11 actually good things that happened in NYC this year

Another year has nearly passed in New York (and in the broader world, we guess, but that’s not really our business). And while there’s always plenty of stuff to complain about and try to make better, it’s become a little Groove tradition to take this week to step back and appreciate the sincerely constructive, positive and just extremely funny things that happened in the city this year. There are always more of them than you think! 

Of course, number one on our list is that you all kept reading and supporting The Groove. We quite literally could not keep doing this without the support of our readers, and this community has been a real bright spot in an otherwise Sick Sad World. So we’ll give a big, heartfelt thanks to all of you, and without further ado, take a trip down memory lane of all the actually good stuff that’s happened in the city in 2025:

The mayoral election provided a perfect antidote to national politics

We say it here all the time: if you want the exact opposite of the crushing despair and helplessness one feels tracking national politics, turn your gaze back to the local level. Not because this city’s political system is some frictionless utopia, but because good, tangible change does happen, and it’s something everyday citizens have the chance to be a part of.

That was especially true of this year’s mayoral election. With his campaign’s relentless focus on affordability and quality-of-life issues, Zohran Mamdani managed to keep the race largely focused on actual issues, and proved that voters are eager and willing to get into nitty gritty policy if you speak to them engagingly and like adults. In the home stretch of the primary, Mamdani’s cross-endorsement with Brad Lander was correctly lauded as the best-case scenario of ranked-choice voting, and a version of politics that made you feel reasonably OK about humanity. Cap it off with a ripper of an election night, and it all adds up to at least one political timeline that actually felt good, even encouraging to pay attention to this year. 
-Virginia

Voters humiliated Andrew Cuomo not once, but twice

This deserves its own item, because while the previous thing is all about positivity and productive action, this one is all about pure, uncut haterade and the joy of seeing your enemies ground into the dust. After a crushing primary loss that saw him unexpectedly conceding before 11 p.m., disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo insisted on running in the general mayoral race as an independent, and was once again resoundingly defeated, but not before being dunked on repeatedly by every single person in the race, especially Curtis Sliwa. Well, at least it’s something Cuomo can add to his long list of accomplishments.
-Virginia

Containerization and food scrap pickup is really working 

Eric Adams may be remembered among the weirder and more corrupt people to lead this city, and that’s no small feat to accomplish, but you simply gotta hand it to him on the trash. The mayor successfully dragged the city into the 20th century over the past two years, pushing through the revolutionary concept of “put the garbage in a fucking garbage can.” Without piles of easily ripped black bags lining the streets, some areas of the city have been noticeably cleaner. The war on rats may rage on, but we are at least armed with hard-sided bins these days. 
-Tim 

The FARE Act is also working

One item on last year’s “good things that happened” list was the passing of the FARE Act, which finally banned the ludicrous practice of renters being charged the fees for brokers who’ve been hired by the damn landlords. Well as of June 11 of this year, it’s officially the law of the land, and while we’re still a long way from the dust settling (ask Tim about the horror of his recent apartment hunt….), renters have been reporting violations en masse, and the Department of Worker and Consumer Protection is hard at work investigating and prosecuting cases. Things are moving in the right direction, and that’s a win.
-Virginia

The bet on the Coney Island casino plan went bust 

More than 5 million people visit Coney Island each year to spend money on everything from hot dogs to beers to games to knockoff bucket hats sold out of shopping carts on the boardwalk. Naturally, therefore, the landlord who has owned huge parcels land in the prime amusement area for decades could only think of one way to make money: scam those people with a casino! 

That was the grand plan put forth this year by developer Thor Equities, an idea it has been salivating over since the Bloomberg administration. But after millions of dollars in plans, lobbying, and allegedly astroturfing some community support, that big plan went bust this year. After massive community pushback and a summer-long resistance campaign led by Coney Island USA, the Coney Island, the plan was not selected to receive consideration for one of the state’s gambling licenses that will be awarded at the end of the year. It was a win for anyone who didn't think the notoriously scummy and unreliable developer should be entrusted with millions of square feet of new construction that would remake the DNA of the People's' Playground, especially as all signs pointed that it would eventually become a half-empty dead mall by the sea before long.

Back to the drawing board for Thor Equities: may we suggest selling bucket hats on the boardwalk if you're still looking for income? 
-Tim 

Congestion pricing actually happened

On Jan. 3, I was stuck in a courtroom in Newark for almost 10 hours as a federal judge considered whether to give a last-minute restraining order to New Jersey to prevent the MTA from finally starting congestion pricing two days later. I lost my mind in that federal court because most of the time was spent waiting for the judge to come out of his chamber and finally say “TRO denied.” I did get to see Randy Mastro humiliate himself by begging the judge for just a teeny tiny TRO but still, it was an insane day.

At midnight on January 5, the MTA finally started tolling drivers entering Manhattan south of 60th Street, accomplishing a decades-long dream of a generation of activists. I celebrated by sending everyone I knew a profane sex emoji text declaring the start of congestion pricing. Forgive me all of this throat clearing, I spent four years writing about every new development on the toll.

Anyway, what happened after Jan. 5 was that congestion pricing worked, even better than people thought it might. Vehicle volumes in lower Manhattan have dropped by 11 percent, the economy is doing just fine and best of all the Bronx has not been waylaid by drivers trying to avoid the toll. I will always resent Kathy Hochul for ruining months of my 2024, but even she deduced it was better to fight Donald Trump and Sean Duffy’s ham handed attempt to kill the toll, and she’s been rewarded with a series of legal victories and comical pratfalls by her opponents.
-Dave

New York City sports had a couple bright spots

Compared to last year’s multi-sport glory, 2025 was a bit of a bust. The Rangers took a step back, tripped and fell down a ravine. The Mets seemed on the way to proving last year’s magical heater was no fluke, until a multi-month slow motion collapse took them from best in baseball to missing the playoffs entirely. The Yankees were consistently pantsed by the eventual American League Champion Blue Jays (ymmv on how much of a bad thing that is) and the Liberty succumbed to the critique that they could never live up to sum of their parts and crashed out of the first round of the playoffs. Even the buddy football comedy act out of the Meadowlands curdled into something no one would prefer to think about.

But hey, Gotham FC of the National Women’s Soccer League defeated Washington Spirit to bring home their second championship in a row, and the Brooklyn Cyclones won the South Atlantic League title to bring a championship to the People’s Playground. And though it’s easy to focus on the less-than-pleasant way the Knicks lost in the Eastern Conference Finals, the team won 50 games in back-to-back seasons for the first time in 30 years, eliminated the cowardly Boston Celtics from the playoffs in a shock upset and gave fans something to look forward to this year despite owner James Dolan’s insistence on being the worst living New Yorker.
-Dave

The Bronx Zoo’s World of Darkness finally reopened

This was a year where we actually got some beloved local institutions back from the grave (welcome back, Siberia). And after a full 16-year hiatus due to recession-era budget troubles, the Bronx Zoo’s World of Darkness exhibit finally returned this summer, and gives you a pay chance to pay a visit to assorted nocturnal friends like bats, sand cats, “night monkeys,” “cloud rats” and so many more. We’re slowly but surely earning back our title as the city that never sleeps.
-Virginia

The Queensboro Bridge finally got a separate pedestrian path

For decades, cyclists and pedestrians were crammed onto the same 8-foot wide path on the north outer roadway of the Queensboro Bridge, even as the population of both consistently rose and made the already cramped path more and more dangerous. Cowardly former Mayor Bill de Blasio refused to open the little-used South Outer Roadway to pedestrians during his time in office, so the job fell to Eric Adams, who pushed the conversion of the road from 2022 to 2024. Adams, to his credit, finally got the job done in 2025. But because this is Eric Adams we’re dealing with, the final victory for pedestrians had to be ludicrously stupid: a planned opening of the South Outer Roadway was inexplicably called off right before it was supposed to happen, and then similarly inexplicably opened weeks later. All's well that ends well though I suppose: the Queensboro will surpass two million cycling trips for the second straight year. 
-Dave

Citi Bike kept humming along

Mayor Adams and Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro decided to make electric Citi Bikes public enemy number one, but people just kept riding the bikes. Citi Bike set a new single day record on Aug. 8 with 205,000 rides across the system, and bike share expanded to Bay Ridge with a minimum of drama. Now someone just has to figure out what to do about the whole “most expensive bike share system in the world” thing.
-Dave

A new ‘henge debuted 

Manhattanhenge is fine and all but what about the one true henge to rule them all? Brooklyn got its own solar phenomenon this year thanks to Groove contributor Kevin Clyne. Kevin calculated exactly when and where one could view the sun setting over the foreboding Brooklyn Tower building to create an even more foreboding “Sauronhenge” effect. See the results, and the crowds who gathered to watch it, here.
-Tim