Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll find out about the return of real-life nights at the museum and those depicted in the movies that starred Ben Stiller. We’ll also get details on why Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor, says he would apologize for saying in 2020 that the New York Police Department was racist and homophobic.
When the movie “Night at the Museum” was released in 2006, the American Museum of Natural History began its own nights at the museum — sleepover nights for children and their parents. The Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton did not spring to life and scamper from gallery to gallery, as in the movie. The Theodore Roosevelt statue did not ride off with Sacagawea. And Ahkmenrah? He was not a real pharaoh. The movie’s writers made him up, along with the golden tablet that aroused the dinosaurs and dioramas. The museum discontinued the sleepover nights when the pandemic hit in 2020. But now it is reviving them, starting on Oct. 24. Sean Decatur, the president of the museum, said not to expect Hollywood-worthy chaos this time around. “Things don’t come alive at night,” he said. “I have yet to see T. rex up and around.” And the museum will have roughly 50 staff members on duty for the sleepover, including security personnel, custodians and employees who greet and guide visitors. In “Night at the Museum,” a single brand-new guard (played by Ben Stiller) was responsible for the entire two-million-square-foot facility after the doors were locked at closing time. The museum will charge $225 for each child and adult, $75 more per person than it charged in 2020 (though now as then, there are discounts for museum members). Decatur acknowledged that at a time when affordability in New York has become a political issue as well as an everyday topic, that is “not a trivial price point.” But he said a sleepover in the museum was “really as unique an experience as you can get.” It’s certainly the only place with a huge blue whale hanging from the ceiling. It’s not the only sleepover option. The Intrepid Museum charges $99 per person for families or groups with children ages 6 to 17 and lets them sleep where sailors once did. The Parks Department charges nothing for overnight camping with urban park rangers in various parks. The department provides the tents; the families who get to take part are chosen by lottery. (The natural history museum will put tickets for its sleepovers on sale on Sept. 30 for its members and on Oct. 7 for everyone else. Each ticket will include a voucher for a return visit to the museum.) “Night at the Museum” was the first of three movies that together grossed more than $1.3 billion. An animated fourth installment was released in 2022, and Deadline.com reported in July that a new movie in the franchise would revolve around “a new story set at the museum with all-new characters.” Decatur said that he had seen the original “Night at the Museum” so many times that he had “absolutely lost count.” His children were 5 and 10 when it came out. “For the then-5-year-old, all of the things that the monkey does to get in trouble would have been a highlight,” he said. The 10-year-old “was actually quite into history at the time” and interested in “Julius Caesar and the cowboy and things that turn out not to be in the museum,” he added. The same goes for mummies. “There’s no Egyptian wing here,” he said. “We have sections that cover Egypt, but people think there’s, like, mummies and stuff, which we don’t have on display.” (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, across Central Park, not only has the Temple of Dendur, a tribute to an Egyptian goddess, but also has a lot of mummies.) And the financial troubles and sparse crowds mentioned in “Night at the Museum” were fictional. “I think in real life the museum was fine,” he said. Does he plan to sleep over in the museum on Oct. 24? He said he would be on hand for “part of it.” But he added, “I am not spending the night.” WEATHER Today will be a sunny one with temperatures in the mid-70s, while tonight will be cloudy with a low near 63. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Sept. 23 and 24 (Rosh Hashana.) The latest Metro news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. Mamdani says he would apologize for 2020 comments about police
Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor, said that he would apologize to the city’s police officers for saying in 2020 that the Police Department was racist and homophobic. He said those comments, in a social media post, had come “at the height of frustration” after the police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, a Black man. He said that he no longer believed what he said in the post and that the comments were not “reflective” of his campaign or “my view of public safety and the fact that police will be critical partners in delivering public safety.” Mamdani has been moving to address one of his biggest political vulnerabilities, his past comments that the police should be defunded — remarks that his rivals in the campaign have seized on as they try to undercut his sizable lead. Mamdani led former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by more than 20 points in a recent survey by The New York Times and Siena University. Mayor Eric Adams was fourth in the four-way race, behind Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee. Mamdani said he would keep police staffing at its current level, with just under 34,000 uniformed officers. Other candidates have said they would hire thousands more. Mamdani earlier promised to set up a Department of Community Safety to dispatch mental health workers, rather than police officers, on 911 calls about people in crisis. He said he would hire 200 more lawyers to replenish the city’s legal staff and to help fight off any attempts by President Trump to send the National Guard into the city. METROPOLITAN DIARY Doesn’t Add Up
Dear Diary: When I was a graduate student in the city years ago, some friends and I ended up at Ratner’s deli late one night. Noticing a decadent cake in the bakery case, I asked the waiter about it. “It’s a seven-layer cake, half chocolate and half vanilla,” he said. Confounded by the math, I quipped: “How many chocolate layers and how many vanilla?” “What am I?” he said. “A mathematician?” — Allan Berkowitz Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here. Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — J.B. P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.
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