Innholdsfortegnelse for Summer 2021 i Esquire

WHEN I WAS A KID, I SPENT THE FIRST WEEK-end of August each year at a reunion for my mother’s side of the family, built around a golf tournament they created called the Schmitz Open. (Schmitz is my mom’s maiden name.) The tradition had started in 1978 in Chicago, then the family seat, as an excuse for my six uncles and two great-uncles, their cousins, various in-laws, and close friends to get together and mess around on the golf course. They even made T-shirts—yellow, with fuzzy letters that read schmitz open and an ironed-on cartoon of a guy whacking a ball. By the eighties, the reunion had drifted west, to the original family seat: the heartland of Iowa, where my mom’s brother Jim and his wife, Marla, lived. Uncle Jim…

APPROPRIATELY, THE MOMENT THAT DEFINES AMERica in 2021 took place on The Real World Homecoming: New York. In a reboot of their 1992 conversations about race, the reunited loftmates agree that everything Kevin Powell said back then about his lived experience, the words that got him labeled an Angry Black Man, is now the accepted truth of Black life in America. Even Kevin’s old sparring partner Becky Blasband seems to admit systemic racism is real. But here’s where things stop being polite and start getting culturally significant: Becky quickly adds that she does not contribute to systemic racism because she was involved in an Afro-Brazilian dance class, wherein she “lost her skin color.” In other words, Becky—who by now has spent full episodes talking about her NYU education, her brilliant…

SOFA SO GOOD Angular mid-century modern furnishings are a stylish way to save and delineate space. A light color softens the mood. DESKTOP BACKGROUND A sleek workstation with built-in storage keeps your multiuse space calm and clutter-free. PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT A mix of ambient and task lighting options creates atmosphere and helps hone your focus.…

LOOK A ROUND YOUR HOME. Locate the nearest plant. I know it’s there. These days, it’s illegal to live in a space without one. This wasn’t always the case. Not long ago, your home lacked vegetation. Then you read that plants could give your bedroom a “refresh,” so you bought a snake plant. You put a fern or a ficus in your living room. Before you knew it, your interior-decoration style had developed not through any cultivation of actual taste but through inertia alone—it became all about plants. The wealthiest among us have taken it to the next level by adding trophy trees, which, according to The Wall Street Journal, involves buying a fully grown oak from someone’s backyard and dropping it on your interior patio. We’ve come a long…

Remember arts-and-crafts time? You’re eight years old and someone gives you a few crayons and a full bottle of Elmer’s and suddenly you’re not a child anymore; you’re a creator. No one in the history of the universe has made a more compelling picture of a doggy than you. Good job, kiddo. But now Leonardo da freakin’ Vinci is pulling up a chair next to you, grabbing a handful of Popsicle sticks, and building a fully functional helicopter. He’s turning the humble into the highbrow (and cool as hell), and he’s making it look easy. That’s kinda what’s happening in fashion right now. While some brands are getting a little too slick (and, let’s face it, a little too soulless), a swath of makers, including Bode, Savant, the Elder Statesman,…

ON APRIL FIFTEENTH, at 8:42 p.m., I had a drink. Not on Zoom. Not alone on my couch. Not outside, under a heat lamp. Nope. Inside, on a stool, at the actual, physical bar. For the first time in more than a year. To sit shoulder to shoulder with friends again, chatting with the bartender about esoteric spirits, hearing the laughter of strangers—it felt new and raw. Even with the masked staff and social distancing, the experience was unexpectedly life-affirming. All of a sudden, I felt like me again. Perhaps it was what I was drinking at Viridian, an Asian American bar in Oakland, one of the places on this year’s Best Bars list; many of the cocktails nodded to flavors of Asian candies my dad would surprise me with…

DADS BRING THEIR SONS TO BASEBALL HEAVEN SO THEY CAN FEEL like pros. The facility, situated on an industrial lot off the Long Island Expressway, has recessed dugouts, proper bullpens, and stadium lights. On weekends, the lot fills with so many cars that minivans must illegally park on the roadway verge. Cleats click-clack on pavement, and cooler wheels groan. Fathers jockey for position to record their sons’ swings and fixate on pitch velocity, murmuring the incantation “What’s he at? What’s he at?” Between games, boys wander the park with Gatorade-stained lips and gnash on Big League Chew. Inside the café, televisions simulcast play on all seven fields. The turf is artificial, which means the grass at Baseball Heaven is always green. Every father finds his own way to this Eden,…

HIGH-FASHION HOUSES RARELY do watchmaking well. Louis Vuitton is an exception. Take the Tambour, the French luxury brand’s first watch, introduced in 2002. Its idiosyncratic case shape—wider at the bottom than at the top, like a drum, or a tambour in French—instantly set it apart from other watches. While a Tambour Slim version was later added to the range, the original remains the hero. That doesn’t mean it’s a watch preserved in aspic. Multiple iterations of the Tambour have surfaced over the years, including decidedly high-end pieces of horological wizardry. But exploring the upper limits of technique (and price) isn’t stopping Vuitton from playing in the more wearable end of the watchmaking pool—or, sorry, the ocean. In April, Louis Vuitton debuted the Tambour Street Diver, an urban, street-inspired riff on…

Rule No. 189: If you need to publicly urinate on the course, there must be four club lengths between you and your playing partners. Also, bushes. Rule No. 410: The golf gods put a birdie in your bank for every ball mark you fix. There is no penalty for abstaining; you’re just an ass. Rule No. 247: There is an 87.4 percent chance someone in your group will complain that TV cameras give pros an unfair advantage; 97 percent of the time it will be because they lost their ball. They are correct Rule No. 620: In regard to using your Bluetooth speaker on the course, please, just avoid the AM sports talk. Rule No. 73: Snacks at the turn, ranked in ascending order of performance enhancement: protein bar, hot…

Serious golfers rarely imbibe midround. Good for them. The rest of us? A drink or four on the back nine can be essential. If you’ve four-putted every green, and it’s only the fifth hole, a cold one before the turn is in order. Hell, it might loosen up your swing. There are some common tricks to drinking while swinging: Don’t get wasted; nothing wrong with an ice-cold light beer; the Transfusion—a vodka, ginger ale, and grape juice—is a delicious choice. Here’s a new one: Embrace hard seltzers. Sure, they’re synonymous with spring-break chug huts, but they hit the perfect combination of ABV enlightenment and hydration without dropping a calorie bomb on you—they all clock in at around 100 calories. If you’d rather avoid pulling a White Claw from your bag,…

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The Sensation-Maker The Other Black Girl BY ZAKIYA DALILA HARRIS Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada in the summer’s buzziest debut, a blistering work of autofiction about Nella, the lone Black employee at Wagner Books. The arrival of Hazel, another Black assistant, seems to answer Nella’s prayers—but Hazel isn’t an ally. When Nella receives threatening anonymous notes demanding that she leave Wagner, she immediately suspects Hazel. The truth is far more sinister. In this powerful story of racism, privilege, and gatekeeping’s damage to the Black psyche, Harris puts corporate America on blast. The Nail-Biter Falling BY T. J. NEWMAN Written by a former flight attendant while she worked redeyes, this bruising thriller unfolds over the course of one transcontinental flight. When the pilot’s family is kidnapped, he has a…

CANFIELD SPEEDWAY AUTOMATIC CHRONOGRAPH Snag the ultimate Father’s Day gift for speed seekers. Shinola’s first-ever automatic chronograph features a tachymeter, a scale on the bezel that converts time elapsed into speed traveled. This limited-edition watch clocks offff the charts for both style and performance. GIFT IN THE FAST LANE AT SHINOLA.COM…

IT’S PARTY TIME, PEOPLE. After a year spent in sweats, we’re coming out of our cages and ready to live it the hell up. Since we’re celebrating, isn’t it high time you treated yourself to some of the finer things in life? Sip some Champagne. Spring for the shrimp cocktail. And when you’re getting dressed, go ahead and channel your inner lazy rich boy. You know who I’m talking about: the kid who’s home from [insert Ivy League institution here] for the summer and enjoying the fruits of his parents’ labor—and their country-club membership to boot. His values might leave something to be desired, but his wardrobe should be your new style inspiration. Sound dicey? I hear you. But this ain’t your granddad’s country-club uniform. Today’s best chopped-and-screwed riffs on…

THE WOKE-UP-LIKE-THIS 1. _______________ 2.THE “IT'S NOT A PERM” PERM 3. THE VOLUMIZER THE BED-HEAD CURL 4. _______________ THE ROYAL WAVE 5. _______________ 6. THE SUPERHERO WHERE DOES YOUR MIND GO when you hear the word perm? Dee Snider. Your mom, circa 1987. Poodles. That’s fair. But here’s the thing: Thanks to advances in technology and technique, a perm looks good now. Really good. I shit you not. A whole generation of guys is discovering it’s their fast track to the best hair they’ve ever had. Matt Huang had none of this context when he got a perm. In fact, he didn’t even plan to get one. It was K-pop’s fault. Visiting his grandparents in China, he took a photo of Minho, a singer and actor, to a salon as…

THERE HAVE BEEN PLENTY OF REASONS TO ABANDON golf. The lofty standards and arcane etiquette. The frumpy snob on the first tee box, cell phone clipped to his belt under an offensively patterned polo shirt—an obnoxious sign that the electricity Tiger Woods brought to the game was all but gone. A few years ago, the headlines began rolling in: American golf was dying a slow death. Fewer people were taking up the sport. Equipment sales and TV ratings were way down. The pro circuit lacked star power. Country clubs faced an existential crisis. But this isn’t an obituary While the critics wrote their eulogies, a new generation of golfers emerged. Younger and more diverse. Postcollegiate bros traded backyard bashes for 6:00 a.m. tee times. Golf meme accounts took over Instagram.…

INSPECTOR GADGET This tech wiz spares no gadget. Rangefinder, cigar holder, GPS watch, TrackMan, alignment sticks, ball retriever: He’s well prepared. Now he just needs a lesson. THE CAVEMAN He rolls up seconds before his tee time. Skips the driving range and the pleasantries. Marks his ball with a bottle cap from a sixer he downed on the front nine. His punch shot? Stunning. THE INFLUENCER Woe be to the group playing behind him, because he just has to get that content on every hole. The worst part: He’s getting paid to ruin your day.…

The way Kamaiu Johnson found golf is a signal of where the game must go to survive. Johnson—twenty-seven and still working toward a spot on the PGA Tour—is proof that a Black kid from rural north Florida has as much a place in this sport as anybody. But Johnson knows talk is cheap and golf isn’t. That’s why, amid his pursuit of golf’s biggest stage, he started a foundation in his name to help give access to kids like him. Kids whose love of the game should be the only prerequisite for admission beyond its gates, and who can channel his story into their own success. ” I DON’T KNOW WHAT MY LIFE STORY looks like if I don’t play golf. Growing up, most of my friends were wealthy; they…

HE STOPS ON A PEDESTRIAN ISLAND TO LET TRAFFIC PASS on Houston Street, and in that brief wait, I wonder if the people in the trundling cars spy one of the most famous comedians on earth under his mask and transition-lens glasses. No one, though, drops the window to shout his name or honk or jab an index in astonishment—Chris Rock granted a reprieve from living famous 24/7/365. Rock, who’s dressed casual in a hoodie and cargo pants and white Reebok Classic trainers, troops a half step ahead of me, a Tumi backpack slung over a shoulder. We turn past a multitude of preschoolers enjoying the recess of their lives inside a fenced-in ball field and amble on up MacDougal. He slows his gait a bit. “The thing about this…

IN 2017, ACTOR COREY HAWKINS WAS filming a movie in Toronto when he got a call from the producers of the U. S. Open. The singer they had booked to perform at the start of the men’s singles final had fallen through—would Hawkins like to do it? “I was like, ‘So, you all want me to do what?’” he recalls. “They were like, ‘Sing “God Bless America” while the planes fly over.’ I’m like, ‘Okay.’” Within twenty-four hours, on September 10, Hawkins was at Arthur Ashe Stadium, in Queens, belting his heart out. He didn’t know it at the time, but among the 23,000 people in the stands sat Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Hawkins’s performance was an informal audition for the film adaptation of the playwright’s breakout musical, In the Heights.…

TUPAC SHAKUR WAS ONE OF THE WORLD’S TOP-SELLING HIP-HOP ARTISTS and a burgeoning movie star in 1993 when he was charged with sexual abuse for an incident that occurred inside a New York hotel room. The case went on for nearly a year, during which time Shakur would survive a shooting, and resulted in his conviction at trial for first-degree sexual abuse. He would serve nine months of a four-and-a-half-year maximum sentence, which would mark the beginning of his tragic downfall. This excerpt adapted from a forthcoming oral history follows the artist’s story through this turbulent chapter. JUSTIN TINSLEY (The Undefeated staff writer): Think about where Tupac was in the summer of 1993. He’s becoming this household name. Juice was a cult classic. Pac was already known by the federal government,…

IN THIS ISSUE, we’ve celebrated twenty-seven places that are comfortable, cozy, and calming, with crafty cocktails, eclectic wine lists, deft bartenders, and innovative snacks that keep you coming back. If that’s what you’re looking for, go to any one of those. But what about when you want… exactly zero of those things? What about when you wanna go where nobody knows your name? For this, we endorse the airport bar. Every single one of them. We cannot narrow it down to just one, because we cannot tell them apart—and that’s the point. We are thirsty for a drink in every airport bar we’ve ever visited, and all of the ones we haven’t. After more than a year in which air travel has been on hold, a stool that’s been bolted…