Congratulations to everyone who survived 300 percent rent hikes and apartment bidding wars, who returned to their offices only to log onto Zoom with the people who stayed in their pajamas, and who huddled afterward in sagging plywood sheds with friends and lovers to eat rapidly cooling fries bathed in a mist of secondhand weed smoke. You saved our city! Or Eric Adams’s city, as he likes to put it.
This year, our readers followed us as we obsessively burrowed into the impossible-to-ignore topic of New York City trash (where it goes, who takes it there, who turns it into TikTok content), delved into why prewar Park Avenue real estate may be losing its superelite status, and cringed at Jimmy Fallon’s bizarre décor. You spent a lot of time with the incredible rooms Wendy Goodman shared with us — including her own apartment, which she had to vacate after 27 years. And you clearly couldn’t get enough of our terrible-landlord stories, whether from a place of empathy or just outrage. Here’s to hoping you don’t find yourself in one in 2023.
Below, you’ll find our list of the 20 most-read articles we published this year, measured by total collective minutes of audience engagement. It’s just a small sample of the work Curbed puts out, alongside New York’s print edition and its other five digital sites — Intelligencer, the Cut, Vulture, Grub Street, and the Strategist — and a growing portfolio of newsletters. For more of all of it, be sure to sign up for Curbed’s daily newsletter (along with our Design Hunting newsletter) and to subscribe.
20.
I Went to Trash School
By Clio Chang
Our reporter gets an education in “juice,” how to protect your shins, and keeping 12,000 daily tons of garbage at bay. Read the story ➼
19.
Plywood Gourmet
By Simon van Zuylen-Wood
When the pandemic hit, restaurants seized on their chance to grab 12,000 pieces of the most valuable resource on earth — New York real estate. The city would never be the same again. Read the story ➼
18.
The Day I Moved Out
By Wendy Goodman
Wendy Goodman loved her apartment — in a Greenwich Village brownstone, with a working fireplace, overlooking a garden — so much that she lived there for 27 years. But when the landlord decided to sell the building, she had to leave, forcing her to confront her life there and the things in it. Read the story ➼
17.
The Dinosaurs of Park Avenue
By Kim Velsey
It used to be that buying an apartment at 740 Park meant something. Not so anymore. Why are apartments in the grandest uptown co-ops sitting on the market for years? Read the story ➼
16.
The Billionaire Behind New York’s Most Luxe Hotel
By Chris Pomorski
There’s no high-end travel brand quite like the Aman. And there’s no operator quite like its ruthless Russian-born owner, Vladislav Doronin. Read the story ➼
15.
The Great Boy Scouts Land Sell-Off
By Molly Osberg
How did a nonprofit now best known for its massive sexual-abuse scandal end up the steward of so much vanishing, valuable, natural land? It took a century for the Boy Scouts to collect it. It’ll take far less time to lose. Read the story ➼
14.
More or Less
By Wendy Goodman
After years of marriage, Dorothy and Stephen Globus grew apart aesthetically. So they built his-and-hers apartments, side by side. Read the story ➼
13.
Voyage of the Gross
By Justin Davidson
The question of where our garbage goes is one politicians don’t like to think about any more than the rest of us do. But ignorance is a luxury New Yorkers can no longer afford. Read the story ➼
12.
Why Do the Men of Saturday Night Live Have Such Horrifying Apartments?
By Rebecca Alter
Live from New York … wow, this is kind of a dump, huh? Read the story ➼
11.
The American Dream Is Almost in Default
By Alissa Walker
The mall, that is. Read the story ➼
10.
Staying Put for 60 Years
By Wendy Goodman
Andrew Alpern bought his apartment in 1962, with no intention of ever leaving. He hasn’t. He also, as these photos from 1968 show, hasn’t changed it much. Read the story ➼
9.
Secrets of the Christmas Tree Trade
By Owen Long
A hilarious insider’s account of the New York City Christmas tree market. An instant holiday classic. Read the story ➼
8.
The 3-Day Return to Office Is, So Far, a Dud
By Kim Velsey
Employers really wanted their workers back in the office for the majority of the workweek. A lot of them stayed home anyway. Read the story ➼
7.
The Ugliest Divorce in Manhattan Real Estate
By James D. Walsh
A deep dive into the bitter feud behind the collapse of HFZ Capital and what was supposed to be its crowning achievement, Bjarke Ingels’s High Line debut. Read the story ➼
6.
We’ll Miss You, MetroCard Machine
By Karrie Jacobs
This is our last year with the ubiquitous, hulking machine. That it (unlike many aspects of the subway system) elicits fond emotions has a lot to do with the unusually thoughtful people who designed it. Read the story ➼
5.
39 Reasons to Love New York
By The Editors
Our annual celebration of why a lot of New Yorkers — despite everything — can’t imagine living anywhere else. Read the story ➼
4.
Outsourcing Public Bathrooms to Starbucks Maybe Wasn’t the Best Idea
By Christopher Bonanos
Starbucks has threatened to lock up all its restrooms, making an extreme shortage of public bathrooms that much worse. Read the story ➼
3.
Two of Elon Musk’s Terrible Ideas Have Both Flopped in Vegas
By Alissa Walker
Before Elon Musk took over Twitter, visitors to CES got to watch his big ideas crash and burn in real time. Read the story ➼
2.
Good-bye to All That Clout-Chasing
By Brock Colyar
When Caroline Calloway, a person of niche internet renown, turned 30, she decided to leave town and her apartment of ten years. But first, she threw herself a series of chaotic good-bye dinner parties. Read the story ➼
1.
‘I’ve Seen a Lease That Calls for Daily Lap Dances’
By Bridget Read
When the story of a landlord with a “sexual intercourse” clause in his lease went viral, we spoke to a tenants-rights attorney who could not have been less shocked. Read the story ➼
