Innholdsfortegnelse for November 11-24, 2019 i New York Magazine

1 For New York’s latest cover story, Olivia Nuzzi embedded with former vice-president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to understand how his bid can seem simultaneously so formidable and weak (“The Zombie Campaign,” October 28–November 10). Journalist Walt Mossberg wrote, “This is a wonderful article … that pulls off a rare journalistic feat: telling you the bad news about a flawed candidacy while simultaneously evoking sympathy and respect for the candidate.” Taffy Brodesser-Akner of the New York Times commented, “Olivia Nuzzi’s so-close-you-can-feel-his-hot-breath profile of Joe Biden is beautiful, intimate, empathetic, brutal, honest, and revelatory … And she never even got an interview with him.” As expected, many in Biden’s camp took exception to the story. His deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, tweeted, “If New York Magazine thinks we are doing it…

“It would be easy to say this all came from Bauhaus, but I think it reflects something that came earlier: the early-20th-century Dutch De Stijl movement, which consisted of artists like Mondrian, Rietveld, and Theo van Doesburg and focused entirely on simplicity and primary colors.” —ANNIE AUCHINCLOSS, home buyer at the MoMA Design Store “Luis Barragán’s use of color in architecture is an inspiration for these bold contrasts, as, of course, is Memphis Milano.” —ELISE MCMAHON, founder of LikeMindedObjects “Tom Wolfe used this expression to describe brightly colored trousers: ‘go-to-hell pants.’ Those bright colors are such a key part of American quote-unquote preppy style, and as prep comes back into the mainstream, it’s not surprising to see them become a trend.” —JACK CARLSON, founder of Rowing Blazers…

The space and glitzy vibe aren’t for everyone, but if you’re in the market for posh, often very good Chinese cooking in midtown, you could do worse. BITES IDEAL MEAL: Dim sum sampler, kou shui chicken, Hutong lobster and/or Red Lantern soft-shell crab, ma la beef tenderloin, Four Seasons beans with pork and shrimp, white-chocolate “bao.” NOTE: The kitchen offers half a Peking duck for the fairly reasonable price of $45, and if La Tâche is a little above your price range, there are 27 other red Burgundies to choose from on the well-stocked trophy-wine list. OPEN: Lunch and dinner daily. PRICES: Appetizers, $10 to $18; entrées, $16 to $84.…

BETWEEN SENEGAL AND the Canary Islands stretch almost 1,000 miles of ocean. Cruise ships cut through the waves like knives. They make the journey in 11 days, and their passengers, who pay upward of $4,000 for a ticket, disembark unscathed. But luxury tourism almost always involves a contortion of optics. Since the mid-1990s, thousands of people along Senegal’s coast, most of them young and poor, have boarded smaller boats, typically used for fishing, in hopes of reaching Europe. The Canary Islands—which sit about halfway between Senegal and Europe and are an archipelago belonging to Spain, making them part of the EU—are often their first stop. Along the way, the waves can appear as big as mountains, and the boats, made from wood and rusted nails, act as fragile as flesh.…

… TRIP ON high-quality mushrooms minus the queasy side effects with Becoming Animal, a combo platter of ecology, philosophy, and art history? … NIBBLE ON The Invisibility Cloak, a 144-page novel about a guy who designs sound systems in Beijing and has thoughts like “Everyone has an inner life, but it’s best if we leave it alone”? … LISTEN TO the audio version of She Said next time you have 9.9 hours and the urge to be thrilled by an investigative-journalism procedural? … FEAST ON Ecstasy and Terror, by Daniel Mendelsohn, the work of a critic in the prime of his brain? … TRY The Incest Diary, if you like the idea of “Lolita but if Sophocles wrote it in 2017”? (Note: NC-17.) BONUS! SUGGESTED PAIRING Pair the…

THE FUTURE IS ALREADY HERE. It’s just not evenly distributed.” ¶ When the novelist William Gibson said this—probably in the late ’80s, though, like a lot of prophetic aphorisms, when he first said it is not exactly clear—he was describing distribution by place: iPhones arriving en masse in Steve Jobs’s United States, all-inclusive social-credit scores blanketing Xi Jinping’s China, antibiotic-resistant superbugs cropping up in India before spreading as far as the Arctic, climate change flooding the Ganges Delta in Bangladesh long before it conquers New York or Tokyo. ¶ But the distribution is uneven in time, too, because the future never arrives all at once with the thunderclap of a brave new world suddenly supplanting the comfortable old one. Which is why future-gazers like Gibson are always talking about how…

CRAYOLA-BRIGHT BLUES, gumball-machine reds, and Very Hungry Caterpillar greens fill the pages of MoMA’s fall catalogue, which includes this primary-color casserole pot (a rerelease of a 1994 MoMA Store design, $76 at store.moma.org). Popular neo-prep brand Rowing Blazers just came out with a rainbow-stripe rugby shirt in collaboration with Lands’ End, and when Nordstrom opened its New York City flagship in October, it featured a Nike boutique outfitted with bright-red carpets, aqua-blue chairs, and rainbow sneakers that look like a Microsoft WordArt gradient come to life. “Maximalism is in,” says Jill Singer, co-founder of Sight Unseen. “Plus, there’s a renewed interest in primary-color-focused artists like Calder and Hockney, and the news is depressing. So why not a rainbow?”…

OLUWABUKOLA BECKY AKINYODE Stylist, Crown Heights What a dress. It’s a scarf, actually—Issey Miyake. I got it because a friend of mine wore the same one in silver to the Crazy Rich Asians premiere last year. She’s an artist and a DJ, and her and her friend, who is a stylist who works with Solange, and her sister, who is a model, all wore these Issey scarves in different colors as dresses. And when I asked her about it, she said, “You have to get it, it’s fab.” The shoes are these slippers I got from Morocco because I want to be comfortable and they look fancy, and also because I have size 12 feet. Size 12! I used to be so self-conscious I’d stuff myself into 10’s, but then…

QUICKSAND IS REAL. I know because I stepped in it. I was getting into a boat to cross a crocodile-infested river mouth in Central America two weeks ago, and instead of docking (there were no docks), the boat ran up against the strip of ground where river met beach. This strip was quicksand. I sank in to my upper knees and squawked—not because I was in peril but because it is unusual to confront a new texture as an adult. I thought I had already experienced all of the textures! I thought quicksand existed only in movies! But here it was, an emulsion of sand and water that looked solid and felt liquid. I easily heaved myself out and into the boat. It was the physical equivalent of speaking a…

JAN 03 China becomes the first nation to land on the dark side of the moon. President Xi Will Be Our Stalin → LAST YEAR, Xi Jinping declared himself president for life. This year, he put his army on a permanent war footing and effectively staged a five-month battle in Hong Kong. More than a million Uighur Muslims are imprisoned in concentration camps in western China, and Han Chinese officials are being sent to the region to live with the prisoners’ wives. A social-credit system monitors your every move and gives you bonus points for reading the president’s writing daily on your phone. By at least one estimate, China will grow past the U.S. as the world’s biggest economy as soon as 2020. Others predict it’ll take a decade or…

Herschel Supply Co. Classic XL Backpack $70 at nordstrom.com Designed by Nordstrom’s VP of creative projects, Olivia Kim, who made similar fanny packs and totes. Type 75 Desk Lamp Paul Smith Edition Three $290 at ylighting.com This lamp, made by Paul Smith and Sir Kenneth Grange, was inspired by the De Stijl movement. Noah Two-Tone Shoulder Pack $78 at noahny.com Like a ’90s nylon ski jacket in sling-bag form. Acne Studios Color-Block Striped Scarf in Yellow Multi $220 at acnestudios.com Made in collaboration with Swedish artist Jacob Dahlgren, who has worn a striped shirt every day since 2001. Vans Era Color-Block Skate Shoe $55 at journeys.com These sneakers have a dash of Hey Arnold!, a dash of the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. Billfold Wallet $139 at mattermattersgallery.com From…

Although they may not win any awards for originality, for under $50, there are a few toys you can’t go wrong with: the Pinkfong stuffed Baby Shark for a 1-year-old, the Battat shape-sorter house for the 2’s, Plus-Plus BIG blocks for a 3-year-old, the Marble Genius Marble Run for age 4, Stomp Rocket for the 5’s, a friendship-bracelet-making kit for the 6’s, Snap Circuits for the 7’s, a 3-D–printing pen for 8-year-olds, kinetic sand for the 9’s (the National Geographic version is good), and finally, for age 10, either the good old-fashioned Rubik’s Cube or its newer, sleeker Ghost Cube cousin. Speaking of Rubik’s-like cubes, look for addictive qualities in your toys: puzzle challenges designed to make a kid feel like she’s just within the grasp of mastery, Magna-Tiles that…

If there’s one word that sums up Hallie Meyer’s ice creams at Caffè Panna, it is extra. Extra sweet, extra salty, extra rich, extra fresh, extra chewy, extra crunchy, but somehow just a millimeter shy of too much. In a realm of established formulas, she has created a place and a menu that feel new. Of the ten flavors, half change daily, and the element of surprise extends to the two composed sundaes that are here today, gone tomorrow (and memorialized on Instagram). Texture is a trademark: Meyer (daughter of Danny) is a mix-ins maven whose approach descends spiritually from Steve Herrell, the ’70s-era visionary who first folded crunchy candy into smooth ice cream. Where Meyer departs from the script is in her chef-y tendencies. Instead of using M&M’s or…

NEW YORKERS LIKE TO THINK New York has everything anyone could ever ask for in a city and, whatever that is, you can get it 24/7. Not so. Take, for instance, Cincinnati chili. If you want a taste of that hyperregional delight of overcooked spaghetti topped with soupy, spiced meat sauce, you have to either coordinate your schedule around its rare appearances at places where chili-deprived Buckeyes congregate (Edward’s in Tribeca the last Monday of the month, Phebe’s in the East Village when the Bengals are playing) or mail-order some cans of Skyline-brand chili straight from the source. What distinguishes this southern-Ohio variant from all other chilies is that it’s not so much chili as it is a sauce or condiment. Most aficionados don’t eat it in a bowl by…

Vernon Subutex 1 BY VIRGINIE DESPENTES (FICTION, NOVEMBER 5) ➽ VERNON IS A down-on-his-luck aging Lothario who has discovered, decades too late, that he should have married one of the rich babes he seduced and discarded when he was still desirable. Whoops! He is the title character of Virginie Despentes’s novel, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies in France and was made into a TV show and short-listed for the International Man Booker prize and has now been translated into English. Like HBO’s Succession, the book revolves around an ensemble of horrible people: a sleazebag movie producer, a professional troll, an ex-groupie, and several sex-ghouls, including Vernon. Almost all are malignant xenophobes, homophobes, and/or misogynists. They also display a specifically French kind of dorkiness—these are the kind of people…

NEW YORK’S architecture critic, Justin Davidson, and art critic, Jerry Saltz, both spent a lot of time considering the expanded Museum of Modern Art. After multiple visits to the reopened museum, they compared their observations. Justin Davidson: Let’s start with the architecture. Jerry, you’ve made your distaste for Diller Scofidio + Renfro—and your skepticism of their MoMA design—plain. Did they live up to or down to your expectations? Jerry Saltz: Both. First, I’m grateful we didn’t get one of their grandiose Pharaonic shed-things on wheels, or another of their carnivalesque corporate nullities. Art dodged a bullet after DS+R announced its original MoMA plans in 2014. You, I, and a few others had hissy fits about what the starchitects were proposing. J.D.: I did object to the demolition of the American…