Table of contents for April 8-21, 2024 in New York Magazine (2024)

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New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Comments1 Kerry Howley investigated the “private and public seductions” of podcaster Andrew Huberman, a prominent pop neuroscientist, for New York’s latest cover story (“Mechanisms of Control,” March 25-April 7). Researcher Cécile Simmons called it a “remarkable piece of reporting,” noting, “Biohackers and tech bros’ obsessive self-control is often about controlling others, specifically the women in their lives.” Writer Tom Gara observed, “This article shows Andrew Huberman to be a huge dirtbag and very dishonorable in his treatment of women, although its description of his management of a five-simultaneous-girlfriends situation doesn’t dispel his reputation for extreme productivity/focus.” Reporter Molly Taft liked that “the women wronged by this man have bonded together and maintain a lively and supportive group chat.” “Oh my god, 5 women pulled a straight up John Tucker Must…3 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 202498 MINUTES WITH … The Lavery FamilyIT’S A MONDAY morning in March, and Danny Lavery is up first to quietly bake the bread he proofed the night before and to walk the two little dogs Maxim Casaubon Lavery (goes by Bon Bon) and Huckleberry Rigaud Lavery (prefers Gogo). Danny and the dogs are, for now, alone in the early-to-bed, early-to-rise camp. His wife, Grace Lavery, gets up a little later, and Lily Woodruff is liable to sleep in as well. Lily has a number of projects to attend to, but at the forefront is gestating the household’s baby. Waiting for a baby here mostly entails talking. “When I say we hope that the baby will be gay, I think maybe we’re all saying that we hope the baby will have an aesthetic life,” says Lily later…7 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where JOHN and YOKO Went for CANNOLION THE DAY THAT Cafe La Fortuna opened on the Upper West Side in 1976, business was slow. “We sold one espresso and made exactly 85 cents,” says Richard Urwand, son of the café’s late owners, Alice and Vincent Urwand. “We thought, What the hell did we just do? But I guess someone liked that one espresso enough to tell someone else, and before we knew it, people started coming in.” Eventually, word spread to the two most famous people in the neighborhood (and arguably the entire world): John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who lived a block away at the Dakota.Cafe La Fortuna, which was best known for its sandwiches and Italian desserts, became the couple’s regular spot. “They used to come in a few times a week, him more…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE KEITH MCNALLY SHUCKED THE OYSTERSFEW PLACES HAD a shorter, brighter, or more impactful run than One Fifth, which opened in the fall of 1976. The elegant, nautically themed establishment is famous as the place where Keith McNally cut his teeth and where the original Saturday Night Live crew hung out because Lorne Michaels lived nearby. One Fifth quickly became a kind of beacon for downtown art celebrities and young New Yorkers who didn’t quite know they were celebrities yet. Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe were regulars, and so was a New York Magazine editor named Anna Wintour. “It was a particular mix of people who were just starting to make it,” says Vincent Fremont, who managed Warhol’s Factory in Union Square. “For many of us, it was one of the first places you could…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE THE SEX WAS AS GOOD AS the ESCARGOTTHE OWNER OF Maxwell’s Plum, Warner LeRoy, the son of Hollywood director Mervyn LeRoy and grandnephew of studio chieftain Jack Warner, had grown up with an appreciation for the magic of celebrity. He kept a list of 450 VIPs, the most important of whom could slide into the tables along the wall in the back room, which was famous for its ceiling covered with glittering Tiffany glass. “You name it—everyone was there. It was the hot restaurant during a time when there were very few inhibitions holding people back,” remembers Drew Nieporent, the future proprietor of Nobu, who found himself running the front of the house at age 23. LeRoy had toyed with a variety of sexually charged names (the Silver Cherry was one) before settling on Maxwell’s Plum, and…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where I REARWINDOWED TAYLOR SWIFTIN 2021, I BOUGHT A PLACE across the street from Lucali. It was, by that point, famous for its delicious pizza and doubly famous for attracting celebrities. It wasn’t long before I became like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, ogling the pizzeria from my living room, watching as a flock of chauffeured SUVs descended upon my otherwise quiet Carroll Gardens street.Beyoncé and Jay-Z were early adopters. I went for the first time in 2008. No sooner had I finished telling my date that it was Bey’s favorite pizza than an Escalade pulled up and she and Jay-Z proceeded to house a pie at the table next to ours.The lines really started getting crazy after Lucali was featured on David Chang’s Ugly Delicious in 2018. Now, every time someone like Bella…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where CEOS COSPLAYED As EMPERORSLIKE ANY TALENTED theatrical restaurateur, Joe Baum had his share of hits: Windows on the World, Tavern on the Green, Fonda del Sol. He also had his share of flops, none more titanic or comically misconceived than the extravagantly over-the-top Roman establishment that opened in the fall of 1957 on the ground floor of Rockefeller Center. Like the Four Seasons, which Baum debuted two years later, the Forum of the Twelve Caesars was built to cater to the high-rolling, high-spending captains of industry who populated midtown during its corporate-restaurant heyday. Unlike Philip Johnson’s sleekly modern, famously tasteful space in the Seagram Building, Forum featured faux-mosaic murals, Baroque-like portraits of Rome’s first dozen emperors, Champagne buckets designed to resemble upturned centurion helmets, and water taps in the restrooms that Mimi Sheraton…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE I ATE AS MUCH STEAK AS I COULDPINK PONY was a place I used to go every single day because I was friends with Lucien, who also owned Lucien on First and 1st. I grew up with his son, Zac. So I could go there and get free meals and then sneak into Max Fish and just get wasted. I was 15, and I would eat so much. It was like French American fusion: cheeseburgers, steaks, delicious French onion soup, oysters. They had snails, I think. I was such a big pothead during those days. I remember having the craziest munchies and eating everything on the menu because it was free.AS TOLD TO BEN KESSLEN…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where THE MEATPACKING DISTRICT WAS BORNIN JULY 1989, as Bastille Day celebrations lit up Paris, an immigrant restaurateur named Florent Morellet dressed up as Marie Antoinette and threw a party in the meat market of downtown Manhattan.Florent, his bistro-diner that felt like a Weimar speakeasy with a Debbie Harry soundtrack, had been a hit since opening on Gansevoort Street four years earlier. Madonna was an early customer, followed by seemingly every boldface name in New York: Calvin Klein, Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Roy Lichtenstein, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, David Bowie and Iman, Prince. But business sagged in the late ’80s as recession loomed and NYPD efforts to clean up Times Square pushed the sex trade into the neighborhood, where meat-packers still hung carcasses from hooks under the sidewalk awnings.“It was dead, it was summer, and we…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where THE STROKES Brought THEIR GIRLFRIENDS (And Then Other Girlfriends)THERE’S A CERTAIN kind of restaurant that feels fancy when you’re young and broke and brand new to the city, as I was in 1999, the year Lavagna opened on East 5th Street just west of Avenue B. By the time I started hanging out there in the mid-aughts, the rustic Italian joint was part clubhouse, part grown-up restaurant that adults hadn’t spoiled: It was ours.The Strokes were and remain the most enduring regulars. “Brett first brought them,” recalls the restaurant’s owner, Yorgos Hatziefthimiou, referring to Brett Kilroe, the art director at the Strokes’ label, RCA, who designed the cover of their 2001 debut album, Is This It. “The Strokes started bringing their families, their girlfriends, and the other girlfriends, and their friends,” Hatziefthimiou says. “They were part of the…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where BROOKLYN Went AFTER SHULACCORDING TO ITS SLOGAN, Dubrow’s was the “Cafeteria of Refinement”—never mind that the BMT subway ran almost directly over its roof. The chainlet (established in 1929, dismantled in 1985) operated in several locations, but the one that lingers in the mind was at Kings Highway and East 16th Street. There, surrounded by showy Italianish murals and an elaborate tile water fountain, three generations of Flatbush residents ate well for not much. The food was comparable to what they’d get at an Automat or a coffee shop but with a slightly Jewish accent: coffee cake, blintzes, chopped liver. Dubrow’s was open 24 hours, arguably busiest on weekends after services let out at Temple Ahavath Sholom. That made it a useful place to mingle with—and court—voters. John F. Kennedy, campaigning on a…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where ELAINE KAUFMAN Got Her START“IF YOU KNOW where the lesbians are, please take me,” Edie Windsor asked a friend in the early ’60s. Divorced for a decade, Windsor was unsure where to meet other women without risking her career at IBM. She ended up at Portofino Restaurant on Thompson and Bleecker, where she met Thea Spyer. Portofino was a straight restaurant that cultivated a discreet but dedicated lesbian following. Passing in whispers between friends, word spread: The food was delicious, the crowd was artistic, and on Friday nights, the women were almost certainly gay.In the early days, Portofino was managed by Elaine Kaufman, who was honing her knack for drawing writers, artists, and musicians. “It was a wild and fun and very scary time because you never knew when the place was going to…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE DEF JAM LUNCHEDIT SEEMED LIKE all of Def Jam used to go to Time Cafe. The female record executives, especially—Rhonda Cowan, Tracey Waples—used to hang out there. We were having so much fun. And that food was good. The angel-hair pasta—oh my God, it was just incredible. One time, I was gonna have a meeting with Andre Harrell, God rest his soul, the former head of Uptown Records and Motown. I told my relative to meet me before so I’m not sitting by myself. She sat down and started to steal the silverware. I was like, “Oh my God, put it back.” Andre and Russell Simmons came walking in, she got up, and the silverware fell everywhere—clink, clink, clink. I turned bright red. When the waitress came over, she just picked up…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where I Accidentally Invented THE CLUBSTAURANTWHEN I WAS 8 YEARS OLD, I wrote a note saying I was going to have my own restaurant by the time I was 30. But as that birthday approached, I was looking and looking for a space and everything was too expensive. My best friend, Yvonne Force Villareal, said Chelsea was going to be the next big place, but I wasn’t totally convinced.I wasn’t looking to be cool. I was looking to be successful.Our first night, Lot 61 had 500 people from all over. The only celebrity I ever knew, an old pal, a bestie, was Bruce Willis. He was really so instrumental in sending so many people. When Kevin Costner was in town for three months, he came in because Bruce Willis told him to. It just clicked…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE You Had to Get Past TWO VELVET ROPESONE WINTER NIGHT in 1993, when I was 29 and still finding my way, a man I’d been seeing tried to impress me, I think, by taking me to Café Tabac. Of course, I’d heard of it. The gossip columns were full of items about the glamorous shenanigans going on nightly at the funky-looking little bistro on East 9th Street, opened the previous year by Roy Liebenthal, a soulfully handsome 28-year-old model, and his business partner, Ernest Santaniello. Madonna, Bono, and the so-called Trinity—Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington—were showing up on a regular basis. “It was like lightning striking the gold pot and the gold pipes burst open and all the gold coins spill out. That’s what it was,” the journalist George Wayne has said.My eyes growing wide…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where POLITICAL POWER WHEELED AND DEALED1950s JOE’S RESTAURANT in Brooklyn HeightsThe spacious two-story diner near Borough Hall with an exhaustive menu and surf-and-turf specialties attracted politicians, Catholic organizations, and civic groups to its banquet tables. Joe’s most famous patron was Dodgers co-owner Branch Rickey, who had discussed signing Jackie Robinson at his favorite table. It was torn down in 1959 to make way for Cadman Plaza West.1960s ANTUN’S in Queens VillageThe catering hall appealed to Democratic bigwigs and labor leaders who needed a banquet room spacious enough to fête governors and senators. JFK stopped by for a women’s luncheon three days before the 1960 election to shore up the Irish American voting bloc in what was then a key swing state. “Everything is always pretty good there,” says former Queens congressman Joe Crowley. “For a…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where You WANTED TO BE in the SMOKING SECTIONRIGHT OUT of the gate, Indochine was one of the hottest spots in the city—alongside Area and Danceteria. But while those places were wild and messy, Indochine, which served Vietnamese food from its perch on Lafayette Street, was chic. The opening-night crowd in 1984 included Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf. Debi Mazar visited throughout the ’80s, sometimes with Madonna in tow. “I loved walking up those stairs with the red light,” Mazar recalls. “And then there’s some gorgeous model going, ‘Hello, let me take you to your seat.’ And me just going, Why can’t I look like her? Why is she a waitress?” (The staff has long been intimidatingly gorgeous. “Whoever did the hiring must’ve been a casting director,” Bethann Hardison told me.)You could see U2 sitting in…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024The Telephone Water Bottle That’s the Talk of Second GradeIT STARTED with a conversation about the Stanley water bottle. Specifically, my 8-year-old had a friend over who asked me why my daughter doesn’t have one. We’re an Owala household, I explained. “Everyone at school is into those telephone water bottles anyway,” she said. I, of course, had to find out what a “telephone water bottle” was, so I Googled. The water bottle in question looks like an old rotary phone and popped up in multiple listings on Amazon: It holds 13.5 ounces, and the whole top twists off to reveal a straw. It also comes with stickers to decorate it. I asked the girls who at school had gotten it first. “It was T.,” they both said, and she had camera, watermelon, and doughnut versions, too. I texted T.’s…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024My Family Group Chat Is 95 Percent Birds Thanks to This Smart FeederI BOUGHT MY PARENTS, who live in Virginia and have become avid bird-watchers, the Netvue Birdfy smart bird feeder in hopes that it would photograph their avian friends better than their iPhones. I knew I chose the right gift when our family group chat started to feature more updates about birds than humans. “European starling,” my mom texted us one day, accompanied by a video. “He’s dancing!” my sister-in-law noted. The gadget is fairly simple—a plastic perch and food trough attached to an auto-recording camera with a motion sensor that charges via a solar panel. It’s similar to the more popular Bird Buddy but is cheaper. I like to think of it as the lazy person’s way to bird-watch.…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024FOR TIGHT SPACESDAVID KENNEDY CUTLER, East Williamsburg; davidkennedycutler.comOWNER DAVID KENNEDY CUTLER and his employees are all exhibiting artists who hang art as a way to support their own studio work. Art adviser Ivy Shapiro says his team makes even highly complex installations feel relaxed. Recently, she says, the crew had to partially remove a large painting from its stretcher (the wooden framework that a canvas is attached to) so it could fit through a prewar home’s labyrinthine corridors. This process was complicated by the fact that the buyer wanted the piece installed before the oil paint had fully dried, so the painting couldn’t be rolled and restretched once it arrived. Kennedy Cutler handled the situation with aplomb, altering the stretcher so that the painting could drape around it and be cradled on…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024In the Belly of the BarbzON A RAINY early-spring evening, a parade of Barbie dreamgirls and gays make their way to see Nicki Minaj, the sound of high heels crunching on the pavement. It’s the first night of her run of Northeast shows on the Pink Friday 2 World Tour at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. While walking toward the venue, a woman in a layered pink miniskirt, a bikini top, and Lucite coral kitten heels bumps into someone who is demonstrably not a Minaj fan: gray hoodie, jeans, a distinct lack of Big Cunt Energy. The other person doesn’t even notice, but this woman clocks the disrespect. “You ain’t a Barb,” she says mostly to herself as she hobbles along the pavement. “You an ugly bitch.”Taylor Swift has her Swifties, Beyoncé has…7 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024To DoFor more culture coverage and streaming recommendations, see vulture.com.MUSIC1. Listen to The Tortured Poets DepartmentIt’s me—again—hi.Republic Records, April 19.Since chasing the 2022 release of her tenth album, Midnights, with the Eras tour and film, rerecordings of back-catalogue highlights Speak Now and 1989, and a whirlwind romance with Super Bowl–winning tight end Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift advances a never-ending rollout with album No. 11, which features Post Malone and Florence + the Machine.CRAIG JENKINSTV2. Watch FalloutTime to venture out of the Vault.Prime Video, April 11.Creative partners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy put on their executive-producer hats for this adaptation of the popular retro-futurist video game, which imagines an alternate Earth transformed by nuclear power and stars Ella Purnell as a woman who emerges from the underground to explore a postapocalyptic U.S.…8 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024THE APPROVAL MATRIXPHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES (FLORIDA, SQUATTER, PUNCHERS, KLOSS, COWS, SPORTS, HAVANA, MICHELE, LUPONE, BEES, DRAKE, GARFIELD, DESCHANEL, VAMPIRE, LIZZO, NEPTUNES, ECLIPSE, MAHOMES, KELCE, SKI, OHTANI); HARVARD UNIVERSITY, HOUGHTON LIBRARY (SKIN); FITZCARRALDO EDITIONS (BARTON); MACMILLAN (CARRASCO); COMPANY GALLERY (ÖSTERBERG); CLUBBED THUMB (GRIEF); PONCILI CREACIÓN/KALEIDOSCOPE BK (PUPPET); KONSTANTIN SERGEYEV (BURGER); AKHIRWAN NURHAIDIR/UNIVERSAL PICTURES; GOOGLE MAPES (MEKELBURG’S); WALT DISNEY (POLLEN); WARNER BROS. (KONG); BROOKLYN PARAMOUNT (PARAMOUNT)…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024The Ballot Box: Errol LouisTHE ROAD TO THE White House this year will run through Black communities—and all indicators point to a rough and tricky path for Democrats. Polls show a massive jump in the level of support among Black voters for Donald Trump, from 12 percent in 2020 to 17 percent now, according to a December survey by GenForward, a data project based at the University of Chicago. More recently, a New York Times–Siena poll had even more startling results, reporting that 23 percent of Blacks would vote for Trump if the election were held today. That would be the highest level of such support for a Republican presidential candidate since Nixon got 32 percent of the Black vote in 1960.How is this possible? This is the candidate who launched his political career…6 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024The Power Trip: Olivia Nuzzi Arizona’s Split RealityONE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED and fifty-four miles, from the Pacific to the Gulf, where people live and work. Where they commute between Mexico and the United States like they commute between New Jersey and New York, passing through a security checkpoint as they would a toll outside the Holland Tunnel. Where you may look in the distance to mountains and valleys and ask where one country ends and the other begins. Where you may start to wonder about the nature of such distinctions, about the nature of separateness, about the nature of self, about borders between men, between man and state, between civilization and disorder. Where you may appreciate just how young a species we are and how tribal. If you have never stood on the banks of the Rio…42 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE JIMMY WALKER RAN THE CITYSERVING AS THE city’s chief executive in the Roaring ’20s, Jimmy Walker was a twinkly, showy character, a onetime Tin Pan Alley songwriter turned Tammany politician. He was known for devoting maybe three hours a day to the job, traveling the city in a flashy Duesenberg automobile that cost more than most houses and swanning around town each night with his showgirl mistress, Betty Compton. (His wife stayed home.) In 1929, he arranged for a dowdy 65-year-old Central Park restaurant known as the Casino (not a gambling spot, despite its name) to become a swanky nightclub. Specifically, the mayor broke the previous restaurant operator’s contract and handed it to his friend and supporter Sidney Solomon, who got the license for $8,500 per year, which would turn out to be the…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE I WAITED ON ANTHONY WEINERANYONE WHO remembers Coffee Shop remembers this big outdoor area. That was where the more finicky people sat, the people who wanted to be seen. I remember working brunch one day, and we were so short-staffed I had that whole outdoor area to myself. It was so busy. At one point, I just set my head down on the edge of the service station and almost cried. I told myself, Okay, you need to just put one foot in front of the other and get through this. I think about that all the time. All the time. There are days now where, obviously, what I’m doing is very different, but I go back to that brunch shift. I worked there for five years. It was one of the most formative…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE SAXOPHONISTS ATE Breakfast at 3 a.m.FOR THE JAZZ MUSICIANS of the 1960s, Birdland was the club to play on 52nd Street—then still Swing Street, filled with nightclubs, though not for much longer—and Ham N’ Egg Corner was the place to eat. Partly, this had to do with practicality (it was across the street) and accessibility (it was open 24 hours), but it was also, as pianist Kenny Barron puts it, “a great vibe.” The peak hour always came around 3 a.m., as the night’s sets wrapped up. “You’d be there for hours,” says Barron, waiting for other band members to trickle in. Once, he remembers, he saw bassist Wilbur Ware looking in through a frosty glass window, smiling at the musicians with their instruments propped up against the linoleum tables. An assortment of performers, fans,…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE East Village Punks WENT …… FOR EggsA7, THE SHORT-LIVED but seminal club called the birthplace of New York hardcore, was across the street from Leshko’s, part of a constellation of Polish and Ukrainian greasy spoons that had fed the East Village for years. So it was an obvious place to stop. “We would go there when we got out, which would be like five, or six, or even seven in the morning,” says Jesse Malin of the early hardcore band Heart Attack. “We worked up quite an appetite in that back room jumping around dancing like crazy.” He’d go with other people from the scene, like the False Prophets. Sometimes he’d run into the Stimulators and Jimmy Gestapo from Murphy’s Law. At least one local band, the Bad Tuna Experience, was named after a…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE MARK TWAIN THREW A RAGERHERE’S WHAT KIND of an event Mark Twain’s 70th-birthday party, on December 5 at Delmonico’s, was: Before it even happened, the New York Times ran not one but two stories about the invitations. The guests ultimately numbered 170, and it was a true A-plus list of literary, powerful, and just plain rich New Yorkers. On the night of the dinner, Andrew Carnegie spoke. So did William Dean Howells, the novelist and Atlantic Monthly editor routinely called “the Dean of American Letters.” President Theodore Roosevelt couldn’t make it, but he sent a message to be read. George Harvey, the editor of Harper’s Weekly, hosted. Delmonico’s was almost 80 years old by that time and still the omphalos of American fine dining. Everyone received a foot-high bust of the guest of honor.The…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE Tokyo’s High Rollers Could Enjoy Their Toro in PeaceBEFORE NOBU and Masa, the city’s sushi world was a smaller, more settled place. “The restaurants were very old-fashioned, they were in midtown, they were marketed mostly to Japanese businessmen, and these guys did not want to see any fucking white people in their restaurants,” recalls Nobu’s Drew Nieporent. Sushiden on East 49th Street was partially owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation; it was a forbidding oasis for salarymen dressed in their dark suits. Kurumazushi, which is still doing business in a small walk-up space on 47th Street, was the big-money venue where the sushi was stored in a golden box and the chef (who called his carefully selected fish “my jewels”) charged upwards of $200 for an omakase dinner when, as one sushi-snob friend remembers, “no one had ever heard…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE Chinese Actors Served Chow Gai KewESTHER ENG WAS SAID to be the first Chinese woman to direct movies in both the U.S. and China. Eng, who lived openly as a lesbian, dressed in masculine clothing, and went by the nickname Big Brother Ha, grew up in San Francisco, made movies in Hong Kong, and moved to New York by 1950.As the story goes, Eng ran into an old friend, Bo Bo, a Chinese actor who was reluctant to return to China, which was then under Mao. She decided to open a restaurant to give her friend and his troupe work. Called Bo Bo, it was located on Pell Street in the heart of Chinatown. In time, the restaurant became a harbor for expat Chinese actors, a place where they could get help learning English and…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE Graydon, Anna, and Tina Had Their Own BoothsBACK IN THE EARLY 1990S, when magazines were fat with ads, relevance, and prestige, there was no place where the raw social power of Condé Nast’s top editors was more on display than at 44. The restaurant was housed inside an Ian Schrager hotel called the Royalton at 44 West 44th Street, just around the corner from Condé’s offices. The hotel’s interior was designed by Philippe Starck. “An early-’90s masterpiece,” remembers Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair starting in 1992.It was run by Brian McNally, who had been encouraged to open it by his friend Vogue editor Anna Wintour. “She was there from day one, which, you know, certainly didn’t hurt,” McNally recalls. “Graydon was a good friend as well, and he came every day as soon as he took…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where Sirio Greeted Us BeautifullyYou walked in ...SHARYN MANN, co-founder of the Food Allergy Initiative (now FARE):Sirio Maccioni would be at the door and sat everyone. He was just one of the most intelligent people. I wish he could have run for president! He knew everybody and seated everybody perfectly.BARBARA TOBER, former editor-in-chief of Brides and longtime philanthropist affiliated with the Metropolitan Opera and Citymeals on Wheels: We were greeted beautifully.JAMEE GREGORY, author of New York Parties: Private Views and past president of the Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering:You know, whenever you entered Sirio’s kingdom, he made you feel really, really special. And if he knew you, it was a place you could always call at the last minute and he would find a table for you. I think that’s one of the things…5 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024… And where she MADE HER NAMEMORE HAS BEEN written about Elaine’s than maybe any other restaurant, probably because writers and movie stars adopted it as their hangout. People liked to trash the food, but nobody went to Elaine’s for the meal. You went to Elaine’s for any of three reasons: (1) Elaine liked you and was willing to carry your tab if you were talented and broke; (2) Elaine liked your friends and you were allowed in by proxy; or (3) you wanted to get a glimpse of Norman Mailer, Michael Caine, or Woody Allen. Woe betide you if you were in group No. 3 and intruded on the privacy of group No. 1. Elaine was never shy about chucking people out.…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE WE DRANK, AND FOUGHT, AND ATE BIG MACS WITH Andy WarholTO A HEEDLESS VISITOR, every McDonald’s looks about the same. But for as long as the fast-food chain has been in New York (its first store opened here in 1972), certain locations have served different purposes—as a high-low venue for a black-tie benefit gala attended by Andy Warhol in 1976, a quasi rec center for elderly Korean patrons in Flushing in 2014, or simply as hubs for various, and often debaucherous, crews throughout the five boroughs.In the late aughts, at around 2 or 3 a.m., when the Lower East Side nightlife scene known as Hell Square began shutting down, the McDonald’s on Delancey and Essex provided an antidote to closing time: You didn’t have to go home, and you absolutely could stay there. “It was another character in our lives.…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE MAMBO KINGS JAMMED EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEKWHEN KENNETH GIORDANO took over Willie’s Steakhouse, a restaurant in the shadow of the rattling 6 train on Westchester Avenue, he knew he wanted to feature live jazz. So to facilitate the descargas, he bought some instruments and left them onstage. Whoever came in could get up and play. Giordano counted the “King of Mambo” himself—Tito Puente—among his customers. “It became the epicenter of the Bronx,” says the music historian Joe Conzo Sr., who was Puente’s confidant and longtime friend. “Queen of Salsa” Celia Cruz, trumpeter Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros, flutist Dave Valentin, drummer Carlos “Patato” Valdes, Latin soul’s Joe Bataan, a young Marc Anthony, and Fania Records founder Johnny Pacheco were all regulars too. Al Pacino showed up with Puente when he was filming Carlito’s Way. As Conzo remembers it,…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE AN ART COLLECTIVE ATE CHEAP FISH BALLSTHEY CALLED IT TUESDAY LUNCH CLUB, a hang with the regularity of a sacrament. Just about every week starting in the late ’80s, the artists Bing Lee and Ik-Joong Kang would round up a crew of friends like Martin Wong, Ken Chu, and Arlan Huang to meet at a rotating series of Chinatown spots. There was Tai Tung, where the Hong Kong chef knew to lace his fish balls with orange peel and seaweed. Or Yuen Yuen, where their performance-artist friend Frog King used to write out the daily menu for the restaurant in exchange for a free meal. Or Canal Seafood, where Kang liked to order the squid. “The criteria was ‘affordable.’ Food has to be good. And,” says Lee, “that the waiter or waitress doesn’t bother us. If…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE JFK JR. ORDERED OATMEAL Next to His StalkersNINETIES TRIBECA had a local god, and he was JFK Jr. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that he jogged shirtless through the still-cobbled streets, that he became a regular at Mary Parvin’s salons at the newsstand–slash–Oriental-rug shop she operated on Hudson. And while he was said to drop in at Walker’s, you would more reliably find him at Bubby’s one block west, which Ron Silver opened in 1990 to sell his pies before it grew into one of the neighborhood’s most durable restaurants. “He came in on the second day that we were open,” Silver says. And he ate his last breakfast there before his plane crash. Kennedy was a regular. Sometimes alone, often with Carolyn. “I would be reading the New York Post, some sort of John-John story, and…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024A Civilized Corner Cleaner➸ AN AGILE hand vac can make cleaning feel like a satisfying pleasure. Writer Amelia Mularz tested dozens of options to find the five most capable spot cleaners, and Shark’s Wandvac Cordless Handheld Vacuum ($130) handily won in the “affordable but not deeply hideous” category. The Wandvac holds its charge for 17 minutes (long enough to clean up all the crumbs Mularz’s toddler scatters over the course of a day), has impressive suction, and, at just under a pound and a half, is the lightest of our selections. It’s also remarkably attractive; the charging dock is so sleek that Mularz is happy to leave it out on her kitchen counter. We named Dyson’s Humdinger ($300) our best overall hand vac because of its 25-minute run time and motorized attachment for…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024The Most Comfortable Shoes to Stand in, According to Stylish Restaurant PeopleBootsDelphine Anton, maître d’ at Ilis in Greenpoint, loves these square-toed heeled booties. She has been wearing her current pair for over a year and says they’re “very chic but extremely comfortable, even on eight-plus-hour days.”OxfordsAfter an extensive hunt, Michael Cecchi-Azzolina, owner of Cecchi’s, landed on these Cole Haans. They’re a bit dressy, making them ideal for moving from work to nonwork activities, and two pairs later, he cites zero break-in period.ClogsThese slip-ons have the perfect amount of arch and lift, says Cerise Zelenetz, owner of Cherry on Top, a natural-wine bar in Bushwick. They also have a padded footbed and “look like clogs and Blundstones had a baby,” she adds.SneakersToussaint Stackhouse, wine director at Heaven and Earth, a wine bar in Greenpoint, swears by his Air Force 1’s. He…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024I Stopped Strangers on the Subway to Find a Perfect Work ToteIN A SINGLE morning commute a few weeks ago, I spotted over 100 tote bags, and many were enviable, including a Longchamp Le Pliage tote, several Baggu Nylon Shoulder Bags, a striped Isabel Marant tote, and leather bags from Coach, J.Crew, and Madewell. But of all the ones I saw, the Cuyana stood out. I talked to multiple people with this bag, including Liz Goldberg, who works at the Met. She told me it’s lightweight but holds its shape, is made from the softest leather, and still feels balanced even when it’s packed. I ventured to Cuyana’s Soho store and bought the brand’s Zipper Tote. So far, it sits comfortably on my shoulder, even while carrying my thousand-page law-school textbooks.…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024The Best Baguette in New York CompetitionDONNA SOLOWAYBoard member and writer, Midtown EastWhat brings you here?I’m a Francophile. I’m a fluent French speaker, I read in French constantly, and I read about this event on the website French Morning. I thought, How big could it be? Maybe three, four manufacturers? Well, there were like more than 30 baguette-makers here, and I was surprised because a lot of them were very good.Do you like living in Midtown East? It’s not the Upper East Side. Upper East Side girls are different. Midtown girls go to all the places—we go north, south, west. Upper East Side girls don’t go out of their way. And actually, we live in Truman Capote’s old building. We have two towers, and Truman lived in mine.By the way, I love your hat. I wear…3 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024How’d You Make That?FOR 40 YEARS, I was an editor, mostly of magazines, including this one. As an editor and as a reader, I found the story of how creators create irresistible. I liked that these stories had a classic structure to them—each inherently dramatic, starting with nothing and ending with something. I assigned a story on Stephen Sondheim in which he explained how he wrote a single song. I traced the evolutions of buildings and novels and soap-opera arcs. Cultural procedurals were especially good material. ¶ When I quit my magazine job, I decided to try my hand as an artist. It wasn’t entirely abrupt: In my work, I always found it satisfying telling stories in photographs and graphics and drawings, and in spare moments—a whim at first—I picked up a paintbrush…25 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Neighborhood News: Patrolling With the Rat CzarNEW YORK CITY’S RAT CZAR, Kathleen Corradi, had come to Seward Park to survey her domain. It was treatment time for some burrows off Essex Street in an area where rats have been known to cross the road in groups. Parks exterminators wheeled a BurrowRx machine to a patch of low-lying greenery: “Perfect rat habitat,” Corradi said. “When something’s above them, they are happy. We want to make them less happy.” Soon, the crew began pumping smoke rich in carbon monoxide down into a hole. As the fumes escaped the other entrances to the rat burrow, the scene became very World War I–trench warfare. Rats inside would meet their demise.A more spotlight-seeking spirit would probably have a catchphrase for a moment like this. But that is not Corradi’s way. A…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024THIS CITY Has ALWAYS LIVED in Its RESTAURANTSGO TO ANY CITY in America and you can likely find a good Italian place, the hot Korean spot, and a semi-secret sushi counter. It’s only in New York that we have the rap-mogul restaurant, the supermodel café, the indie-director diner, and the club kids’ breakfast nook. We go to restaurants for oxtail or cocktails, but we also go to find our people. The great New York critic Vivian Gornick recently told my colleague Hilary Reid about the first time she was taken to Café Loup on West 13th Street by an editor: “He told me it was a ‘writer restaurant.’ I was thrilled. I thought, Oh boy, I’m being initiated.”It was not always this way. As William Grimes writes in his 2009 book, Appetite City, the word restaurant entered…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE It Felt Like 1967 in 1987IF “THE FUTURE’S already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed” (see William Gibson), in the Brooklyn I knew growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, the past was strewn around in randomized chunks, like the clamshells in a giant bowl of Two Toms’ linguine. The little spot at Third and Union wasn’t a nostalgic portal into a romanticized Ye Olde Brooklyn (like, say, Gage & Tollner); it was simply stuck in time, like a piece of overcooked pork chop you can’t work out of your back molars until you get busy with a toothpick.Never sublime enough to become any foodie’s fetish, it was a workingman’s red-sauce house to the end, famous for the cops and firefighters, yes, but also home to tradespeople.The restaurant’s fake-stone stucco and tin awning made it…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where WE DANCED OFF Our CHICKEN KIEVFOR MOST OF MY childhood, I was dragged to a Brighton Beach banquet hall at least monthly. A Russian uncle would ask, “Paydyom v’Nassional?” On went the sequined dresses and Men’s Wearhouse blazers, up went the magenta-tinted hair, out came the knockoff Chanel bags, and off we went, usually to the “Nassional.” Established in 1981 by members of the first immigrant wave to land in Little Odessa, the National presented a windowless façade, but wonders lay within: a two-tiered palace festooned with dizzying carpet patterns, crystal chandeliers, and blinding footlights. Hundreds of seats were crammed into long tables laden with French-inflected Soviet appetizers: smoked sturgeon and tongue; salmon roe and black bread; and—my favorite—Olivier salad, a mélange of eggs, pickles, potatoes, mayonnaise, peas, and bologna. (Trust me.) By the time…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where CELEBRITIES Went TO BE SNAPPEDIF 2006 EVER CALLS and wants its celebrities back, the caller ID might well come up as “Da Silvano.” Silvano Marchetto’s Italian restaurant spilled onto an unusually broad sidewalk on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village from 1975 until 2016—often with one of his three Ferraris parked outside.Perhaps its ample outdoor seating—more like the Ivy in L.A. than anything in New York—helped attract the glam clientele for which it was known. The stars provided a buffet for the paparazzi (who were always waiting by the curb) without appearing too thirsty for attention.Celebrities descended upon Da Silvano throughout its 41-year run, but 2006—with its saucer-size sunglasses and brand-new T-Mobile Sidekicks—was the year in which Frank Bruni began his New York Times review (dropping it from two stars to one) by highlighting not…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE Uptown Teens SPENT THEIR Parents’ MoneyFOR A CERTAIN SET of private-school kids who came of age in the mid-’90s, the Serafina on 79th and Madison will always be Sofia.The restaurant opened in 1995, the same year I started high school, and quickly became our social hub. My friends and I would come for dinner, marching up the narrow steps in bulbous Steve Maddens, carrying box-cut Kate Spades, with Ricky’s glitter on our eyelids. The hostess would herd us past the main dining room (where grownups sat), up another flight to the third story, which had tented ceilings and uneven brick floors. This was the domain of teenagers.“It was the one place you’d see everyone from all the schools,” says Elana Wexler, a friend from school days. We all showed up: Riverdale, Trinity, Spence, etc. Even…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE Club Kids Loaded Up ON Macrobiotic DinnersWEDNESDAY NIGHT was our flagship party, Disco 2000 at Limelight. After three hours of getting ready at the Chelsea Hotel, where I lived throughout the ’90s, I’d join my fellow club kids at photographer Michael Fazakerley’s studio to have our looks documented. Emerging as a Technicolor chain gang, we would tread in our platform shoes to an outlaw party staged at a high-traffic hub like Twin Donut or the L train—think flash mobs but before they were invented. We’d flood the joint with splendor and party until the cops came, then drinks would fly into the air and a herd of club kids, ravers, and banjee boys would stampede toward Limelight.Whisked through the crowds waiting to get in, we’d regroup for a surreal, yet surprisingly civilized, sit-down dinner party around…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE High Society COULD FEAST ON Foie Gras AND GossipTHERE WAS ALREADY FRENCH FOOD in New York—at the Colony, the big hotels, Delmonico’s to some degree—when the 1939 New York World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadow. But it was there that Le Restaurant du Pavillon de France served un-Americanized, uncut Gallicness, run by a hotheaded restaurateur named Henri Soulé and prepped by a well-drilled team brought over aboard the grand Art Deco liner Normandie. There was capon in tarragon aspic; saddle of lamb; there were, of course, frogs’ legs. An order of foie gras was 75 cents. The restaurant served more than 136,000 customers from April through October and did it again for the Fair’s repeat engagement in 1940.When it was time for Soulé and his chefs to go home, France was no longer France. The Nazis had reached…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE MALCOLM X ORGANIZED OVER OMELETSJAMES ALSTON IV OPENED HIS homestyle Harlem diner in 1962, and it quickly became a destination for Black politicians, religious leaders, and community organizers. 22 West doubled as a bar, a jazz club, and even a gallery. It never fully embraced the trappings of a social club, but, with its plates of oxtails, smothered chicken, and greens, the restaurant nurtured a sense of community and trust among its diners. Frequent customers included Muhammad Ali; Percy Sutton; labor leader Howard Bennett, who would go on to fight to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday; and, most notably, Malcolm X, who became such a fixture that he used the restaurant’s pay phone to make radio announcements and regularly held court in his own back booth. (And it’s where he…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where BILLIE HOLIDAY WOUND DOWN THE NIGHTKNOWN SIMPLY AS WELL’S, it opened in 1938 as a three-booth, five-stool bistro in Central Harlem. It would later become a 250-seat restaurant famous far and wide for its chicken and waffles. Although Smalls Paradise, another Harlem staple, was likely serving its own version over a decade earlier, owner Joseph Turner Wells eventually trademarked a logo, helping to stake the Supper Club’s claim—misattributed—as the dish’s founder. The origins hardly mattered to the Black musicians and performers who headed there after shows at the Cotton Club, which, like many of the spots they performed at, remained segregated, prohibiting them from eating dinner there. Regulars included everyone from Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington to Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra. In a 1984 New York Times article, published two years after Well’s…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where a PANADERIÁ BECOME a PARTYWHEN COSITAS RICAS opened in 2000, it became a refuge for Jackson Heights’ Colombian community, a modest bakery where you could nurse a café con leche and a guava pastry for hours. The energy inside skewed campy: Employees dressed in beige-and-green uniforms, and hamburger-shaped neon signs adorned the walls. Customers often stopped by wearing waist-trainers and with their hair in rollers. Then, in 2006, True Colors, a popular gay bar, opened next door.The restaurant quickly became—and remains—a queer haven: To this day, it’s not uncommon to see a table of trans women and gays sharing a bottle of aguardiente sitting next to a group of straight dudes cursing at the soccer games playing on TV monitors overhead, all while waitresses float effortlessly among the aisles calling everyone amor. Over the…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024WHERE Cabdrivers MADE THEIR PIT STOPS...PARK AVENUE SOUTH between East 28th and 29th was always lined with cabs; Belmore Cafeteria, named for a brand of cigars, served food to drivers at all hours. The Belmore occupied a culinary niche that’s now gone, that of steam-table corned-beef hash and boiled potatoes, borscht and roasted squash, served on fiberglass trays. The hamburger was reportedly pretty good, and there were pitchers of water in case a customer needed to run outside and top up his radiator. Taxi Driver made it famous—Peter Boyle, as Wizard, lays out his earnest if incoherent philosophy to Travis Bickle there late one night—but times change and cabbies retire. The building came down for a beige apartment tower in 1984.C.B.BY THE EARLY 1990S, South Asian immigrants had taken on the mantle of the yellow-cab…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where JACK KEROUAC and ALLEN GINSBERG Saw Through the SmokeTHE WRITERS AND ARTISTS who loitered around Macdougal Street in the 1950s have been called a lot of things: “irresponsible tea heads,” Allen Ginsberg used to say; “subterraneans,” Jack Kerouac called them; and “real bastards,” according to the artist Mary Frank. To most people, though, they are and will forever be the Beats—a group united not so much by artistic style as by proximity and a desire to drink, do drugs, screw around, write, and repeat.Where, then, did food fit into the equation? Mostly, it didn’t. To them, it was just “something they put in their mouth,” says Frank, who was married to the photographer Robert Frank, himself a part of the Beat crowd, for 19 years. The restaurants, cafés, and bars they frequented throughout their 20s served more as…2 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where I ASKED BRAD PITT TO WAIT FOR A TABLETUCKED ON THE QUIET CORNER of Commerce and Barrow Streets in the West Village, across from two identical townhouses separated by a shared gated garden (fancifully rumored to have been built for warring twin sisters) and a few doors down from the Cherry Lane Theatre, was Grange Hall.I was hired as a waiter before it opened in 1992, which, at the time, was something of a surprise. Typically, restaurants had a stunning Black woman at the host stand, eye candy for the white male patrons, but Black men were mostly relegated to being busboys or barbacks, even in bohemian downtown. Luckily, one of Grange’s owners, Jacqui Smith, took a shine to me.Grange served comfort food in a Great Depression–speakeasy type setting—down to the portrait of FDR over the bar and…3 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Where ARTISTS in ILLEGAL LOFTS Ate GRASS-FED BURGERSWHEN DINER opened in 1998 in a dining car that had been sitting empty just south of the Williamsburg Bridge, it wasn’t entirely clear who its actual diners might be. Shoppers at the nearby thrift store Domsey’s, maybe? Owners Andrew Tarlow and Mark Firth hadn’t known that the Gretsch, the battleship-size guitar factory across the street, was full of artists living there illegally. “There weren’t a lot of restaurants,” remembers Casey Spooner, who ate there daily while recording the Fischerspooner album #1. For a very brief bohemian moment, Diner was a world-class distillery of high-proof cool. The fashion editor Cecilia Dean brought Hedi Slimane there in a Town Car looking for “pasty-white lanky rock-and-roll hipsters” to model. In May 2000, a pop-up version, with actual Diner diners flown in to…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Best BetsCELEBRITY SHOPPINGTumi Alpha Bravo Search Backpack, from $595“It fits my laptop, my workout gear, a change of clothes, my knives. I’ve had it for three years now, and it’s been super-durable. People always compliment me on it or are like, ‘Yo, I got that same bag.’”111Skin Rose Gold Illuminating Eye Mask, $110 for eight“These eye masks are incredible, especially if I’m shooting. I’m so shameless with them. I was just doing a Clint Eastwood movie in Savannah, and I would throw them on, jump in my rental car, and go to the coffee shop. These are not cheap, but they do work.”Teva ReEmber Quilted Bootie, $80“If I wear sweats at home, it reminds me of being sick. And I feel the same way about slippers. I need a shoe with…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024Non-Junky Party Favors for Kids’ BirthdaysBecause I personally do not need any more broken crayons lying around the house, I opted for these neon half-pencils last year. I was imagining kids drawing quietly or pretending they were detectives jotting down clues.A friend bought these hardcover sketchbooks for her daughter’s art-themed birthday party, where the kids would be creating their own books. The cover is great for drawing on.For a smaller party, consider these felt bananas that Strategist senior writer Liza Corsillo recently gave out at her son’s 1st-birthday party. My kids, who attended, were happy to receive them—especially because the banana comes out of its peel.When my younger son turned 1 last year, I got a bunch of these mini tiger puzzles from Mudpuppy to go with the party’s tiger theme—the Chinese-zodiac sign of the…1 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024The Best ART HANGERSFor Immaculate Gallery WallsILEVEL, 37 E. 7th St.; 212-477-4319; ilevel.bizWHEN YOU’RE PUTTING up a gallery wall, one errant nail can ruin the entire thing. For more than 30 years, David Kassel has been sparing New Yorkers from this agonizing mistake. Kassel worked as an installer to help pay his way through art school, then joined the Guggenheim’s installation crew while earning his B.F.A. These days, he’s popular with high-end interior designers, including Alexandra Pappas, Richard Mishaan, and Young Huh. His company, ILevel, focuses solely on art arrangement and installation—no transport and no storage—and hangs about 56,000 paintings, prints, photographs, mirrors, sconces, and family-photo collections each year. “I have a pretty strong sense of how I’d like things installed, but they are really great to collaborate with,” says interior designer Alan…4 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024At the Altar of Korean Fried ChickenTHERE COMES A TIME when a New Yorker must pledge allegiance to his or her preferred Korean fried-chicken outpost: Are you a Mad for Chicken man? Pelicana partisan? Or one of the many who still lament the gone-but-not-forgotten charms of Baden Baden?Simon Kim, who Koreanized the New York steakhouse with Cote (or steakified the KBBQ, depending on your perspective), is hoping a quorum of the wealthy will warm to Coqodaq, his own entrant in the ongoing KFC wars. So far, they have. Since it opened in January, Coqodaq (the French and Korean words for “chicken,” soldered together) has been taunting aspirant diners with nothing more than midnight Resy slots and unfulfilled promises to Notify them. Coqodaq has the low lights, pulsing music, and door-stationed bouncer of a nightclub, and most…4 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024CRITICSMUSIC / CRAIG JENKINSNot Her First RodeoBeyoncé’s country album is a history lesson, a rallying cry, and a missed opportunity.A TREBLY RADIO flits through stations, sampling Charles Anderson’s “Laughing Yodel,” Son House’s “Grinnin’ in Your Face,” Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Down by the Riverside,” Chuck Berry’s “Maybellene,” and Roy Hamilton’s “Don’t Let Go,” finally pausing for the drawl of Willie Nelson, spliff ablaze, reading out, “Welcome to ‘The Smoke Hour’ on KNTRY Radio Texas.” The sixth song on Beyoncé’s eighth studio album is a curt history lesson nestled inside a song cycle with a rallying cry. After performing with the Chicks at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards, Beyoncé experienced backlash from racist traditionalists; “Smoke Hour ★ Willie Nelson” practically screams “We’ve always been here” to those detractors. With Cowboy Carter,…15 min
New York Magazine|April 8-21, 2024GAMESTHE new york CROSSWORDIdentity TheftBy Matt GaffneyAcross1 More rich, as custard7 “My bad”11 Jeweler’s unit19 49th of 5020 Body part with a cap21 Cuba libre ingredient22 Actress who moonlightsat a shipyard?25 Came in second26 Corner27 Hawaii’s Mauna ___ Observatory28 Spice Girl Halliwell29 CPR pro30 Purple paste31 Gets on the same page34 Sarges, e.g.38 Tennis player you shouldn’t try to lob over?44 Command to your band46 40-day period47 Bakery’s free advertising48 Spill the ___ (gossip)49 Tighten, as a paragraph50 Driving hazard52 Cel-maker54 Cat seen only at night55 John of “Good Times”56 Place like paradise59 Allow new apartments on, say60 “I’d like to speak to the ___”62 Lea of “Miss Saigon”65 Eyelid irritations66 With 73-Across: Actress who conveniently forgets her purse at lunches?69 “The Spanish Singer” painter, 186072 Shpilkes73 See 66-Across77 Not…7 min
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