Innholdsfortegnelse for July 17-30, 2023 i New York Magazine

1 For New York’s latest cover story, Rebecca Traister profiled Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and what his campaign reveals about the rot in American democracy (“The Kennedy Conspiracy,” July 3–16). Dan Cluchey, a former Obama speechwriter, said, “It’s almost unfair for journalism this trenchant to also be this dazzling as prose,” adding that the story “reads like sublime fiction.” Vanity Fair’s Joe Hagan called it a “terrific and definitive profile of RFK Jr. … and not just for the compilation of well-observed facts, but for the astute interpretation of his appeal to sad American white men.” The Hill’s Norman Solomon said the feature was a “devastating” brief “against Kennedy’s faux populism.” But writing for National Review, Dan McLaughlin argued that Traister seemed “hesitant” to blame Democrats outright for their complicity…

WHAT is a doll?” asks America Ferrera, head tilted to one side, hands kneading the air. We’re awaiting her second iced coffee of the day, and she’s in the throes of a mini-speech on the semiotics of the toy. “What, across centuries and across cultures, across civilizations, has a doll meant? A doll is a representation of a woman’s deepest intuition.” The original question—“Did you, America Ferrera, whose work represents all that is not Barbie, have qualms about being in a blockbuster about Barbie?”—has been forgotten. Dolls, she reminds me, did not begin with Barbie but have been integral to female play, ceremony, and self-actualization for centuries. Dolls and therefore Barbies and therefore the Barbie movie reveal “deeper meanings in our culture and in our psyche,” she concludes. The coffee…

The Blah Glass Tower 850 Third Avenue Built: 1960 / Sq. ft.: 617,000 THE GLASS ZIGGURAT at 850 Third Avenue is the architectural equivalent of The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit: sharp, straitlaced, and way past its prime. Its 21 stories were the height of corporate chic when the building first opened; this spring, the Chetrit Group sold the whole thing back to its lenders for $266 million, roughly $150 million less than it had paid only four years prior. After losing Discovery, Inc., during the pandemic, a major tenant that rented 160,000 square feet over seven floors, the building sits half-empty and brokers say it’s in dire need of a face-lift. The decline in the building’s fortunes stands in sad contrast to its once-vaunted tenant list, which included…

SOME TIME AFTER his father, Abraham, strapped him to an altar and attempted to sacrifice him to God, Isaac suffered another misfortune. He and his wife, Rebekah, struggled to have children. “Isaac intreatied the Lord for his wife, because she was barren,” reads the King James Bible. “And the Lord was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.” But was she barren? Lately, I’ve been wondering. Rebekah appears to have been significantly younger than Isaac. They didn’t wed until he was 40; their children weren’t born until Isaac was threescore years old. Studies show that advanced paternal age is associated with increased risk of miscarriage and that men contribute to at least a third, and maybe closer to half, of global cases of infertility. Plus stress has been shown…

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DESIGN HUNTING WELL, I MARRIED the apartment,” John Githens says of his home of over five decades in a 19th-century townhouse overlooking Washington Square Park. In 1968, Githens was a 30-year-old professor teaching Russian at Vassar College when he met and fell in love with the German-born artist Ingeborg ten Haeff, whose second husband, the architect Paul Lester Wiener, had died the year before. “She was 22 years older than I was,” Githens says. “But there was nobody like her.” He found himself spending more and more time in her Washington Square North apartment and soon moved in and never left. Githens is a scholar and translator who also taught at St. John’s University; he has worked for UNICEF as well. The day we met at the apartment, he was…

IT WAS JUST BEFORE SUNSET, and a cautious-looking man was standing in Fermi Playground holding a potato. “Is this the stew thing?” he asked, sounding a bit unsure. “This is the stew thing!” said a beaming Annie Rauwerda, gesturing toward her slow cooker. Inside was the Perpetual Stew: a pot that is endlessly replenished and offered to anybody who shows up for the regular gatherings (the schedule is updated at perpetualstew.club) that Rauwerda started to host earlier this summer. She first gained some level of internet fame as the creator of Depths of Wikipedia: Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok accounts where she surfaces obscure and absurd Wikipedia entries (umarell: the Bolognese word for retired Italian men who spend their time gazing at construction sites). Nearly 800,000 people follow the Twitter account;…

SECRET INVASION is now on Disney+. THINK ABOUT SOME OF THESE iconic movie lines: “I’ve had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” “What the fuck happened to you, man? Shit, your ass used to be beautiful!” “And that’s the truth, Ruth.” “Yes, they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in hell!” “Hold on to your butts.” “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.” The words are the work of writers. But none of these quotes would have become part of our pop-culture lexicon if it weren’t for Samuel L. Jackson’s authoritative, impassioned delivery. ¶ The 74-year-old actor, probably the most bankable movie star of our time, is a major part of multiple franchises: the Marvel Cinematic…

WHEN LARRY MCKAUGHAN was coming up in the ’80s, the golden rules of denim were simple: Work hard. Don’t poach customers. Don’t rip people off—not too badly, anyway. And never reveal your sources. “It was a little bit rough-and-tumble. A fistfight was not uncommon,” says 68-year-old McKaughan, who is known as the King of Vintage and sells mid-century and earlier pieces from his collection, Heller’s Café. Originally, McKaughan was drawn to the grit, the grind, and the reverence for a bygone American era. “My father was a machinist. He used to come home and sweat metal,” he says. “Clothing had to represent the values. It had to be durable. It had to be strong. It had to last.” Back then, denim dealing was a closed network of history-obsessed scroungers and…

For One-on-One Attention HUDSON BOXING GYM, 406 Broadway; 646-241-1506; hudsonboxinggym.com RICARDO ANDRE OPENED Hudson Boxing Gym in a small basement in Tribeca after training around the city for over a decade. The studio has no ring; instead, it’s set up with heavy bags on one side and mirrors on the other with room for warm-up bear crawls and running drills in the hallway. “To say it is ‘no frills’ is an understatement,” says Damion Sammarco, who has been training under Andre for more than a decade. “You’re there to learn from the trainers, and these guys can train you anywhere.” They work with boxers one-on-one and zero in on technique. Actress Erica Pappas says she improved more in just six weeks at Hudson than in five years at the…

I’VE BEEN EATING New York for half a year now, and while some nights have come close to perfection—Eyval’s  (25 Bogart St., at Varet St., Bushwick; eyvalnyc.com) dynamic vision of Persian food; the casual opulence of St. Jardim (183 W. 10th St., at 4th St.; stjardimnyc.com) and Place des Fêtes (212 Greene Ave., nr. Grand Ave., Clinton Hill; pdfnyc.com)— many of my dinners have blurred together: Alt-martinis and glasses of volcanic whites usher in bread baskets with “house butter” and rustic Italianate pastas that mark a midway point before large-format proteins (“to share”) and a slice of cake or bowl of custard for dessert. The New American wine-bar trend—small plates leading to progressively bigger ones—has become the New York paradigm. Little Gem is the “It” lettuce (apologies to kale), while…

KIT CONNOR MADE what was possibly the biggest decision of his life while lying in bed scrolling through Twitter. It was October 31, and the British actor, then 18, was in the middle of shooting the second season of Heartstopper, the young-adult Netflix romance series in which he plays Nick Nelson, a bisexual-but-hasn’t-realized-it-yet jock who becomes the primary love interest of the central character, the gay misfit Charlie (played by Joe Locke). The show is a rose-tinted, and often more than a little didactic, depiction of British high-school life, based on the webcomic that became a series of graphic novels by Alice Oseman, which had sold 1 million copies before the release of the TV adaptation. The story takes place in a universe a few ticks closer to utopia than…

For more culture coverage and streaming recommendations, see vulture.com. TV 1. Watch Reservation Dogs Season Three Don’t miss it. Hulu, August 2. This will be the final season of the show that all three Vulture TV critics picked as one of the best of 2022. Maybe more than any other series on TV this summer, Reservation Dogs is the show you owe it to yourself to spend some time with. Soak up its gorgeous, astonishing wit before the series takes a final bow this fall. KATHRYN VANARENDONK ART 2. See Brigid Berlin Behind the muse. Vito Schnabel Gallery, 43 Clarkson Street; through August 18. Brigid Berlin came from an ultraprivileged home, as did much of Andy Warhol’s entourage. She was a force of nature who could drink anybody at Max’s…

FROM AFAR, the office corridor on Third Avenue in midtown might look headed for complete disaster. The real estate, mostly boxy glass buildings with no discernible character, was built as standard-issue office space for white-collar workers starting in the ’50s. The strip lacks the glamour of Madison or Park, with its trophy towers Lever House and the Seagram Building, and many of the buildings are in need of major upgrades. And while it’s by no means inaccessible, it is more of a schlep than the buildings right next to Grand Central. Even before the pandemic, tenants were deserting it for newer towers on the West Side and lower Manhattan. The office availability rate on Third between 42nd and 59th Streets is nearly 10 percent higher than in the rest of…

A GOOD NIGHT’S REST has long been a priority for Strategist readers. Over the years, we’ve fielded numerous niche sleep-related questions, such as “What’s the most stylish alarm clock?” and “What’s the best husband pillow?” And to keep up with the demand for bedtime-related products, our writers and editors have conducted extensive reporting on everything from blackout curtains to sound machines, talked to lingerie experts about the coziest silk pajamas, and chatted with sleep coaches about the plushiest mattress toppers. Collectively, we’ve tested more than 35 mattresses and slept on more than 20 types of linen sheets. This has all yielded a deep archive of sleep products, which we recently combed through. On the following pages, we’ve selected some of our most-stood-behind items, including this adjustable memory-foam pillow from Coop…

When did you start getting injections? I was right out of college. I was about 21, and I started with lip filler and then worked my way up to Botox. I just wanted to make my face more symmetrical. I feel like when my lips are a little bit bigger, it kind of proportions my face better. And Kylie Jenner’s friend Stassie—I loved the way her lips were kind of pouty. And I have some fine lines on my forehead that I’ve always been a little self-conscious about. Have you ever had anything go wrong? No, but my best friend got cheek filler done somewhere else and they ended up putting in way too much and it migrated all the way down to the bottom of her cheeks. And when…