TableFest, a new app described by its co-creator as the “Airbnb for food,” seeks to tap into the sharing economy while avoiding regulation that has plagued similar companies.

The app, which launched on Oct. 4, was designed by New York University junior Gyan Kandhari and his brother Amar Kandhari, and allows users to book “dining experiences” at hosts’ homes in New York City.

Kandhari said that his company takes a unique approach to avoid the legal challenges that similar companies have faced. “A lot of startups like EatWith and Feastly are facing red tape regulations due to the fact that theirs is solely a come-and-eat service,” he said. “It’s the experience part that we’re charging for, and in that way we can totally negate the red tape.”

“It’s gonna be not only food, but socializing, and being able to listen to authentic music,” he said.

Kandhari was inspired to create the app because he missed eating home-cooked meals while at college. He said he began working with developers in Pakistan to create the app while studying abroad at NYU Prague last semester, using $20,000 provided by his brother. The app launched on the Apple App Store six months later.

Kandhari said he is now focusing on marketing the app to both customers and hosts. “We’re really trying to source the highest quality hosts we can.”

Patricia Williams, the executive chef at Smoked Jazz and Supper Club on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, said she decided to become a host on the app after Kandhari invited her to test it out. “Gyan found me, and I enjoyed our conversation. He’s interested in promoting his app, and I really liked that,” she said.

Williams said she has been running a home-dining business for the past six years and regularly hosts meals for paying customers. “I’m trying to promote this because I want to be able to open up my dinners to more people,” she said.

Carol Ann Ransaw, a private chef and host on the app, said, “It seems like an easy way to connect with people.”

“People like to have parties, but they don’t want to prepare everything. This is the best of both worlds,” Ransaw said.

During his junior year at UC Berkeley, Charles Yan, an underground rapper under the moniker Chow Mane, had to research about his family business history for a class. As one of the only second-generation Asian-Americans in his predominately white class, Yan tried to weasel his way out of the assignment, explaining to his white classmates, who had longer backgrounds in the US, that he did not have a family business history.

But after failing to excuse himself out of the assignment, Yan was surprised to discover more about his family history not only as business owners, but also as refugees.

“My grandparents escaped to the United States because there was a Catholic Church that sponsored them to come,” Yan, 22, said. “My grandparents worked in a restaurant for 10 years, and my grandfather was actually able to start his own Japanese restaurant.”

Yan, fascinated by his findings about his own family history, drove to his local studio to condense his family narrative into one three-minute rap.

Yan’s debut song Mooncakes is contextualized in times when dialogue concerning refugees and immigrants is a prevalent political talking point. But Yan holds onto the personal intention behind the song lost in the political interpretation.

“I kind of try not to look at my music as just talking about the Asian-American experience or the refugee immigrant experience,” Yan said. “So I’m just talking about my own experience.”

Yan started producing and writing music during the MySpace era in middle school over a cheap headset in his “studio”, or his parents’ garage, but wrote “nothing really concrete.” Throughout high school and college, he was constantly experimenting with improvised bars over makeshift beats.

“In my raps that I wrote since high school, I was touching more about generic rap topics,” Yan said. “After I found a little bit more about my background and family history, I started telling stories that are unique to myself.”

While Yan acknowledged how the song may sound politically charged within the current times, Yan was merely writing about the harsh reality behind his family history and his upbringing.

“I mean I’m influenced by the society we live in and what I see every day,” Yan said. “But it wasn’t explicitly political–it’s just about my story and how I feel.”

The first verse of Mooncakes explores Yan’s upbringing and his memories of his grandparents’ restaurant, while the second verse delves into the origin of his grandparents’ arrival to the States. As Yan was writing the song, he was more focused on the personal elements of the story, unaware of the personal overlaps with the political.

“I wanted to capture part of their backstory in a way that’s more sentimental,” Yan said. “I wrote Mooncakes to be nostalgic and to talk about something that means something to me.”

Despite Mooncakes’ release taking place amid the prevalent immigration debate, Yan does not claim to be a political spokesperson for the Asian-American community or the refugee immigrant community.

“I’m here just trying to talk about my own experience based on the Bay Area,” Yan said. “And that is something I knew enough to write music on.”

Painter John Vanderlyn’s dedication of Christopher Columbus landing in the West Indies. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Twenty-six out of 30 fifth graders in Manhattan’s P.S. 3 in the West Village, voted to ban Columbus Day yesterday. The 10 and 11-year-old students agreed that Christopher Columbus no longer deserves to be hailed as an American hero

The students gained their knowledge of the history of Christopher Columbus’s pillage into the “New World” through the progressive curriculum taught at the school. While this classroom chose to present more than just the bare-bones, name, date facts of Columbus’s 1492 sail into modern day America, many classrooms across the country do not do the same.

A recent study found that 33 out of 34 elementary school teachers’ curricula did not present multiple interpretations of Columbus’s voyage or engage in any detail outside of a minimal description of who Christopher Columbus was and why America celebrates him. Elementary school teachers spend less time on average teaching history and social studies than any other subject.

Hannah Sawyer, lead teacher in the fifth grade classroom, said that her own introduction to Christopher Columbus in elementary school was vague and uninformative. She now works to equip her students with a full and comprehensive knowledge of history.

“It is impossible to teach fifth graders to be critical thinkers without giving all the facts,” Sawyer said. “Especially when dealing with a culturally sensitive topic.”

Many young adults recall learning very little about Christopher Columbus’ practices in their elementary classrooms, suggesting that more comprehensive curricula have only recently begun to creep into schools nationwide. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/10/columbus-day-school-holiday/409984/

New York University student Chanel Seto said that her public elementary school in Rockville, Maryland, not only taught about Columbus in an altogether positive way, but continued to celebrate his actions well into the holiday season.

“My school celebrated him not only for Columbus Day, but for Thanksgiving, too,” Seto said. “The story we heard was that Christopher Columbus discovered America and we are here because of him.”

Saddleback College volleyball player Mandy Sides recalled that her California classroom taught her next to nothing about Columbus.

“It wasn’t until my last few years of high school that I actually found out how he brutally treated the native people already living here and stole their land,” Sides said. “It wasn’t even my high school that taught me. I researched it myself.”

The fifth grade students of P.S. 3 were given the option to develop their own opinions on the celebration of Columbus Day after being taught by Sawyer not only about Columbus’ sail into the New World but about the subsequent enslavement and murder of native peoples that occurred because of his voyage.

“I’m not just going to teach one side of the story,” Sawyer said. “That would be equivalent to teaching them nothing. They need to be informed.”

Following their Christopher Columbus lesson, the fifth graders were encouraged to articulate their stance on the controversial holiday.

“I don’t think we should celebrate Columbus Day anymore,” Ezra Silverberg said. “I know Christopher Columbus wasn’t a good person. He killed a lot of people and it’s just not right to celebrate that.”

When I came back to New York in August after spending three months away, one of the first things I noticed was the increase in bike lanes. As someone who enjoys biking, I thought to myself: “That’s great! Now biking in the city is safer and I can finally get a Citi Bike membership,” which, conveniently, has a station right outside my apartment.

Then I saw some not-so-surprising news: another cyclist death, reinforcing my fears of biking on New York City streets. It’s only October and more cyclists have been killed in the first 8 months of 2016 than in all of last year. In 2015, there were 14 cycling fatalities compared to this year’s 16. Notably, all of this year’s fatalities happened on non-protected bike lanes and most were outside of Manhattan.

The rise in fatalities shows that city transportation officials are still prioritizing cars over bicycles and pedestrians. This approach to city planning is outdated and short-sighted. Bike lanes are tight and concentrated around lower Manhattan. There are few protected lanes on major avenues going into the busy business districts, primarily Midtown. There’s also little advocacy from city officials to encourage bikers to wear helmets (which is also the responsibility of bicyclists themselves).

For years, New York has been trying to market itself as a bike-friendly city, and that effort has paid off. From 1990 to 2015, there has been an increase of almost 300 percent of people commuting to work by bike, with the majority of commuters coming from Brooklyn and Manhattan. But even with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero, which calls for zero traffic-related deaths by 2024, the city must do more to protect bicyclists and quell their fears on the roads.

Biking in the city can be pretty scary. Competing with motorized vehicles, where drivers are better protected in their steel armor, cyclists often feel vulnerable with only a helmet to protect them. The lack of visible, clearly-defined and protected green lanes also hurt bikers, who must ride side-by-side with drivers who often don’t think about the safety of others on the street.

In theory, biking in New York is the best mode of transport. It’s better than waiting for regularly delayed subways and buses, and it’s much faster than walking across long avenues. It is also good for one’s health and environmentally friendly. Studies have shown that bike lanes can help calm traffic, something that de Blasio acknowledged in his Vision Zero plans.

Besides a zero fatality rate, the mayor’s ambitious plan includes the construction of 75 more bike lanes by the end of this year, 18 of which will be fully protected. This project is opportune, as a recent Department of Transportation study revealed a 320 percent increase in daily cycling (including commutes) between 1990 and 2014, from 100,000 riders to 420,000.

But despite the uptick in ridership and increase of bike lanes over the years, it has not been sufficient to prevent an increase in accident and fatality rates. “No cyclist death is acceptable and that’s why we’ll continue raising the bar to keep riders protected,” de Blasio said in a statement last month about Vision Zero.

Is de Blasio’s commitment to zero fatalities enough to make it a reality?

Cycling advocates argue that it’s not. De Blasio allocated $115 million for his Vision Zero capital projects, but Paul White, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, noted that in order to meet the 2024 deadline, the city will need to spend $250 million— annually. The City Council proposed a budget increase to meet Vision Zero goals in July, but de Blasio refused to accept it. This means that the chance of achieving zero traffic-related deaths in eight years is nowhere in sight.

New York should take a cue from its neighbors across the pond. Cities across Europe have invested in a sustainable biking infrastructure to help accommodate the growing population of cyclists. From Copenhagen, which has long been heralded as the model bike city, to London, which has recently invested £300m in its cycling infrastructure, and most recently Paris, where a major section of the Seine riverbank is set to be completely pedestrianized, European cities illustrate the increasing popularity of biking as a mode of transport.

In those European cities and other bike-friendly cities in America, city planning is human-centered where cars take the backseat. It shows that biking can be a valuable and vital mode of transportation when it is well integrated into a city’s infrastructure. As an example, Copenhagen dedicates a quarter of its road budget to cycling infrastructure, and as a result 75 percent of the city’s population bike year-round and 76 percent of cyclists feel safe on the road.

In New York, both bike riders and city officials must work toward creating a more bike-friendly city. Adding more green lanes is a step in the right direction, but it’s not enough. The city administration needs to invest much more funds in redesigning and building infrastructure that extends the bike lane network, especially in boroughs outside of Manhattan. Without making streets safer, the city continues to put civilian lives at risk.

There’s a buzz in the air of Queens Theatre. It’s 7 PM on a Saturday night, and rap is blaring through the speakers on either side of the stage. The crowd has just settled into their plush red theater seats. Their eyes gradually begin to fixate on the red boxing ring in the center of the stage. A few men sneak glances at the bored, scantily-clad ring girl propped along the ropes of the ring. At 7:10, a bearded black man in a black suit appears. He deftly ducks under the ropes and swaggers his way to the center of the boxing ring. “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen!” the announcer roars into his mic. “We are live in Queens, New York, at the world famous Queens Theatre. We present to you, Warriors Cup XXV!” The crowd – mostly family, friends, and gym members of the fighters – claps impatiently.

Eldris Barbosa, a 21-year-old Dominican American hailing from the Bronx, sits in a room backstage. He stands at 6’1” and weighs 170 pounds. Tonight, Eldris’ trademark boyish grin is replaced by a steely grimace. He’s wearing a pair of black shorts, shin guards, 12-ounce boxing gloves and a mongkhon, a traditional muay thai headgear that resembles a white rope tied around his forehead. Eldris focuses on steadying his breath and ignoring his cotton-mouth. Brandon, his coach, is saying something, but Eldris barely hears him. All he can think about is stepping into the ring against Brett Taratko, his heavily tattooed opponent. His girlfriend, Castle Joely, is sitting in the middle of the second row along with several gym mates from Evolution Muay Thai. He doesn’t even want to think about losing in front of her. Eldris’ dad, a former Golden Gloves boxer back in the day, had asked his boss if he could leave work early that day to watch his son fight. He’s sitting in the front row. “You’re up next, Barbosa,” Brandon tells him. “You’ve trained hard for this, now all you have to do is show this prick how much you want to win.” Eldris nods and takes another deep breath before he bounces off his seat and heads into battle.

*             *             *

Muay thai, also known as “the art of the eight limbs,” is a brutal combat sport that originated in Thailand. Muay thai practitioners like Eldris are taught to strike using their fists, elbows, knees, and shins. They combine these strikes with clinching techniques in which they grab their opponent in various standing positions. In full-contact amateur-league competitions like Warriors Cup, fighters face off in a ring for three 2-minute rounds. If both are still standing by the end of the match, judges will award the victory to the fighter who lands cleaner hits, displays more aggressiveness, and maintains control of the ring.

Practicing muay thai is not without its risks; just last year, Eldris injured his back training for his first smoker (an unofficial fight between members of the same gym). Despite the inherent dangers in the combat sport, he has no plans to stop training. “When I was little, I used to watch a lot of kung fu movies with my dad,” Eldris recalls. “Bruce Lee, Jet Li – any Lee really. My dad’s a boxer, my older half-brother is a boxer. I fell in love with martial arts at an early age.”

Eldris has trained at Evolution Muay Thai (Evo) on 27^th and Broadway since he was 18. The gym is located on the second floor of a 17-story building filled with modeling agencies, luxury spas, and cosmetic companies. Heavy black punching bags hang from the ceiling at the center of Evo. Dried sweat dots the dark blue rubber mats on the floor under the heavy punching bags, and there is a faint musk in the air. The northern wall is adorned with medals of varying size and color. The west side features a worn but well-kept elevated boxing ring with red, white, and blue ropes. Eldris spends the last four weeks leading to his fight on February 20 in a training camp, an intensive program designed by the gym to prepare fighters for their match. “That’s four hours a day, six days a week,” he tells me. “The first two weeks are real tough since our bodies aren’t used to that level of running, sparring, and drills. Staying mentally positive becomes a real push-and-pull.”

On most afternoons, the sounds of rattling chains and heavy thuds reverberate through the gym as men and women of all ages practice on the punching bags. Brandon Levi, Eldris’ coach and founder of Evo, can usually be found in the thick of the chaos, barking commands for punch-kick combinations. The lean 41-year-old Australian stands at 5’10” with sandy hair and a goatee, and moves with the grace and ferocity of a man half his age (“The secret to preserving my youth is alcohol, lots of alcohol,” he tells me with a grin). It is a rainy Tuesday afternoon, fourth and final week of fight camp, and three days before the official weigh-in on Friday, February 19. Eldris weighs 183 pounds, and he needs to lose 13 pounds within three days in order to qualify for the competition. So, for each day of this week, his daily rations include an egg for breakfast, one slice of chicken breast for lunch, and some nuts for dinner. Eldris arrives at the gym at 2 PM to find an unusually empty gym. Brandon is stretching his legs near the punching bags. “There you are, my favorite little fruit cake,” he roars when he spots Eldris at the entrance. “You ready?” Eldris nods and heads toward the locker room. He wearily strips and puts on his muay thai shorts.

The two stand at the center of the ring at 2:15 PM. Eldris stretches his legs while Brandon impatiently paces back and forth. “Make sure you don’t eat until you’re full – eat until you’re not hungry,” he reminds Eldris. “And no fucking your girlfriend after Thursday, I need you horny and mean.” Brandon holds up a pair of worn black muay thai pads. “I want to see a cross hook, hook cross,” he instructs. Eldris raises his hands to his head in the muay thai fighting stance. He punches the pads and grunts a “ss” sound at each point of impact. “You’re telegraphing,” Brandon says. “Stronger!” Eldris moves to strike the pads again. Ss-ss, ss-ss! “Harder!” Ss-ss, ss-ss! His movements seem sluggish and uncoordinated. “Faster!” Ss-ss, ss…ss! “Now spit on me and call me a whore,” Brandon says with a wink. Eldris laughs wearily as he pushes onward. He’s familiar with his coach’s trick: just as Brandon pushes his fighters to their breaking point, he’ll crack a joke for a brief reprieve.

The final week before a fight is always the hardest. Fighters are required to drastically cut down on eating in order to make weight for their division (170-lb division for Eldris). Carbs and salt are completely cut out from their diet, replaced by controlled portions of protein. Fighters drink about two gallons of water a day to reduce the feeling of hunger and enter the “flushing mode.” Two days before the fight, they switch to distilled water (water with no sodium). On the day of the official weigh-in, one day before the fight, fighters drink no water at all. Because their bodies are still in the flushing mode, fighters will constantly use the bathroom and lose water weight. “I get really irritable in the last week before a fight,” Jeremy Sanchez, Eldris’ longtime friend and training partner, explains. “But Eldris just gets kind of quiet. He handles it better than I do.”

At 3:15, Eldris begins his footwork training. Sweat pours freely down his back as he makes his way to the center of the gym. Eldris seems unsteady on his feet. Brandon sets up an agility course by laying out muay thai pads in a large circle around the gym. Eldris begins to weave in and out around the muay thai pads in fighting stance without crossing his feet. He struggles to catch his breath. “You have the habit of being the nice guy, sometimes a little too nice,” Brandon tells Eldris as he continues to move along the circular path. “You have to want it. I need you aggressive, to be comfortable with dominating someone.” Eldris nods his head, too tired to say anything. Around and around he goes for the next fifteen minutes. At the end of the exercise, Eldris collapses on the mats. “Good work,” Brandon tells him. “Now go run three miles on the treadmill and we’ll call it a day.”

Physically, Eldris is undoubtedly a force to be reckoned with. At 6’1”, he towers over most opponents in the 170-pound weight division. Eldris legs are as thick as tree trunks, and he packs a powerful roundhouse kick. As his coach, Brandon’s biggest concern for the impending match is his mindset. When a photographer came to the gym to take Eldris’ picture before the fight, he asked him to make a “tough guy pose”. Eldris burst into laughter and assumed a Herculean pose with a sheepish grin. “He’s a nice guy with a goofy sense of humor,” Jeremy says. Eldris lacks the cocky surefootedness found in most fighters I’ve met, either downplaying his fighting prowess or unsure of himself as a martial artist.

Eldris trains hard, often pushing himself to the brink of collapse during sparring sessions. But when the sweat dries up and the endorphins begin to fade, he seems to feel lost in his life outside the ring. “I’m not really sure what I want to do after the fight,” Eldris tells me. “There’s so many things I want to accomplish.” He wants to go back to the Borough of Manhattan Community College and get a degree in sports therapy or economics. He also wants to find a part-time job in the city. Above all else, Eldris dreams of one day opening his own muay thai gym where he can teach underprivileged kids in the city.

*             *             *

“This bout is scheduled for three 2-minute rounds to be contested under B-class modified muay thai rules for weight class 170 pounds,” the man announces. “Introducing first, currently making his way to the ringside area, fighting out of the blue corner, this is Eldris BARBOSA, representing Evolution Muay Thai!” Eldris walks on stage, with Brandon and Jeremy close behind him. They stop right outside the ring. Brandon adjusts Eldris’ mongkhon. “You’re ready,” he tells him one last time before putting in his mouth-guard. Eldris steps into the ring and stops at each corner for a brief prayer. Ninety-six hours of training for six minutes in the ring, he thinks to himself. Evo gym mates and Eldris’ girlfriend Joely are cheering loudly in the crowd. He hears his dad’s familiar whistle pierce through the clamor, but doesn’t have time to look around.

“And his opponent, about to make his way to the ringside area. Fighting out of the red corner, this is Brett TARATKO, representing Staten Island Muay Thai!” Brett saunters into the ring, briefly tapping each corner of the ring for good luck. They return to their respective corners, and Brett bares his mouth-guard at Eldris. The ring-girl wanders around the ring with an octagonal sign and a frozen smile before returning to her seat. The bell rings.

Clearly the more aggressive fighter, Brett begins round one with a push kick that sends Eldris sprawling against the ropes. Eldris moves cautiously – perhaps too cautiously – in the first round. He gets knocked down from another push kick 45 seconds into the match. Eldris throws a few jabs and crosses but does not mount enough of a threat to counter Brett’s vicious push kicks. The bells rings, signifying the end of the round.

Brandon scrambles into the ring with an uncharacteristically grim expression. Brett’s coach sits Brett down on a stool and begins talking, while Brandon keeps Eldris standing and stretching. He never lets his fighters sit between rounds, a mind game some coaches use to demoralize the opponent by letting them know that the fighter isn’t tired. “You have to watch for that push kick, he’s scoring big with those kicks,” Brandon tells Eldris as Jeremy holds an ice bag to his head. Eldris nods without a word and waits for the bell.

Eldris begins to loosen up in round two. Brett, eager to reenact the first round, continues to throw push kicks. Eldris counters these by dodging and answering with his own roundhouse. Brett, becoming increasingly frustrated, begins to throw wild haymakers, some of which connect. Eldris answers with his own punches. The two trade shot for shot as they circle each other until the end of the round.

Eldris feels much more confident as the bell rings for the third and final round, and his initial anxiety is replaced by adrenaline. “You edged in a narrow win for round 2,” Brandon had assured him. “Show the world how much you want to win this fight.” The two fighters touch gloves at the center of the ring as a sign of respect. Brett, increasingly predictable, begins the round with another push kick. Eldris dodges and counters with a kick to his leg. Brett tries to grab him in a clinch, but Eldris deftly ducks out of it before anything can happen. Eldris seems loose as he bounces around the ring. He utilizes head movement to dodge a wild haymaker and counter with a nasty right cross. Joely and members of Evo yell excitedly as Brett crumples onto the floor. Eldris’ dad is perfectly silent and still. Brett stands back up and takes a quick look at the clock. He knows he’s behind on points. Brett’s punches become increasingly wild as he tries to land a knockout. Eldris kicks him in the leg and down goes Brett for the second time. Brett angrily shoots back up. It’s the last ten seconds. Both fighters are swinging desperately, almost blindly, trying to rack up last-second points or a lucky knockout. But the bell rings and it’s all over. The fighters wearily shake hands. The ref stands them in the center of the ring, each hand grasping a fighter’s arm.

“And now ladies and gentlemen, after three hard-fought rounds of B-Class modified muay thai, we have a winner,” the announcer says. “Ladies and gentlemen, the judges have scored this bout as a result of unanimous decision, your winner. The blue corner!  Eldris Barbosa!” The ref raises his arm, then places a gold medal around his neck. Eldris looks more tired than excited. Joely is squealing and flushed with excitement. His dad, previously a mask of perfect composure, is grinning widely and whistling at his son. “He’s quick on his feet, but he could hit a little harder,” he tells me. “Eldris has a lot of potential, but he doesn’t really want to hurt the other guy. And that makes all the difference in the ring.”