tayabet The Best of Metropolitan Diary 2024: The Readers Speak

Over the past yeartayabet, Metropolitan Diary shared more than 250 tales of life in New York City. Now, readers have chosen the best.

New York Times editors narrowed the entire field to a top 5, from which readers picked their favorite during a two-week online vote.

As we head into 2025, we’d like to encourage you to share your New York stories throughout the coming year. Tell us about experiences that capture the city’s spirit and heart — an anecdote, memory, quirky encounter or overheard snippet of conversation that has stuck with you or only just happened. If it made an impression on you, we’re guessing it may well do the same for others.

Metropolitan Diary, which was first published in 1976, is The Times’s longest-running column and on track to hit the 50-year milestone in 2026. Please help us get there in style. — Ed Shanahan

Dear Diary:

I was in the habit of taking walks in Carl Schurz Park on early summer mornings, when the sun cast a lovely orange glow over the quiet East River esplanade.

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The video appears to have been compiled from several recordings, in which Dr. Varma is seen at a number of restaurants and cafes, chatting with a woman who remains off camera. At various points, he describes a sex party he and his wife held in a hotel and a dance party he attended in a space under a bank on Wall Street, joined by more than 200 people.

After flybys of the Statue of Libertytayabet, the World Trade Center and the Brooklyn Bridge, during which passengers leaned out the open door to shoot photos, the flight ended suddenly 14 minutes after takeoff when the red helicopter plunged into the East River. It tipped on its side, and as cold water flooded the cockpit, the passengers realized they could not escape.