Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here with all of you. Many, many workers have been asking me over the last few days and weeks about how confident I feel with the work upcoming, and I always tell them of our confidence as a City government, and I just want to be very clear that that confidence just comes from the work that each and every one of you has been doing for days, for weeks, for months and frankly for years.
And I know it is quite something to have been preparing for this moment and now to be in the midst of it, and I still have that same level of confidence in everything that I am seeing and that I am hearing from you. So first and foremost, just thank you for all of your work and all of time. And it is our wildest dreams [that] in that the World Cup is coinciding with the Knicks' historic finals run. So, we know that we're not just preparing for Morocco-Brazil tomorrow, but we're also preparing for Game Five, [and] we know just as we are the biggest city in the country, we can prepare for the biggest events in the countries. We can prepare for them happening at all at the same time. So, thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to hearing about the briefings from each and every agency and department and sharing that with New Yorkers about how we're going to be handling the days to come.
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Question: Mayor, why are you here at NYCEM today and what do New Yorkers need to know as we see the first game in the Tri-State Area tomorrow?
Mayor Mamdani: I just got out of a preparedness briefing with agencies, from DOT to Parks to FDNY, looking through all of the many ways in which City government has been preparing for this weekend and for this tournament, not just for days or weeks or months, but frankly for years. And what we're going to see over the course of this weekend is first, that New York-New Jersey will be hosting, with Morocco playing Brazil Saturday evening, and there will be a few things that New Yorkers should be aware of.
The first is traffic. We're going to see changes to a lot of the streetscape in Midtown Manhattan, starting as early as noon tomorrow on Saturday, lasting as late as 11 p.m. We encourage New Yorkers to stay alert as to these changes, because we're going be implementing a number of busways to ensure that we can get fans to and from where they need to go, as well as emergency vehicles.
The second thing is that this weekend is also coming at a moment of extreme heat. And so, in order to respond to that, we have set up cooling centers across the five boroughs. We encourage New Yorkers to stay cool whenever they can, to drink lots of water and to look for any space with air conditioning. If they're looking for one, they can call 311.
The last thing is we know that the World Cup is the most-watched sporting event across the entirety of the globe. So many across our city are incredibly excited for this moment, because it's more than just a collection of 104 matches. This is a moment to celebrate the fact that we are part of something larger than ourselves, something that brings the entire world together. And we can't wait to welcome so many from across the world coming to our city for the first time and for New Yorkers to rediscover that same city. Thank you so much.
