Early Addition: Ricky's Is Shrinking Down To Just Two Locations

June 19, 2019, 12:01 p.m.

Because the Times interrogated all the Democratic prez candidates, check out today's midday links: Ricky's endangered, Facebook human cost, golf clothes, gentrified graffiti, Trump's rally, and dog meets dog celeb.

dennis fraevich's flickr

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/samsebeskazal/48083263981/in/pool-gothamist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">dennis fraevich's flickr</a>

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  • Is Ricky's, the New York beauty supplies retailer, an endangered species?
  • "Our political opponents look down with hatred on our values and with utter disdain for the people whose lives they want to run," President Trump told supporters during his 2020 kickoff rally in Florida yesterday.
  • Greg O’Connell, a retired NYPD narcotics officer, is worth millions after buying up property in Red Hook in the '70s for peanuts. “Not in my wildest dreams would I ever believe that there was such a thing as a million-dollar condo, but they sell ’em” in Red Hook, said O’Connell, who paid $4,000 in 1976 for his three-story home on Warren Street, which is now worth more than $1.2 million.
  • Here is a remarkably grim story about the conditions at Facebook offices in Florida, and the human cost of employing people to look at child abuse, organ harvesting, animal killings and other types of graphic violence every day.
  • The Times spoke with 21 Democratic presidential candidates (basically everyone except Joe Biden) and asked them the same set of questions.
  • Vox has some interesting thoughts on how to improve the state of TV.
  • A wealthy Manhattan couple has emerged as significant financiers of the anti-vaccine movement, contributing more than $3 million in recent years to groups that spread misinformation about immunizations online and at live events.
  • Spoon is releasing a greatest hits album, including a new single "No Bullets Spent."
  • Brunch Hate Reads alert: can "cool clothes" make young people love golf?
  • The New Republic writes about how graffiti became gentrified.
  • Lindsay Lohan's reality show is done, and her Mykonos beach club may also be closed.
  • And finally, another instance of what it's like to meet a real life dog celebrity: