By Marco Shalma

There was a time, not folklore, not sepia-tone nostalgia, literally fifteen years ago, when New York at 2 AM meant something. The diner was open. The bodega was lit. A grill guy in Jackson Heights was still throwing carbón. You didn’t need a reservation. You didn’t need a QR code. You didn’t need permission. The city moved because the people moved.

Then the slow suffocation started. Between the Bloomberg “polish it up” era, the de Blasio committees and commissions, and Adams treating nightlife like a backdrop for his photo ops, the city that never sleeps got rocked to bed. And not gently.

Look at the numbers.

Q1 of 2024 marked the first time in a decade that more NYC restaurants closed than opened. Not because New Yorkers lost their appetite.

Because doing business here turned into a bureaucratic obstacle course that nobody asked for. Rents climbed to cartoon levels. Regulations doubled. Agencies expanded while services shrank.

And here’s the part that drives operators crazy: You can follow every rule in the book, spend thousands on compliance, inspections, insurance, training, and still get slammed. Meanwhile, the same block has six unlicensed setups running open flame on folding tables with zero oversight. It’s not that we don’t want them hustling. This city is built on hustle.

It’s that the playing field looks like a joke. Nightlife took the same hit. The 24/7 subway myth? Gone. Late-night permits got tighter. Outdoor dining hours got clipped. Venues already on life support got choked again.

Add landlords who warehouse empty spaces for two years waiting for a chain, developers selling “activated spaces” no one asked for, and delivery apps skimming 20–30 percent off local restaurants while pretending they’re partners.

You don’t kill New York in one big move. You kill it in a thousand tiny cuts.

Now we’re staring at a new mayor-elect, Zohran Mamdani, who’s walking into a city with more culture per square foot than anywhere in the world, and more friction than it should ever take to express it.

Nobody needs miracles. Nobody’s asking for a savior. But New Yorkers expect one simple thing: Stop treating culture like a liability. Start treating it like the backbone of the city you’re about to run.

If Mamdani wants to prove he’s different, it’s not with speeches. It’s with action:

Because if we don’t open our eyes now, we’re going to wake up to a New York that looks busy on a postcard but feels empty in real life.

They didn’t kill the city that doesn’t sleep overnight. But someone needs to help wake it back up.