New York Magazine

“it’s gonna be great!” john homans (1958–2020)

Ariel Levy (writer): He was not so much your editor as your guru. I didn’t just trust him to tell me what to do with a story; I trusted him to tell me what to do with my life. Joe Hagan (writer): He was a vision-quest editor: He gave you a mandate, in this oracular style that’s hard to describe. When I was tired, depressed, demoralized, he’d say, “Oh, this is the sport of kings, man! We’re lucky! This is the great fortune—the world is ours to go have fun with!” Then you’d turn in a manuscript and he’d always say the same thing: “It’s gonna be great!” And it’s the worst thing you can say, but it also gives you hope! Gabriel Sherman (writer): “It’s gonna be great!” Which means it’s…

empires : zak cheney-rice

GENERAL-ELECTION SEASON typically announces itself with a handful of reliable signposts—veepstakes rumors, dueling party conventions, more frequent campaign rallies in contested states. The presidency of Donald Trump has occasioned a new one: the deployment of militarized federal forces on American soil. Their presence in Portland, Oregon (and at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018), is more than a flex of authoritarian muscle. It marks, for Trump, the establishment of an election-year ritual, a political strategy ripe for replication anytime he faces the will of the voters. Especially if he thinks he might lose. With three months to go until Election Day, the president is seeing some of the worst polling numbers of his tenure. Eight in ten Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction, and just 38 percent say…

lezley mcspadden

FERGUSON POLICE OFFICER Darren Wilson shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown around this time of year, when the high summer sun in Missouri heats the pavement to temperatures that sear the skin. There are concerts, and at night the riverfront lights up with fireworks. Around this time, Lezley McSpadden’s mind usually turns to the logistics of honoring her late son, whom she called “Mike Mike.” Usually, she is planning an annual foundation gala to benefit mothers who have lost children to violence or preparing a visit to Brown’s grave site on the anniversary of his death, August 9. But this summer brought with it a new climate, with protesters calling out the names of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and, still, Mike Brown. Seeing officers indicted, a police…

100-person poll: you peed where?

Have you been drinking outside? YES 95% “Hell yes.” NO 5% “But only because I’m pregnant.” HOW OFTEN? Every day ............................... 1 Weekly ................................ 62 Sometimes ......................... 32 Once or twice before ........... 5 ARE YOU DRINKING: Less ..................................... 44 More ................................... 26 Much more ........................... 8 Much less .............................15 About the same ....................7 ARE YOU GOING INTO OTHER PEOPLE’S APARTMENTS AFTER DRINKING? YES ..................................... 33 NO ...................................... 67 HOW MANY FRIENDS ARE YOU USUALLY GOING OUT WITH? Just one person ................... 6 2-3 people ......................... 44 4-5 people ......................... 41 6-7 people ............................ 8 I don’t care how many! .........1 Where are your favorite places to drink right now? Check all that apply: At the park 70 At home ............................. 43 On the street ......................16 At outdoor bars ..................17 At outdoor restaurants .......12 Other?................ “Everywhere” HAVE YOU MADE OUT WITH ANYONE NEW AFTER GOING OUT DRINKING? YES......................................................22 NO.......................................................78 What are you comfortable doing these days? Check all that apply: DRINKING IN PARKS 97 STAYING HOME 96…

vision 2020 : gabriel debenedetti

JOE BIDEN AND ELIZABETH WARREN didn’t know each other extremely well until March. They’d been crossing paths for well over a decade, most uncomfortably in 2005 at a Capitol Hill hearing, where they collided over bankruptcy law and the Delaware senator called the Harvard Law professor’s argument “very compelling and mildly demagogic,” and most closely ten years later at Biden’s official residence in D.C. There, the VP secretly told Senator Warren he would want her as his running mate if he ran for president in 2016. For all their mutual respect, when they finally shared a debate stage in September 2019, it wasn’t exactly chummy. So when Warren and Biden spoke on the phone shortly before she dropped out of the presidential race early this year, there was every reason to…

two lawyers, a summer of unrest, and a bottle of bud light. the making of a molotov cocktail

IT’S AN AUDACIOUS CHOICE to pause in front of an Applebee’s restaurant on Flatbush Avenue and grant an impromptu interview to a video journalist shortly before you allegedly throw a Molotov cocktail into a police car. But the city was out of its collective mind that night, the Friday after the Monday George Floyd was killed. Urooj Rahman faced the camera looking high-strung and distracted, answering questions as her hands waved and flitted around her body and in front of her face as if they were birds escaping from a box. Rahman emigrated from Pakistan when she was 4 and now lives with her elderly mother in Bay Ridge; she works as an attorney at Legal Services in the Bronx, representing tenants without means in eviction proceedings. “This shit won’t ever…