New York Explained — Saturday, June 20, 2026

The Front Page

The Rent Guidelines Board froze rent-stabilized leases at 0%.

Story

Sample story body for the stub build.

Around the Boroughs

A Jackson Heights tenant association won a rent-overcharge case.

Only in New York

A Queens man fixed the Ridgewood bank clock.

Nelson Mandela Rides the Canyon of Heroes

Four months out of a South African prison, Nelson Mandela stood in a bulletproof box on the back of a truck and let lower Broadway bury him in paper.

On June 20, 1990, Nelson Mandela rode up the Canyon of Heroes on lower Broadway in a ticker-tape parade, the first stop of a three-day New York visit that was also his first trip to the United States. Mayor David N. Dinkins led the parade and greeted him at City Hall with the key to the city. Mandela had walked out of prison only a little more than four months earlier, after 27 years, and crowds that would total more than a million people over the three days packed the route from Battery Park to City Hall to see him. The parade was one stop on a swing that also took him to a Brooklyn high school, a Harlem rally, Riverside Church, and Yankee Stadium.

DateJune 20, 1990

RouteThe Canyon of Heroes, lower Broadway from Battery Park to City Hall

Led byMayor David N. Dinkins, who presented Mandela the key to the city

CrowdsMore than 1 million people over the three-day visit

“We welcome you with open arms and full hearts, as a leader, as a brother, as a friend, as an ally, and as a magnificent example of commitment, conviction and courage”

Mayor David N. Dinkins, welcoming Mandela to New York, June 1990

The city that had spent years boycotting apartheid South Africa got to hand its highest civic welcome to the man apartheid had tried hardest to erase, and it did it with the same ticker tape it saves for astronauts and champions.