I picked up my press pass for the inaugural National Urban Rat Summit, hosted by Mayor Eric Adams and his affectionately termed “rat czar,” Kathleen Corradi, on the day it was scheduled to take place. Already late, I hustled westward, my freshly acquired credentials bobbing around my neck. Darting into a side entrance of Pier 57, I spotted a foam-core sign mounted on an easel near an unmanned check-in desk, on which were scattered the last of the printed programs and a few unclaimed name tags. In a room to the right, a group of sixty or so people gathered in a summit-y way.
Not wanting to disrupt the stimulating Zoom presentation (“Urban Rat Population Dynamics: How Knockdowns and Rebounds Impact Long-Term Trends”) already underway, I attempted to slip in quietly as a mouse but was met by a stout brunette who briskly escorted me back out. “I’m press,” I said assuredly. “Only the opening remarks were open to the press,” she replied, before calling up a colleague at the mayor’s office to confirm my expulsion.
Had I been a veteran of the city-politics beat, I might ha…