NYC Mayor-Elect Eric Adams Told Colbert He Wants New Yorkers Out And About At Night Again: ‘We’re So Damned Boring Now, Man’

Earlier this month, New Yorkers for the least odd candidate between two weirdos: Democrat Eric Adams handily trounced Republican (and founder of the not-quite-vigilante group the Guardian Angels) Curtis Sliwa. Sliwa was definitely the more unhinged candidate, and not because he has a dozen-and-a-half cats. But Adams is at the very least eccentric. Shortly before the election, he was even busted illegally parking and driving on the sidewalk outside the Bed-Stuy apartment he may not actually live in.

But now that he’s mayor-elect, swearing in first of the new year, he seems to be trying to bring the city back to normal. The Big Apple is certainly not dead, as Jerry Seinfeld can attest. It fact it’s been slowly reviving over the last handful of months, with vaccine rates skyrocketing and restaurants, bars, and other public venues inching closer to before-time patronage. And on Tuesday’s The Late Show with the decidedly pro-vaxx Stephen Colbert, Adams talked about how on the night he won the election, he painted the town, whose streets were all but empty at the height of the pandemic, red.

— The Late Show (@colbertlateshow) November 17, 2021

Adams listed the clubs he hit on Election Night, namechecking Zero Bond in the East Village, one of Cipriani’s three Manhattan locations, and Sugar Hill in Bed-Stuy, where he allegedly lives.

“I am the mayor, this is the city of nightlife. I must test the product. I have to be out,” Adams told Colbert. He then pitched his idea for a new New York City: “I want New Yorkers to come back. We used to be the coolest place on the globe. We’re so damned boring now, man. We have to be among the people, enjoying life. I want the cross-pollination of our energy and the diversity of this city. We have some beautiful places in the city. So I’m going to be out.”

That said, Adams does rise earlier than most, though by no means all, New Yorkers. “If you’re going to be hanging out with the boys at night, you gotta get up with the men in the morning,” he said. “I’m up at 5am every morning.”

And so Adams, who promises to be workaholic, may still find some time to hit the city’s reawakening nightlife. But when he’s done, he may do what he’s threatened to do, which is crash not at Gracie Mansion all the way up in Yorkville, but all the down there in Lower Manhattan, sleeping in his office in City Hall.