Our favorite stories of 2024 ❤️‍🔥

Well Groovies, the year is drawing to a close and we just hosted our holiday party last night, and you know what that means: it’s time for a clip show, aka a stroll down memory lane of some of our favorite stories of the past year.

Whether you’re a newer reader (welcome!) or just missed an issue or two (it’s ok, we get it), we’re taking this week to re-up a few of our personal favorites from 2024. (Next week over the holiday we’ll be back with our most-read stories of the year, i.e. Google Analytics’ personal favorites from 2024.)

For those of you who came out last night: we couldn’t be happier to have had the chance to hang out with you in person, and we’re so glad you made it!! Official party photos coming *soon!* 

Without further ado, a few of Team Groove’s favorite stories of the year:

Virginia’s picks:

Sorting through the stories I loved the most this year, a clear theme emerged: my favorite pieces are almost always the ones where whoever wrote them has personal stakes in the matter and/or an extremely strong POV.

To wit: When Dave pitched this story about taking Robert F. Kennedy’s name off the RFK bridge and returning it to its rightful moniker of Triborough, I was a little skeptical. After reading the post, however, I’m now frothing at the mouth to right this historical wrong and may just paint over all the signs myself. I was also skeptical when Dave pitched a guide to the current mayoral candidates in part based on how familiar they are with his “bits,” but goddammit, he got me again.

I’m still reeling from Jess’ revelation that pigeons can’t get bird flu even when scientists squirt it into their little mouths (!!), and may or may not now cry when I contemplate the degree to which humans have abandoned our winged former-friends.

I was also personally proud to call out nightlife venues that were foolishly throwing away patrons’ life-saving Narcan — allegedly, they’ve since changed their policies — and floored by Conal Darcy’s ludicrously thorough guide to everything you could possibly need to know in order to navigate the Port Authority. If this ain’t service journalism, I don’t know what is!

Dave’s picks:

Tim and I both agree that his story on Live Nation swallowing up The Bell House and turning it from interesting multipurpose venue to vertically-integrated comedy factory was one of our best of the year. Besides being a big scoop for us, it was nice to revisit our history with the Gowanus spot before so much of what we loved about it went away.

I was also a big fan of some of the work our freelancers did this year, showing how the city works in both fun and frustrating ways. Aaron Short delved into how you manage to get yourself into a tennis court around here and just why it is that it’s a regular struggle. Anna Leah found a hidden issue to solve with the city’s much-needed trash revolution by explaining how canners, New York’s necessary but sometimes invisible army of recyclers, are trying to negotiate a way to access the locked trash containers the city is going to install in residential neighborhoods. And Rick Paulas helped us understand how to plan out the sprawling tour marathon of Open House New York Weekend without becoming overwhelmed or missing out on chances to peek into some of the city’s coolest indoor spaces.

Tim’s picks:

In the spring of this year, with the Beyoncé country-ish album on the horizon, we sent resident Southerner Kate Mooney out on assignment to find out where the heart of honky tonk lives in New York City. She immediately came back with this picture of Mr. Met line dancing in Ridgewood and we knew we were onto something good.

Speaking of New York’s beloved baseball monster, last year the Mets announced they were holding auditions for a new person to play Mr. and Mrs. Met; Dave got the inside scoop for this members-only post on what that process is like from someone who made it pretty far in the auditions. 

In less fun news, one of our most beloved Brooklyn venues got swallowed up by Live Nation this year; we not only broke that news, we also took a look at what it means when a place known for offbeat comedy and niche events like librarian-themed ragers gets conglomerated into a hypernational mega corp. Not long after that, another fabled comedy night came to an end too.

As always, we tried to help out if you had some major stress this year, whether it was from the new threat of wildfire smoke or from the new threat of cuts to reproductive healthcare. 

If all that has you feeling sad and wanting to go for a bike ride, I also offered a humble solution for biking to the beach in a much more pleasant way.