Flora Marteen Captures the Romance of Argentina With Its Buenos Aires Resort Collection 2027

NY Weekly Staff on October 2, 2026

Designer Jennifer Peykar looks to family, travel and the timeless sophistication of Buenos Aires for Flora Marteen’s newest luxury capsule.

Fashion has always had a love affair with cities.

Paris represents romance. Milan evokes craftsmanship. New York symbolizes energy.

For Flora Marteen designer Jennifer Peykar, the inspiration for 2027 leads to another extraordinary fashion capital: Buenos Aires.

The luxury resort wear label’s Buenos Aires Resort Collection 2027 celebrates the Argentine capital through an elegant capsule designed around fluidity, femininity and travel.

But the collection’s story begins long before Peykar selected a destination.

It begins with her grandmother.

Flora Marteen is named in honor of the woman whose influence helped shape Peykar’s understanding of elegance.

“My grandmother taught me that beautiful clothing isn’t about excess,” Peykar says. “It’s about confidence, quality, and creating something that makes a woman feel extraordinary. Every collection I design begins with her influence.”

That philosophy runs throughout Resort 2027.

Argentina Through a Designer’s Eyes

Buenos Aires is famous for contrasts.

European-influenced architecture meets Latin American culture. Grand boulevards lead to intimate neighborhood cafés. Historic elegance exists alongside the energy of contemporary life.

And then there is tango, a dance built around emotion, movement and connection.

Peykar brings those contrasts into the collection.

Flowing silhouettes echo the movement of dancers. Soft metallic materials evoke evening light across the city. Knitted and seamless pieces bring modern ease, while delicate lace offers an unmistakably romantic element.

Together, the pieces present Peykar’s interpretation of Buenos Aires rather than a literal recreation of it.

Resort Wear Goes Global

The definition of resort wear has expanded considerably.

It is no longer simply a category associated with beach cover-ups and tropical vacations. For a global consumer, resort clothing may need to work in multiple countries and through multiple occasions.

Peykar’s collection responds with adaptable pieces.

Lightweight dresses can move from daytime exploration to dinner. Accessories can transform relaxed silhouettes for evening. The collection is intentionally designed to make packing easier while maintaining a sense of polish.

That means the same Flora Marteen wardrobe can feel at home in the Hamptons, St. Barths, Mediterranean, Amalfi Coast or Buenos Aires.

Fashion Worth Remembering

Limited-production design and an emphasis on craftsmanship also reinforce the brand’s approach to luxury.

Rather than chasing every passing trend, Peykar continues to develop a recognizable identity around femininity and timelessness.

And perhaps that is where her grandmother’s influence is most apparent.

Fashion inevitably changes. Hemlines move. Colors rotate. Trends disappear and return.

Personal style has a longer life.

With the Buenos Aires Resort Collection 2027, Flora Marteen celebrates that idea through clothing created to become part of the memories women make while traveling.

Buenos Aires provides the setting.

Peykar provides the design.

And the legacy of Flora Marteen provides the soul.

https://floramarteen.com/

NYU Launches Plastics Research Center Focused on Health Risks

NY Weekly Staff 2 on October 2, 2026

The NYU plastics research center launched Oct. 1 as the NYC Center for Healthier Plastic Solutions, pairing NYU Tandon engineers with NYU Grossman medical specialists. The program will examine plastic degradation, microplastics and potential health effects while using high-throughput testing and artificial intelligence to compare new polymer formulations.

Key Takeaways

  • NYU announced the NYC Center for Healthier Plastic Solutions on Oct. 1, 2026
  • The center brings together NYU Tandon School of Engineering and NYU Grossman School of Medicine
  • A 2025 Nature Medicine study detected micro- and nanoplastics in human kidney, liver and brain tissue, but detection does not establish disease causation
  • NYU plans to use high-throughput testing and AI to compare polymer formulations and degradation behavior

New York University created the center to connect polymer design with environmental health and medicine. The project addresses an unresolved scientific question: plastics can fragment into micro- and nanoplastics, but scientists are still determining what different levels and routes of exposure mean for human health.

NYU says teams will study how materials change under physical wear, chemical exposure and heat, then compare those findings with biological and health data. The program will also test new polymer formulations, including materials made from non-petroleum feedstocks.

NYU Plastics Research Center Connects Engineering and Medicine

The NYU plastics research center is co-directed by Miguel Modestino, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NYU Tandon, and Leonardo Trasande, a professor of pediatrics and population health at NYU Grossman.

The center brings together specialists in polymer synthesis, microplastic detection, toxicology, epidemiology, environmental engineering and machine-learning-assisted materials analysis. That structure is intended to connect decisions made during material design with measurements of how those materials behave as they age and degrade.

Polymer scientists can examine how formulation and processing affect fragmentation, while medical and environmental teams study how particles and chemical components interact with biological systems. Similar questions about durability, degradation and biological interaction also appear in medical-grade polymer research, where material properties are evaluated in relation to their intended use.

NYU says its laboratories will support parallel polymer synthesis, micro- and nanoplastic characterization, accelerated degradation testing, and thermal, chemical and mechanical analysis. The approach is designed to generate comparable data on how materials perform and how their properties change under different conditions.

Human Tissue Findings Define a Major Evidence Gap

The health side of the initiative enters a field where detection methods have advanced faster than definitive conclusions about long-term effects.

A 2025 Nature Medicine study detected micro- and nanoplastics in samples of human kidney, liver and brain tissue. The authors reported higher concentrations in brain tissue than in liver and kidney samples and found higher concentrations in 2024 liver and brain samples than in samples from 2016.

The study did not establish that the detected particles caused a particular disease or health outcome. Its authors called for further investigation into exposure routes, uptake, clearance and potential health effects.

That distinction is central to NYU’s approach. Detecting plastic particles establishes their presence, but additional evidence is needed to determine whether particular concentrations, particle characteristics or exposure pathways contribute to specific health outcomes.

A World Health Organization review has also identified evidence gaps involving human exposure to nano- and microplastic particles through food, water and air. The review called for stronger data on exposure levels, particle characteristics and potential health effects.

NYU’s decision to combine medical analysis with materials engineering is intended to address both sides of that gap: how plastics fragment and what happens after resulting particles or chemical components encounter biological systems.

AI Supports High-Throughput Materials Testing

The engineering program will use high-throughput experimentation to produce and test multiple candidate materials in parallel. NYU says teams will expose those materials to mechanical, chemical and thermal stresses, measure degradation products and use computational tools to help guide later rounds of testing.

Artificial intelligence will support that screening process rather than make independent safety determinations. The approach reflects a wider use of AI in laboratory research, where computational systems can help organize complex datasets and identify areas for further experimental analysis.

The NYU center plans to measure factors including molecular weight, thermal stability, mechanical behavior and fragmentation. Scientists can then compare those measurements across formulations to identify material characteristics associated with different degradation patterns.

The program links two stages that are often examined separately. Teams can characterize what existing and experimental plastics release as they degrade, then use those measurements to inform the design and testing of later formulations.

NYU Grossman also had more than a dozen projects related to plastics and health underway when the center was announced. NYU said those efforts were supported by nearly $20 million in funding, giving the new center an existing base of medical and environmental health work alongside its engineering program.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the NYC Center for Healthier Plastic Solutions?

The NYC Center for Healthier Plastic Solutions is a joint center created by NYU Tandon School of Engineering and NYU Grossman School of Medicine. It examines plastic degradation, micro- and nanoplastics, potential health effects and new polymer formulations.

When did NYU launch the plastics research center?

NYU announced the center on Oct. 1, 2026. The NYU plastics research center combines engineering, materials science and medicine in a program focused on plastics, degradation and health-related questions.

What will scientists test at the center?

Teams plan to synthesize and compare polymer formulations, including some made from non-petroleum feedstocks. Testing will examine physical wear, chemical exposure, heat, micro- and nanoplastic formation, thermal stability and mechanical properties.

Does current evidence prove that microplastics cause disease?

Current studies have detected micro- and nanoplastics in human tissues, but detection alone does not establish that the particles caused a specific disease. Scientists are continuing to examine exposure, uptake, clearance and potential biological effects.

How will artificial intelligence be used?

AI will help analyze experimental data and guide the screening of polymer formulations. Physical testing and biological analysis remain necessary to evaluate how materials degrade and how resulting particles or chemical components behave.

On Conesus Lake, the Third of July Outranks the Fourth

NY Weekly Staff on October 2, 2026

Most American communities observe Independence Day on the fourth. On Conesus Lake, in Livingston County, the significant date is the third – and it has been for the better part of a century.

The reason is the Ring of Fire, an annual tradition in which residents along the shoreline light flares simultaneously at 10:00 pm on July 3, producing a continuous band of red light around the water. Fireworks follow, launched from points up and down the lake. The Conesus Lake Association sponsors the event and distributes flares to participating households for a nominal fee.

A Local Calendar

The date has become sufficiently embedded that it functions as its own holiday in local usage.

“People say, what are you doing for the third? It’s an actual sentence that gets uttered quite frequently,” says Matthew Sharman, who was born and raised on the lake and sells waterfront property in the area.

Local reporting places the tradition’s organized origin in 1938, which would make it close to a century old. A further account, carried by the Conesus Lake Association and in county tourism materials, traces the practice back to Seneca gatherings around fires on the lake. That earlier account is local tradition rather than documented history, and is best treated as such – though it is the version Sharman grew up hearing, and the one most often repeated around the lake.

The scale is substantial for a lake eight miles long. Visitors arrive from well outside the county, and when July 3 falls on a weekend the convergence is considerable.

The Participation Model

What distinguishes the Ring of Fire from a conventional fireworks display is that the spectators and the performers are largely the same people.

“They, themselves, are part of the show,” Sharman says. Households along the shoreline are not an audience assembled to watch something staged for them; the lighting of the flares is distributed across virtually every property on the water, which means the display cannot happen unless a few hundred households independently decide to take part.

Sharman describes the effect as the lake celebrating together rather than hosting an event that happens to have water behind it. From the water, the ring is visible in both directions. From the air – and private aircraft have produced the most widely circulated images over the years – it resolves into the shape the name describes.

For anyone without lake access, the two established public vantage points are Vitale Park at the north end of the lake, which looks straight down the length of the water, and Long Point Park off West Lake Road. Sharman’s practical note on Vitale Park is that it fills early.

The tradition is not unique to Conesus within the region. Honeoye Lake holds its own Ring of Fire over Labor Day weekend, marking the close of summer rather than Independence Day.

What A Tradition Indicates About A Market

Sharman’s professional interest in the event is less about the evening than about what sustains it. A coordinated display requiring near-universal voluntary participation is a reasonable proxy for how a lake community actually functions – and that has changed less than the ownership around the lake has.

Conesus was historically a lake of local families in second cottages. A substantial share of the shoreline now belongs to owners who came from elsewhere. Sharman’s observation is that the tradition has absorbed them rather than thinned out, and that participating in it is one of the mechanisms by which newer owners stop feeling like visitors.

That matters commercially in a way buyers frequently underestimate. Lots on Conesus are narrow and close together; privacy is limited, and the practical experience of ownership depends heavily on how neighbors behave toward one another. Sharman says the owners who report the best experience are consistently the ones who treat proximity as an asset – offering unused parking when someone has family visiting, collecting misdirected mail, lending a hand with a task. His phrasing is that they make their neighbors friends rather than neighbors.

Amenity and community factors are difficult to quantify and tend to be omitted from listing data entirely, but on a small lake they shape demand in ways that square footage and frontage figures do not capture.

For a buyer weighing a property on Conesus, the operative question is not whether the Ring of Fire is worth attending. It is whether the communal model it depends on is the model they want to live inside – because on a lake this tightly built, it is not really optional.

About the Expert: Matthew Sharman leads The Sharman Team at Real Broker NY LLC, serving Greater Rochester, the GLOW region, and the western Finger Lakes, with particular focus on Conesus Lake and Livingston County lakefront property.

Disclaimer: This article is based on information provided by the expert source cited above. It is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or real estate advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult qualified professionals before making any real estate or financial decisions.

A Film About Dirt Wants to Change One Billion Acres of Farmland

NY Weekly Staff on October 2, 2026

The team behind the documentary Groundswell launched One Billion Acres during New York Climate Week, with new pledges covering 66 million acres

Rebecca and Josh Tickell have spent years making films about soil. On September 23, during New York Climate Week, they set out to show that a film can do more than leave an audience feeling hopeful.

At WHY REGENERATIVE in New York City, the Tickells and their collaborators launched One Billion Acres, a campaign to move one billion acres of the world’s farmland and rangeland to regenerative agriculture by 2030. The press conference was followed by the New York premiere of Groundswell, the documentary the campaign grew out of.

On launch day, the campaign announced commitments covering 66 million new acres, more than 40 million of them in the United States.

“This is how systemic change happens: top down, bottom up, and middle out,” Rebecca Tickell told the audience. “Today’s announcement is the beginning of a new age of regeneration.”

Groundswell is the last film in the Tickells’ soil trilogy, which began with Kiss the Ground (2020) and continued with Common Ground (2023). It was an Official Selection at the Festival de Cannes and won the Golden Globe Documentary Prize. Narrated by Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson, it is now streaming on Prime Video. The film presents the problems facing climate, water, biodiversity and human health as something people can act on, rather than as reasons to give up.

One Billion Acres turns that message into a scoreboard. Governments, brands, farmers, investors and nonprofits make pledges through the campaign, and it tracks their progress publicly. The idea behind it is that regenerative practices, which restore the natural cycles of carbon, water and nutrients in soil, lead to healthier land, cleaner water and air, and more stable incomes for farmers.

Photo Courtesy: Big Picture Ranch

Most of the 66 million acres came from two groups. Grassroots Carbon pledged 40 million acres, and the Regenerative Organic Alliance pledged 8 million, both by 2030.

“The path to one billion acres runs through America’s ranches,” said Brad Tipper, CEO of Grassroots Carbon. He noted that the company already works with hundreds of ranching families across nearly 3 million acres in 22 states. “Now we are raising our ambition.”

Christopher Gergen, CEO of the Regenerative Organic Alliance, put it more bluntly. “We can’t afford to wait,” he said. “We must farm like the world depends on it.”

Food and beverage brands also signed on, including Nespresso, Maker’s Mark, Applegate, Serenity Kids, Maison Mirabeau, White Oak Pastures, Yerba Madre and Wildfarmed. Lisa K. Gibby, chief communications officer at Nespresso’s parent company Nestlé, said the industry has moved beyond asking whether regenerative farming works. “The challenge now is not proving it works,” she said, “but scaling it across millions of hectares, thousands of suppliers, and entire value chains.”

The campaign is co-led by Finian Makepeace and Ryland Englehart, who co-founded Kiss the Ground. Makepeace said he has spent 15 years working toward this point. “I believe we’re now at the moment when we can truly reach a tipping point,” he said.

Laura Turner Seydel, chair of the Turner Foundation and an executive producer of Groundswell, spoke about practical benefits. She said healthy soils help farms hold up against flooding, heat and drought, and keep harmful chemicals out of drinking water.

The most personal remarks came from Will Harris, owner of White Oak Pastures in Georgia, who has farmed regeneratively for three decades.

“For the last thirty years, I’ve wondered whether I was a niche marketer or an early innovator in an emerging movement,” Harris said. “Seeing films like Groundswell and an effort like One Billion Acres makes me believe the answer is becoming clear: this is a global movement.”

Farmers, brands and individuals can take the pledge at OneBillionAcres.org.

Sara Stamford on Writing Anna in The Lost Souls

NY Weekly Staff on October 2, 2026

By: Jessica Suarez

There is a particular challenge in writing a character who is manipulative, genuinely in pain, darkly funny, and occasionally frightening in the same chapter. The risk is that the reader will stop caring about her, that the manipulation will cancel the pain, that the destruction will overwhelm the humanity underneath it. In The Lost Souls, Sara Stamford writes Anna at her most complex without ever losing her compassion for the woman beneath the behavior.

That balance was intentional and required constant attention. Stamford always saw Anna as more than her worst moments. She can be manipulative and destructive, but underneath that is someone carrying a lot of pain and trying to survive it in ways that aren’t always healthy. Having compassion for a character doesn’t mean excusing their behavior. It means trying to understand what brought them to that moment.

The Marionette and the Music

Anna describes herself at one point as a marionette dancing to the rhythm of her own music. That image captures something essential about her. She performs a version of herself for the world around her, a life of confidence and dream-fulfillment that she eventually acknowledges is a sham and a staged performance. The performance is so practiced and so complete that it has become almost impossible to separate from the person underneath it.

Stamford’s title speaks directly to this. Anna is one of the lost souls of the novel’s central concern, someone who has lost herself while trying to be who the world around her expects her to be. Her version of Los Angeles is a city that demands you look a certain way, know the right people, and constantly prove that you belong. She has been proving it for so long that she has forgotten she was ever doing anything else.

The Kitchen and the Knife

One of the most difficult scenes in the novel involves Anna in Patrick’s kitchen with a knife. Stamford was clear about what she wanted readers to feel in that moment. She didn’t want them to simply see Anna as dangerous or unstable. She wanted them to feel how lost Anna had become, drowning in her own fears and anguish.

That is a harder thing to write than a simple villain scene. It requires holding the character’s interior pain as primary, even while the external behavior is alarming. The scene works because Stamford never steps back from Anna’s perspective long enough to judge her from the outside. The compassion doesn’t disappear at the moment the behavior is most difficult. It deepens.

Connection as a Lifeline

Anna’s darkest moments in the novel are written with a specific and important counterweight. When thoughts of ending her life surface, they are pulled back by Shane’s face or Elizabeth’s smile, which Anna clings to like lifelines. Stamford was deliberate about this dynamic.

She wanted to show that even in Anna’s darkest moments, she still had hope. Shane and Elizabeth couldn’t save her. But they reminded her she wasn’t completely alone. That felt very important to capture: sometimes connection, even when it’s messy, can be the thread someone holds onto when everything else feels lost.

Patrick and Jasmine’s Complicity

Anna’s supporting cast is equally carefully drawn. Patrick is described as a heart surgeon who doesn’t have a heart. Jasmine is the wife displaced by Anna’s presence who still shows up with her Yorkshire Terrier and genuine concern. Both of them care about Anna. And both of them, through good intentions, become part of her unraveling.

Stamford wanted them to feel human rather than simply good or bad. Good intentions don’t always lead to good choices. Sometimes trying to protect someone, making excuses for them, or constantly rescuing them can actually enable their behavior. Their dynamic shows how easy it is to become part of someone’s unraveling without realizing it, especially when love, guilt, and responsibility get mixed together in ways that are impossible to fully separate.

A novel about pain, performance, and the complicated compassion we owe even our most difficult characters. The Lost Souls by Sara Stamford can be found on the book’s Amazon page.

David Moore and the Fight to Save 24/7 Media

NY Weekly Staff on October 2, 2026

By: Serg Fussaro

There are bad earnings calls, and there are career-defining moments of public failure. In the dark months after the dot-com crash, David Moore faced both. The CEO of 24/7 Media stood before staggering losses, a deep accumulated deficit, and eventually the phrase every CEO dreads seeing in a company filing: substantial doubt about the ability to continue as a going concern. He didn’t take questions on the call that followed because he knew what the questions would be. Within sixty days, most of his analysts were gone.

David drove home that night thinking at least it couldn’t get any worse. It got worse.

What got him out of bed the next morning, and every morning after that through a prolonged survival story of the dot-com era, is the core of The 24/7 CEO: The Battle for Survival That Helped Build Digital Advertising. It is a memoir that spans four decades in media and technology but centers on a dramatic survival story of the early internet era, told with the candor and specific detail of someone who has had enough distance to see it clearly and enough honesty to tell it whole.

The Phone and What It Represents

David came up in sales. He started at Turner Broadcasting in 1979, selling cable television to agencies that didn’t want to talk to him at a time when cable was considered a joke by everyone with a budget to spend. He learned something in those years that became the foundation of everything that followed: when things are bad, you pick up the phone and dial. That was true at Turner in 1981, and it was true at 24/7 in 2001. As long as there was someone left to call, they weren’t done.

That sounds simple enough to be a cliché until you understand what it meant in practice. It meant commissioning a thousand cold calls at a time when most people in the industry had already written 24/7 off and moved on to covering companies that still had a future worth covering. It meant asking every person who said no if they knew someone who might say yes. One of those calls eventually reached a man named Joe Waechter, who couldn’t invest but introduced them to Toshio Masuda, who represented a group of seventy-five to a hundred Japanese investors. David flew to Japan with his son Chris, who had just graduated high school. For reasons he still doesn’t fully understand, the investors gave Chris a standing ovation and took pictures with him. They walked out with an investment in exchange for a significant stake in the company. That was the first time in years they had actual runway, not just the illusion of one. That was when David knew they were going to make it.

What Never Giving Up Actually Looks Like

Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, called David the Winston Churchill of dot-com CEOs. From the inside, David says, it doesn’t look heroic. It looks like walking down a hallway to deliver news nobody asked to hear.

Late 2001, he called Mark Moran, the company’s general counsel, and got no answer. He walked the two doors down to Mark’s office, knocked twice, and opened the door to find ten senior executives with faces going pale. They were inquiring about the feasibility of a bankruptcy filing, more worried about their own severance than about saving the company they still worked for.

David told them to go to the conference room. He told them the truth in terms he thought they could absorb: he was not declaring the end anytime soon. If they were not with him, he could probably squeeze out a week of severance, but that was it. It is not the size of the dog in the fight, he told them. It is the size of the fight in the dog. They were taking it to the end.

He didn’t convince all of them. He didn’t need to. He just needed enough of them to still be standing when the call came in from Japan, when Judy held the stock above a dollar with forty-five minutes left on the clock, when the press releases went out every day for ten days to stay above delisting.

Never giving up isn’t a feeling. It is a decision you make in a room full of people who have already decided otherwise. David Moore made it repeatedly, over years, and the outcome was the eventual sale of the company to WPP. The book is the story of everything that happened between the going concern notice and that sale, told in full.

The survival story that helped build digital advertising. The 24/7 CEO by David Moore is available now on Amazon.

World Cup Delivered $2 Billion to New York City Economy as Brooklyn Visitor Spending Jumped 19%

NY Weekly Staff 2 on October 2, 2026

The 2026 FIFA World Cup generated an estimated $2 billion in economic impact for New York City, according to a preliminary analysis released September 30 by the Mayor’s Office and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. Tournament spending supported about 12,100 jobs, and international card spending rose in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

Key Takeaways

  • Direct visitor spending in New York City reached $1.2 billion, with another $162 million in operational spending tied to the tournament.
  • The New York-New Jersey region recorded $3.5 billion in total impact, above the $3.3 billion the Host Committee projected before the tournament.
  • New York City captured 56% of the regional economic impact and 70% of all visitor spending, even though every match was played in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
  • International Visa card spending rose 19% year over year in Brooklyn, 12% in Manhattan, and 6% in Queens during the tournament.
  • Hotel occupancy in the combined Bronx and Staten Island markets increased 6% over the 39-day event.
  • NYCEDC’s Choose NYC Summit drew more than 350 attendees from 150 businesses representing 34 countries.

New York City Captured the Majority of Regional World Cup Spending

The eight matches, including the July 19 final, took place at New York New Jersey Stadium across the Hudson. Even so, New York City ended up with most of the money. The NYCEDC figures show the city accounted for more than half of the region’s $3.5 billion total and more than two-thirds of direct visitor spending.

The gap between where the games were played and where the money was spent comes down to infrastructure. New York City’s hotel inventory, transit connections, and dense restaurant and retail corridors made it the natural base for visitors. The FIFA World Cup 2026 New York New Jersey Host Committee reports that 1.3 million match attendees and non-local visitors produced about $1.7 billion in regional visitor spending. With roughly $1.2 billion of that landing in New York City, the city kept most of what a stadium-centered event usually sends elsewhere.

The NYCEDC estimate, prepared with Tourism Economics, covers more than receipts from fans. It also includes purchases by businesses that supplied goods and services during the tournament and spending by workers and households whose income rose because of tournament activity. Officials describe the analysis as preliminary, so final figures may change.

Outer-Borough Growth Points to Wider Distribution

The borough-level data may matter more for small businesses than the headline total. Brooklyn’s 19% rise in international card spending was higher than Manhattan’s 12%. That suggests visitors went past Midtown and into neighborhoods that usually see a smaller share of tourist traffic. Queens recorded a 6% increase, and the Bronx and Staten Island saw hotel occupancy rise by the same margin.

That pattern lines up with the city’s programming during the tournament. The administration hosted more than 100 free watch parties across the five boroughs, turned more than 50 blocks into “Soccer Streets,” streamed matches on LinkNYC kiosks, and secured 1,000 affordable match tickets for residents. Business-facing efforts included a “$26 for 2026” dining special, the “Welcome World Rewards” program, and a World Cup Business Toolkit for local merchants.

Maya Handa, the city’s World Cup Czar, said agencies worked to drive foot traffic to businesses in all five boroughs and that the results showed the tournament worked for New Yorkers broadly. Nancy Mammana, Chief Marketing Officer of New York City Tourism + Conventions, said the programming brought visitors into neighborhoods across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island.

Small Businesses and Hospitality Workers Absorbed the Demand

The 12,100 jobs supported by tournament spending spanned hospitality, food service, retail, and related sectors. For New York City’s roughly 183,000 small businesses, the World Cup worked as a 39-day stress test of how quickly neighborhood operators could take on international demand.

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani credited deli owners, cab drivers, and line cooks with powering the tournament’s local economy. NYCEDC President and CEO Anthony Shorris pointed to restaurant servers, hotel workers, and small business owners as the people who turned a global sporting event into gains for the city.

Regional transit was also preparing for the surge well before kickoff. The accelerated transit investment the Port Authority tied to tournament preparation shows how infrastructure planning shaped the visitor experience that drove these spending figures.

Choose NYC Summit Used the Tournament to Court Global Investment

NYCEDC also used the World Cup to pursue longer-term business development. The Choose NYC Summit brought together more than 350 attendees from 150 businesses across 34 countries. NYCEDC also organized tours of Downtown Brooklyn, Long Island City, the Bronx, Union Square, and Sunset Park for international organizations considering expansion into New York City.

Alex Lasry, CEO of the Host Committee, said the investments, partnerships, and global visibility from the tournament will keep benefiting the region after the final whistle. Whether that turns into new leases, offices, or jobs will become clearer over the next several years.

 

Disclaimer: This article is based on preliminary economic impact estimates and data released by the New York City Mayor’s Office and NYCEDC. The figures, including visitor spending, jobs supported, and borough-level spending changes, may be revised as additional data becomes available. Economic impact estimates are not the same as direct revenue or profit, and the reported figures should not be interpreted as a guarantee of future economic activity. References to businesses, organizations, officials, and public programs are provided for informational purposes only.

 

FAQs

How much money did the World Cup bring to New York City?

The 2026 FIFA World Cup generated an estimated $2 billion in total economic impact for New York City. That figure includes $1.2 billion in direct visitor spending and $162 million in operational spending, according to a preliminary NYCEDC and Tourism Economics analysis.

How many jobs did the World Cup support in New York City?

Tournament-related spending supported about 12,100 jobs in New York City, mainly in hospitality, food service, retail, and related industries.

Where were the New York World Cup matches played?

All eight New York-New Jersey matches, including the July 19 final, were played at New York New Jersey Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. New York City still captured 70% of regional visitor spending.

Which borough saw the largest increase in international spending?

Brooklyn recorded a 19% year-over-year increase in international Visa card spending during the tournament, compared with 12% in Manhattan and 6% in Queens.

Did the World Cup beat its economic projections for the region?

Yes. The Host Committee projected $3.3 billion in regional economic impact before the tournament. The updated estimate after the final came to $3.5 billion.

From a Yellow Python Book to Building a Community of Girl Coders

NY Weekly Staff on October 2, 2026

By: Elena Mart

Nicole Xu turned her own early struggles with coding into an all-girls coding club, SheCodes, and created opportunities for girls in Singapore to explore, experience, and participate in the field of technology

At Nexus International School in Singapore, Nicole Xu is often one of the few girls in the room. She is currently the only girl among eight students taking Higher Level Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science in her year. But rather than simply noticing the imbalance, Xu has spent the past few years creating spaces where other girls could explore the world of coding alongside people who share their interests. She founded SheCodes, a coding co-curricular activity at Nexus, and later brought around 50 participants together for a SheCodes hackathon in October 2026. Her work is now extending beyond Singapore through Seeds of Light, a charitable project supporting coding opportunities for children in rural Yunnan, China.

The story started in 2021, when Xu was 15 and had just joined Nexus. She bought a thick yellow book about Python, excited to learn how to code. The book was packed with pages and had a Python snake on its cover. But instead of figuring everything out from the book alone, Xu quickly found her own way through coding with Ms Hemangi, the teacher who led the Hack Club at her school.

Early interest in coding & searching for a community

Ms Hemangi became an important teacher and role model for Xu as she began learning to code. Xu picked up Python quickly and soon began applying what she learned through her school’s Hack Club, where she could experiment with small projects and make games such as tic-tac-toe.

The more she learned, however, the more she wanted people around her who were equally interested in technology. Coding itself was not the barrier. Finding a community of people who shared her enthusiasm was.

The Hack Club gave her some of that community, while Ms Hemangi showed her what it could look like to have someone encourage and guide that interest. Those experiences would eventually influence the kind of environment Xu wanted to create for female students.

Photo Courtesy: Eric Matisse

Hackathons & Workshops

Xu began looking for opportunities to take her interest in technology beyond regular classes. She participated in three Nexus hackathons and a Lenovo hackathon, working with teams to develop projects around practical problems. Her Nexus teams won Best Impact and Best Pitch.

The projects allowed her to see coding as a way of building solutions rather than simply learning a programming language. One involved creating a map to help parents navigate the school’s layout. Another focused on helping women understand their rights, combining information about the law with a community where girls could seek help.

Xu also attended workshops focused on women in technology, where she encountered women building careers in fields in which women remain underrepresented. Seeing those examples broadened her sense of what was possible for her.

“I can see women leading in such field and how they succeeded in those fields. And I’m always inspired by them,” she says.

The experiences reinforced something Xu had already begun to understand: technical skills are only part of the picture. Having peers who share the same interests, and seeing people like themselves succeed in the field, can shape whether someone feels that they belong there.

Founding SheCodes

That idea eventually became SheCodes. Encouraged by Ms Hemangi, Xu launched the coding co-curricular activity at Nexus to give younger girls an accessible way into programming.

She did not want coding to feel like a wall of unfamiliar commands. She wanted students to be able to experiment and immediately see what their code could create. The idea partly came from a conversation with a friend who thought coding was boring.

“She felt like coding is just… just boring. So I want to create something visual. So make it more attractive,” Xu says.

Xu uses a block-based visual programming interface alongside Python Turtle, allowing students to give instructions that become drawings, shapes and patterns on screen. The emphasis is on making the process visible and creative, giving beginners an immediate result to work with.

For Xu, building interest and confidence is an important first step.

“It’s quite important to first build the interest and also build the confidence. I don’t want anyone just give up because they think it’s boring or something.”

SheCodes eventually grew beyond its regular sessions. In October, Xu organised a hackathon that brought around 50 participants together, giving girls the opportunity to work in teams and develop their own technology projects. It was another way of creating the kind of community Xu herself had been looking for when she first became interested in coding.

Photo Courtesy: Nicole Xu (block-based visual programming interface)

Expanding to Yunnan

As SheCodes developed at Nexus, Xu began thinking about whether the same idea could reach students beyond her own school. The project had shown her the value of creating an environment where young people could encounter coding, experiment with it, and find others who shared their interests. The next question was how to make that opportunity available to students who might not have the same access.

Through Seeds of Light, a charitable project, Xu is now working to bring coding opportunities to Yilege Primary School in Huangnihe Town, Fuyuan County, Yunnan.

The Yunnan project extends the thinking behind SheCodes into a different community. Instead of focusing only on girls at her own school, Xu is now working to give girls elsewhere an opportunity to encounter coding and build confidence with technology.

There is a fitting connection to the yellow Python book that started her own journey. Xu did not need to be convinced that coding was something she could learn. What she needed was a teacher who could show her how to begin and a community in which she could develop that interest.

Now, through SheCodes and Seeds of Light, she is trying to create those opportunities for other young women.

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