Innholdsfortegnelse for September 11-24, 2023 i New York Magazine

1 For New York’s “Fall Preview” issue, Rachel Handler profiled the trio who created the year’s most unlikely, delightfully dumb comedy (“Power Bottoms,” August 28–September 10). The cover, which described the film as a “horny, bloody lesbian incel comedy,” provoked fierce debate online, and in a widely shared tweet, @holdenford-focus wrote, “incel has really lost all meaning huh.” On Instagram, Joe Rosenthal agreed, adding, “Uncomfortable with ‘incel’ being used this way given how dangerous actual incels are, and I think it’s something that intrinsically describes cishet men.” Meredith Modzelewski pushed back: “A woman originated the term about her own life and experiences so perhaps reconsider that ‘intrinsic’ characterization.” In a letter to the magazine, Julia Himberg, author of The New Gay for Pay, said she “especially appreciated the article’s attention…

I HAVE A FACE THAT people think they can say anything to me,” Gisele Barreto Fetterman says, dipping a plastic knife into soft serve at a Burger King near Braddock, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh. (There are no spoons.) Before she became recognizable as the magnificently browed Brazilian-born five-foot-nine wife of the state’s six-foot-eight junior senator, she says mothers who heard her speak Portuguese with her three kids addressed her as if she were the nanny. There were many such cases of mistaken identity—as when a woman thought she was staff at a book signing the couple hosted in 2015. “There were 200 people in my house. I was just overwhelmed, and I snuck into the pantry,” Fetterman tells me. “I went to have a glass of wine. This woman came…

IT’S A SATURDAY NIGHT in August, and Walter Isaacson is sitting in the back of Lilette, a restaurant on Magazine Street in his hometown of New Orleans, swizzling a Sazerac. “The question for a biographer,” he tells me, holding forth a little, “is to show how the demons of a person are totally connected to the drive that gets their rockets to orbit. People who are driven by demons get shit done.” Isaacson was the editor of Time magazine in the 1990s, a decade or so before the internet wrecked the print party. He was running CNN when 9/11 happened and then landed in 2003 at the Aspen Institute, where, for 14 years, he was the impresario of its thought-leader confabs. But he’s long had a side hustle writing biographies…

For Classic Strawberry Shortcake VENIERO’S, 342 E. 11th St.; venieros.com ➥ EVERYTHING ABOUT this 129-year-old East Village bakery is old-school and distinctly Italian—from the mirrored walls to the intricately tiled floors and the grand swaths of stained glass on the tin ceiling. Cannoli, rainbow cookies, and biscotti line the pastry cases, but one of its most popular desserts is strawberry shortcake. Event planner Pejy Kash has been eating it for the past 20 years. “I’ve had strawberry shortcake everywhere,” he says, but nothing compares to Veniero’s “really airy” version. Coming Soon owners Fabiana Faria and Helena Barquet love it too. Faria first ordered it for Barquet’s birthday in 2021. “It’s old-fashioned, but that’s what I like,” Barquet says of the “spongy yellow cake” and “super-fresh strawberries in every layer…

Libertine 684 Greenwich St., at Christopher St. libertinenyc.com LONG AGO, the city’s French restaurants busied themselves with haute cookery and haute ambience. These days, they’ve ceded much of the white-tablecloth territory to other cuisines and disguised ambition under scruff at all manner of bistros and bars à vin: Claud, Place des Fêtes, Le Dive, the list goes on. The newest and perhaps most eagerly hyped arrival in this overcrowded genre is Libertine, tucked in a petrol-blue corner about as far west as the West Village goes, where the Hudson stands in for the Canal Saint-Martin. Its menus are movable chalkboards, just as they would be in any low-ceilinged hideaway in the 11th; its patron libertine is Serge Gainsbourg, peering down from above a prime table. Since it opened in May,…

THE FRAUD is out now from Penguin Press. ZADIE SMITH’S FIRST book, White Teeth, was the English comic novel on bath salts. Published to universal acclaim in 2000, it loosely centered on the Iqbals and the Joneses, two zany families living in Willesden Green, the diverse North London neighborhood where Smith grew up. Her madcap creations lost their teeth, fucked twins, gave birth during earthquakes, predicted the end of the world; there were Irish pubs owned by Iraqis, genetically modified mice, and an Islamic fundamentalist group named KEVIN. (“ ‘We are aware,’ said Hifan solemnly, pointing to the spot underneath the cupped flame where the initials were minutely embroidered, ‘that we have an acronym problem.’”) All the while, one never lost sight of Smith herself, bursting with exuberance and sincerity.…

IN 2018, A MOVIE-PUBLICITY company called Bunker 15 took on a new project: Ophelia, a feminist retelling of Hamlet starring Daisy Ridley. Critics who had seen early screenings had published 13 reviews, seven of them negative, which translated to a score of 46 percent on the all-important aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes—a disappointing outcome for a film with prestige aspirations and no domestic distributor. ¶ But just because the “Tomatometer” says a title is “rotten”—scoring below 60 percent—it doesn’t need to stay that way. Bunker 15 went to work. While most film-PR companies aim to get the attention of critics from top publications, Bunker 15 takes a more bottom-up approach, recruiting obscure, often self-published critics who are nevertheless part of the pool tracked by Rotten Tomatoes. In another break from standard…

Foe, September 30, October 4 and 5. This sci-fi drama about a married couple (Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal) living in a climate-change-decimated future looks plenty intriguing. Evil Does Not Exist, October 5, 7, 11. Ryusuke Hamaguchi is back with a thriller about a single father whose rural life is disrupted by the arrival of a luxury camping site, which also has serious ramifications for everyone in the village. Janet Planet, October 8, 9, 12. Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Annie Baker makes her directorial debut with this film starring Zoe Ziegler as a tween spending an idle summer with her mother in western Massachusetts. The Curse, October 12. A comedy series from Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie. The two star alongside Emma Stone as the hosts and producer of a house-flipping…

DIATRIBE ›› BEAUTY WRITERS WILL always remember where they were on December 18, 2022, the day that Zendaya premiered a surprise haircut. Her locks were chopped short, into a tousled-yet-smooth ’do that stopped inches above her shoulders, and in that instant she transformed from a superstar into something even more uncommon: a woman who understands and wields the power of the bob. In 2023, other beloved characters (both real and not) seemed to understand as well. Jenna Ortega’s ’90s chop at the Golden Globes, Eva Longoria’s shoulder-length trim at Cannes, Shiv Roy’s “Do not fuck with me” hair in Succession. And, at the end of August, Hailey Bieber was spotted running around New York with her “cinnamon-cookie-butter”-colored hair clipped short. But as suddenly as the bob pendulum can swing into…

LAST PAGEACCESSORIES ›› FOR A LONG TIME, tying a sweater around the shoulders was reserved for the preppy elite, or for those panicky moments when breezy weather takes one by surprise. But recently, I’ve noticed well-dressed people all over the globe doing it—not out of desperation, as far as I can tell, but by choice. I’ve spotted hip Brooklyn moms wheeling strollers in the park with the sleeves of their pastel pullovers woven together on their clavicles. Dickies-wearing design guys have tossed their vintage cable knits across their shoulders with the masculine savoir faire of a Greek fisherman. During a recent walk through Tribeca, I saw a handful of gallery girls decked out in The Row who had topped off their well-tailored pants and blazers with neat little sweater capes.…

Laurie Kanyok was 38, a professional dancer on the cusp of retirement, when she learned she was pregnant. She had already suffered one miscarriage and had recently undergone a spinal treatment that she feared would increase the risk of birth defects. Kanyok booked an appointment with an obstetrician, Dr. Robert Hadden of Columbia University. She felt grateful to be in the care of someone who had spent his entire career at such a distinguished institution. At first, Kanyok liked Hadden, who had a soft-spoken, fatherly way. With his prim, grayish beard and wire-rimmed glasses, he reminded her of a “skinny Santa Claus,” as she later put it. But there was one time when, heels in the stirrups, she thought she felt a flicker of something moist on her vagina. During…

RACHEL PERKOCHA Retired, Soho Who’d you go with? Well, my friends and I have played tennis together forever—we all belonged to the same tennis club in California. Then we started a book club three years ago. This year, we read Billie Jean King’s memoir All In. We’d always talked about going to the U.S. Open together since I bought an apartment in Soho. So this year, we were just like, “We’re going.” Is everyone staying with you in Soho? Yes. I’m so happy. We went today, and we’re going tomorrow and Wednesday, too. It’s been so fun. And, oh my God, this is a weird thing, but the stadium bathrooms are spotless. You go in a women’s bathroom, and they have two attendants. One points you to the open stalls;…

MANY READERS WILL already recognize Matthew Schneier’s name: He has written for the magazine since 2019—and he wrote the profile of Jenna Lyons that can be found just a few pages away. This issue also marks his debut as our new restaurant critic. Food editor Alan Sytsma asks what we can expect from his forthcoming reviews. Why is your photo still so easy to find? In interviews for this job, I volunteered my willingness to wear a Ruth Reichl–esque wig and dark glasses, and for some reason that was politely ignored. No, but really: Everyone’s photo is only ever two clicks away. My excellent predecessor, Adam Platt, dropped the veneer of critical anonymity in 2013, and I’m happy to follow his lead. I won’t give restaurants advance notice that I’m…

IN NASHVILLE, ’90s country hasn’t been this cool since, well, the ’90s. Just look at May’s ACM Awards, which was co-hosted by Garth Brooks while his wife and fellow ’90s star, Trisha Yearwood, duetted her greatest hits with up-and-comer Carly Pearce. One of the night’s biggest winners? “She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” Cole Swindell’s ode to Jo Dee Messina’s breakout hit, “Heads Carolina, Tails California.” On the record, you can hear Swindell grinning as he belts, “She’s a ’90s-country fan—like I am.” ¶ Back in 1996, “Heads Carolina” shot up the charts because it was an archetype of the era’s sound, slipping traditional country signifiers, like mandolin, steel guitar, and organ, into a pop-oriented anthem. Messina put her all into the karaoke-sing-along chorus, and, crucially, the lyrics told a…

I ROLLED ON EACH sheer burgundy leg of pantyhose and hiked the waistband over my hips. I slid on the sheer halter-neck slip dress, over which I layered the sheer polka-dot pencil skirt. Over all of that: a matching sheer button-down. It was look No. 11 from Miu Miu’s fall ’23 show. On the runway, the collection featured models with windswept hair clutching their keys and holding handbags in the crooks of their arms—this, ostensibly, is what they would wear going about such mundane tasks as grabbing an iced coffee or picking up the dry cleaning. So I set out on my own day of errands in this lasagna of chiffon. I strapped in to the pointy kitten heels (a sample pair four sizes too large, mind you) and, keys…

She stood alone atop a black staircase before a megascreen that had all night projected many curious symbols—digital mitochondria, ancestral totems, a beetle—but would soon show a giant moon. Till then, it was just her. Just her and me, just thousands of Mes watching their own private Her. It was late July in Dallas, in the blunt-filled dark of the American Airlines Center, during one of the hottest summers we’ll ever experience until next summer. Time had come for Erykah Badu to sing “Orange Moon.” From the keyboard trickled pools of ascending notes, and under those keys crickets chirped softly. Everything was very still, everything was the memory of your first great summer lover—then she nosedived into the first lines: I’m an orange moonI’m an orange moonReflecting the light of…

DYLAN MULVANEY WOULD LIKE TO CLARIFY that she does in fact enjoy drinking a cold beer now and again. Still, when we meet at her cottage tucked behind a towering shrub on a steep drive in Laurel Canyon on a blazing-hot afternoon in July—“It feels like Palm Springs!” she chirps as she ushers me inside—she whips up some Aperol spritzes for us despite there being some brews in her fridge. Needless to say, they were not Bud Lights. The TikTok starlet is dressed like a sexy Stepford in a baby-blue miniskirt and a cropped white cardigan that is coming undone in the front and, unbeknownst to her, exposing her pasties-covered nipples. “I’m just going to eyeball it. Do you trust me?” she asks while topping off a hefty pour with…

WHEN PATRICK MCMULLAN, the photographer, came home from a trip in February, he found the front door of his Greenwich Village apartment askew. The frame had shifted so wildly that the latch wouldn’t shut. Inside, he found dust all over and a big crack going through the ceiling as if there had been an earthquake. He called the super, who told him, “You don’t understand. The whole building moved.” While McMullan was away, an adjacent apartment building, 10 Fifth Avenue, had been evacuated. The Department of Buildings found cracks running across the façade and a three-inch separation between it and McMullan’s at 12 Fifth. Though the DOB is still investigating what happened, the obvious culprit seemed to be the construction project next door: a 19-story ultraluxury condo tower designed by…

. . . . THE LOOK BOOK GOES TO THE U.S. OPEN . . . THE BEST CAKE SHOPS ➸ USING A STRAIGHT RAZOR isn’t the easiest way to achieve a clean shave—experts say that it can take about three months to get the technique down—but it is the best. Straight razors offer complete control over the blade, which means they are great for shaping beards, says barber Angelo Ruscetta. And while technique is key (try one on a balloon covered in shaving cream before testing it on your face), so is the tool. For a weighty but manageable and safe razor, a majority of our experts recommend the Dovo Silver Shavette Satin-Finish Straight Razor ($70). It has a stainless-steel handle that’s sufficiently heavy to apply the amount of pressure…

DISPATCH FROM VENICE OVER THE PAST FEW MONTHS, our great mother the internet has given birth to hundreds of scathing-hot takes on the categorically large prosthetic nose Bradley Cooper wears to play famous Jewish conductor Leonard Bernstein in his second directorial effort, Maestro. Everyone from the Anti-Defamation League to Bernstein’s own family to, for some reason, New York restaurateur Keith McNally has taken a side on the matter with some calling the nose antisemitic, some saying it’s inaccurate or unnecessary, and some just drinking their coffee and walking their dogs and watching the sunset, free of the unholy weight of having to generate an opinion. ¶ I saw Maestro at the Venice Film Festival in early September. The nose is a bit distracting in its hugeness but only for a…

For more culture coverage and streaming recommendations, see vulture.com. TV 1. Watch The Continental Wick-ed ways of the pre-Keanu prequel. Peacock, September 22. The success of the John Wick franchise means it’s time for spinoffs, and the first arrives in the form of this three-part prequel series about the iconic hotel that provides sanctuary for assassins. The dense (and silly) myth-building of this world will only get more complicated. ROXANA HADADI THEATER 2. See Gutenberg! The Musical! Don’t worry about reading up on Johannes. James Earl Jones Theatre, previews September 15. Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells, who opened The Book of Mormon, reunite for a comedy about a bumbling pair of friends trying to sell a musical about Johannes Gutenberg without knowing much about him, aside from the fact he…

1 Balance a big fluffy coat with really pointy shoes. Wearing something like these square-toed mules adds a bit of hardness to an otherwise soft outfit. The denim should lightly puddle on top of the shoe so you can see just the tip and heel. 2 Ballet flats with a grungy tee. To avoid looking too precious or girlie in pretty flats, look deep into your closet for those worn-in, distressed T-shirts. 3 Combine long, knee-grazing shorts with high boots. Choose shorts that are wide and loose and sit lower on the waist, and make sure the boots come up high enough to meet the hem. Stick with a sleek pair to accentuate the bagginess of the shorts. 4 Wear a boxy blazer or jacket with an extra-miniskirt. To find…

WHEN LUDOVIC DE SAINT SERNIN, a young French designer, slid into her DMs, Jenna Lyons agreed immediately to meet him for breakfast while he was in New York. Saint Sernin is a darling of the international fashion press with a long Brâncusi face, shoulder-length waves, and a design philosophy that could fairly be called “empowered slut.” (His breakout piece was a grommeted pair of men’s underpants that lace up like a corset.) Five years before, he might have been reaching out to her peer to peer: She had spent 27 years designing J.Crew, where she revitalized a former mall brand and brought it all the way to the Met Gala. But no, it turned out, that wasn’t it. “When I started watching the show, I was like, Oh, I recognize…

Deanna Denham Hughes still remembers the jingle that ruined her life. “Just for meeeee,” she sings, drawing out the last syllable before she breaks into a self-conscious laugh. “It’s like this little hip-hop beat.” In the ad, for Just for Me hair relaxer, Black girls wearing big earrings rap about “body and shine” and flip their silky hair in slow motion. Denham Hughes wanted to be just like them when she was a ’90s kid, and that meant she had to tame her thick, immovable Afro. From the time Denham Hughes was 5, several times a year she would sit at the kitchen table with a towel around her neck while her mom worked Just for Me cream into her hair. Her mother, a Jamaican immigrant, was sensitive to…