New York Magazine May 11-24, 2020

1 New York’s latest issue explored the ways in which the coronavirus is furthering economic inequality. On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough praised the issue, saying that the virus “really has highlighted the great disparity between rich and poor: the two Americas that we’ve had for quite some time, but my gosh, if you just look at the death rates … this pandemic has really underlined it in ways that we can’t ignore.” In the opening essay, Zak Cheney-Rice argued that the inequalities exposed by the pandemic are actually flaws in America’s design (“Even Naked, America Cannot See Itself,” April 27–May 10). Katie Couric called it “an incredibly well-written, important piece.” @AnyaAscendant added, “Reading it I felt humbled, outraged, grateful, and to an extent ashamed that this crisis hasn’t affected me…

THERE WAS A BRIEF SILENCE, and then a muffling sound, and then Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s voice came through clearly, on the scratchier side of her vocal spectrum but unmistakable. The justice was calling from her hospital bed, where she was being treated for a gallbladder infection, on the third day of the Supreme Court’s historic experiment in conference calling. The pandemic had dragged the Court into at least the 20th century. In March, oral arguments had been postponed for the first time since the 1918 Spanish flu and, before that, 18th-century yellow-fever outbreaks. The justices have for decades refused any kind of live broadcast of their proceedings, leaving access to the elite or the longtime line-waiters. (“The day you see a camera coming into our courtroom, it is going to…

ANDRÉ LEON TALLEY’S LIFE in quarantine is not so different from the time before. He loves his house in White Plains and spends the days reading and watching Netflix in his UGG boots and trademark caftans in various shades of black and burgundy and olive green. Before our phone call, he warmed up a shepherd’s pie brought to him the night before by Alexandra Kotur, the creative director of Town & Country, which he ate on a “beautiful plate by Ralph Lauren.” He telephones regularly: Sandra Bernhard every day, Carolina Herrera every other, and Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, whom he calls his “missing sister.” He refers to everyone by their full name each time so there can be no confusion. He would love to hear from Anna Wintour, but…

THE LAW OF ENTROPY states (more or less) that when a place is left alone, things start to get weird, and at around 12:30 a.m. on an April night in Times Square, they did. Bikers from around the tristate area roared into the empty plaza. Jonathan Mena is the sergeant at arms of the Gonobikerreas, a Colombian crew with around 50 local members. Their PPE took the form of Blue-tooth helmets that, Mena says, “close completely, so you don’t get exposed.” With fewer cars on the road, it’s easier than ever to cruise. “We take the New Jersey Turnpike,” he says. “It took like 25 or 30 minutes to get there, and there wasn’t any traffic.” Also in Times Square that night was Benjamin Rahanaev and members of the Brooklyn…

The Couple Putting Their Engagement on Hold NIDA, 31, SAN FRANCISCO I MET DAVID AT the end of November, and it was just like instant connection. Everything progressed really fast. Within a few weeks, he asked me to go to Europe. I’m such a spontaneous person—I usually think as far as, You probably won’t kill me, right?— so of course I said yes. We go from first date to traveling through Europe to living together, all in less than three months. It was going so well, I was like, Why delay? By February 1, we’d found an apartment in downtown San Francisco and moved in. We were planning to go to Ireland at the end of March, and I knew he was going to propose to me. How did I…

WHEN FOURTH-TERM SENATOR Joe Biden built his Wilmington, Delaware, home in 1996, he had no plans to turn it into a backup office, let alone a presidential-campaign isolation bunker from which to plan a crisis presidency an order of magnitude more expansive than anything in the past half-century. Now, nearly every morning, Biden spins through an early Peloton ride in the upstairs weight room, dresses (formally, no sweatpants), drinks his breakfast shake, and sits at the phone in his study awaiting the latest updates on the world’s misery. Then, sometimes looking at the small lake abutting his backyard that bulges out from Little Mill Creek, the self-conscious man in the Democratic middle—mocked by the activist left throughout the primary campaign as hopelessly retrograde—considers the present calamity and plots a presidency…