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New York December 18-31, 2023 (Digital)

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27 Articles

2 min.

Comments

1 The magazine’s annual “Reasons to Love New York” issue featured everything from a newly single former First Lady to a lost dog found through the kindness of strangers. “Reasons to Love New York was entertaining, as always, except for the item about ordering a takeout martini from Nobu, which was spectacular,” wrote Judith Coyne in a letter.“I thought you would’ve balanced the roundup with some serious substance, such as one of your excellent reporting pieces. But no, instead you piled on with a long takeout on Timothée Chalamet. 10 pages! I loved all of it. Please carry on giving me the stories I need, not just the stories I think I need.”The City’s Katie Honan commended the “good showing from Queens including the first and second slots. This is…

7 min.

Fame: Shawn McCreesh

THE CLOCK SHOULD BE TICKING on George Santos’s quarter-hour of MAGA “It”-girl fame, and with even his own party kicking him to the congressional curb, it makes you wonder what could prolong, or transform, the public’s interest in him. “How do you fit this guy into the culture? Because we need him,” Michael Hirschorn, former head of programming at VH1, who oversaw Flavor of Love, Rock of Love,and I Love the ’80s,tells me with a laugh when I ask about Santos’s prospects. “He’s like Anthony Weiner times ten, in terms of the narcissistic aspect of it, but there’s just so much pleasure in watching him—the fashion, the cockiness, the unearned swag.” As any Housewife or fallen televangelist will tell you, camp shamelessness can get you far. No wonder Santos is already…

1 min.

Neighborhood News: Billionaire Burger

ASIDE FROM Danny Meyer and Ronald McDonald, George Motz is the biggest name in burgers. He’s a pundit, an author of hamburger-history books, and the host of a show on the YouTube channel First We Feast. His large fan base recognizes him as the country’s foremost “burger scholar.” Now he has his own restaurant: Hamburger America, which opened in late November on the corner of West Houston and Macdougal, is a big-city ode to the small-town roadside griddles Motz has evangelized for throughout his career. Between Motz’s fans and everyone who saw the news on TikTok, the place had no problem drawing a crowd for its first official day in business after a heavily publicized soft opening. The ribbon cutting saw Michael Bloomberg and Christy Turlington Burns in attendance, and Chris…

6 min.

58 MINUTES WITH … Damian Williams

WHEN A JURY found the cryptocurrency crook Sam Bankman-Fried guilty of money laundering and fraud in November, Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, did something unusual. Standing in front of the federal courthouse on Pearl Street with a posse of unsmiling aides, Williams departed from his normally reserved demeanor to read the riot act to would-be criminals. “When I became U.S. Attorney, I promised that we would be relentless in rooting out corruption in our financial markets,” he said. “This is what relentless looks like.” It was a coming-out moment for an official who, after two years of quietly leading the most powerful prosecutorial office in America, is getting comfortable in the spotlight. “There should not be two standards of justice in this country, one…

6 min.

Screen Time: John Herrman

FOR THE PAST YEAR, the political class has been wearing itself out over what sounds like a simple question: Why are Americans so down on the economy? Wages are rising, unemployment is low, labor participation is high, and inflation is slowing. Look at the consumer price index! The Biden economy is pretty great, actually, yet less than a fifth of swing-state voters will concede that the condition of the economy is even “good.” Okay, but while inflation is in some sense under control, and some goods and services are even getting cheaper, prices remain noticeably high; likewise, interest rates, while no longer rising, have frozen the housing market, leaving homeowners and renters alike feeling stuck in place or worse. Look at the consumer price index! The Biden economy is pretty…

29 min.

The Campaign Is Going Great A REPORT FROM BIDEN ’24 HEADQUARTERS.

ONE FRIDAY MORNING in November, a handful of Joe Biden’s top aides gathered in a Sheraton conference room in Chicago. Alumni of Barack Obama’s first presidential bid had descended on the city to celebrate the 15th anniversary of his 2008 victory, and now, after a night of partying, more than 100 of them had rolled out of bed to hear the Biden campaign’s leaders detail the effort to get the president a second term. The audience had reason to be skeptical about 2024, even panicky. The president is old, hobbled by the aftereffects of a big spike in inflation, buffeted by two wars, and starting to trail in polls against an opponent whose grip on the Republican Party seems stronger than ever. An off-cycle Election Day was looming after the weekend.…

30 min.

THE AGE GAPPERS

Jessica Moss met Kevin Hardesty in the summer of 2000 at a feature-film production company in Los Angeles. He was a 37-year-old executive; she was a 19-year-old intern. Moss first spotted Hardesty while she was doing paperwork in the operations department: He strolled by wearing a silm maroon Prada dress shirt tucked into a pair of perfectly cut trousers and had thick horn-rimmed glasses. On the last day of her internship, she followed him to the elevators as he was leaving to go home and asked him out to lunch. As the elevator doors closed, he shrugged and said, “Well, I’m listed.” Moss looked him up in the white pages, and they went out a few times after that, but ultimately Hardesty told her it couldn’t happen. “You’re too young,” he…

31 min.

AN AMERICAN GIRLHOOD IN THE OZEMPIC ERA

PEOPLE HAVE HAD OPINIONS about Maggie Ervie’s body ever since she was a baby. Maggie, who is 15 years old, has lived her whole life in Marceline, Missouri, a town of just more than 2,000 people 97 miles northeast of Kansas City, reached by driving straight highways that traverse wide cornfields lined by white fences, past sale lots full of shiny blue tractors. Walt Disney spent his boyhood in Marceline, and Mark Twain’s hometown is not far away. The people of Marceline—many descended from farmers, railroaders, and coal miners—have grown up together, as did their parents and grandparents, which makes them a little more comfortable expressing themselves about one another’s business. When Maggie was still in diapers, a relative leaning over her changing table made a comment to her mother, Erika,…

6 min.

An Unfussy Iron

. . . . THE LOOK BOOK GOES TO the nutcracker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A NEW OLD-SEEMING RESTAURANT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .…

4 min.

What to Get the Kids?

Buying for children age 2 and under is difficult. What have you guys done well with? WINNIE YANG, Senior Editor: Babies will play with garbage. They would rather have the wrapping paper than the thing in the package, but something that makes them feel like a grown-up is good. So that’s a good age to get a kid a scooter or a balance bike. LIZA CORSILLO, Senior Writer: Yes—my parents are getting Arlo, my 1-year-old, the Scuttlebug, and we’re very excited about that. ALEXIS SWERDLOFF, Deputy Editor: Does anyone have that Rody? That is one of the things I have been contemplating getting Eve, who is 2. W.Y.: We have Rody! Two is a great age for Rody. There’s something about its round, bulbous shape and its rubberiness, as well as its wall-eyed stare,…

2 min.

The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center

ADELINE F. Third-grader, Ridgewood, New Jersey Whose idea was it to go see The Nutcracker? My mom and my dad’s. It was basically kind of a surprise. That morning, they were like, “Hey, we’re going to go do something really special. Get a little dressed up.” So I really didn’t know too much about it, but I knew we were doing something special. Any plans for the holidays? My mom goes to a pottery studio, and one of her friends at the studio has a dog, so we’re going to be dog-sitting that dog. Do you have any dogs of your own? No, but soon we might get a dog. What kind do you want? Well, I want a Cavalier King, but we’re not going to get one. Have you wanted a dog for a while?…

3 min.

Cloud City in Tribeca

DURING THE PANDEMIC, Inna Khidekel and Bert van der Walt hatched a plan to move to Florida. They both work in finance—she is senior managing director and global co-head of client solutions at Bridge Investment Group, he the co-founding partner and portfolio manager of Tectonic Investors—and had been renting a loft in Tribeca that would be too small with their second child on the way. But after they found a house in Miami, Khidekel’s company asked that she stay put, so they went looking for a new place in Manhattan. “This was actually our first purchase in the city,” Khidekel says of the Tribeca duplex they bought in early 2022. It’s in an 1881 cast-iron building that had once been a textile factory and was redone by the Pritzker Prize–winning architect…

4 min.

Very Offline

A VISIT TO EULALIE begins, inevitably, with an outgoing voice-mail message. That alone may be disqualifying for whole swaths of would-be diners; Eulalie is on no reservation apps and has no official website. “You have found us in the wonderful and historic Tribeca,” announces the voice of Tina Vaughn, who, with her husband, Chip Smith, runs Eulalie in the address recently vacated by Bâtard. This is not a short message. It comes with news (it is fully booked), rules (“We do so appreciate your best in terms of attire … think more Mad Men and less Grubhub”), and an invitation to leave a message and be called back because, as Vaughn says, “we are so looking forward to welcoming you.” She means it, too. “Welcome to the house!” Vaughn crowed on…

9 min.

LET’S DISCUSS … THE BEST MOVIES OF THE YEAR

WITH THE END of the year upon us, it makes sense to start thinking about movie endings. Not just the actual endings to movies—though this year certainly gave us a few notable climactic final scenes, from John Wick: Chapter 4 to Oppenheimer to Barbie to Beau Is Afraid—but also a general sense that some of the biggest trends we’ve seen in recent years may be coming to an end. Is that a good thing? Or is this a Careful What We Wish For situation? As our movie critics sat down to ponder their favorite films of the year, they couldn’t escape one question: If 2023 marks the end of so many things, what’s next? BILGE EBIRI: This year saw several major superhero movies go bust. It saw Disney deliver one bona…

3 min.

THE BEST MOVIES OF 2023, ACCORDING TO JOHN WATERS

1. BEAU IS AFRAID (Ari Aster) A superlong, super-crazy, super-funny movie about one man’s mental breakdown with a cast better than Around the World in 80 Days’: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Parker Posey, Nathan Lane. It’s a laugh riot from hell you’ll never forget, even if you want to. 2. A PRINCE (Pierre Creton) You’ve never heard of this one, but I’d never heard of Super Mario Bros.when it came out either, so there. A most unlikely gay movie about a gerontophilic hot male farmer and his two old-man lovers who drop dead for no apparent reason other than being “embarrassed by youth and beauty.” It’s dirty in a soil-like way. Dicks turn into mythic creatures; men howl like dogs. Slow, spooky, and poetically fucked up. In other words, perfect.…

3 min.

THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR

1. Marc Maron, From Bleak to Dark (Max) Maron’s previous special was about how to live in an apocalyptic moment; From Bleak to Dark is about what happens when the apocalypse arrives and you find yourself still standing. The core is Maron discussing the death of his partner, Lynn Shelton, and though the material is not light, it has an appreciative quality to it, a sense of delight from Maron almost in spite of himself. 2. Beth Stelling, If You Didn’t Want Me Then (Netflix) Stelling’s persona, which ticks between disaffection and full-throated weirdness, is especially effective in this special, which she recorded in her hometown of Dayton, Ohio. It’s full of reflections on her childhood, and the highlight is a stretch of jokes about her father, culminating in an account of his…

8 min.

LET’S DISCUSS … THE BEST TELEVISION OF THE YEAR

ONCE UPON A TIME, television told stories about intelligent machines that take over the world and algorithms that prevent people from making their own choices, and it felt like distant, fanciful science fiction. This year, as actors and writers remained on strike for half of it—in part over the threat AI poses to human artistry and the opaque algorithm that dictates which streaming shows get placed in front of which eyeballs—this same kind of storytelling felt more present than future tense. And there was a fair amount of it in 2023: some made by streaming platforms most likely to succumb to the machines, others developed through traditional cable platforms most likely to rage against them. If there’s anything we can take away from our season of list-making, it’s that a…

3 min.

THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

1. Sampha, Lahai The U.K. singer-songwriter-producer’s sophomore LP is a celebration of family and fatherhood but also an alluring development in the ongoing quest to blur the lines between compositions crafted with machines and music made on traditional instruments. It’s a delicate musicology lesson about the sounds that connect cultures across continents couched in a contemplation of man’s place in the cosmos. 2. Iris DeMent, Workin’ on a World DeMent reacts to the tumult we’ve seen since 2016 with a song cycle about mustering the bravery to love and fight for what’s right even when it feels radioactive to do so. “I’m going down to sing in Texas, where anybody can carry a gun,” she huffs in a meditation on paranoia and Islamophobia. Her weapons of choice are wit and warmth. 3. Sufjan Stevens,…

1 min.

BEST SONGS

1. “VAMPIRE,” OLIVIA RODRIGO Calling an ex a bloodsucker and fame fucker is one thing, but telling him “You can’t love anyone ’cause that would mean you had a heart” is ice cold. 2. “BOY’S A LIAR PT. 2,” PINKPANTHERESS AND ICE SPICE A perfect on-paper and in-practice matchup that doesn’t jettison the original song’s mojo. 3. “A&W,” LANA DEL REY The famously on-the-nose artist laments “the experience of bein’ an American whore.” 4. “DUSTIES,” MAIYA THE DON “If I let you near me, then you lucky,” the Brooklyn rapper sharply snarls over a Lil’ Kim sample. 5. “BLACK EARTH, WI,” RATBOYS Only a midwestern rock band could pull such beauty from getting lost on the highway. 6. “SHAKIRA: BZRP MUSIC SESSIONS, VOL. 53,” SHAKIRA AND BIZARRAP The superstar goes scorched earth on her ex in the year’s best diss track. 7.…

7 min.

LET’S DISCUSS … THE BEST THEATER OF THE YEAR

SARA HOLDREN: I came back to this job in August, moving up from Virginia, and feel a little bit like Thomas Jefferson—“What’d I miss?” JACKSON MCHENRY: In the spring, because of the Tony season, there were a lot of Broadway musical revivals—Parade, Sweeney Todd, Camelot—with a “We’re back from the pandemic, we’re going big” bent. With Camelot, I guess we learned that Aaron Sorkin’s maybe not the one to revise your musical. I did like Parade and Sweeney a lot. But the show that hit me hardest was the Encores! revival of The Light in the Piazza with Ruthie Ann Miles. It was relatively straightforward, except cast with an Asian American mother and daughter, which adds a new tension to a story about encountering all these European depictions of beauty. But…

2 min.

THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

1. Doppelganger, by Naomi Klein Leftist writer Naomi Klein investigates the red-pilling of fellow author Naomi Wolf, with whom she’s constantly confused—then uses that as a jumping-off point to explore the disinformation shadow world that exists alongside our own. 2. Enter Ghost, by Isabella Hammad This astonishing second novel tells the story of a London-based Palestinian actress who is enlisted to play Gertrude in an Arabic staging of Hamlet to be performed in the West Bank. In the shadow of IDF checkpoints and interrogations, the cast mounts a production infused with subtext. 3. When Crack Was King, by Donovan X. Ramsey A deeply researched and deeply felt nonfiction debut about the 1980s crack epidemic, alternating between legal and cultural detail and the personal stories of four people whose lives were profoundly changed by the rise…

1 min.

BEST VIDEO GAMES

1. BALDUR’S GATE 3 Your Dungeons & Dragons character’s actions will literally be decided by the rolling of a 20-sided die as you navigate misadventures in Faerûn. 2. STREET FIGHTER 6 A new control scheme vastly simplifies special-move inputs, allowing all of our old thumbs to summon up a Shoryuken. 3. ALAN WAKE II A psychological detective adventure; you investigate the eldritch disappearance of the namesake author (and obvious Stephen King stand-in). 4. TEARS OF THE KINGDOM Nintendo has totally reinvented Zelda twice in six years, and both times it wound up with a new classic. 5. SYSTEM SHOCK It turns out the spirit of the 1994 original was always indelible; it just needed a fresh coat of paint. 6. PIZZA TOWER Wario is replaced with a madcap pizza chef lost in a garish, hand-scrawled Ren & Stimpy–esque universe. 7. PIKMIN 4 Sometimes…

3 min.

THE BEST PODCASTS OF THE YEAR

1. The Retrievals (New York Times and Serial Productions) It was a real-life nightmare: A nurse at the Yale Fertility Center was found to have routinely swapped out fentanyl with saline, thus subjecting patients to the full pain of egg-retrieval procedures. The Retrievals could’ve been a series that fixated on the luridity of the crime, but reporter Susan Burton cedes much of the floor to the patients themselves and leaves room at the edges for other thorny subject matter, such as the tension between bodily autonomy and motherhood. 2. You Didn’t See Nothin (USG Audio and the Invisible Institute) Chicago writer Yohance Lacour, looking to settle a kind of spiritual score, revisits a hate crime that took place in the late ’90s: A young Black boy, Lenard Clark, was beaten into a coma…

3 min.

THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR

1. Henry Taylor, “B Side,” Whitney Museum of American Art With a sweeping grasp of history, art history, and everyday life in this country, Taylor provided a Whitney retrospective that channeled rage, pain, love, and suffering—the long American night done in vivid color and bold strokes. 2. Tracey Emin, “Lovers Grave,” White Cube Powerful, scrawled, half-mad, brilliantly rendered images of Emin in bed, opening herself up, being blown apart by unseen forces, reconstituting herself, and making love in rooms filled with ghosts and coffins. Emin is our Edvard Munch with a profound seer’s soul. 3. Dana Schutz, “Jupiter’s Lottery,” David Zwirner Gallery It was amazing to see Schutz reach visionary heights in this eye-burning exhibition. There were gigantic narratives of struggle between cosmic social forces, lurid spirits, ghouls, twisted beings, monsters, and babies—with the brave…

9 min.

To DO

For more culture coverage and streaming recommendations, see vulture.com. MOVIES 1. See Carol Time for your favorite tragic holiday story. Metrograph, December 23. The mesmerizing 2015 drama of forbidden desire in 35-mm. has become a Christmas tradition at the Metrograph with good reason. Todd Haynes and cinematographer Edward Lachman’s richly textured images envelop us in the heartbreaking mid-century romance of a wealthy woman (Cate Blanchett) and a young, aspiring photographer (Rooney Mara). BILGE EBIRI TV 2. Watch Dr. Death Season Two Medical malpractice. Peacock, December 21. Health-care-related fraud is a particular horror. This series, based on a podcast of the same name, focuses on thoracic surgeon Paolo Macchiarini (played by Edgar Ramírez), whose misleading research led to patients’ deaths. Mandy Moore costars as a journalist who begins asking questions Paolo can’t adequately answer, and their blurred-lines relationship might lead to some…

7 min.

GAMES

THE new york CROSSWORD Celebrity Siting By Matt Gaffney The New York Crossword now posts online on Saturday mornings. Across 1 See the sights5 Tony that led to Emmys12 “Cosmopolitan” rival19 “Let me get this straight …”20 Forest leaper22 “Seven Year Ache” singer Cash23 “50 First Dates” and “Charlie’s Angels” star25 Most recent college grads26 Strawberry once found in New York fields27 Checking out the enemy’s position, briefly29 Where cranberries grow30 Bond rating35 Music legend who acted in “Labyrinth” and “The Prestige”38 Pittsburgh-based metals giant42 Horse controllers44 “I’ll take care of that”45 He played Faceman on “The A-Team”48 Part of PRNDL52 Object53 Orwell title word55 Face cover57 It’s upped at a poker game59 “The Partridge Family” actor63 One more than hexa-64 Adverb seen on 90-Across65 “Now I understand!”66 14.3 percent parts72 Producer of the 1997…

1 min.

THE APPROVAL MATRIX

PHOTOGRAPHS: GETTY IMAGES (YSL, STEFANIK, GIULIANI, ESCOLA, LIMELIGHT, BOYLAN, LEAR, GRANDE, WILDE, DEVITO); UKGOV/FLICKR (ADAMS); WALKINGSF/FLICKR (RENT); GADS/CAMEO.COM (SANTOS); MTA/FLICKR (MTA); @BALFOURUK/TWITTER (TRUMP); MARÍA MAGDALENA CAMPOS-PONS (BEHOLD); JAMES FUENTES (LAHTI); THE WHITE HOUSE (BIDEN); ITV (TRAIN); BRAVO (MADIX, LYONS); NYC.GOV (HEART); AYAT (DITMAS); WARNER BROS. (OOMPA LOOMPA, WONKA); MARILEE HOLMES/INSTAGRAM (EXES); REAL WORLD RECORDS (GABRIEL); THEPOGUESOFFICIAL/YOUTUBE (MACGOWAN); DISNEY (CHIHUAHUA); STUDIO GHIBLI (HERON); ESPN (OHTANI); PARAMOUNT+ (COFFEE); NETFLIX (CONNECTICUT); SANTACON (FUNDS)…

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New York December 18-31, 2023 (Digital)

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