It’s telling when you finally find a rich person or moneyed entity that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani can get behind.
Sure, he’ll berate Citadel hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin outside Griffin’s home with a video touting new property taxes, even though it wasn’t terribly far from where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated not long ago.
Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich. pic.twitter.com/Wky2LFXC9W
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) April 15, 2026
And sure, he’s the kind of guy who talks about the city’s hemorrhaging of wealthy New Yorkers due to his tax policies as an “imagined exodus.”
But at least the infamously leftist mayor knows where to draw the line: He’ll let Hollywood millionaires ruin Mother’s Day for everyone who wanted to go in or around New York City’s Chinatown to let a studio film a movie.
According to the New York Post, Mamdani’s office issued filming permits for “A Quiet Place 3” for Sunday in the historic neighborhood, where residents “were jolted awake with predawn sounds of explosions and had to navigate traffic and parking chaos all day.”
“Residents were left not-so-quietly fuming at the Mamdani administration for issuing permits to Paramount Pictures to film the blockbuster sequel on the special day, gobbling up parking spots on a dozen streets and creating a Mother’s Day madhouse in the neighborhood,” the paper reported.
One woman, who crossed into the movie set with her daughter as a protest, decried the disruption.
“My Mother’s Day is terrible because they’ve blocked the whole f***ing place. It’s already ruined,” she told the newspaper.
A man who spoke to reporters wasn’t much happier.
“This is unexpected and annoying. I just want to get home so I can cook for my wife,” he said.
And this wasn’t an ordinary disruption put upon by billionaire moguls and millionaire actors and directors, either.
At 4 a.m., the whole shindig began with military vehicles and fake weapons lining up around the neighborhood.
By the time Mother’s Day brunches were beginning hours later, the filming had congested traffic around the intersection of Bowery and Canal Street — the heart of the district — making it difficult to reach the not-insignificant number of restaurants there.
And have fun finding parking!
“Why do you screw the people on Mother’s Day? They took away hundreds of parking spaces,” Jan Lee, founder of Chinatown Core Block Association, told the New York Post.
“Do you think they would do this to moms on Park Place or Sutton Place? You don’t mess around with people on Christmas, Passover or Mother’s Day.”
Actually, Mamdani might mess around with Passover, but I digress.
The point is that, during one of the busiest days for Chinatown’s restaurants — where a third of the residents are elderly and likely wouldn’t be as mobile as those getting around the disruption otherwise — the mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment decided to say “yes” to a bunch of Hollywood gazillionaires.
In a statement, the city’s media boss defended the move, according to the New York Post.
“Film and television production supports thousands of New York City jobs and small businesses and we remain committed to balancing that economic activity with the needs and quality of life of local communities, including being mindful of production concentration in heavily impacted neighborhoods,” said the commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment.
The statement said the office “has been coordinating closely with production, community stakeholders, and multiple city agencies for months to minimize disruption and ensure the operation is conducted safely and responsibly.”
That didn’t placate Lee and others in the neighborhood, or in civic officialdom, who “were stunned by what they viewed as insensitivity,” the New York Post reported.
“I’m not anti-film or anti-art. There’s filming in Chinatown all the time,” Susan Lee, founder and president of the Alliance for Community Preservation and Betterment, told the newspaper. “I’m anti-insensitivity. I’m pushing back on filming during Mother’s Day.”
Well, get used to it. There’s going to be plenty of insensitivity — as well as hypocrisy — over the next four years at the hands of Mayor Mamdani and his cohort. Happy Mother’s Day, from the Mamdani administration!
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