In 2018, I hosted a comedy show called Holecialism. The name was a pun connecting Talk Hole, the comedy brand I created with Steven Phillips-Horst, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s insurgent congressional campaign in a post–Bernie bro New York. The flyer featured a clenched fist and used AOC’s labor-inspired graphics. A Bedford + Bowery headline alleged, “These Comedians Are Merging Queer Culture with Socialism,” but mostly we were just being topical and promoting our basement show.
Mamdani has bet big on hole filling, distributing “pothole politics” signs during his hundred-days address at the Knockdown Center and celebrating his 100,000th hole filled—a total not even Basement’s best tops can top.
Cut to 2026. Mamdani has votemogged Cuomo and exorcised ex-Mayor Adams’s ghosting of Gracie Mansion. Though holecialism has not exactly caught on, there has been another phrase circulating among leftists to describe Mamdani’s political stylings: sewer socialism. Originally coined in 1932 as a sneer at Milwaukee’s socialist city hall, the term referred to a politics oriented less on revolutionary theory than on the custodial tasks of civic governance. Over time, it came to describe a reformist wager: that the left might win not by promising political upheaval but by making the city more livable. Mamdani has praised the tradition of socialist mayors “truly putting the needs of the working class at the center of city government,” and his quality-of-life focus echoes that logic, turning socialism into a softer sell.
I was initially drawn to the concept not because I’m a policy wonk but because I’m a homosexual. Sewer socialism suggested something sordid yet seductive, like a depraved underground sex party. Gays, given the right infrastructure (parties, PrEP, poppers), organize into a collective mass, connecting pipe to pipe in a kind of sociosexual system of fluid exchange. It felt soothing to think of socialism not as a scolding doctrine but as something that might seep up through the grates, joining us not only politically but physically, too. Mamdani and his social media machine seem to get that socialism needs sex appeal. In an age where posts are public infrastructure (see the terminally online @nycferry or increasingly unhinged @nygov accounts), the practice of socialism feels less like DSA indoctrination than a DTC subscription—a daily dose of Mamdanifil to ease our electoral dysfunction.
Lately, that dose is targeting the outbreak of potholes after one of the snowiest years on record. Mamdani has bet big on hole filling, distributing “pothole politics” signs during his hundred-days address at the Knockdown Center and celebrating his 100,000th hole filled—a total not even Basement’s best tops can top. But pothole politics is hardly new: Adams and de Blasio each made a public spectacle of their own milestone fills, and now Hochul has a plan to plug 125,000 holes upstate. And while the psychosexual dimension is certainly novel—@nygov posted to Instagram that they would “send ppl to annihilate that hole”—as politics go, fixing roads isn’t exactly reformist, let alone revolutionary. A Post headline quoted Staten Island Councilman Frank Morano, who likened it to “taking credit for changing a lightbulb.” And while it would be hard to find someone who didn’t want their hole filled, socialist or otherwise, it’s the mayor’s double penetration approach—accountable action and media amplification—that makes even the most mundane managerial duties feel like a mass movement.
Back in January, I opened Instagram to a feed frenzy of clips showing Mamdani, newly sworn in, shoveling fresh blacktop on the Manhattan side of the Williamsburg Bridge bike path, where he, along with an orange-vested construction crew, smoothed over the infamous concrete bump that had sent many a Bowery-bound bicyclist over their handlebars.
According to a City Hall official speaking on background, the Department of Transportation (DOT) was already aware of the offending hump, and a larger redesign of that stretch was in the works. But before that, a little bump of boosterism. In one of the administration’s first meetings, Mamdani mentioned seeing a video of cyclists crashing on the cursed curb and pushed staff to think about an immediate fix, an example of the “no problem too big or too small” ethos he wanted to bring to City Hall.
Mamdani had cemented his biker bona fides on the campaign trail. After being heckled as a “communist,” he clapped back, “It’s pronounced, ‘cyclist,’” riding off on a Citi Bike. Of course, a bank-branded bicycle is not exactly DSA drip, but the bar for mayoral mobility was lowered by his competition’s twin engines: a Dodge Charger that racked up school-zone speeding tickets and a white 1996 Ford that, Cuomo had to clarify, is “not the O. J. Bronco.”
While it would be hard to find someone who didn’t want their hole filled, socialist or otherwise, it’s the mayor’s double penetration approach—accountable action and media amplification—that makes even the most mundane managerial duties feel like a mass movement.
One evening, I took a pit stop to inspect the city’s buzziest new public work. I wasn’t alone. A group of friends were drinking bubbly from the bottle on a nearby bench, spectating like it was sport. A bearded e-biker paused to snap a photo and explain that the bump was worse than before. “It’s supposed to stop people going the wrong way,” he said, gesturing toward the lane, where a steady stream of commuters was flowing Brooklyn-bound against traffic. “But everyone goes the wrong way anyway.” (A DOT official later clarified it was not, in fact, designed as a deterrent or speed calming device.) A Brooklyn-based run club attempted a group selfie with the slope. This proved difficult, since it’s a mound of asphalt. The runners crouched and repositioned themselves, at one point directly blocking the bike lane, forcing cyclists to maneuver around them as the bench brigade and I looked on with amusement.
Only a week into his tenure, Mamdani already had a monument: not a statue in his likeness but a self-effacing tribute to his characteristic smoothness and civil seduction. The ramp had become a symbol, a fresh stick-and-poke on the city’s bulging bridge bicep. A microinfrastructural morsel to feed the social-media masses. In a chronically stressful city, even a bump and a few filled holes can feel like real relief.
As the weather improved, I found myself back at the Mamdani Monument, not out of curiosity but necessity: It’s on my bike route home from work. The Williamsburg Bridge has always required a gear change, where I downshift dreams of Manhattan mischief for a responsible ride back to Brooklyn. One afternoon, I took another pit stop to watch the newly smoothed scene. But the vibe was still bumpy. Vomit pooled below an abandoned Samsung Galaxy teetering on a bench. E-bikers bombarded phone-glued pedestrians as runners bounced by and eight lanes of engines edged toward the faded crosswalk. I even saw City Councilman Chi Ossé zip over the Zohramp back toward his Bed-Stuy district. Yes, he went the wrong way.