Welcome to the Eric Adams Table of Success

Long before he became the internationally-known Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams had a favorite saying about haters and waiters. 

Sometimes it's used for inspiration, like in 2018, when he told Brooklyn College graduates, "Let your haters be your waiters!" In other cases, it's a cautionary tale for those who doubt him. "As a little boy, as a police officer, as a state senator, as the borough president, as the mayor, all I know is, all my haters become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success," Adams told a heckler earlier this year.

The mayor's haters are easy enough to spot. But who are the other people sitting at Adams's table? What do they know that the haters and waiters don't?

For the past few months, Hell Gate has pondered these questions, and the result is the Table of Success, an interactive site exploring dozens of people who are in the mayor's orbit, their connections to each other, and why it all matters. You'll learn about the union-connected attorney working on Adams's legal defense fund, the competitive bodybuilder who shares an apartment with the mayor, and the billionaires and moguls who want a piece of the casino action in New York City.

Also, why was the mayor's son at a dinner in San Francisco with New York City real estate developers? How did the mayor choose a nightlife impresario for the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art? And will Adams's ultra-connected former chief of staff join his 2025 campaign or jump ship? The Table has answers!

The Table of Success was made in collaboration with the Wayne Barrett Project at Type Investigations, and with the help of Partner & Partners, a worker-owned design firm. It's also a living document, so we'll keep adding names and faces, scouring old news reports, and calling up sources. Are we missing someone? Drop us a line.

We'll have more to say about this project soon, but if you appreciate this kind of journalism, and want to support more ambitious efforts like this one, subscribe to Hell Gate!