Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll get details of a royal visit to New York City. We’ll also find out what Mayor Eric Adams said when asked about pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
They did not arrive in the United States the way many couples do — the husband, who has a pilot’s license, was in the cockpit of the Boeing 737 jet, serving as the co-pilot for at least part of the flight from Europe.
Still, on their outing in New York City today, the pair, King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands will do what many tourists do. They will stroll along the High Line and go to a museum.
But they said the trip had a purpose — emphasizing ties between the Netherlands and the United States and strengthening economic connections. The most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that the Netherlands ranked third in direct investment in the United States with $617.1 billion at the end of 2022, after Japan ($712 billion) and the United Kingdom ($663.4 billion).
So the royals’ itinerary includes a midday event at the Brooklyn Navy Yard about business startups and ways to accelerate clean technology.
They will also go on a tour of East Flatbush, Brooklyn, where they will “discuss urban challenges such as climate action, affordable housing and societal resilience” with community leaders, according to the Dutch government. Their day will end with a reception at Hudson Yards in Manhattan; the king and Mayor Eric Adams are expected to speak there.
The trip is not the royals’ first visit to New York. Willem-Alexander and Máxima visited in 2009, when he was the crown prince (he ascended to the throne in 2013). Máxima had lived in New York from 1996 to 2000 when she was an investment banker.
They arrived in New York City after two days in Georgia and one in Albany. (Willem-Alexander flew the plane there, too, according to a spokeswoman for the Netherlands Embassy in Washington.) Willem-Alexander’s focus was on jobs during a session at a nanotechnology center in Albany that describes itself as the largest nonprofit semiconductor research-and-development facility in the country. Willem-Alexander was all business in his brief remarks there, saying that trade with the Netherlands accounted for 57,000 jobs in New York State.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said that “New York became what it is because of the Dutch” and mentioned names like Brooklyn and the New York Knicks that have Dutch roots. She also referred to the Schuyler mansion in Albany, where Elizabeth Schuyler grew up. Of the three daughters in the household — familiar to theatergoers who’ve seen “Hamilton” — she was the one who married the man whose portrait is on the $10 bill.
Later, as the king looked on, Hochul and a Dutch trade official signed a memorandum of understanding that confirmed shared interests in advancing semiconductor research and development.
Today, after their stops in Brooklyn, Willem-Alexander and Máxima will walk through an exhibition commemorating 400 years of Dutch history in New York at the New-York Historical Society on the Upper West Side. The exhibition includes a 1626 letter that describes the “purchase” of Manhattan from Native Americans for 60 guilders, which later was said to have been $24.
The exhibition also includes a letter from three chiefs of contemporary Lenape communities whose ancestors lived in Manhattan when the Dutch arrived with hopes of establishing a Dutch republic in North America. And the exhibition displays a map of New Amsterdam, called the Castello Plan, that was painted around 1660, long before Peter Stuyvesant surrendered to the British.
So what do you say when a king and queen cross the threshold?
“I’m going to invite them to have a look at Dutch history, beginning at the very beginning,” said Louise Mirrer, the president and chief executive of the historical society.
“What’s eye-opening is to see evidence that the Dutch actually did believe they had purchased Manhattan from the Lenape,” she said. “The letter really says something about how cultures can understand each other incorrectly, or misunderstand one another. Obviously, history bore out how the misunderstanding was disadvantageous to the Lenape.”
Weather
Enjoy a sunny day in the mid-80s. The evening should be mostly clear, with temperatures in the low 70s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Monday (Eid al-Adha).
The latest Metro news
Adams praised a reporter’s ‘summer body’
Mayor Eric Adams told a journalist who asked him about pro-Palestinian demonstrations that it looked as if he had been working out and complimented the reporter’s “summer body.”
One of the mayor’s top female advisers, sitting nearby at City Hall, shook her head in disbelief. Another deputy mayor looked down and covered her eyes.
My colleague Emma G. Fitzsimmons writes that the remark was not unusual for Adams. He often comments on people’s physical appearance or clothing. And while he speaks proudly about the number of top cabinet officials who are women, he has also made the point to note that they lead while wearing Christian Louboutin shoes, with their signature red-soled heels.
This was not the first time that Adams had singled out the reporter he said had a “summer body” — Pete Cuddihy, an intern at Fox News. At a news conference in March, when Cuddihy asked about the city’s housing crisis, the mayor said, “I like that turtleneck — people don’t wear turtlenecks anymore.”
A spokeswoman for Fox News sent a statement from Cuddihy that said: “Speaking only about my interaction on June 11 with Mayor Adams, I felt his comments towards me were friendly, and I did not feel uncomfortable.”
Adams is far from the only notable elected official who has been criticized for making comments that seem inappropriate. President Biden has made remarks about people’s physical appearance; Donald Trump often mocks people’s physical appearance and was found liable in a civil trial for sexually abusing the writer E. Jean Carroll. And the Justice Department found that Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor, subjected female employees to a “sexually hostile work environment,” made unwanted comments and gave preferential treatment to some employees based on their physical appearance.
Adams, a Democrat, was himself accused in a lawsuit of sexually assaulting a colleague in 1993 when he was a police officer.
Fabien Levy, a deputy mayor and Adams’s chief spokesman, said the mayor “would never intentionally make someone feel uncomfortable. He’s a warm and engaging person who talks to New Yorkers the way any regular New Yorker speaks to one another.”
METROPOLITAN diary
Gene Palma
Dear Diary:
Anyone who lived or worked in Midtown Manhattan in the 1970s and ’80s knew Gene Palma as the guy who “played” Sixth Avenue. He even had a cameo in “Taxi Driver.”
With shoe-polish blackened hair and heavy makeup, Gene would play his drum on the sidewalk. Sometimes, he would bang his sticks on newspaper vending machines, or sit on the curb and play the street itself.