Innholdsfortegnelse for December 21, 2020-January 3, 2021 i New York Magazine

1 New York’s 16th annual “Reasons to Love New York” issue was a remembrance of 500 places that have closed since the start of the pandemic (“Reasons We’ve Loved New York,” December 7–20). Readers responded with their own mix of grief and nostalgia for the bars, restaurants, galleries, gyms, and other places we’ve spent our lives. Daniela Bernal wrote, “Didn’t know I was going to cry on a Monday morning because of a NY Mag cover, but here we are.” The New York Times’ Dana Goldstein called the tribute a “near perfect magazine issue. Read it in print. Had me in tears on several occasions.” Many readers highlighted their own experiences with the businesses listed: Sam Sheppard tweeted, “I’ve been so focused on the impact of COVID in my immediate…

AMY, LET’S CALL HER, IS the Regina George of the moms in Kelly’s upper-middle-class Pittsburgh neighborhood. (Some names have been changed.) She’s the one with the pool and the biggest house who throws the most over-the-top Christmas party every year, and she wields more power than God or Tony Fauci when it comes to determining the group’s social calendar. So when Amy started acting like COVID was over this summer, it was a green light for all the other moms (except Kelly) to start socializing again. Back in the spring, Kelly, who works as a researcher at a nearby hospital, formed a remote-learning pod for her first-grade son with two other neighborhood families (not Amy’s), and they had strict rules about socializing to make sure they didn’t risk exposing anyone…

EARLY IN 2020, Villa Rosa Bonheur, Villa Charlotte Brontë’s “sister” building, was demolished. Built roughly two years before VCB (also as a cooperative), Villa Rosa Bonheur fell into private ownership after its 17-year-old association failed, according to the Times. Eventually, it came to be owned by the family of Beatlemania creator Robert Rabinowitz, who sold it off for just under $2.6 million in 2017 to Timber Equities through a subsidiary. While the new owner’s work permits reassured the neighborhood that it wouldn’t destroy the building—at most, some interior touch-ups and alterations to beef up the number of units from seven to 11—it became clear by the following year that the complex’s Spanish-style gabled roofs and stone-and-brick exterior walls were at risk. The community was furious, and an 11th-hour effort to…

AT THE END of this miserable year, at least there is Bridgerton, arriving this holiday season like a frivolous but fulfilling present. The show is a Shonda Rhimes–produced adaptation of Julia Quinn’s series of romance novels of the same name, a Regency-era confection of gloves and glances and dicks and dukes. Rhimes’s first series for Netflix, Bridgerton is also a beguiling example of what can happen when romance is allowed to belong to characters who aren’t all straight and white and a fanfare-and-confetti reminder of what the genre can be at its best. It made me want to whisper obscene gossip, pop Champagne, and run giddily through a hedge maze. If anyone is primed to have that response to Bridgerton, it’s me, a person whose high-school years were shaped by…

THERE WAS NEVER REALLY any question whether Pete Buttigieg would get some sort of job in Joe Biden’s administration—just where, exactly, he would be a good fit. For a while, the thinking was that the 38-year-old might make an exciting ambassador to the United Nations, but that never actually made much sense—Biden is determined to reassert American influence abroad using experienced diplomats—no matter how many languages Buttigieg speaks. And when some people close to Biden floated the idea of the former presidential candidate relocating to Beijing as the ambassador to China, it was swiftly shot down as unrealistic and maybe a little offensive. But Transportation secretary? Now there was a job for an infrastructure obsessive! Who could possibly object to that far-from-the-headlines posting? When many criticized the pick, however, it…

IT IS SO COMMON FOR JOGGERS, passersby, and tourists to stop and take pictures of the Villa Charlotte Brontë—to crowd around the front gate, to sneak in past the NOTRESPASSINGsign—that the residents of the 17-unit co-op have become self-proclaimed expert shooers. It’s hard to blame the intruders: Set jarringly beside a blocky 1980s development on a cliff’s edge above the Hudson, the Villa is “like a set for a Disney movie,” residents say, and “the Amalfi Coast.” Both of which feel apt: The property is covered with winding hedge-lined paths, arched staircases, and a sunken courtyard. Triplex apartments with two decks sit seemingly in mid-air, accessible only by curlicue staircases. Says singer and psychotherapist Ivy Austin, who moved into the Villa last year, “It’s only when the trains go by…

AS 2020 TURNED UP the chaos on internet scandals, social-media influencers posted apologies on YouTube and Instagram that tended to follow a pattern: Dressed in comfy casual or all white, influencers deflected responsibility while claiming “100 percent” accountability. Tears were key—especially when crying over the response to their wrongdoing. If they’d engaged in some racism, an NAACP donation wasn’t far away. The scandals got more intricate, but the apologies stayed as thin as ever. The Clueless Child She apologized once on a livestream that same day, claiming she “didn’t know” it was the Quran and that her “stepmom is from Egypt.” (She said they just thought the man was “cute.”) She had to regroup three days later, posting a new video with a totally NESSA BARRETT TikTok teens are using…

WONDER WOMAN, also known as Diana Prince, is one of the most dynamic of DC’s mainstay superhero characters, but you’d never know it watching Wonder Woman 1984. This sequel had almost everything going for it. Its predecessor, also directed by Patty Jenkins, is likely the most beloved and critically successful of the beleaguered DC Comics movies. The first film’s time-skipping story line offered a desperately needed way to expand the genre’s usual plot beats and was buoyed by an excellent cast. Perhaps its lopsided universe was imperfect; there were lackluster villains and a noticeable absence of racial diversity and sensuality. This sequel also had to contend with a jump from WWI-era Europe into early-1980s Washington, D.C. These issues were surmountable. But, sadly, all that glittered in the first outing is…

IT HAS BEEN A LONG, DREADFUL year, a year without the comforts of plans and certainty, without the rejuvenation of carefree gatherings with friends or holidays spent basking in the love of family. Shaken loose from norms and rituals, our minds drifted elsewhere—deeper into history; into the alternate realities of fiction in video games, comics, film, and television; into the autumnal worlds created by sad songs. Coping has been a tall order, even for the people who make the art we use to cope. Months after the July surprise release of Taylor Swift’s folklore, it’s apparent that the album was an exercise in creating some distance between the singer-songwriter and her lyrics. We used to parse Swift’s songs for clues about where her mind was and how her life was…

FOLLOWING A STRING OF E-BIKE ROBBERIES in the spring, Gustavo Ajche, a delivery worker from Guatemala, was messaging his fellow deliveristas in a WhatsApp group chat of workers in their neighborhood about how they could protect one another (those bikes, which they have to pay for themselves, can cost up to $2,000). The conversation shifted to how their already poor working conditions had worsened during the pandemic: a lack of PPE, nowhere to take breaks during lockdown, and meager pay. For these workers—who are considered independent contractors and sometimes paid below minimum wage—determining one’s take-home pay is often a confusing endeavor, as earnings vary wildly for each service: DoorDash lists its base pay as a range from $2 to about $10 per order (though some workers claim it’s often more…

ARRIVING IN ATLANTA on a recent Sunday afternoon, I turned on my hotel room’s TV and soon saw, staring back at me, the patrician face of David Perdue. Georgia’s Republican senior senator was the target of an attack ad paid for by his opponent, Jon Ossoff, in a runoff campaign for his seat; it suggested that Perdue had traded stocks with insider knowledge of the pandemic. A few minutes later, Ossoff, who at 33 is attempting to become the youngest U.S. senator in four decades, appeared in a sunnier TV spot, talking about how he would work with President-elect Joe Biden. This was followed immediately by an attack ad on the Democratic candidate in a second Georgia Senate runoff—the Reverend Raphael Warnock of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. I walked away…

The Big White Couch That (Arguably) Started It All Shabby Chic Floris Sofa, from $4,337 at shabbychic.com Everyone from Jennifer Lopez to Oprah had one of Rachel Ashwell’s extra-large white sofas in the ’90s. Now, a new crop of owners have emerged, like Annie Auchincloss, a home buyer for MoMA Design Store. “When my [ex-boyfriend] and I broke up, he asked if he could keep our Shabby Chic couch,” she says. “I was like, ‘No, I’m taking it.’ So he ended up getting his own.” A Start-up Slipcover Sixpenny Neva Sofa, $2,399 at sixpenny.com For those who prefer a sleeker silhouette, new DTC slipcovered-furniture start-up Sixpenny sells sofas covered in cotton, linen, and velvet, with fabric names like Pacific Pearl and Ancient Indigo. The One That (Might) Have Been in…

MOVED IN: 1993 Perry Brass Writer “ WHEN WE MOVED IN, I was 45 and my husband was 44 and we were the youngest people in the co-op. It was difficult for them to accept we were a gay couple who were open about it. If we had both had two horns and a tail, the rest of the co-op, with a few exceptions, could not have treated us any worse. I tried to get on the board, and every single person voted on it against me. I said to my husband if there was a six-foot hole in the floor at that moment, I’d have jumped in it. Now, there’s only one person who’s left here from the old regime, and his mind-set is still back in that regime,…

A One-Stop Shop for One-of-a-Kind Items DAME DELI & BOTTLE SHOP 85 Macdougal St. On their road to opening an English-inspired seafood restaurant, Patricia Howard and Ed Szymanski have run two pop-ups (modern British tasting menu, counter-service chippy) and were on the brink of debuting a third (small-group private dining) when the rising COVID-19 infection rate made them reconsider. Anticipating a dining public resigned to home cooking and takeout, they’ve turned their temporary location into a retail showcase for their favorite purveyors, Szymanski’s prepared foods, and a portion of the wine collection they’ve slowly amassed. Their guiding principle: “We have to love it.” And it helps if the product is a retail exclusive. That applies to breads from Mel bakery, flour tortillas from Yellow Rose, and exotic citrus and mixed radicchio…

OVER FOUR decades of filmmaking, Nancy Meyers has perfected her own cinematic world and language. Her movies are comfort incarnate. Nobody looks for love, but everyone stumbles upon it. The protagonist gets a little too drunk or stoned for the first time in years, and everyone agrees this is good for her. In our particularly heavy times, Meyers’s gently screwball, fantastically aspirational comedies offer much-needed lightness and catharsis. It’s time to assess this auteur’s canon in full. It’s time for a taxonomy of the most Nancy Meyers–esque movies in the Nancy Meyers Cinematic Universe. This includes her feature films as a director and a writer, some films she co-wrote with now-ex Charles Shyer, and Home Again— a Meyers simulacrum directed by her daughter Hallie Meyers-Shyer. Grab a towering glass of…

POP MUSIC 1. See Blackpink: The Show In your area. youtube.com/c/blackpinkofficial, December 27. After working on music with Cardi B, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, and David Guetta on the sleek The Album and on the autobiographical Netflix doc Blackpink: Light Up the Sky, K-pop singing group Blackpink brings its signature blustery trap pop into our homes once more with The Show, a winter virtual concert. CRAIG JENKINS TV 2. Watch Death to 2020 A mockumentary. Netflix, December 27. 2020 is not a year most people want to look back on, but maybe it’ll be more palatable if it comes in the form of a special-event mockumentary from the creators of Black Mirror featuring Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, and Lisa Kudrow. KATHRYN VANARENDONK DANCE 3. See New York City Ballet’s…