Mamdani's Bagel Prohibition Sparks Another NYC Exodus to Miami
Diminished police unable to contain mob of cream cheese hurling protesters
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The News | March 12, 2028
New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has taken another step towards reshaping the city in the image of East Berlin circa 1974 with legislation prohibiting the production, transportation and sale of bagels within the Five Equal Socialist New York Boroughs (FESNYB). Following his administration’s alleged discovery that cash-only bagel shops on the Upper West Side were not paying adequate taxes, the mayor cut the power to every business with the word ‘bagel’ in its Google Maps description.
New Yorkers who oppose the legislation responded by hurling vestigial tubs of cream cheese at The People’s House of the Five Equal and United Boroughs (PHFEUB), nee Gracie Mansion, which was left unprotected by Mamdani’s dramatic reduction of the NYPD. New Yorkers with greater means protested by fleeing their Upper East Side, West Village, and Nolita homes for Miami, which has seen over twenty per cent annual population growth from the wealthier parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn since Mamdani’s narrow victory in 2025.
This is the second significant wave of entrepreneurs, finance professionals, and successful artists to have relocated to Miami since a socialist administration took office in the city shaped by free market capitalism; the first exodus in 2026 followed Mamdani’s hiking of corporate and income taxes, increased scrutiny on hedge funds by The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYSDFS), and the conversion of Lincoln Center into an extension of The People’s Committee House (nee City Hall) to domicile the thousands of new Committee workers. The original mass exodus of wealthy New Yorkers to Miami took place in 2020 and 2021 during the Pandemic, which to many at the time felt like the socialist revolution that has more recently transformed the city that had once been referred to as, ‘The Big Apple.’
“Bagel shops on the Upper West Side have collectively demonstrated their resistance to moving towards our new model of centralized resource allocation,” said Zohran Mamdani at a press conference in front of the former Metropolitan Museum of Art, which, after losing its major gifts by megadonors, became the third overflow building for The People’s Committee House as the number of city workers tripled from approximately 300,000 in 2025 to 900,000 today. “This enforcement has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the proprietors of these enterprises happen to be Jewish,” said Mamdani. “Really,” continued Mandani.
The city’s transition from a capitalist economy to a socialist economy has been more challenging than Mamdani’s ardent Queens, Bushwick, and Bed-Stuy based supporters had expected.
“In the beginning it was great, because my rent got capped, and I was able to quit my job at the coffee shop and work for the People’s Committee’s Brooklyn bureau, where I just write poetry all day for $20 an hour,” said Tom Shepherd, a nonbinary genderqueer cis man with a masters in urban planning. “All of my school debt was wiped away, the subway was suddenly free, and I could go weeks without seeing a police officer.”
Tom lives in a polyamorous commune on Lefferts Avenue with his primary partner, who is also an urban planner, and their metamour, who is also an urban planner, and their metamour’s nesting partner, who is also an urban planner. Tom and his primary partner met at the Brooklyn Liberation March in June of 2021 and spent their first date at the local food co-op discussing their respective dietary needs and restrictions. They met their secondary partner at a Bolshevik poetry reading vegan pot luck when each of them arrived wearing the exact same Free Luigi t-shirt. They all still ask for consent before any form of touching, “just to keep things spicy,” added Tom.
Tom noted that their quality of life is significantly lower today than it was before Mamdani took office, but they understand that their suffering is for the greater good.
“Nothing works in our building, our collective nose ring collection was stolen by looters, no one can afford plant-based milk, and I wear the same beige tunic to work every day, because vintage stores have become city-run uniform allocation centers,” said Tom. “But it’s better than knowing that there are billionaires eating foie gras on the Upper East Side,” they added.
Lower income New Yorkers like Tom initially celebrated the exodus of the city’s wealthy individuals and businesses, but many now say they miss the shuttered cultural institutions that were supported by donations, such as museums, libraries, research institutions, hospitals, and green parks—particularly Prospect Park, which once hosted every single vegan pot luck in South Brooklyn but was recently converted into city-run farmland.
“I used to love going to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden for inspiration for my water color paintings,” says Susanna Gratry, an urban planner who shares a studio apartment in Crown Heights with three comrades from her twelve years at New York City Technical School, nee NYU. “But I understand that losing all of our federal funding and giving up real estate taxes in order to create more public housing meant that all of the city’s green spaces had to be converted into corn fields to keep our dear comrades fed.”
President Vance, elected in 2028 on a platform of curbing the spread of socialism, announced earlier this week that talks between New York City and the federal government had stalled yet again, and that the Statue of Liberty would remain in Boston Harbor for its safekeeping following Mamdani’s attempt to destroy it after claiming that it represented “bourgeois liberty,” was funded by wealthy patrons, and was a symbol of “American capitalism and militarism.”
Author’s note:
I’ve lived in New York City my entire adult life, and I have been shaped by the challenge and gift of being a New Yorker. This is because New York City changes people—people do no change New York City.
As such I’ve considered the many mayors that have come and gone to be glorified janitors: ephemeral elected officials whose primary job is to ensure that the garbage is collected in a timely manner and that streets are free of trash, except for random articles of pink and black clothing and condom wrappers, which make the city feel edgy.
I’ve felt apathetic during the mayoral elections in which I’ve mostly failed to participate, and I’ve felt sanguine at every outcome, which I’ve mostly failed to influence, trusting that that no one mayor could ever change the city in any meaningful, lasting way. “New York City is too resilient,” I would think to myself.
But this election is different.
Zohran Mamdani is running on a set of beliefs that are antithetical to New York City.
Zohran Mamdani wants to raise taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, who have already demonstrated that they will simply leave New York for more favorable economic climates, like Miami, if policy (or vibe) becomes too prohibitive. The further exodus of wealthy New Yorkers and businesses will not only cause unemployment, it will also reduce the operating budgets of the many cultural institutions that rely on donations. Everything that makes New York City great will suffer as a direct consequence of Mamdani being elected.
Let that sink in.
Zohran Mamdani has a terrible legislative record. He has prioritized his mayoral run over being present in the state assembly, and he ironically refused to support housing-related budget measures in Albany that jeopardized the city’s fare-free bus pilot.
Zohran Mamdani is an anti-semite who, when challenged, failed to recognize Israel’s right to exist and whose Democratic Socialist comrades have condoned violence against Israelis and Jews in the United States.
Zohran Mamdani has explicitly, repeatedly expressed his desire to make New York City less of what has made it New York City.
New York City is the greatest city on earth because it is the finest expression of free market opportunity in history. It is home to the smartest, most passionate and creative people of all races, religions, and nationalities who have, since 1664, come here to achieve.
Socialism is inherently about the mediocrity of the many rather than the greatness of the few, and if there is one place that should forever be a place to shoot your shot, it’s New York Fucking City.
If you are a New Yorker, and you want to protect the greatness of New York City and preserve your chance to knock it out of the park, simply leave Zohran Mamdani off of the ballot. It doesn’t matter if Myrie, Tilson, Cuomo, Stringer, Adams or Landers wins. It only matters that Mamdani loses.
Do your civic duty and leave the last letter of the alphabet off of your ballot.
This beyond hysterical- well done.
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Your brain is swiss cheese <3