New York Magazine June 6-19, 2022

1 In a special issue, New York’s latest cover story featured a handbook of abortion providers in all 50 states and a road map of options if Roe v. Wade falls (“A Practical Guide to Accessing an Abortion, Today and Tomorrow,” May 23–June 5). Journalist Cindi Leive called the cover “a beautiful sight,” and @General-GrantW tweeted, “This is an incredibly important read for every American, even if you don’t have a uterus. You never know who in your life will need this information.” Aaron Huertas wrote, “Members of Congress, state legislators, and health agencies should be publishing information like this, too.” The News & Observer’s Sara Pequeño added, “I really hope copies of this end up in public libraries virtually and physically!” Media consultant Molly Cantrell-Kraig urged her followers to…

Intelligencer THE LATEST ERA FOR THE elite mainstream media—that is, the heavily paywalled, rule-bound, college-educated-reader-focused American news media—has been marked by a rolling journalistic reassessment of how women are covered. This began with the investigations into Harvey Weinstein five years ago. More recently, readers have followed along as writers (and their editors) explore how journalism has historically treated women as sex objects and punch lines. Most notably: Britney Spears became the subject of esteemed investigative projects and mournful personal essays; Justin Timberlake was shamed into apologizing to Spears and Janet Jackson; Paris Hilton took to the Washington Post and Congress to crusade against the cruel “troubled teen” industry and was treated with respect for the first time; Kim Kardashian, future Esq., was no longer to be blamed for the horrible…

IF YOU TOUCH, SAY, A SCULPTURE at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, maybe because you want to know what ancient Greek marble feels like, you’ll set off a quiet chain of events. A security guard has to tell a supervisor, who will write up an incident report, and anywhere from five to ten people will be notified, including the museum’s top curator. “I wish people realized the magnitude of this one touch,” says Regina Lombardo, head of security, bemoaning TikTok art-touching videos. “It creates a lot of heartburn.” Without the guards, there is no Met. They not only protect the art but also help lost tourists, work special events, make sure no one brings in a knife, and, now, enforce a mask mandate. The pandemic has been a rocky time…

OH, MANDY, let me get you a chair,” says legendary Swiss nightlife hostess Susanne Bartsch to also legendary New York nightlife fixture Amanda Lepore as the latter slowly struts into a dressing room shortly before midnight on a recent Saturday. We’re backstage with Bartsch and her club-kid crew, most of whom were not born when she started throwing parties in 1986, at the most mega of new midtown megaclubs, Musica, where she was hired to provide some freaky atmospherics on Thursday and Saturday nights. “Basically fashion meets opera meets vaudeville meets burlesque meets show business, you know?” is how she explains her shtick. Lepore, who arrives with a chipper twink in tow ready to fetch her a shot of tequila, is always invited. Musica is located in a blocky building…

THE REVELATION ARRIVED on horseback. One morning this winter while staying at the Ritz-Carlton, Dove Mountain, just north of Tucson, Arizona, Steve Schmidt was out riding. As he made his way along the desert path, he recalled later, his mind wandered and relaxed as he had experienced before only through meditation. Schmidt started meditating after the successive health scares (a brain tumor followed by a fall from a different horse that resulted in a broken back, he said) that led him to get Cali sober, trade red meat for salads, start exercising, and lose 50 pounds. Yet the more that he solved every problem he perceived to be within his control, the more it became obvious that mindfulness and wellness could not cure what he had identified as the biggest…

ON ELECTION NIGHT IN SAN FRANCISCO in 1969, a 36-year-old woman who had run a campaign for the Board of Supervisors that featured the unconventional use of just her first name, Dianne, was waiting anxiously for results in a race she was not expected to win. The local media had barely covered her. She had earned the endorsement of only one elected official, the state assemblyman Willie Brown. She had initially run the race out of her own house and had taken a risky, forward-looking tactical approach: cultivating support from the city’s growing population of gay voters and environmental conservationists. As the returns began to trickle in, “it soon became clear that a big local story was unfolding,” Jerry Roberts later wrote in his 1994 book, Dianne Feinstein: Never Let…