New York Magazine August 17-30, 2020

1 New York’s latest cover story, by Keith Gessen, took a close look at the city’s messy planning for returning students to the classroom (“What Will the First Day of School Look Like?,” August 3–16). The cover image—a photograph by Bobby Doherty of a young student in face shield and full-body PPE holding a lunch box—touched a nerve with many readers. Mark J. Rochester, the editor of Type Investigations, wrote, “This New York mag cover is the sum of all fears for parents of school-aged kids.” Pulitzer-winning journalist Laurie Garrett wrote that the photograph “does a pretty good job of summarizing what parents, teachers, kids and communities face in trying to reopen schools.” And on NY1, Annika Pergament said, “I mean, it’s sort of meant to provoke you, but this…

SUMMERTIME IN HARLEM is a carnival of sound. It’s the praise choruses of excited pigeons in the morning and the low ululations of cicadas at night. It’s parties and fights, church bake sales and tenant-association cookouts. It’s treble rising from children’s voices as they charge through playgrounds made of stone. It’s the delicate tones of bodega-counter flirts and the quick, sarcastic retorts of their regulars. It’s the unexpected fzzt and belated pop of unseen fireworks. It’s motorcycle and ATV engines bleating in the streets like electric sheep. It’s car horns blaring in the late-day Yankee Stadium gridlock. It’s cop-car sirens slicing through the air like knives. It’s music traveling on every gust of wind. It’s Frankie Beverly and Maze’s “Before I Let Go.” It’s SWV’s “You’re the One.” It’s Oro…

What are your clients most curious about? And what are they most worried about? Their families .......... 57 Theeconomy................................................27 COVID-19......................................................8 The 2020 election ......................................... 7 “The calls tend to be frantic. People absolutely tearing their hair out being with their loved ones 24/7. They’re asking questions about how to deal with their kids. We’re not therapists, but we fill that role.” —MARY MILLER, CLAIRVOYANT TAROT READER And what do they want advice on? ARE YOU TELLING THEM IT’S A GOOD TIME TO CHANGE CAREERS? YES..................................................................71 OR TO FALL IN LOVE? YES.............................................................70 “Not to say the pandemic’s good, but the pandemic was a good nudge for people to look in their mirrors and do something about it. It’s time to change things that aren’t working.” —LITANY BURNS, CLAIRVOYANT-MEDIUM HAS A CLIENT…

Who will win the 2020 election? Biden: 53% Trump: 47% “I heard, intuitively, that the vice-president takes over the White House and it will be very conservative. I thought it meant Biden, but unfortunately the message repeated “very conservative,” as in, Pence.” —JOAN CARRA, PSYCHIC MEDIUM “I see a female image holding the ‘bow of authority.’ Makes me think that Kamala—not really Biden, but Kamala—may draw the votes and win.” —ELAINE CLAYTON, PSYCHIC-INTUITIVE MEDIUM “How would you describe winning the election? Getting the most votes? That may not help. Be prepared for an October surprise.” —FAHRUSHA, PSYCHIC Will Trump go to prison? “I organized a panel of astrologers for the Great American Eclipse at the Edgar Cayce Center in NYC. All the panelists saw Trump leaving office either due to…

TAMMIE TECLEMARIAM appears through a kitchen window at the rear of a stately three-story house in Ditmas Park, a bottle of Cavallotto “Pinner” 2018 in one hand and a delicate wineglass in the other. She hands them down to me and then materializes a few minutes later with her own already filled glass, a plastic container of drunken noodles, and her year-old rescue dog, Buffer. As she fills my glass, Teclemariam explains that we’re drinking a Pinot Noir (or Pinot Nero) from Italy—which is unusual, she informs me, given that Pinot Noir grapes aren’t native to the area. Just then, one of her five roommates walks through the courtyard from a garage turned recording studio. “Is it cool if we hang out here?” she asks as he passes. “I don’t…

IF YOU HAD WALKED the streets of Lisbon at the end of last year, just after Portugal voted to reelect its surprisingly successful center-left coalition government, it wouldn’t have taken long for you to notice something strange. The people spilling out of the capital’s beautiful old apartment buildings were very often, very obviously, tourists—not locals on their way to work but usually groups of well-to-do 20-somethings looking for an upscale café or jumping on electric Uber bicycles to find some attraction. When you did see the rare old woman still living downtown in the ancient city, she was usually trailed by a young man with an expensive camera trying to get a shot of the workaday Portuguese life that had all but vanished. As Lisbon rapidly transformed into a tourist…