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| It's Friday. |
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| Weather: A chance of showers and thunderstorms early, with a high in the upper 70s. The weekend should be sunny and warm — perfect picnic weather. |
| Alternate-side parking: In effect until July 4. |
 Bryan Anselm for The New York Times |
| Have you ever ordered food to be delivered to your office or apartment? |
| If you said yes, you helped change how every person will experience New York City streets and sidewalks. |
| The food was most likely transported by a worker using an electric bike, some of which were illegal in the city. |
| But electric bikes, as well as electric scooters, will soon be legal, thanks to state lawmakers. |
| So, watch out! |
| [Read more about how tech leaders and delivery workers fought to lift the ban on these devices.] |
| What happened? |
| State lawmakers reached a deal to legalize e-scooters and e-bikes. The law, which allows cities and towns to set local rules for the devices, would take effect over the next year. |
| Basic rules: E-scooter users must be at least 16 years old, and e-scooters and e-bikes are banned from the Hudson River Greenway in Manhattan. |
| Sorry, Manhattan: Scooter rental companies like Bird and Lime cannot operate in the borough. |
| When did lawmakers get into the business of regulating bikes and scooters? |
| In the early 2000s, the city tried preventing a large group of cyclists from gathering in Union Square (the rides were called Critical Mass). Later, the city began creating pedestrian plazas and rethought the role cars play in streets. |
| Bike and scooter regulation went into high gear around 2013, when New York City's bike-sharing program debuted. It offered traditional bikes that were parked at one docking station and could be returned to another. |
| Why is the state legislation changing now? |
| The politics: The legislative session in Albany is ending and a lot of major policies are hammered out at the last minute. State lawmakers were responding to a crackdown on e-bikes that began in New York City in 2017. |
| The technology: A writer at Streetsblog, which focuses on mobility, said last month, "Thanks to a pile of start-up cash, a struggling transit system and some major advances in battery technology, the e-bike market is ripe for a huge expansion in New York." |
| The editor of that website, Gersh Kuntzman, told me there was one more reason: Electric bikes proved to be really popular in the city-sanctioned bike-sharing program. Those bikes, he said, "give you a little bit of a boost." |
| "You can get to work without being sweaty," he added. "These are concerns people have." |
| Aren't electric bikes legal already? |
| There are two kinds of electric bikes. One is a pedal-assist bike, which requires a rider to pedal to activate an electric motor to keep the bike moving. Those were the types that Citi Bike offered. |
| The other is a throttle-controlled bike, which does not require pedaling and which was illegal. |
| In late 2017, Mayor de Blasio announced a crackdown on electric bikes. |
| Last year, according to the city comptroller, Scott Stringer, New York City issued more than 1,000 civil summonses to e-bike riders, and more than 1,200 electric bikes "were seized from delivery workers." |
| The crackdown has continued through this month. |
| Is this all just about food, or showing up to work a little less sweaty? |
| The issue of mobility is not just about how we get around. |
| Supporters in New York said the two devices represented larger issues. E-scooters are viewed as an environmentally friendly way to reduce congestion and pollution. Also, delivery workers argued that the bike laws were discriminatory because they were penalized for using the best option to do their job. |
| What next? |
| First, expect cities around the state to pass their own bills. |
| Then, Mr. Kuntzman said, they will have to consider redesigned streetscapes to better accommodate these devices. |
| From The Times |
 Some critics say the Pride March has become overrun by corporate sponsors.
James Estrin/The New York Times |
| "Clash of values": Why a boycott is brewing over pride celebrations. |
| Students of color are more likely to be arrested in school. That may change. |
| A race for Queens district attorney, but Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders loom. |
| Demise of gasoline-powered cars? What we know about New York's climate goals. |
| [Want more news from New York and around the region? Check out our full coverage.] |
| The Mini Crossword: Here is today's puzzle. |
| What we're reading |
| Nik and Lijana Wallenda, the acrobat siblings, will walk on a high wire in Times Square on Sunday. [Good Morning America] |
| The Bull Moose Dog Run next to the Museum of Natural History is being renovated. [West Side Rag] |
| The first two Democratic presidential primary debates are next week. Here are the bars where you can watch them. [amNew York] |
| What we're watching: The Times's Brian Rosenthal discusses his investigation of the predatory lending in New York City's taxi industry on "The New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts." The show airs tonight at 8, on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and on Sunday at 12:30 p.m. [CUNY TV] |
| Coming up this weekend |
| Friday: |
| Kayak on the East River with the Brooklyn Bridge Park Boathouse at the Pier 2 dock. All levels are welcome. 5:30 p.m. [Free] |
| A 2000s-era disco punk dance party at the Knitting Factory in Brooklyn with music by Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and LCD Soundsystem. 11:30 p.m. [$10] |
| Saturday: |
| The 37th annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade is a "celebration of ancient mythology and honky-tonk rituals of the seaside." 11 a.m. [Free] |
| Use hand-held recorders to make field recordings on Governors Island, then learn to manipulate the sounds. 1 p.m. [By donation] |
| The World Refugee Day Festival at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music features live music, theater, storytelling, crafts and food. 3 p.m. [Free] |
| Sunday: |
| Browse the One of a Kind Bazaar at Grand Bazaar NYC in Manhattan. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. [Free] |
| Tune up your sewing machine at the Staten Island MakerSpace and leave with a better understanding of how it works. 11 a.m. [$20] |
| — Vivian Ewing |
| Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times's culture pages. |
| And finally: How many squirrels are in Central Park? |
 Vincent Tullo for The New York Times |
| The Times's Vivian Ewing reports: |
| After days of counting and months of waiting, the number is in: There are roughly 2,373 Eastern Gray squirrels in Central Park. |
| But let's back up. |
| The Central Park Squirrel Census is a project to, yes, tally the squirrels in the park. Last fall, volunteer "sighters" counted the rodents, and then a formula was used to adjust for both double-counts and squirrels that escape detection altogether. |
| [Still confused about how the squirrels were counted? Read our explainer.] |
| Today, the project's founder, Jamie Allen, and his team published the Central Park Squirrel Census 2019 Report to lay out everything they learned. It includes the Squirrel Supplemental, a 37-page booklet of squirrel insights — their behavior in the morning and evening, the number of teeth in their mouth (22) and more. |
| In the process of gathering that information — the sighters, as they're called, also recorded encounters that happened in the field — some with humans. |
| "You start seeing trends with squirrels acting really weird, the people in the parks," Mr. Allen said. "We started to see that there were opportunities to capture the flavor of Central Park and the people who populate it." |
| He collected the anecdotes and had the sighters read them aloud for a 45-r.p.m. record. |
| "It's like listening to a walk through the park from the south to the north," Mr. Allen said. |
| In addition to the booklet and the record, the report includes two five-foot-long detailed maps of the park created by Nat Slaughter, the team's cartographer. |
| "We're trying to tell stories," Mr. Allen said. "And, in the process, we've brought attention to perhaps the most overlooked creature in the United States. Along the way, I've discovered the Eastern Gray to be one of the coolest, most intelligent animals with a really sweet sense of humor. It's a sentient being. And it's there, right in front of us." |
| So, is the Central Park Squirrel Census an art or a science? |
| "We've been taught that science and art are two different things, but they're both pursuits where we're seeking answers," Mr. Allen said. "The Venn diagram comes together here." |
| It's Friday — you and the squirrels made it through the week! |
| Metropolitan Diary: Strolling |
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| Dear Diary: |
| I was sitting on a bench in Prospect Park on a beautiful Sunday afternoon waiting for my niece and her daughter to join me. |
| A young woman walked past. She was leading a dog on a leash and pushing a stroller with a little girl sitting up in it. |
| As I watched, the young woman stopped, took the little girl out of the stroller, picked up the dog, put it in the stroller and went on her way. |
| — Isabel Hoth |
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