Innholdsfortegnelse for April 26-May 9, 2021 i New York Magazine

WORKING AT: A DOWNTOWN START-UP, 2010S The Lowliest Assistant Could Wield Secret Power By Molly Young ONE AFTERNOON, I ran into Emily in the office kitchen. Emily was the executive assistant to the CEO of the company in downtown New York where we worked. Like all of the CEO’s assistants past and future, she was offensively overqualified for her position (in her case: double major at an Ivy League school, fluency in four languages). It was 11:30 a.m. when I found her maneuvering a cake out of the refrigerator and onto a stand. There was a board meeting that day. Emily (a pseudonym) had somehow figured out that it was a key investor’s birthday—and that the investor followed a vegan, gluten-free diet and disliked chocolate. She had obtained a vanilla…

The Glossy Playground The most blessed and beautiful people work in a certain kind of fantasy office: luxe, well lit, and packed with stylish strivers. Mod décor is a must, as seen in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Often, the employer is a fashion magazine—whether colorful, as in Funny Face, or awash in creamy sophistication, as in The Devil Wears Prada. Lately, these dream jobs might exhibit millennial playfulness—see The Intern’s Anne Hathaway riding a bike inside her Brooklyn start-up. But like Lucious Lyon’s headquarters on Empire, all of these gleaming offices exude a tantalizing wealth that’s just close enough to touch. The Greedy Snake Pit These workplaces run on avarice. Size is a motif: In The Hudsucker Proxy, industrial egos are bigger than the comically oversize…

August 1969: “We can now provide each individual with a choice of … working at home, where he can carry out his duties for all his assignments through computer access.” (“You’ll Never Have to Go to Work Again,” Washington Post) April 1974: “Homework. The word conjures up the overworked executive. But everybody’s doing it. Part time. Full time. Some time.” (“The Home Office: Nice Work If You Can Stand It,” New York Magazine) May 1982: “One joy of the coming telecommuting age is that people will be able to choose to have virtually no government by congregating with like-minded neighbors.” (“Why Men Die,” The Economist) April 1989: “We may be at the very end of the tremendous boom in office construction and office rents that was triggered when Napoleon III…

SEARCHING OUT A fiery new iteration of Sichuan noodles, say, or a pot of dry curry cooked the way it’s cooked in the kitchens of central Pakistan has always been a fine momentary cure whenever the urge to travel hits, especially in this international city and especially now. So if you’re feeling a little restless after a year’s hibernation on the couch, and if you’ve ever dreamed of touring the far-off culinary corners of India—places where the regional delicacies include well-simmered goat kidneys, lamb ribs steamed in pockets of banana leaves, and chunks of tenderized dogfish—then I suggest you strap on a mask and amble down to the jangling, brightly lit Pan-Indian bistro Dhamaka, which opened a couple of months ago near the entrance to the new, spaceship-size Essex Market…

SOCIAL! THE SOCIAL DISTANCE DANCE CLUB ran from April 9 to April 22 at the Park Avenue Armory. ON A RECENT afternoon at the Park Avenue Armory, Daft Punk’s “Lose Yourself to Dance’’ was blaring from a DJ booth. A disco ball glittered overhead. Eyes closed and inhibitions loose, I felt a sensation I hadn’t experienced since the pandemic shut down New York City’s nightlife (and, as a result, my groovy moves) 13 months ago: total release. The reason? “Social! The Social Distance Dance Club,” an interactive art show that gave about a hundred people at a time the chance to be in a “club,” if the club in question were like Studio 54 revived as a sweaty Pilates class. Dreamt up by the artists David Byrne, Christine Jones, and…

IT’S NO SHOCK that Sesame Street was born from a mixture of idealism and academic seriousness. Created by TV producer Joan Ganz Cooney and psychologist Lloyd Morrisett, then the vice-president of the Carnegie Foundation, the show aimed to bridge socioeconomic rifts and reach kids who were falling behind in their education before they had even started kindergarten. What does come as a bit of a surprise when watching the documentary Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street is that the legendary series was thought of as an attempt to harness the addictive powers of an inescapable mass medium for the forces of good. In these days of screens and streaming, battles over the perceived disreputability of the boob tube feel as done with as the term boob tube itself.…

TV 1. Watch Pose The category is: final season. FX, May 2. The Ryan Murphy series about ballroom culture in ’80s New York comes to a close with seven episodes that, among other things, will see Pray Tell (Billy Porter) struggling with HIV. JEN CHANEY POP MUSIC 2. Listen to Van Weezer The alt-rock vets are back again. Crush Music/Atlantic Records, May 7. Van Weezer, Weezer’s 15th studio album and a love letter to front man Rivers Cuomo’s hard-rock and heavy-metal roots, was originally supposed to land last spring, but then the world ground to a halt and the band finished and released the orchestral pop album OK Human instead. Now, Van Weezer finally sees the light of day. It’s a celebration of Cuomo’s love of KISS and Van Halen,…

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,…

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…

1906: Office as throne room. J.P. Morgan received visitors in his opulent study. Here, during the Panic of 1907, he arranged—and to a large extent bankrolled—a bailout of the U.S. economy. 1910: Office as center for social change. During its early years, the NAACP was headquartered in New York, as were the editorial offices of its magazine, ‘The Crisis.’ 1961: Office as reputation burnisher. Chase Manhattan Plaza’s high modernism conveyed steadiness and fastidiousness: How could such a spotless institution ever mess up your money? 1974: Office as groovy tastemaker’s enclave. Elsa Peretti designed jewelry from her worktable-desk, equipped with cactus, cigarette, and wine. 1988: Office as tasteful design museum. SBK Entertainment was kitted out by Gwathmey Siegel with look-we-have-class Frank Lloyd Wright furniture and a Wiener Werkstätte grid wall. 1994:…

WORKING FOR: DIANA VREELAND, 1976 Sharp Pencils. No Crusts. And a Shot of Scotch. By Wendy Goodman IT WAS ALWAYS an event to get access to Diana Vreeland’s office in the basement of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on the same floor as the Costume Institute, where she worked after being fired from Vogue in 1971. You didn’t get in unless you had a vetted appointment through her personal assistant, who would usher you into her sanctum, which was painted a deep lacquer red. There was natural light from one window high up in the wall covered with a grid of thick security bars that looked like ones from a Renaissance palace. Mrs. Vreeland’s desk was covered in red oilcloth, with two rattan trays holding papers and yellow legal pads.…

THE SMOKE BREAK The Perks of a Bad Habit By James Camp ONE MORNING IN 1989, the employees of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette arrived to discover that their ashtrays, overnight, had become decorative. A banner had been tacked to one wall: THE NONSMOKERS HAVE WON. Until that point, “it was much more going outside to take a break from smoking than taking a break to smoke,” recalls Mark Manson, then an equity research analyst with the firm. But as the decade ended, this was starting to invert at offices across New York. To breathe fresh air, you would simply stay inside, and to smoke, you would have to go out. Down on the street, looking for a nook, you would face enemies: joggers, windchill. It was “a tragic day, an…

WHENEVER THE UNDERGROUND GOURMET goes on the hunt for something new and exciting to eat in Greenwich Village, we head straight to 8th Street. The blocks that run from Broadway to Sixth Avenue attract their share of chains, including a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Chipotle, and a Domino’s Pizza. But interspersed among them lies a small fleet of indie gems. The only problem with this fleet is that it is fleeting. Good restaurants come and good restaurants go. No sooner do you discover the purveyor of a first-rate Persian ash-e reshteh than it is packed up and replaced by a Yunnanese tofu-pudding specialist; blink and the Basque cookie bakery has morphed into a French wine bar. The latest player in this game of culinary musical chairs is the 12-seat counter-service Cafedelia,…

KANYE WEST ALWAYS KNEW his fate, it seemed. And this fate was Kim Kardashian. ¶ He knew in 2003, when they encountered each other for the first time. He was recording a song with Brandy when her friend Kim came by—then in her era of smoky eyes, nude lip gloss, flat irons, and less ass. Kim was married to producer Damon Thomas, though, so she and Kanye stayed squarely in the friend zone. But as the years passed, the more smitten he became, he explained later in an interview with Ryan Seacrest. By 2006, he was basically in love. He would see pictures of Kim on vacation with Paris Hilton and ask his friends, “What’s up with Kim Kar-dijon?” or “Kim Kardi-shawn?” “I just dreamed about being next to her,”…

IN 2018, the artist Lorraine O’Grady said at a Brooklyn Museum book event, “In the future, white supremacy will no longer need white people.” After I watched Them, Amazon Prime’s latest horror anthology series, O’Grady’s quote came to mind for its distillation of how people of color can participate in both our own degradation and the systems that cut our lives heartbreakingly short. Them—created by showrunner Little Marvin and executive-produced by Lena Waitheisn’t just rote, flagrantly biting the aesthetics of other filmmakers. It isn’t just morally bankrupt. It isn’t just grating in its empty platitudes and kiddie-pool-deep proclamations. I am comfortable calling it one of the most anti-Black pieces of pop culture I have seen in the past few years, one that left me spent after watching it. It is…

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…

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…

WORKING AT: TV KEY, 1985 The Exquisite Pleasure of a Dead-End Job By Mark Harris I GOT MY FIRST real job in midtown Manhattan on Sixth Avenue. Or, I should say, off Sixth. This was not the Avenue of the Americas of Time Inc. and other places to which I aspired. I was with a small company hanging on for dear life above an Indian restaurant in a dilapidated five-story building with stairs behind a steel door and an ancient elevator that would as soon plunge you into hell as take you up 25 feet. The office had once been somebody’s long, narrow apartment and was now the home of the ancient-times version of a content farm. At the back end were two rooms, each with three or four desks…

THE EQUITABLE BUILDING IS not as famous as the Chrysler, the Empire State, or even the Flatiron. But it changed the city in countless ways—with as many superlatives, historical firsts, and tabloid headlines as one structure can bear. (Well, two structures, but we’ll get to that.) Completed in 1870 at 120 Broadway, the original tower is widely considered to be the first office building in the world with passenger elevators, and thousands rode to the roof for what the New York Sun called “the most exciting, wonderful, and instructive view to be had on our continent.” It was just seven stories tall, soon to be eight. The choicest floors were rented to bankers and lawyers, making the Equitable one of the first speculative office buildings; they ate at the in-house…

SARAH KIM AND DAVID ZHANG met living floors apart in the same dorm at NYU. They went on to share separate apartments with roommates: Kim in the East Village, Zhang in Bed-Stuy. A few months before graduating last year, they decided to move in together. But where? Many of their friends lived in Bushwick, and on visits they would often pass by the brand-new complex the Denizen, with its trusswork façade, which sprawls across two city blocks, contains 900 apartments, and is the sort of place that brags about having a craft brewery, a dog spa, and an arcade room. Kim says they always thought it was “so weird and big. And who would want to live there?” When a broker took them to look at that very same rental…

IT’S SPRING IN NEW YORK. Outdoor-dining season is upon us, and fresh streeteries are popping up everywhere. With vaccinations proceeding apace and operators timing reopenings to increased indoor capacity, the city’s hospitality industry is slowly coming back. Help-wanted ads are visible in an ever-growing number of restaurant windows and on social-media accounts. In February, the month with the latest data available from the state, there were 49 percent fewer jobs than the previous year. But now the people in charge of hiring face a new problem: There aren’t enough workers eager to fill the available positions. “We would like very much to reopen Txikito,” says Alex Raij of the Chelsea tapas spot that she owns with her husband and co-chef, Eder Montero, along with two Brooklyn restaurants that have continued…

BEFORE HE BECAME an actor, Mads Mikkelsen spent almost a decade as a dancer, a practice evident in the carriage of his characters. Each vibrates on his own frequency, a jittery drug dealer, a sweaty butcher, a pagan warrior, a worldly cannibal. Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round features one of the rare moments in Mikkelsen’s filmography when he straight-up dances. His character, Martin, has the leaden tread of a man stuck in a midlife crisis. Throughout the film, his friends urge him to show off some moves for old time’s sake, and he resists until the final scene, an ecstatic burst of choreography that pops like a sea spray of Champagne. As an actor in Hollywood, Mikkelsen is better known for playing franchise villains—Casino Royale, Doctor Strange—but he’s perhaps too fast,…

THE NARRATOR of Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Second Place, lives at the edge of a marsh, a place of apparent peace. She loves to watch the water moving in over the flat land, advancing stealthily in a silver sheet. People have been lost to the tide; those who live on this coast are lulled by its subtle rhythms. Boundaries melt and reform and melt again, each time with danger slightly closer—and we come to realize the narrator’s mental place of safety is dissolving too. Though there is an identifiable plot in Second Place (something not always true of Cusk’s work), the book is an atmospheric, a mood piece, a drug. Fight it, and it drags you down like undertow. Cusk has written tidally before. Her Outline novels, a trilogy published…