Innholdsfortegnelse for 7/10-7/23/17 i New York Magazine

THE FIRST TIME Camilo José Vergara pointed his camera at the corner of 125th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, it was 1989. Most of the upper floors of the building he photographed had been bricked up. But it was highly functional at street level. “Count how many small businesses are in this building,” says Griffin Hansbury, a.k.a. Jeremiah Moss, the blogger behind Vanishing New York and now author of a book by the same name. “This is a building that, had it been brought back to life instead of destroyed, you could theoretically have more than a dozen small businesses and people living over that.” As for its replacement, it’s mostly “a glass box with a Whole Foods and a bank.” The store opens on July 21. Men’s Walkers, one…

NOW MORE THAN EVER, New York food lovers recognize the value of diversity in their communities and on their plates, and in this year’s edition of our annual guide to the city’s best budget dining, we celebrate what ensues when culinary cultures meet. Namely: bacon-and-cheese tamales, Franco-Japanese bar food, Mexican-Turkish döner kebabs, and chocolate-drizzled Indonesian avocado shakes, just for starters. Further proof that immigration only enriches the cheap-eats catalogue came in the far-flung forms of rice-noodle soups from Yunnan, seaweed from Wales, and Nepalese thalis from … Jackson Heights. In other news, fast-casual continues its ascent, with delightfully downscale contributions from the likes of Danny Meyer and his erstwhile employees Daniel Humm and Will Guidara. Elsewhere on the high-low front, top chefs redefine the boundaries of breakfast and reveal soft…

IN THE GORGEOUSLY harsh Lady Macbeth, the then-19-year-old actress Florence Pugh plays young Katherine, who is essentially purchased by an elderly northern England industrialist in the 19th century to marry his son and give his estate an heir—which is difficult to accomplish given that her new, abrasive spouse prefers her to face the wall, naked, while he noisily pleasures himself. By day, she is commanded not to venture out of doors, and so she sits, her waist tightly corseted, her hoop skirt spread wide, on a sofa, awaiting the return of the man who will only make her feel belittled, attended to by a black maid named Anna (Naomi Ackie) plainly too timid (or terrified) to bond with her mistress in their shared servitude. What feels modern in Lady Macbeth…

WHERE WILL WE shop tomorrow? National chains contract, malls go quiet, and for more and more people “going shopping” means curling up in bed with a laptop. Amazon’s recent purchase of Whole Foods intimates that even supermarkets may one day go the way of blacksmiths and soda fountains. In New York, national trends make the leap from the spreadsheet to the sidewalk. A recent report compiled by Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer counted 188 vacant storefronts along Broadway, one of the world’s great shopping corridors. Booms and recessions threaten street-level retail in different ways: A strong real-estate market can obliterate fragile businesses; when it falters, some landlords can make more by leaving stores empty than by lowering the rent. And yet New Yorkers sometimes seem to be swallowed up by…

MOVIES 1. See The Little Hours Hail Mary. In theaters now. Nunsploitation! It’s rarely as hilariously deadpan as in Jeff Baena’s loose adaptation of stories from Boccaccio’s The Decameron about sexual high jinks in a medieval Tuscan monastery. See nuns Aubrey Plaza, Alison Brie, and Kate Micucci toss back their habits and throw themselves on an alternately panicky and delighted Dave Franco. It’s irreverent, but the characters are such innocents you might find yourself giving thanks to a God who forgives all iniquity. DAVID EDELSTEIN TV 2. Watch Game of Thrones Oh, yes, child. HBO, July 16. The fate of Westeros hangs in the balance as competing forces jockey for control of the Iron Throne; meanwhile, the threat of the White Walkers grows in prominence in the icy North and…

New Yorkers by Nature The cover of the issue you’re reading takes inspiration (as anyone of a certain age will recognize) from the Whole Earth Catalog, the counterculture manual first published by Stewart Brand in 1968. It was a how-to book for people with an urge to go back to the land, giving basic instructions to citified folks about operating wood stoves and drilling wells and such. ¶ Richard Goldstein, a longtime editor at The Village Voice, was a frequent contributor to New York in its early years, and he knew many New Yorkers who were feeling the need to get out of town. “There was,” he explains today, “a lot of hostility coming from the police, who just regarded hippies as baby seals who could be clubbed. I saw…

THE HIGH SEASON in Chiang Mai falls between November and February, after the monsoon rains and before the burning season, when farmers in the surrounding valleys set fire to old rice stalks and smoke shrouds the mountains that ring the northern Thai city. For four months, when the air is cool and dry and clear, the city sees a surge in so-called digital nomads, migratory laptop-toting entrepreneurs who make their livings online and can work from anywhere. Ten years after the movement was birthed by Tim Ferriss’s blockbuster 2007 best seller The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, an ever-expanding archipelago of digital-nomad hubs has arisen; Medellín, Berlin, and Ubud are among the most popular. But none more so than Chiang Mai. Because of the…

CLUSTER New technical-apparel shops Aday’s Simplicity Store (268 Elizabeth St.) and Mizzen + Main (452 W. Broadway) join Soho’s sweat-wicking district. Lululemon: Moisture-removing gray zip-up hoodie ($118); olive-green lightweight jacket ($118); gray post-workout pants ($118). Mizzen + Main: Quick-drying red chinos ($135); performance-fabric dress shirts in madras and gingham ($125). Sweaty Betty: Flared yoga pants ($115); cactus-print crop top ($70). Aday’s Simplicity Store: Pilling- and UV-resistant silk culottes ($105); high-necked navy pullover with a mesh back panel ($110). MOVING IN On June 15, Ali Mejia, co-owner of Miami-based lingerie-and-swimwear company Eberjey, set up shop in the Meatpacking District (13 Gansevoort St.). “Our stock is the same as it is in Miami—it’s everything from our lace French briefs ($26) to our gingham strapless one-piece suit ($169)…

IS SOFT SERVE finally getting some respect? The World’s Best Pastry Chef (at least according to the publishers of the U.K.’s Restaurant magazine), Dominique Ansel, is a big fan. And so are the owners of the World’s Best Restaurant, Eleven Madison Park’s Daniel Humm and Will Guidara. These three distinguished Mister Softees are part of a pack of serious restaurant folk gravitating to the least-serious ice-cream form. Here’s why: Besides being fun, nostalgic, refreshing, and eternally crowd-pleasing, it can be dipped, sprinkled, drizzled, or otherwise Salty Pimped, in the manner of trendsetter Big Gay Ice Cream (just try asking some snooty gelateria for jimmies or hot fudge). What had long been the sole province of boardwalk stands and Dairy Queens has trickled up to boutique bakeries, major restaurant groups, and…

FOR DECADES, a single word has followed filmmaker Luc Besson: spectacle. Critics, reporters, interviewers, and academics have all used it—both admiringly and derisively—to describe the heady fantasias crafted by the French writer and director, including La Femme Nikita, Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element, Taken (which he co-wrote and produced, but did not direct), and 2014’s surprise blockbuster Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson. Besson’s latest film, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, is his most ambitious: an adaptation of an iconic (in France) comic book, which follows two space cops (played by Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne) as they romp through Alpha, a massive extraterrestrial city. We spoke to Besson in his Beverly Hills office about strong female heroines, international film markets, and the power of Technicolor utopian visions…

THE SAGA OF the Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album, which unfolded in 2015, seemed both too good to be true and too good to ignore. There was the outlandish conceit: The iconic rap group had recorded an entire new album, of which it was producing only a single copy. There was the over-the-top villain: pharma-industry gremlin Martin Shkreli, who, in what appeared to be a trolling act of conspicuous consumption, bought the copy of the album for a reported $2 million (the exact number has never been officially confirmed) in order to hoard it for himself. And there was the whiff of illicit high jinks: A rumored clause in the sale contract suggested that the Clan (or, weirdly, Bill Murray) could legitimately retrieve the album from…

WHEN BENJAMIN WITTES meets me for lunch at the century-old Tabard Inn in Washington, D.C.—the city’s original boutique hotel—he’s just wrapping up a phone call. “I was talking to a friend,” he says. “A personal friend.” I ask if it was Jim Comey. “It was not Jim Comey.” You never know. After the FBI director was fired in May, Wittes relayed to the New York Times a bombshell conversation he’d had with Comey about Trump’s apparent attempts to sway the bureau’s Russia investigation. Then Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that he’d asked a close friend to disclose yet more Trumpian impropriety to the Times. “And that was Mr. Wittes?” asked Senator Susan Collins. It wasn’t, but no matter. Suddenly, he was D.C. famous; the very next day, Collins…

WHEN SUPER-CHEF JEAN-GEORGES Vongerichten opened abcV in February, he didn’t start by serving dinner. Neither did Anita Jaisinghani at Pondicheri or Fredrik Berselius and Claus Meyer at Norman. They all began with lunch and, more surprisingly, breakfast, which used to be something you could reliably find only at coffee shops and hotels. But nowadays, savvy restaurateurs realize the value of an extra service and create morning menus that go way beyond eggs and pancakes, influenced by the increasing appetite for healthful foods and global flavors and by places like L.A. and Melbourne that raise breakfast to an art form. For the diner, these new meals function as not only sustenance for the day ahead but a laid-back, less-expensive way to try a world-class chef ’s food. abcV Lentil-and-rice porridge might…

NETFLIX’S NEW WRESTLING COMEDY, GLOW, is about women creating opportunities where none exist. The key to success, it tells us, is pretending that you don’t know what the patriarchy’s rules are, so it’s better to ignore them. The pilot starts with its heroine, Ruth Wilder (Alison Brie), at an audition, acting as if she doesn’t know she’s reading the man’s part in a scene because the woman’s role is a demeaning waste of time that consists of telling a powerful man his wife is on line two. It’s a futile protest against the substandard roles she’s been getting (and auditioning for) recently. She isn’t supposed to pull stunts like that. She’s not supposed to accost the casting director after the audition and complain, either, but her misbehavior leads to a…

SCREENING OF BABY DRIVER HOSTED BY THE CINEMA SOCIETY AND AVIÓN METROGRAPH AND THE CROWN, JUNE 26. “I got a Subaru WRX, like the one in the movie, so sometimes I’ll do the hand-brake 90-degree turn into my driveway on Long Island. But a wet parking lot is really the best place.” —Ansel Elgort “I’m a hands-on-the wheel-at-ten-and-two driver. But I am afraid that by saying this I will get in some big accident now.” —Rachel Dratch “I grew up drag racing and building muscle cars. I actually just drove at a racetrack close to 200 miles an hour. But it wasn’t my car. I don’t own a Ferrari!” —Adrien Brody “It took me four attempts to pass my driving…