A Skull Turns Up Under a West Village Garden, Google Threatens to Switch Off Search in City Schools, a Betting App Puts $1 Million Into NYCHA, and the Bronx Leads the City in Loitering Tickets

Vinnie clocks four New York scenes from the week of November 2–8, 2026: a cemetery turns up under a West Village garden, Google tells the country's largest school system to take its AI or lose its search bar, a betting company puts a million dollars into public housing while the state sues it, and one Bronx precinct writes most of the city's loitering tickets.

Thursday, November 5, around 11 a.m.: a construction crew renovating the backyard at 79 Christopher Street in the West Village called 911 after uncovering several bones and part of a human skull, buried four to seven feet below the ground. The building is attached to St. John's Lutheran Church, which dates to 1855, and the city medical examiner determined the bones are historic — likely buried when the plot served as the church's cemetery in the mid-1800s. Police said no foul play is suspected, and that it is not yet clear whether the remains belonged to a woman or a man. 12

Google told schools this week that banning artificial intelligence means losing Google search, under a policy it says takes effect early next year; its vice president for education told the New York Times that "search and A.I. are deeply integrated." In September Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a one-year ban on most AI programs in city schools below ninth grade. The school system runs 1.3 million Chromebooks, about 500,000 of them assigned to students, and posts homework through Google Classroom; officials say they have already disabled the Gemini chatbot and AI Mode on student devices and are asking Google to turn off AI Overviews in search. Mamdani called the company's move an attempt to use monopoly power to force AI into public schools. Google says the change gives schools "more choice, not less." 3

Thursday, November 5, in a Bronx senior center: Kalshi, the Public Housing Community Fund and Rep. Ritchie Torres announced a four-year, $1 million investment creating the Kalshi Public Housing Health Fund, which supports up to 35 volunteers in NYCHA's Health Corps. Kalshi is a prediction-market platform where users bet on events, including elections; Attorney General Letitia James and Gov. Kathy Hochul sued the company in July, claiming it runs an illegal, unlicensed gambling business without a license from the New York State Gaming Commission. CEO Tarek Mansour said at the announcement that he is "a passionate believer that markets can predict everything better," and that he does not believe they can solve every problem. 4

An analysis published this week by the Data Collaborative for Justice at John Jay College found that, from 2025 through the first half of 2026, more than 60% of the city's criminal loitering summonses came from a single precinct — the 40th, in the South Bronx — along with more than a third of all panhandling summonses. Officers in East New York's 75th Precinct wrote 855 open-container summonses, the most in the city. In 2024 judges dismissed 65% of criminal summons cases and only 9% ended in convictions; nearly 82% of criminal summonses in the first half of 2026 went to Black and Hispanic New Yorkers. The NYPD says 311 calls are up 215% in the 40th Precinct since 2015, and that summonses there are down this year. 5

Sources: amNewYork (human skull found during a West Village garden renovation, November 5, 2026); Gothamist (skeletal remains in a West Village backyard, November 6, 2026; NYC schools and Google, November 6, 2026; the criminal summons analysis, November 6, 2026); Bronx Times (Kalshi and the NYCHA health fund, November 6, 2026).