Innholdsfortegnelse for March 11-24, 2024 i New York Magazine

1 For New York’s latest cover story, Jay Bulger and Paula Aceves spoke with dozens of migrants about their lives since arriving in New York (“In Line at St. Brigid,” February 26–March 10). Many readers were moved by their stories of being forced to sleep on the streets while awaiting a spot in a shelter and the scarcity of food once they got there. @DebbelerN wrote, “The scale of human suffering and sadness reflected here is just immense,” while Daniel Endonino said, “This is who is on the human end of the draconian policies Biden and the Democrats are proposing in the ‘bipartisan border bill.’ ” Writer Justin Glawe said, “Excellent work here by New York mag to humanize the migrants ending up on the streets. Imagine if we just…

AN HOUR BEFORE her Good Morning America interview, Reesa Teesa is texting her lawn guy. Focusing on the grass and shrubs back home in Atlanta is helping her “not freak out about this,” she says while riding the elevator to hair and makeup. “This”—appearing on the country’s No. 1–rated morning show, watched by millions of people—“is terrifying.” The door opens backstage, where Robin Roberts is walking by. The anchor pulls Teesa to the side. “Thank you for having the courage to tell your story,” she says. “Don’t make me cry,” Teesa responds. The TikToker then drops her luggage off in the greenroom, where she tries to calm herself with deep breaths: “My whole prayer right now is like, ‘God, please, I don’t want to sound like a babbling fool.’ ”…

ASK AN EXTERMINATOR Say there’s a pest in your apartment. What should you do? Find the access points and seal them with caulk or steel wool. Exclusion is most important. But most people don’t find all the entry points because they’re hidden behind cabinets and appliances. That’s why our exclusion experts are also carpenters—they know where the holes are. Do home remedies work for deterring pests? The majority don’t. People talk about essential oils keeping pests away, but no consumer would be able to buy a concentration high enough to matter. And there are a lot of gimmicks out there, like ultrasound devices. Pests dislike the high-pitched sound they make, but they get used to it. If rats and roaches were scared by loud noises, they wouldn’t be in the…

ASK A FRAMER Is there a mat-and-frame combination that looks good with any piece of art? There is no magic pill, unfortunately, but that’s the value we bring, right? We look at the compositional elements of the piece and the frame, and the whole thing in concert becomes an artwork. What goes into deciding how a piece should be framed? If five people brought in the same work of art, it’s likely that each would leave with a different frame. We ask people about their living space. Everyone’s home is made up of hundreds of colors and textures. So in addition to fitting the artwork, we want the frame to fit the environment. Does framing come down to instinct? Oh, yeah, I hover my hands over your artwork and absorb…

ASK A TATTOO ARTIST Before someone gets a tattoo, how should they prepare? Before booking, check out artists on Instagram. Find a style you like. Think about sizing and placement. And then before your appointment, eat, drink water, make sure your skin is moisturized. If your skin is dry, it won’t hold ink or heal as well—it’s going to get irritated faster. Do any tattoo requests make you cringe? Matching names, or the name of a partner. Especially if they’re really young, I tell them to hold off. Have you ever covered up a regretted tattoo? I covered up a grammar error once—it was lines of text, and the first line ended in the, and the next line started with the, so it said “the the.” You really have to…

ASK A BUBBLE-MAKER Is there a brand of bubbles you recommend? The best I’ve found for home use is from Target or Dollar Tree. Do eight parts of that stuff to one part Dawn dish soap, and it’ll make way bigger bubbles than ones you’re probably used to. It has to be Dawn? Well, this is weird, but the classic blue Dawn was the gold standard for bubble performers for decades. But a few years back, they changed the formula. One weekend, all my performers were texting, “The bubbles are small! They’re popping really quickly!” The bubble community was abuzz. So now, after testing everything available, I can tell you the best is Dawn Antibacterial, but it has to be the apple-blossom or orange-scented one. I have no idea why.…

FOODRESTAURANT REVIEW IN THE EVENING rain, the Perelman Center shimmers like a sturgeon. In the architectural hodgepodge of the former World Trade Center—hard by Santiago Calatrava’s bony Oculus, just opposite Michael Arad’s 9/11 memorial—you can’t miss it, paneled in Portuguese marble whose natural striations seem to be wriggling their way upstream. Inside are three separate theaters, which will play host this season to Laurence Fishburne’s one-man show, the New York premiere of an opera about the suicide of a Chinese American Army private, and a ballroom reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. The Perelman Performing Arts Center, so called thanks to a $75 million gift by the billionaire Ron Perelman, is, by any measure, a major, if corporate, addition to the arts, like a Shed South, with its own restaurant,…

BECKY KENNEDY, a child psychologist known as Dr. Becky to her 2.4 million Instagram followers—making her one of the most influential figures in contemporary parenting—believes that parents should approach their roles with the same degree of seriousness as medical students training to be doctors. “To me, being a parent is that level of importance of a job,” she told me recently. Kennedy first rose to prominence on social media during the darkest lockdown days of the pandemic by making simple front-facing Instagram videos in which she role-played common scenarios—a child who is anxious, a child who lashes out angrily at a sibling—and offered suggestions for specific things for parents to say and do. The promise of a parenting script turned out to be a relief for floundering, isolated parents. Since…

ASK A BAKER What’s the shop’s most beloved cake? We’re known for our blackout cake: a dark-chocolate cake with chocolate pudding in the middle and fudge frosting on top. People looking for something simpler often go for our dark-chocolate or yellow cake with buttercream frosting. We sell vanilla frosting the most. What flavor combo are most people missing out on? Oh, almond cake with raspberry jam and chocolate frosting, by far. Wow, you absolutely did not hesitate. It’s my go-to. You get the richness from the almond and the tart from the jam. It’s one of the best combinations. What’s your best advice on storing leftover cake? You can freeze most cakes and they’ll be fine. But in general, you can go a couple of weeks with our cakes in…

ASK A BRAIDER You ask clients to bring a specific brand of hair called Ruwa. Why? I look for a lot of things when it comes to braiding hair. Is it light? Will it frizz after dipping it in hot water? Ruwa is my go-to. It’s lightweight, it stays smooth after being dipped, and it just looks good. It’s also anti-itch, which is important for my clients with allergies. Is there a brand that’s completely allergen free? For clients who have really bad allergies, I recommend cleansing the hair before putting it in—dip the hair in warm water with a little apple-cider vinegar and let it dry. That way, you break down some of the chemicals that are on the hair. Do you only work with synthetic hair? No. For…

ASK A BUTCHER What meat should people eat more of? Americans eat remarkably little lamb. But cooked right, the flavor is delicious. I’d also love to see more people eat goat. It’s clean and a little more strongly flavored than lamb. And rabbit, too—I’ve lived in Italy, and people eat rabbit extensively there. It’s super-delicious. Can you suggest a cut of meat for a dinner party that won’t bankrupt the host? A classic roast beef is relatively inexpensive and surprisingly delicious done rare, hot from the oven, sliced thin with horseradish or mustard. You could do Yorkshire pudding if you’re feeling festive. These cuts are not in vogue, but they’re very good and inexpensive. What other cuts of meat are underrated? I grew up eating London broil, which is a…

How long have you known Zibby? I’ve known her for a little over a decade, since before she put together her podcast, Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, even. Initially, our kids were in summer camp together. Are you a big reader? I love to read, but I find it difficult with life taking over and my own personal projects and all that. I only have one child, but I can use that excuse, too, right? I will read Zibby’s book, but I haven’t read it yet. I tend to read books that are more in the category of self-help—something that has to do with soul work, if you will. How did you pick your outfit for the party? Well, that’s pretty easy for me. I always wear black.…

HELP WANTED is out now. WHEN ADELLE WALDMAN’S daughter was 21 months old, Waldman would wake at 2:30 a.m. to nurse her, take a shower, then drive from her house in Rhinebeck to a big-box store across the Hudson, arriving early enough to stash her belongings in a locker and clock in before her shift from 4 to 8 a.m. (One time, she got a speeding ticket because she didn’t want to get written up for being late.) She would then join her team in spending the next four hours unloading a truck full of boxes, then dispersing their contents throughout the store. There was one 15-minute break halfway through the shift, and some employees would smoke cigarettes to help them stay awake. As we share American Spirits on the…

For more culture coverage and streaming recommendations, see vulture.com. TV 1. Watch 3 Body Problem They’re coming. Netflix, March 21. Several elements of this project are primed to raise eyebrows. It’s an adaptation of Liu Cixin’s sci-fi novel, which is highly acclaimed but also requires significant changes in order to make its theoretical, abstract, meditative alien-invasion story into a filmable TV show. It’s produced by D. B. Weiss and David Benioff of Game of Thrones fame. It’s Netflix, not HBO or one of the other prestige-y outlets. None of its leads are enormous stars. And yet somehow all of that adds up to a fascinating series! KATHRYN VANARENDONK MUSIC 2. Hear The Mad King Outsize characters. Rosemary and Meredith Wilson Theater, Juilliard, March 25. Composers have always been drawn to…

➺ ONE OFTEN HEARS today that gender is a social construct. The idea is sometimes credited to the book Gender Trouble, published in 1990 by a handsome young philosopher named Judith Butler. In fact, sociologists began thinking of gender as a social achievement distinct from sex as early as the 1960s. What Butler proposed was more radical: that the repeated citation of gender norms—things like wearing heels or drinking Scotch—produced the illusion of a biological sex just waiting to be infused with meaning. For Butler, gender was performative, a term they borrowed from the philosophy of language, where it referred to sentences that seem to do things: “I promise,” for instance, a phrase that literally makes a promise. Gender, too, was a kind of promise— “It’s a girl”—one that, because…

. . . . . . THE LOOK BOOK GOES TO AN UES BOOK PARTY . . . . . . . . . . A CLINTON HILL TOWNHOUSE WITH A COOKING FIREPLACE . . . . → CREATING OUR METICULOUS “Best of New York” list has been a tradition at this magazine since 1985, and given the unpredictable churn of retail in the city, we have no plans to stop. For this year’s edition, we decided to revisit and update the 30 top categories in our archive, boil them down to their most useful tidbits, and organize them into a neat resource you can refer to anytime your heat suddenly finks out in the middle of the night or you find yourself considering a hyperrealistic tattoo of a turtle.…

ASK A COBBLER When buying shoes, what should someone look for to avoid future repairs? Well, I don’t know if you can avoid that. Anything you wear you’re gonna wear out. So the best thing is to buy a good-quality leather shoe that has a leather lining, one that’s stitched onto the shoe, not glued. What’s the worst condition you’ve seen a shoe in? Oh, forget it. Disaster. I mean, people just keep wearing shoes until the holes go through the whole thing. I’ve seen it all. I have a pair of high heels I’m working on now—a dog chewed the heel off. Pradas, if I’m not mistaken. Is there a brand of shoes you’re partial to? I wear Ferragamo. And I have some Bally shoes from years ago. Gucci…

ASK A PSYCHIC How do your tarot readings unfold? I do a full session, which uses the whole deck and takes an hour. I set it up in this cross spread I created many years ago, and I read in piles. Each pile represents a different area of your psyche. As I work, I answer questions and discuss what I see and offer guidance. I get messages when the cards touch. I’ve been reading tarot for over 40 years and grew up with my mom reading cards. So I watched her technique, and my mentor’s, and I adapted their styles to create my own. Have your predictions ever come true? Recently, a woman I read for joined The Real Housewives of New York City—I predicted in her session a year…

ASK A LASER SPECIALIST What makes a laser technician great rather than merely good? A great technician listens to the client, asks questions: What have they done in the last two weeks? Are they on medication, antibiotics? Have they been in the sun? Do they use self-tanners? This assessment will tell you the proper settings to use or tell you when to postpone treatment altogether. If someone’s on medication that creates photosensitivity, they may get pigmentation that can take months to resolve. Are there different lasers for different parts of the body? Yes and for different kinds of hair and skin. Most places use one laser on everybody. We have 12 different ones. If somebody has red or blonde hair, we use a laser that targets their roots differently than…

IN THE VIDEO for her new song, “27 Club,” Tierra Whack appears in her customary setup: a surrealist world splattered with bright colors and filled with weird characters. At what seems to be a pep rally from an alternate universe, Whack wears a silver garment that looks like a cross between a choir robe and a clown suit. As a melancholy melody starts to play, she cycles through a series of animated masks—one with running eye shadow, another with subtle clown makeup—before she reveals her actual, downcast face. “I can show you how it feels,” she sings, then drops an octave, “when you lose what you love.” As band members and cheerleaders dance joyfully around her, she tells a story of disillusionment and loneliness, of how thoughts in isolation can…

HOW TO LISTEN TO Dive into ➽ “Cardinal,” a folk-rock reflection on grief whose harmonies and 12-string guitar nod to the Byrds. Sulk through ➽ “Moving Out,” a sighing vocal that is like a physical manifestation of post-breakup woe. Rebound with ➽ “Dinner With Friends,” a brief catalogue of life’s simple joys and a much-needed pick-me-up. Meditate on ➽ “Jade Green,” a prayer for freedom from anxiety whose bongos sound like galloping horses. Two-step to ➽ “Lonely Millionaire,” a sultry country-R&B jam for Golden Hour fans expecting a pop album.…