Miscount of NYC mayors spans centuries, archive search confirms

Today's newsletter is curated by James Ramsay

Weather: ☀️ Sunny and frigid, highs in the mid 30s.

It's Friday in New York City, where handwritten 17th-century documents in New York City’s municipal archives confirm that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will not be New York City's 111th mayor. 

He'll be the 112th mayor.

Department of Records researcher Michael Lorenzini began digging through the archives after Gothamist reported on evidence of the mayoral miscount. That's where he found evidence that Mayor Matthias Nicolls, a slaveholder from a prominent Long Island family, served nonconsecutive terms as the city's sixth and eighth mayor.

Here's why historians say this matters.

And here's what else is happening: 

• Police said an NJ Transit bus driver slammed into a building in Midtown late Thursday afternoon just after dropping off passengers.
• Current New York City Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos wants to keep her job under the Mamdani administration. But what, exactly, is Mamdani's vision for the city's school system?
• DoorDash and Uber are suing New York City over laws requiring their apps to offer customers the chance to tip delivery workers at checkout.
• A former NYPD lieutenant who was fired after pleading guilty at a departmental trial to receiving $100,000 for hours he didn't work will not go to prison as long as he is not rearrested, a Manhattan judge ruled.
• Queens prosecutors have charged 13 alleged crew members with stealing more than $2.2 million worth of merchandise from Home Depots with the intent of reselling it on the black market.
• Public safety nonprofits across New York City say they’re scrambling to fill major funding gaps after the Trump administration terminated millions of dollars in anti-violence grants this year — and warn the city could face an uptick in violence if the money isn’t replaced.
• The NYPD said a man who repeatedly stabbed a taxi driver and drove away in the Bronx last month turned himself in this week.

• A federal grand jury in Virginia yesterday again declined to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James on mortgage fraud charges, marking the second time in a week jurors refused to revive a case that was dismissed last month.
• Mayor-elect Mamdani won't get to fire as many Adams-era City Hall appointees as he intended because some of them have union protections.  
• Someone hacked Brad Lander's X account this week and started posting about cryptocurrencies and a Cadillac. 
• Anheuser-Busch is selling off its massive, decades-old brewing facility in Newark.
• Here's where Robert Sietsema ate in the East Village in the late '70s when he first showed up from Wisconsin.
• Dick Van Dyke turns 100 tomorrow.
• A new This Is Lorelai album comes out today.
• We love a mug.