For the past 103 years, local journalists have gathered for the Inner Circle, an annual black-tie dinner with the city's political elite, where said journalists perform a series of satirical musical skits about the mayor, city councilmembers, and other major players around town (there is often someone wearing a rat costume), after which the mayor gets to refute their playful ribbing with a performance of their own.
At $1,000 a ticket (thanks again, Craig, for inviting us!), the Inner Circle is technically a charity fundraiser, but the more salient idea is generally to let some steam off between what one might assume is an adversarial relationship between New York City's politicians and press.
In practice, Inner Circle is unsettlingly amicable—why were journalists taking chummy photographs with public officials?— and, if you can get past the specter of local news anchors doing songs like "Started From Uganda" (to the tune of Drake's "Started From the Bottom"), it is revealing about the machinations of power, at least.