New York Magazine April 29-May 12, 2019

1 In New York’s latest cover story, Olivia Nuzzi asked whether “Mayor Pete” Buttigieg is a plausible candidate for 2020 (“Wonder Boy,” April 15–28). The Daily Beast’s Scott Bixby wrote, “@Olivianuzzi’s new cover story—in which Buttigieg admits that ‘I haven’t won anything other than a few media cycles’—is a must-read.” Some readers questioned his preparedness for the presidency, with Amy Siskind suggesting, “He could run for governor of Indiana in 2020. He might actually be qualified for that.” @MartinCassien tweeted, “I was in South Bend recently. With the exception of a wealthy university, it is a depressed city and has been for as long as I can remember. I’m having trouble understanding the appeal of this candidate.” The New York Post’s Maureen Callahan pointed to the story as emblematic of…

ONE NIGHT IN EARLY APRIL, roughly 20 of the Democratic Party’s highest-profile donors from the financial industry sat down over dinner to discuss how exactly they were feeling about the 2020 presidential race. For the most part, it wasn’t great. Convened by two veterans of liberal fund-raising—investors Steven Rattner and Blair Effron—the group had no hard-and-fast agenda except to share notes on the overflowing field of candidates. The crowd of Democratic heavyweights, including Clinton-administration Treasury secretary and Goldman Sachs and Citi alum Robert Rubin, former ambassador to France Jane Hartley, and venture capitalist Deven Parekh, knew most of the contenders well. But coming to some kind of consensus, picking a plausible candidate they felt they could all live with and throw their considerable money behind—that was a far-fetched proposition. “There’s…

“I’M JUST GONNA RUN AROUND like a madman,” says Steven Defendini, the art director at North Bergen High School in New Jersey, as he speed-walks across the stage where the drama club is putting together an encore of its now-internet-famous Alien: The Play. He needs to fix the tail of the alien—ahem, xenomorph— because it’s starting to go limp from the two-a-day rehearsals happening over spring break. Inspired by the 1979 film and adapted by Perfecto Cuervo, an English teacher and the director of the production, the show premiered in March. “It was really hard selling tickets. Kids would just give us blank stares,” says Gabriella Delacruz, the senior who plays Ripley. All told, Cuervo and Defendini spent about $3,500, most of it out of their own pockets—unlike football, theater…

IT WAS 2013, and David Brooks was in the wilderness. Not the literal desert or jungle or anything like that, but the emotional wilderness of an accomplished man who, in midlife, has discovered a deep emptiness at his core. His marriage of 27 years was falling apart. The genteel conservatism in which he was nurtured and raised was morphing into something craven, naked, and raw. Lonely and living alone in an apartment in Washington, D.C., Brooks, 52 at the time, took stock and saw that in his rise to the pinnacle of American punditry, he had failed to make or keep meaningful friendships. And what was happening to him, Brooks writes in his new book, The Second Mountain, was happening on a nationwide scale. “The crisis in our politics is…

IF AN INSTRUMENT could measure the level of New Yorkers’ complaints about their city, it would probably register a constant, four-century-long roar increasing with the population. Vocal discontent is an unreliable indicator of how we actually live. Say, then, that a computer could grind through the city’s history, compiling photographs, newspapers, art, and piles of data into a quotient that measured the richness of urban life. When, precisely, would that number have peaked? In 1999, when crime had plummeted from its highest point a decade earlier but the words Times Square were regularly hitched to Disneyfied? In 1979, when the city had emptied out into the suburbs but a rebellious creativity broke out amid broken glass and empty lots? In 1959, when the middle class took center stage but black…

Evidence of the magic beginning... From day one of rehearsal, it has been clear that Audra McDonald and Michael Shannon are not simply portraying the title characters searching for connection in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. They’re becoming them. These extraordinary actors have gone deep into Terrence McNally’s love story, and pulled back its many layers to find an electricity and visceral intimacy rarely seen on a Broadway stage. A story about love, being seen for who you really are, and being truly vulnerable—can only be served by stars like these. Watching them is like seeing comets hurtle toward each other, burning brightly apart, and when they collide—it’s indescribably dazzling.…