Peter Balanon-Rosen

So it was this marathon listening session where over the course of 12 hours, Mamdani sat face-to-face with over 140 New Yorkers, three minutes at a time, at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens.

Now, this choice of venue, it's pretty notable because this is a museum dedicated to movies, TV, Hollywood, the moving image.

It's a place built to pay respects to spectacle.

So I was curious going in, is this Mamdani event just spectacle too?

Or could it be something more?

Inside, we had volunteers checking people in.

There were guys giving out chai tea who chug caffeine to be there real early.

Most of the people I ran into, they were Mamdani super fans.

There'd been this Instagram post telling people they could sign up for this event, and within 10 minutes, every single spot was full.

And for the people here, one-on-one with the next mayor, it was pretty exciting stuff.

I grabbed Samina Qadir after she left her three-minute sit-down with Mamdani, and she said they spoke in Urdu, her native language.

What did he say to you?

Really?

Yeah, I spoke with Ricky Kadir, no relation to Samina.

He was that wife and kids guy from just earlier.

And he was here to tell Mamdani that the universal child care that Mamdani campaigned on was going to be crucial.

But he did also see the public performance of this event.

Mamdani's team says the idea for this did actually come from performance art.

It was inspired by Marina Abramovich, the performance artist.

She had this piece where for months she sat at the MoMA from open to close.