Mamdani is going to town on the annoyance economy

Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Mark Lennihan/AP Images; Alyssa powell/BI Navigating New York City's economy can feel like a gauntlet of minor indignities.

Selling ice cream, for some reason, requires two different permits.

Want to quit your gym? You may have to send a certified letter by mail.

Oh, and before you haul your belongings to that storage unit, you'd better read the fine print real carefully to see how much of a tease that teaser rate is.

Zohran Mamdani is sweating this kind of small stuff.

His administration is targeting the fees, scams, and bureaucratic headaches that make day-to-day life in New York slightly more annoying.

They're going after rule-breaking parking lots and dentists, cracking down on convoluted cancellation policies , and cutting through the city's silliest red tape.

New York has a reputation for being a home of petty scams — guys hustling Times Square tourists, businesses upcharging customers who don't know better.

Residents are accustomed to working some angles in order to make city life work for them.

Mamdani's actions, on their own, will not solve New York City's affordability crisis and, in some cases, may amount to little more than politically satisfying whack-a-mole.

But his wager is that if you relentlessly whack enough moles, it adds up and earns goodwill to take bigger swings that aren't such gimmes.

"If government can do the things that materially improve the lives of New Yorkers, we can be trusted to do more," says Julie Su, New York City deputy mayor for economic justice.

It's pocketbook pothole politics.

A thing has started to happen where New Yorkers post videos of problems they notice around the city on social media and tag the mayor — hey, look, here's a pothole, there's a blocked sewer drain.