Innholdsfortegnelse for November 20-December 3, 2023 i New York Magazine

1 New York’s latest cover story by Kerry Howley traced how a 1960s Japanese sect birthed a hippie L.A. grocer that has reshaped the way Americans eat (“What Erewhon Knows,” November 6–19). Taylor Weik wrote, “I knew a Japanese family was behind the original Erewhon, but assumed it was your typical mom and pop grocery (spoiler: it’s not). A must-read if you live in LA and/or have visited an Erewhon.” Scientist Vineeth Surendranath said that “in tracing the history of a brand, this is a damning critique of how and what we choose to put in our mouths.” The Reason Interview host Nick Gillespie urged his followers to read the story and “then scrounge up a copy of You Are All Sanpaku,” a nutrition book written by one of the…

THE CONNECTICUT tourist board should cut Paige Lorenze a check. “Getting me into Manhattan is like pulling teeth,” the 25-year-old influencer and founder of the lifestyle brand Dairy Boy told me as we sank into the cloudlike couch in her home. Last year, Lorenze moved from New York to Southport, Connecticut—a suburban enclave right on the edge of commuting distance to Manhattan. The yards are big, the trees old, the driveways large enough for her Chevy and her Porsche. Gone are the days of partying in the back seats of Ubers. Her Instagram page is now an endless scroll of coastal-country porn—riding her horses, Navy and Louie, through the woods; stacks of chocolate-chip pancakes on a checked tablecloth; her silky blonde hair tied up in all kinds of bows. Lorenze…

ELEVEN DAYS AFTER 92NY disinvited from its stage the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen for signing a controversial open letter critical of Israel, the Y’s CEO, Seth Pinsky, meets me for breakfast at Nice Matin, the Upper West Side brasserie on the ground floor of the Lucerne Hotel, not far from where he lives. We are joined by Rabbi David Ingber, who heads the Y’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, and Jonathan Rosen, co-founder of the top-shelf PR shop BerlinRosen, whose role here very much falls under the firm’s “crisis management” tab. We are still three days away from the circulation of a follow-up open letter decrying the Y’s reaction to the original open letter, which would be signed by prominent authors Tony Kushner, Leslie Jamison, and John Banville,…

ON THE EVENING OF November 2, a few dozen people gathered around the traffic circle at the southwest end of Prospect Park for a candlelight vigil. They were there to honor the thousands of Palestinians who had been killed by Israeli air strikes since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas. Victoria Ruiz, a public defender with New York County Defender Services, was standing with two of her colleagues, listening to one of the vigil organizers reading off a list of the dead, when a handful of people arrived. “What about Hamas?” some yelled. According to one of the organizers, one man walked up to the altar he had made for Hala Abu Sa’da, a 13-year-old killed in Gaza, spit at it, and challenged those present to fight…

A Flag-Football Team Caught in a Protest MESA Charter High School’s flag-football team was getting nervous. In the weeks after Hamas’ attack on Israel, team members at the school in Bushwick were warned not to go to Hasidic Williamsburg. “We didn’t know what the response was going to be in that neighborhood,” says Aisaac, a 16-year-old junior with an air of unflagging sincerity. “I was warned to steer clear out of my own safety.” Then, on October 28, the team had another game, this one in Downtown Brooklyn. A large pro-Palestinian-rights march passed their playing field on the way to cross the Brooklyn Bridge. “The whole street was filled,” explains Aisaac’s teammate Genaury, a senior with curly hair and glasses. The team stayed put, watching, until well after dark. “My…

IF EATING IN THE subway is this city’s last durable taboo, Noksu has its provocations built right in. The 13-seat dining counter, wrapped around a shockingly pristine kitchen, is housed in a former barbershop in the northeast entrance to the Herald Square B/D/F/M/ N/Q/R/W station. To enter, you descend into its bowels like any commuter and, armed with a six-digit door code to ease your way, take a left where the crowd surges right. Inside, Noksu is all gray-veined marble and inky abstracts, a frictionless dreamland where the chairs push you in. “Sit all the way back,” a jacketed captain says, “and I’ll do the rest.” During two nightly seatings, Noksu fills with takers for chef Dae Kim’s 12-course menu. Just 27, Kim has the piecey hair of a K-pop…

NAPOLEON / LEXI FREIMAN / BILLY PORTER / CRITICS / TO DO BRIT MARLING has spent her career both co-writing and starring in projects that are grounded in reality yet shockingly metaphysical—including The OA, the Netflix series she created with longtime collaborator Zal Batmanglij about a blind woman who disappears for seven years and reemerges with the ability to see, the conviction that she is a kind of angel, and knowledge of a series of “movements” that induce interdimensional travel. When it was canceled in 2019, bereft fans protested and at least one went on a hunger strike, and Marling and Batmanglij disappeared, creatively speaking. Now they’re back with the FX show A Murder at the End of the World, starring Emma Corrin as Darby Hart, a hacker and amateur…

BILLY PORTER’S VOICE booms. It fills up a space, demanding to be listened to. It’s likely you know a mom with a voice like that—or a Black Pentecostal pastor who uses it to work his congregation into a sanctified frenzy. Porter speaks with a rasp that glides into clear, full-throated song, sometimes mid-sentence to emphasize a point. The voice has served him well on Broadway, where he debuted over 30 years ago. And as Pray Tell, the firecracker of a ballroom MC and an elder who rules with an always-on mic and a stern tongue on the FX show Pose. In the second season, when a legend of the scene skips an important ACT UP protest, then struts into the ball in elaborate Marie Antoinette panniers, Pray becomes a pin…

ALL THE Great-Mas and Great-Gongs who actually understood Peou, from her youth into her adulthood, from Cambodia to Cambotown, remembered her as having a gift with numbers. Apparently, Peou’s mother even thought her a genius, a mathematics prodigy, that she carried so much potential because she memorized the price of each vegetable sold in every Battambang market stall. Then, in the early 1980s, in a land of soda fountains and steel-enforced buildings dedicated to shopping, the Mas of a still-emerging Cambotown found themselves clapping Peou’s malnourished cheeks into their hands, their worked-to-death, we-endured-concentration-camps-but-it’s-not-as-if-our-previous-lives-had-been-stuffed-with-bliss hands. “If only you were born here, they lamented, you’d be guaranteed a real life. You could be a bank teller, or a store manager, or a cashier on the good side of town. You could be…

ON A TUESDAY morning in late October, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was in Brentwood at the 5,900-square-foot home he purchased for $6.6 million in 2021 with his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Shaded by sycamore and fruit trees, the pad has six bedrooms, a backyard tiki bar, a pool with a waterfall, private security hovering at the gate (more on that later), and, parked out front, a Toyota minivan that he calls “the dog car” on account of its being unsuitable for passengers of any other species. Bobby, as he’s known to friends, walked through the French doors dressed for his morning hike in blue jeans, a black hoodie, Keens, and an unfriendly expression. He said little as he led his three enormous canines to the…

JOSHUA LEIFER, a graduate student at Yale, is a soft-spoken leftist whose thoughts unspool in long, eloquent paragraphs. In this respect, he is like his peers in the small bowl of soup that is the world of leftist magazines, a group of writers and editors who know one another, sit together on editorial boards, and attend the same issue-launch parties. But it is their differences that have been most pronounced ever since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, their gentle voices belying the vehemence of their disagreements. “A segment of the left’s moral compass seems to have broken,” Leifer told me over the phone from New Haven. The argument playing out in a handful of New York-based journals—most notably n+1, Dissent, and Jewish Currents—may seem like the intramural squabbling of…

THE LETTER THAT Artforum’s website published on October 19, “An Open Letter From the Art Community to Cultural Organizations,” calling for Palestinian liberation and “an end to the killing and harming of all civilians, an immediate ceasefire, the passage of humanitarian aid into Gaza,” had already been circulating as a Google form. It had already been signed by more than 4,000 people, including Judith Butler and Fred Moten and, as David Velasco, the magazine’s editor of almost six years, put it, more artists who had made the cover of Artforum “than I’d ever seen in one space”: Barbara Kruger, Kara Walker, Nicole Eisenman, Nan Goldin. “This was the first moment where it felt like there was consensus, where you had thousands of people signing something saying, ‘We can agree on…

‘‘NOOR ELKHALDI, INDEPENDENT CREATOR, 34:It’s not often I’d meet people from Gaza. Moe understands things I’m experiencing in a way that doesn’t require explaining. My parents each have one parent from Gaza. My mom has hundreds of relatives there. She sent me a list of all our family members who have died. Dr. Hammam, the doctor who gave an interview stating he wouldn’t leave his patients at Al-Shifa hospital before he was killed, is my uncle’s brother-in-law. My cousin Dema got married at the end of July—her husband and his family were killed in an air strike. They didn’t even get a chance. MOE DABBAGH, BRAND- MARKETING MANAGER, 32:Both my parents were born and raised there. I lived there as a kid. On my mom’s side, 49 members of our…

CAMERON TRINH Biology professor, Stone Mountain, Georgia Have you run New York before? It’s my first time running the New York Marathon, and, in fact, it’s my first time in New York City. I was kind of scared, to be quite frank, but when we’re walking around Central Park or the Financial District, there’s nothing really to be terrified about. How do you feel? Physically, totally empty. I have a very fast metabolism—I can eat dang near anything. So eating my only meal at 3:30 a.m. and not racing until 9 a.m., I’m hollow. At the end, my form went to the wayside and I was just shuffling, especially up those last couple hills at miles 24, 25. But I never felt mentally out of it. I was engaged, I…

MUCH HAS BEEN made of bartenders’ recent fascination with savory drinks—tomato margaritas and Parmesan martinis are practically commonplace—but a surprising subgenre has emerged inside the city’s more forward-thinking mixology labs: drinks that, by design, evoke the sensation of eating some very specific sandwiches. Even more surprising: They’re good. BACON, EGG, AND CHEESE Madame George 45 W. 45th St.madamegeorgenyc.com Bartender Marshall Minaya tweaked his recipe for the NY Bodega Sour—bacon-infused whiskey, egg whites, everything-bagel seasoning on top—until 3 a.m. the night before his bar’s grand opening to get this drinkable BEC just right. ITALIAN COMBO Ask for Janice 640 Manhattan Ave., Greenpointaskforjanice.nyc The A4J Martini’s soppressata-washed gin, found in the speakeasy behind Upside Pizza, is actually fairly subtle, but with its mozzarella-and-olive garnish, it still evokes the best parts of a…

I SAW SOMEONE ripping down one of those KIDNAPPED posters the other day. I live in a neighborhood where there are a lot of those posters. I have no idea whether the person ripping them down is Jewish, Muslim, Israeli, Palestinian, or none of the above. Honestly, their vibe was none of the above; their vibe was “college.” Their expression was blank and even and stony, the face people put on when someone asks them for money on the street and they are not going to make eye contact or break stride but they still want to manifest the plausible deniability of cruel intention that adds up to a performance of civility. This person was on a mission; part of the mission was that they were not going to engage…

A Middle Eastern Actor: ‘‘I HAVE PLAYED PALESTINIANS,Israelis, Iraqis, Afghans—every version of that you can imagine. I once played a Palestinian character, and someone asked me if I “related to my character,” who was a freedom fighter. My job is to relate to the character I’m playing, so I replied, “I don’t believe in violence. I’m a pacifist. But I do relate to my character because he has gone through trauma and he’s trying his best outside of the violence. I can understand and empathize with his POV.” And the conversation erupted into me being called a Nazi. I get emotional about it because I grew up in a house of immigrants that cared for everyone in our town, especially our Jewish neighbors. I was like, Oh, fuck! People are…

‘‘ASHISH PRASHAR:My son’s favorite playground rotates, but for the past month, it has been Edmonds Playground in Fort Greene. He loves it because he gets to run around—he’s 18 months old and really energetic. We go every day. Last Tuesday morning, I was wearing my keffiyeh when we went. Before we left, my son ran into the basketball court because he saw a kid playing there. This kid must have been 7, maybe 8, and he was shooting hoops from the free-throw line. And my baby runs up to him. The kid saw him and started talking to him. It was really cute. Babies love big kids. They’re kind of in awe of them. Then this woman walked over to me from a bench on the opposite side of the…

FINE DINING IN A SUBWAY STATION . . . A HOUSE DESIGNED BY A LE CORBUSIER APPRENTICE . . . THE LOOK BOOK GOES TO THE MARATHON A PAIR OF DINKY ski goggles can be disastrous, but the skiers and instructors writer Miyo McGinn spoke to had only praise for Oakley’s Line Miner Snow Goggles(from $131). They have some neat features (like an interior notch for eyeglasses) and a wide frame for unobstructed views, but it’s their Prizm lenses that stand out. They come in a range of tints for skiing any time of day. One editor owns two pairs: a heavily tinted one to reduce the glare during sunny skiing and one with a clearer lens for runs at night. But that’s not necessary. Sarah Plaskitt, founder of ski…

IN 2020, Glenn Mariconda and Asaka Midorikawa had lived in Brooklyn for almost 20 years. After their son, Jonah, was born, they were looking for a mid-century house outside the city, one that hadn’t been messed up in renovation, and they were having a hard time finding anything they liked. Until they drove by this one in a Nutley, New Jersey, neighborhood of mostly starter Colonials. They came back the next day to tour the property. Its listing mentioned the architect of the house, Edward T. Bowser Jr. “I had never heard of him,” says Mariconda, a fashion executive. “And it said that he had worked for Le Corbusier.” It was in pristine condition, its heritage intact, and they bought it. “When the house was first built, there was nothing…

For more culture coverage and streaming recommendations, see vulture.com. TV 1. Watch Squid Game: The Challenge A new entry in “missing the point.” Netflix, November 22. It’s incredibly depressing, but perhaps inevitable, that a TV show about a horrendously demeaning and brutal competition among desperate contestants looking for a payday would inspire a reality-TV spinoff in which desperate contestants looking for a payday compete in a horrendously demeaning and brutal competition. ROXANA HADADI THEATER 2. See Walk On Through A musical docent. MCC Theater, opens December 4. Gavin Creel, a winning presence in musicals like Hair, Hello, Dolly!, and Into the Woods, became a devotee of wandering the halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and turned his experiences into a musical with songs inspired by pieces in its collection.…