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Samira Samii attended high school in the Rockaways, but she never thought she’d return to the seaside neighborhood to live. Then circumstances—and a love of all things surf and sand—propelled her back there this month. At the time she signed the lease on her rental in Rockaway Park, she knew that her commute to her job on the Upper West Side would be long, but nothing could prepare her for what that meant in practice. The route she settled on involves taking a shuttle bus to a ferry, then walking to the subway, and making one last transfer before arriving at her work. Read on for Samira's walkthrough of the gorgeous but extreme trip. Living in Rockaway is a little bit like coming back home . See, I heard about the apartment I’m renting—it’s the upstairs apartment in a two-family house—through my high school friend who has lived here all of her life. It’s a block and a half from the ocean. I’m a little bit of a sun worshipper and love the ocean, so I knew I’d love it here. Then th...

CLOSE Family- friendly spots in NYC Wochit The Hills on Governor's Island. (Photo: Timothy Schenck 2016) During the last two weeks of summer, when summer camp is over but school has yet to begin, getting the kids out of the house is a must. And if you're not jetting off to Europe — or even heading down the shore — you're going to need a plan. Lucky for you, we have one. From a ferry ride out to Governor's Island to a tour of an aircraft carrier, from 65-million-year-old fossils to playful sea lions , very much alive, we have curated six fun trips to New York City that promise to keep your child not only occupied, but entertained. We've even included plans for lunch.  Kids' decor:: Little girls' backyard dream house comes to life Going 'round:: Take a spin on these magnificent carousels Governor's Island Governor's Island is a pretty magical place to escape to for the day, and there really is something for everyone in the family to enjoy. The ...

The Safdie Brothers Are Classic New York Hustlers And their movies might make them legends. Before deciding he wanted to make a Safdie Brothers movie , the erstwhile heartthrob Robert Pattinson hadn ’t actually seen a Safdie Brothers movie . It was one still image — of the lead actress from their 2014 addiction drama Heaven Knows What — that led him to pick up the phone. “He said, ‘I wanna be on a movie set that had the energy that I imagine this had,’” Benny, 31, says. “Little did he know, there was no movie set,” Josh, 33, laughs. Adapted from the street life of its star, Arielle Holmes, Heaven Knows What is a breathless, booming piece of work — somehow both a plotless character study built on mumbly dialogue and stolen shots, and a punch to the face. “We were just this weird little crew making this movie in a very serious fashion.” For over a decade, that’s been the mission statement. The Safdies split a schizophrenic childhood on either side of the East River, with a dutifu...

“They’re tired of politics as usual,” Sal Albanese, the best chance the Never de Blasio movement has of electing a new mayor, said last night during the first televised debate of the Democratic primary. “It’s always tough to run as a reformer, but I think this time is different.” This time is probably not different. Albanese, a former five- term city councilmember from Brooklyn who is challenging Mayor Bill de Blasio , jabbed and scraped and lashed out at his bête noire during the debate, drawing his share of applause from a sympathetic Upper West Side audience . For watchers of the political scene, there wasn’t much to learn: De Blasio, in Albanese’s eyes, is corrupt; he’s in the pocket of big developers; he’s allowed the city to degenerate into some kind of carnival of woe, but for rich people. De Blasio, who despite his height advantage over Albanese often struggles to be the bigger man, rebutted plenty. His testy side was showing. A progressive Democrat, the first to govern this ...

Take a walk east from the gold-plated cupola of San Francisco City Hall and the landscape transforms into the Tenderloin, a patchwork of residential hotels, small delis and social service clinics that cater to the poor. It winds into the city’s main tourist corridor , and, farther along, a glossy cluster of condominium towers where upper- story penthouses cost millions . These symbols of extreme poverty and prosperity are wedged together in District Six, which serves both as a portal for visitors and a cauldron where San Francisco ’s most pressing political issues simmer . For 20 years, District Six voters have reliably concluded that the solutions to those issues come from the progressive viewpoint. And while it’s more than a year until the next election for supervisor, the contest is already shaping up as a test of whether that is still true. From the Tenderloin to the Mission Bay waterfront , District Six has seen a rush of development over the past two decades, and residents are ...

Megyn Kelly is excited about bonding with her fellow human beings . She’s so excited she’s bouncing in her chair, hands waving, as she talks about empowerment and laughter and tears. It’s a recent summer evening , and we’re in her living room on Manhattan’s Upper West Side —a simple space of modern furniture, earth tones, and bookshelves (mostly hardcover novels, De­Mille to Franzen). The apartment is quiet, uncharacteristically so, as her husband, the tech CEO turned novelist Douglas Brunt , and their children—sons Yates and Thatcher, eight and four, and six-year-old daughter Yardley—are all at the beach. Kelly, barefoot in a loose cream-colored sweater and black leggings, is telling me about her new perch at NBC and the morning show, Megyn Kelly Today , that’s set to debut later this month. Not that she can get into specifics. Occupying what used to be the 9:00 a.m. hour of the Today show, her new venture, she says, will have a live studio audience and guests of various sorts. It w...