Innholdsfortegnelse for 2/19-3/4/18 i New York Magazine

1 For New York’s “Spring Fashion” issue, Carl Swanson profiled Mary J. Blige, the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul,” who received Academy Award nominations for both her performance in and songwriting for Mud-bound (“Mary J. Blige Sees Herself Anew,” February 5–18). Maiysha Kai at the Root wrote of the story, “Just when we think we know the unmitigated glory that is Mary J. Blige, she shape-shifts, leveling up her glamour to unimaginable new heights. This is the only way to describe her latest appearance on the cover of New York Magazine, where she somehow seems to channel both Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, but mostly an iconic diva who is inimitably, undeniably Mary.” And BuzzFeed’s Dionne Grant tweeted, “Her life story has produced some of the most beautiful, relatable and honest…

“A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, the turret actually shifted—there was a beam that moved during a renovation of the bathroom below. It was tilted about a foot—I had it fixed, and now it’s only four or five inches off. People always used to say that the room looked like a church. So lately I’ve started to decorate it with a lot of religious statues and a church bench. For all the furniture in the house, I try to stick to Gothic style so it matches the structure, though it’s hard to find and is extremely expensive. I do need my television and computer and that stuff—I keep all that in one room downstairs.”…

THIS PAST OCTOBER, the Beekman Hotel unveiled its two “turret suites,” designed by the architect Martin Brudnizki. The 1,200-square-foot rooms are each two floors, with 30-foot ceilings, Catherine Howe floral monotypes, and Beaux-Arts-inspired chandeliers. “The rooms are very ‘writer’s-apartment attic,’” says Brudnizki. “We used oak floors, vintage Persian rugs. They also feel particularly private. Because who would expect someone to be staying inside the turrets of a 19th-century landmarked building?” ($6,500 a night, thebeekman.com.)…

“I WANTED TO KEEP part of the Plaza’s history, and I thought the turret would be perfect for an Eloise breakfast room. Instead of hanging art on the wall, I hired the original illustrator, Hilary Knight, to hand-paint the mural. I’m so in love with the domed ceiling, too—I hung a chandelier from the old New York Times Building from it that I got at a Sotheby’s auction. Or Christie’s, I can’t remember which. The turret has its own temperature control, as do most of the rooms in the apartment, so it doesn’t get drafty. The room has become a favorite nook to start our day in. And it also makes it very easy to point out my home as the northern turret of the Plaza.” ($50 million, sothebyshomes.com.)…

STINKY TOFU Its fearsome, odoriferous reputation precedes it, but stinky tofu is really nothing more than the fermented-bean-curd equivalent of a pungent washed-rind cheese. At Win Son, 159 Graham Ave., Williamsburg. GUA BAO You know those legendary Momofuku pork buns? They’re gua bao by any other name—or, as some people call them, the hamburgers of Taiwan. At Zai Lai, Eighth Ave. and 57th St. subway entrance. BUBBLE TEA Thanks to the universal appeal of sucking up tapioca balls (boba) through fat straws, bubble tea has conquered the world. Now also made with milk, juice, coffee, even horchata. At Boba Guys, multiple locations. POPCORN CHICKEN A Taiwanese night-market favorite, these deep-fried chicken tidbits (yan su ji), marinated in soy sauce and five-spice powder, are what McNuggets dream of becoming. At Chi…

Of all the mystery and wonder/And beauty on this Earth/Nothing can compare to the miracle of birth/ Well, your cervix has been closed and plugged with mucus/But soon that viscous plug will be discharged/ And explosive diarrhea/Means that labor’s drawing near-ah/And those sharp, painful contractions cause your cervix to enlarge … / And though you’ve never been this tired—/ Wait—here comes the ring of fire!/ That’s your vagina bursting into flames as the head starts to crown/ Burn, burn, burn goes your vagina/And you’ll curse and scream until you hear a cry/ (It’s your baby!)/ And oops there it went-a …/That was the placenta/Which you must expel or you will surely die/ When it’s all over they’ll place the baby on your breast/You may be happy for a moment, but…

CHICAGO will be published on February 27 by HarperCollins. ON A SUNNY, mid-February morning in Santa Monica, California—a far cry from the dingy, wintry, late-1920s setting of his new crime novel, Chicago—David Mamet sat down with New York to discuss his latest project, his love of James Cain, and his desire to eat dinner with Pancho Barnes. My first question is about James M. Cain. You mention the real-life Ruth Snyder–Judd Gray case in the novel, which was the inspiration for two of Cain’s novels, Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. DAVID MAMET: Oh, I didn’t know that! Yet adapting Postman is how you got your start in Hollywood. Curiously, it was through my then-brother-in-law, a wonderful writer…

If the over-the-top sequined leotards were your favorite part of I, Tonya … The Annual Oscar Party Drag queens Lavinia Draper and Chocolatina host this annual shindig with guest performances, trivia, and an extended happy hour. Stonewall Inn, 53 Christopher St.; 7 p.m. If you have strong opinions on the Mark Bridges–Jacqueline Durran face-off for Best Costume Design … Kostume Kult’s Eighth Annual Alt.Oscar Awards Come costumed to compete for awards in categories like Least Dressed, Best Celebrity Impersonation, and Most Tragic. House of Yes, 2 Wyckoff Ave., Bushwick; 6 p.m. If you can name the four other female Best Director nominees before Greta Gerwig … The Big Oscars Quiz Thing Downtown’s latest hangout for brainiacs is the place to be for preshow movie trivia. Caveat, 21A Clinton St.; 5 p.m. If…

ON THE SAME FALL NIGHT in 2016 that the infamous Access Hollywood tape featuring Donald Trump bragging about sexual assault was made public by the Washington Post and dominated the news, an Alaska attorney, Moira Smith, wrote on Facebook about her own experiences as a victim of sexual misconduct in 1999. “At the age of 24, I found out I’d be attending a dinner at my boss’s house with Justice Clarence Thomas,” she began her post, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court justice who was famously accused of sexually harassing Anita Hill, a woman who had worked for him at two federal agencies, including the EEOC, the federal sexual-harassment watchdog. “I was so incredibly excited to meet him, rough confirmation hearings notwithstanding,” Smith continued. “He was charming in many ways—giant,…

IT IS A BEAUTIFUL, HARDY FLOWER, Papaver somniferum, a poppy that grows up to four feet in height and arrives in a multitude of colors. It thrives in temperate climates, needs no fertilizer, attracts few pests, and is as tough as many weeds. The blooms last only a few days and then the petals fall, revealing a matte, greenish-gray pod fringed with flutes. The seeds are nutritious and have no psychotropic effects. No one knows when the first curious human learned to crush this bulblike pod and mix it with water, creating a substance that has an oddly calming and euphoric effect on the human brain. Nor do we know who first found out that if you cut the pod with a small knife, capture its milky sap, and leave…

LIGHTNING ROUND Age: 22. Overalls: “They’re from Dickies and were given to me by my friend Spencer.” Job prospects: “I’m waiting for my work authorization—my OPT—to come through, but I just applied to 80 jobs.” Relationship status: “I feel like I am dating New York City right now. I do have a couple boys I’m talking to, but nothing serious.” What are you up to today? I actually just moved a few days ago, so I’ve been unpacking boxes and decorating. I moved to East Williamsburg, the hippest part of Brooklyn, allegedly, with my roommate, Adam. I’m a Libra, and he’s a Taurus; we’re both ruled by Venus, so we’re great roommates. I’m really into astrology. Have you always been? No, I was raised near…

“I BOUGHT THIS building in 2016. When we started the renovation, the ceiling was covered with several layers of plaster. So we removed the rest of the ceiling and discovered the original framing of the turret was there, intact, from the day it was built in 1888. Before we bought the building, the city landmarked it. The last owner had put flat glass in the curved windows, but according to landmark regulations, those had to be replaced with curved glass that resembled the originals. It was expensive—each window was about $18,000 to redo.”…

Though turrets may evoke charming European hill towns more than, well, New York, there are actually quite a lot of them here. The majority of New York City turrets were built in the late-19th century, when affinity for the Romanesque revival, a style influenced by 11th-century medieval architecture, reached a fever pitch: “Areas like the Upper West Side, Park Slope, and Crown Heights developed in the 1880s and 1890s,” says historian Andrew Dolkart. “And that was truly the heyday of turrets.”…

IF YOU’RE UP on your Asian noodle soups, you know that New York has entered its niu rou mian phase. If not, and you require proof, you need only toddle down 7th Street in the East Village any Wednesday through Sunday between the hours of 6 and 10 p.m. That is when Ho Foods is open for business, and that is where, outside the tiny canteen, you’ll find a horde of noodle-soup aficionados hoping for the best. They’re all waiting (up to two hours one recent, practically Siberian night) for a chance to sample the only entrée on the shop’s menu, a noodle soup some consider the national dish of Taiwan: deeply flavored beef-bone broth with an undercurrent of spice and heat, plus slabs of red-cooked beef, springy wheat noodles,…

WHILE THIS has been an undeniably weird year for Hollywood, there’s one familiar element: a bumper crop of breakout talent. The diversity of this group—from a Pakistani stand-up comic to a London-born actor of Ugandan heritage—is especially welcome and raises the question: So, what’s next? We polled a handful of veteran casting directors, compiled their best (anonymous) insights, and created this forecast for the season’s standouts based on their responses—as well as what these actors might expect going forward. Timothée Chalamet, Call Me by Your Name, Lady Bird 2018 award nominations: Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA. Describe his performance in one word: Awakening. Person you’d put him on par with, casting-wise: Ansel Elgort. Director you’d love to see him work with: Nicole Holofcener. Person you could see him having a…

THE CONTINENT will be published on March 27 by Harlequin Teen. IN 2013, when Keira Drake sat down to write her debut young-adult fantasy novel, The Continent, she had the best of intentions. She wanted to write about privilege, about the way that those who have it can so easily turn a blind eye to the suffering of those who don’t. Her imagination had been sparked by an NPR report about bombings in Iraq; it brought her to tears, and when she switched off the radio, she began thinking about what might happen if someone like her—someone white, sheltered, and privileged—suddenly found herself in the middle of a feud between two violent societies in a foreign land. Drake set her fantasy in a place called the Continent, a brutal realm…

Sukari Hardnett IF YOU WERE YOUNG, black, female and reasonably attractive and worked directly for Clarence Thomas, you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female. You knew when you were in favor because you were always at his beck and call, being summoned constantly, tracked down wherever you were in the agency and given special deference by others because of his interest. You knew when you had ceased to be an object of sexual interest—because you were barred from entering his office and treated as an outcast or, worse, a leper with whom contact was taboo. For my own part, I found his attention unpleasant, sought a transfer, was told one “just doesn’t do that,” insisted nonetheless, and paid the price as an outcast for…

MAKEUP PADS, TISSUE PAPER, Q-TIPS—the average grooming regimen calls for a lot of onetime-only drugstore products that go in the trash, a fact that bothered Alison Freer, a Hollywood costume designer and obsessive shopper. She mentioned this to a friend who then serenely, bizarrely, “reached into her bra, pulled out a small, flower-shaped pad, and handed it to me,” Freer says. The washable bamboo Eco Nursing Pad ($14 for ten at amazon.com), meant for new moms to soak up leaks between breastfeeding sessions, doubles as the perfect makeup remover “The nipple pads have a thick, absorbent side, which I use with a cream to remove my foundation, and a smoother side to remove eye makeup with micellar water. I’ve had the same batch of ten for over six months.” Read…

“WHEN WE MOVED IN, we had to have almost all of the furniture built specially for the space—circular bookshelves, a special curved couch. The couch is comfortable enough to sleep on, so sometimes our guests stay up there. For them, we also had these special shades built for the porthole windows. They are freestanding, sort of like pillows you can fit into the window. There was a deck already built off the second floor of the thing, but we had long grass put in and bought a couple of lounge chairs. Really, it’s heavenly—I feel like the luckiest man in the world when I’m up there.”…

“THE HOUSE was built in 1886 for James Bailey of Barnum & Bailey. We’ve owned it for nine years and are still restoring it—we haven’t gotten to the room inside the turret yet. The house has more than 70 windows, including seven in the turret, all of which require curved glass to fit the structure. To get curved windows that fit exactly, there’s a mathematical formula you have to follow—basically, you figure out the exact degree of the curve, then send that out to a glassmaker. As for the inside of the turret room: We plan to turn it into a dining area with a round banquette and a round table in the center.”…

1877 The Jefferson Market Library building is erected on Sixth Avenue as a courthouse, and it features one of New York’s earliest turrets: a 172-foot pyramidal tower with clocks on four sides. 1887 New York’s first cancer hospital is built on Central Park West, with five massive turrets used as patient wards. The turrets were functional: The idea was that dirt and germs would not be able to accumulate in corners if there were no corners. In the early aughts, the building was converted into luxury condos. 1914 The Municipal Building is built with four small pinnacle turrets, symbolizing the four boroughs joined to Manhattan. 2000 Wes Anderson rents a Hamilton Heights building on 144th Street and Convent Avenue for six months to shoot The Royal Tenenbaums. 2014 Developers “renovate”…

When Masa Takayama was planning the dessert menu for his robata restaurant, Tetsu, he asked pastry chef Matthew O’Haver to think beyond traditional Asian sweets. After the first few attempts, says O’Haver, Takayama told him to stop trying to please him. “He pointed at me and said, ‘You do you.’ ” And so, in pastry terms, O’Haver is this toasty slab of charred yuzu-scented olive-oil cake, paired with a stripe of mascarpone cream. It’s an inventive approach to a rustic Mediterranean dessert—sturdy enough to grill, in keeping with Tetsu’s theme, and, with its barely detectable hit of yuzu sake, true to its creator’s vision. “I add booze to everything,” he says. “And salt.” On the menu at Tetsu; $12; 78 Leonard St., nr. Church St.; 212-207-2370.…

IN NOVEMBER, Rachel Bloom, the co-creator and star of the CW’s Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, had trouble breathing during the table read for the show’s third-season finale. By the time she arrived at the conference room in the North Hollywood soundstage where the show tapes, she’d been working since 6:30 a.m. and had filmed three scenes for the penultimate episode, including a puppet-filled music video called “Buttload of Cats.” “This was the first time in three seasons where my body shut down,” she tells me later. “I got cold. I got chills. I was shaking. My throat closed up, and I was like, I think this is a panic attack.” At any given moment during production, Bloom can be found writing, recording, acting, dancing, or giving notes on songs, scripts, look books,…

TV 1. Watch Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. Chasing the truth. USA, February 27. From Anthony Hemingway, a celebrated director of The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story, comes this similarly thorough ten-episode retelling of the murders of the Notorious B.I.G (Wavyy Jonez) and Tupac Shakur (Marcc Rose) and the simultaneous investigations by detectives Greg Kading (Josh Duhamel) and Russell Poole (Jimmi Simpson). MATT ZOLLER SEITZ MOVIES 2. Go to Women at Work: Labor Activism Leading the charge. BAM, March 2 through 8. This series kicks off with the 1954 strike drama Salt of the Earth, a collaboration between blacklisted filmmakers and Mexican-American zinc miners, with Rosaura Revueltas as a noble spouse. It’s chockablock with lectures, exhortations, and homilies, but as a specimen of ’30s-style…