New York Magazine April 26-May 9, 2021

1 New York’s latest cover story explored the ever-more-chaotic future of finance (“What Is the Meaning of All This Money?” April 12–25). In an introductory essay, Max Read wrote about “the new and funny money” (“There’s Nothing to Do Except Gamble”). Will Blaze tweeted, “Crypto, IPO’s, economy roaring back, government spending at epic highs, MMT, SPAC’s … this article hits all of it. What really is money anymore?” Alex Ayon said, “This article sums up what I’ve been thinking for a while. The idea of money is being challenged. And the results are savage.” The issue included an anonymous millennial tech worker’s feelings of ambivalence about her sudden new wealth (“Confessions of an Overnight Millionaire”). Many readers responded to the story with anger. Kwame Opam tweeted, “This is gross. All…

DAYS OF TENSION in Minneapolis gave way to relief for many, and celebration for some, on April 20, when jurors in the criminal trial of ex-police-officer Derek Chauvin returned with a verdict: guilty, guilty, guilty. The expected protests were forestalled, officers in riot gear stood down, and politicians began to wax poetic on what the outcome said about accountability and sacrifice. George Floyd’s “life will have bettered our city,” tweeted Mayor Jacob Frey. “Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice,” said Nancy Pelosi, praising a choice that Floyd did not make, nor likely would have made, when he was tortured to death last spring. The march of death continues, meanwhile. Daunte Wright was killed in neighboring Brooklyn Center nine days before the verdict by Officer Kim Potter,…

JAWANZA WILLIAMS REMEMBERS the day in 2019 when adult-use marijuana legalization didn’t pass in New York. As the director of organizing for VOCAL-NY, he had been advocating for nearly a decade, and he thought this time his group might have it. Now, he was at the Capitol with his fellow activists, talking through the loss. In the end, it had come down to the money: Progressive legislators wanted to direct half of cannabis revenue to minority communities, but Governor Cuomo wouldn’t commit in writing. “We were outraged,” Williams says. But for him, the outcome contained “a seed of hope.” A compromised bill might have resulted in a form of legalization that ignored “the experiences of Black, brown, and poor people who have been catching hell as it relates to this…

ON A SUNDAY in April, Gregory Meeks, the head of the Queens County Democratic Party and the congressman from the largely Black, middle-class, home-owning precincts of southeastern Queens, endorsed the mayoral campaign of Ray McGuire, a former Citigroup executive whose candidacy has been buoyed by a biography that takes him from the other side of the tracks in Dayton, Ohio, to a position as one of the highest-ranking Black executives on Wall Street. So one day later, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a leading candidate in the mayor’s race, came to southeastern Queens himself to open a campaign office. Stepping up to the microphone at the ribbon-cutting on April 19, Adams made clear that his is no rags-to-riches, Dayton-to-downtown story. “I am you. You all finally have a…

DURING THE FIRST hundred days of Joe Biden’s presidency, it has dawned on Republicans that the man their standard-bearer once mocked as “Sleepy Joe” is a formidable adversary. And the quality that has made him so effective up to this point is, well, his sleepiness. “I think Biden is a disaster for the country, and his ideas are an atrocity. But he’s boring. He’s just boring,” complained alt-media personality Dan Bongino. This frustration is not confined to the party’s entertainment wing. “It’s always harder to fight against a nice person because usually people will sort of give him the benefit of the doubt,” grumbled Senator John Cornyn. At a recent speech to donors, Donald Trump was reduced to mocking his successor as “Saintly Joe Biden,” perhaps the feeblest moment in…

Sleeping at SNL Showering at Skadden Arps Sidestepping poop at the DA’s Giving Mike Bloomberg your coffee order Pitching President Reagan Stress-eating with Bella Abzug Washing the Coen brothers’ windows And more stories of the New York office WHAT I WANT OUT OF OFFICE gossip is what Herman Melville delivers in “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” Ur-text of Manhattan office life. Imagine hearing it over happy-hour beers some Thursday night. A new clerk arrives at a Wall Street law firm, and at first everything seems normal—quiet guy, efficient, neat. Bartleby eats literally nothing except the ginger-nut cookies that the intern (everyone calls the intern Ginger Nut) always buys. But, you know, basically, he’s fine. Then Bartleby starts refusing to do things. He says he “prefers not to.” He prefers not to go…