The “Chasing Cars” group headlines at Brooklyn Paramount on April 8.

Sunset Park BID hosted its 25th annual Street Festival, an event whose primary purpose is to promote small business.

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What if your life came crashing down in the middle of the hottest day of the year? In ‘Notice to Quit,’ that’s exactly where the story evolves for its lead, Andy (played by Michael Zegen), who begins the film caught in the middle of his own eviction crisis when his semi-estranged daughter (Kasey Bella Suarez) comes to shadow him for the day.

Set over the course of 24 hours, the story follows Andy’s personal and professional life falling apart, but also, how he repairs it to possibly create something even better. And there are a few hilarious moments in between. To chat more about the experience and what audiences can expect from writer-director Simon Hacker’s new feature, Zegen sat down to dive deeper into ‘Notice to Quit.’

This is your first leading role. Is the experience what you expected?

To be honest, I didn’t know what I expected. It was not easy, I’ll tell you that just based on the plot itself. It takes place on the hottest day of the year, and it’s this father-and-daughter relationship, so it’s mostly us.

You’re dealing with weather, and it rained a bunch, so we had to figure out how to get around that. We’re dealing with a child who has her hours, who has to have breaks and has to have tutoring at some point. Then we were battling the sun because like I said, it takes place on the hottest day of the year, so it must be really bright and sunny. And no matter how early we started, it always felt like the sun was on its way down.

Another thing was we shot on 35 mm, it would have been a lot easier if we shot on digital, but I think it was well worth it because it looks gorgeous. It really felt like we went through a war here and we’re on the other end of it, and I can’t believe it’s coming out in theaters.

On top of all that, you also shot around every borough of New York City, right?

Yes, and that’s not even counting Roosevelt Island, where we shot at this abandoned hospital. But yeah, we shot all over. And that was another tricky bit is that one day we’d be shooting in the Bronx and the next day we’d be shooting in Bed-Stuy or Brooklyn, and I’d be taking subways at six in the morning. We didn’t have a lot of money for transportation, so I was self-reporting to set, and that was fine by me actually. It gave me time to just reflect and go over my lines on the subway.

There’s one particular shot I thought looked really challenging to shoot. That running scene at the end…

Yes, it was a huge challenge because it all had to line up correctly with the camera, which was on a tricycle sort of thing. I took a few takes, it was like five or six before we got the shot. And by that point, my legs were not well. I was feeling it, I really was.

How would you describe your character in ‘Notice to Quit’ and what he goes through?

I think when you first see him, he is a scumbag. I did try to lean into that a little bit, but you always have to show some sort of humanity, some sort of heart, because he is the focus of the movie and you want the audience to like him eventually. You want to see him evolve and you want to see him change. Luckily, it was all in the script, it wasn’t so much me. Simon [Hacker] is a really good writer, and it was all kind of there.

Audiences will see your character not only fighting for his job and to keep his apartment, but handling a lot of different personal relationships throughout the film as well. Which character dynamics were fun for you to explore?

I get to work with Robert Klein, which was incredible. I’ve always been such a fan of his, and we were very lucky to have him and he couldn’t have been more professional if he tried. And working with Kasey Bella Suarez, who played Anna, my daughter. I mean, she was like 10 or 11 when we started doing it, and she was so wonderful and just so normal.

She doesn’t have stage parents or anything like that, and she’s not jaded by the business yet. But I loved working with her, we had a good rapport, I think it’s believable that we’re father and daughter. I wanted to be an actor since I was a little kid, and just thinking back to where I was at her age, I couldn’t do that. She’s just so talented that she’s going to be huge.

What do you hope audiences walk away thinking or feeling after getting to watch ‘Notice to Quit’?  

I want ’em to have a good time, and there are some underlying themes to this. There’s the father-daughter relationship, there’s resilience. He’s a hustler, and he doesn’t stop hustling and I definitely recognize that in myself, I’ve been a hustler for a long time. But at the end of the day, I just want people to come see this movie and laugh and have a great time.

‘Notice to Quit‘ releases in theaters Sept. 27. 

New asphalt made with 50% recycled material will reduce fossil fuel use, save money and cut down on amount of old roadway pavement.

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The New York City Planning Commission voted Wednesday to approve Mayor Eric Adams’ “City of Yes” zoning overhaul aimed at boosting housing supply across the Big Apple — but the controversial plan must still pass the City Council, where it likely will face strong political opposition.

The scheme, known as the “City of Yes for Housing Opportunity,” would rewrite zoning rules that have restricted where and how much housing developers can build in many corners of the city since the early 1960s. It aims to make it easier to construct “a little more housing in every neighborhood” as the city contends with an ever-worsening shortage of available and affordable homes.

The 13-member panel passed the plan — as expected — by a 10 to 3 vote, with the dissenting members giving lengthy explanations for their “no” votes.

Before casting his vote, Dan Garodnick, who chairs the commission and heads the Department of City Planning, said the plan would be a solution for the city’s acute housing crisis. He argued that it is designed to maintain the character of various neighborhoods around the city, despite concerns that it would do the opposite.

“We don’t have to live this way. We have the power to update our outdated rules and generate the homes New Yorkers need across the city,” Garodnick said. “That’s what City of Yes for Housing Opportunity will do, allow for a little more housing in every neighborhood to take a big bite out of our housing crisis citywide.”

But the plan must pass one final hurdle: Majority approval by the 51-member City Council. 

Mayor Adams, in a Wednesday afternoon statement, urged the City Council to greenlight the suite of zoning changes in a vote before the end of the year.

“Now, it is time for the City Council to meet the moment,” Adams said. “I urge councilmembers to join New Yorkers in supporting this proposal and building a future that’s more affordable for working-class families, that provides peace of mind for older adults who want to age in place, and that allows our young people to live comfortably in the greatest city on the globe. That starts with them saying ‘yes’ to this once-in-a-generation housing proposal.”

City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, in a statement, said her office will “thoroughly review” the plan before the council votes on it.

The zoning text amendment contains eight core proposals including eliminating a requirement that new residential buildings include off-street parking, allowing builders who include affordable units in their developments to increase the number of dwelling units by 20% and over depending on the zoning district and authorizing small apartment buildings near all train stations. Other proposals in the plan would make it easier to convert office buildings into housing and allowing homeowners to add accessory dwelling units on their properties by converting garages, basements or backyard spaces.

Explaining ‘no’ votes

One commissioner who voted against the plan, Fred Cerullo, blasted the plan as “one-size fits all.” Cerullo, who hails from the mostly low-density borough of Staten Island, argued the borough is already doing its part under the current rules.

“While I completely agree with the principle and the goal of City of Yes for Housing, I have to say that the current zoning structure already provides many opportunities for new housing units, and does it in a way that enables the communities where new housing occurs not to have undermined all the reasons why they chose to call their neighborhood home,” Cerullo said.

Progressive housing attorney Leah Goodridge, another commissioner who voted against the plan, said she thinks it will hurt the populations it is intended to help — namely Black and brown communities struggling to find afforable apartments. She framed it as a giveaway to big developers that does not secure enough affrodable housing for Black and brown New Yorkers.

“This framing of housing, to address the housing shortage and to address the housing crisis as making it a supply and demand issue, to help Black and brown New Yorkers, is wrong,” she said. “It’s inaccurate framing.”

Several other commissioners enumerated the parts of the plan they disagree with, but ultimately concluded that it was still worth voting for.

The panel also made a couple of tweaks to the plan before passing it, in response to feedback during a 15-hour public hearing in July. One of them would exempt public housing campuses from a proposal under the plan to make it easier to build new housing on different kinds of campuses.

Rough Council waters ahead

The City of Yes will have the most trouble winning support among council members representing outer-borough neighborhoods comprised of homes for one or two families and low-rise apartment buildings.

Some of the plan’s most vocal opponents are council members representing swaths of Queens and Staten Island — such as Council Members Joann Ariola (R-Queens) and Robert Holden (D-Queens). They have cited concerns that the proposals would destroy the character of lower-density areas of the city, which are more akin to the suburbs, while also arguing those areas do not have the infrastructure to support more homes.

They also argue the plan is unpopular with most communities around the five boroughs, pointing out that a majority of the city’s community boards have rejected it.

Yet a survey of 1,733 registered city voters released Wednesday told a different story — with 72% of those polled approving of the plan and only 22% opposing it. The plan has also received support from four of the city’s five borough presidents.

Shortly before the vote, Holden released a statement urging the panel to delay the proceedings and instead be put before the city’s voters in some form.

“The last thing we should be doing is pushing forward a rushed plan that most community boards and countless civic associations oppose,” Holden said. “We need to step back, delay this proposal, and put it up for a vote as either a ballot proposal or an election topic for next year’s municipal elections.”

While those lawmakers, who are among the mayor’s most reliable allies on the council, are against the zoning changes, Mayor Adams’ political foes on the body’s progressive wing are broadly in favor of it — setting up an awkward political dynamic.

Further complicating matters is the storm of federal inquiries surrounding the Adams administration, which has led several of his top officials to resign over the past couple of weeks. The turmoil could make it harder for Adams to maintain support among the left-leaning lawmakers who are critical of his mayoralty overall.