NEW YORK CITY

A broad strip of mixed dried leaves and scattered garbage stretched along the avenue like a carpet runner.

A child sat on the sidewalk, tugging the end of the long, coiled tether tying it to a brunch.

We talked with Robert Sullivan, the author of Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants, for a wide-ranging conversation that began with the news that Central Park’s beloved owl Barry had consumed rat poison that may have made impaired her ability to fly before she was hit and killed by a Conservancy truck inside the park.

Overpass shade was so deep the minivan's display flipped over to night mode and back.

From unvaccinated teachers to the challenges for a new Chancellor, a conversation with Chalkbeat New York reporter Christina Veiga on the city’s chaotic first week of school.

A rim of soft pink, higher in the west, surrounded the sky.

A PIGEON HUNCHED up dark and round in the green of a locust tree, under dim skies. The air had lost its coolness. The clouds were irregular but gray all the way through. Brunchers sat right up beside the open windows of restaurants, with the brunch music carrying past them over fully empty outdoor tables. […]

Katie Honan and Harry Siegel talk with George Joseph of WNYC about the spate of deaths at Rikers, and with Maurizio Guerrero about his reporting for Documented NY on the secret price of a construction worker’s life.

The grass in Central Park was lush and springy underfoot, the air saturated with water and thick with vegetal smells.

On and on the rain pattered, in the suspended animation of a day going nowhere.

Documentarians Steven Rosenbaum and Pamela Yoder discuss their new film, The Outsider, about the construction of the 9/11 Museum and Memorial and why it feels so cut off from New York City and from the last 20 years.

Sunlight got into fire escapes and grates and vents and the girders of the Queensboro Bridge. Bay windows let the light through like vitrines.