New York Magazine October 11-24, 2021

1 In New York’s latest cover story, Simone Biles told Camonghne Felix, “I Should Have Quit Way Before Tokyo” (September 27–October 10). Insider’s Sophie Kleeman called the story “a beautifully considered examination of trauma and grief: how it functions like a crack that splinters out and touches everything else, and how it’s really about figuring out how to live alongside it, rather than moving on from it.” “There is strength in vulnerability,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom, California’s First Partner, wrote. “Thank you @Simone_Biles for choosing yourself and being such an amazing example for all of us.” And Lindsey Boylan, a former aide to Andrew Cuomo who accused the ex-governor of sexual harassment, wrote, “Walking away is a revolutionary act of self acceptance and love. I am so appreciative of Simone Biles…

EVEN AS HE PREPARES for an all-but-certain victory in the November mayoral election, Eric Adams is facing a problem: His honeymoon is almost over before it has even officially begun. Thanks to the peculiarities of the political calendar, the minute Adams won the Democratic primary in July, he became the favorite to win the race for mayor. But it’s also the first time in modern history that New York has held a mayoral primary so early in the year. (In the past, the primaries were held in September.) In a city where Democrats have an overwhelming registration advantage, Adams is basically a lock. Betting and prediction markets give him a 97 percent chance of winning. The current mayor, Bill de Blasio, has more or less checked out of the job, reportedly…

MADISON SUTTON HAD been a real-estate agent for less than a year when the city shut down. Sutton, now 25, was surviving on a trickle of leads and started posting apartment tours to TikTok. A few months later, she was getting so many inquiries—up to 500 a day—that she ended up hiring a team of two agents to help field them. “I was doing 25,000 to 30,000 steps per day,” said Sutton, who now has almost 95,000 followers. “I had to start wearing knee braces because I was going to so many walk-ups.” Her posts vary from straightforward walk-throughs to comedic takes on the Murray Hill dating scene. (If he can’t commit to a full wall in his apartment, he can’t commit to you.) It turns out that TikTok, famous…

STEPHANIE GRISHAM SAW THE PICKUP outside and yelped, “That’s Larry!” She grabbed a package and raced out her door, down the steps of the porch, and through the gate of the white picket fence and leaned halfway into the truck’s passenger window. “I wanted you to have this,” she said. Larry unwrapped the package to reveal a shimmering whiskey glass embossed in gold with the presidential seal. Grisham told him it had been engraved with the signature of the 45th president of the United States. “It’s one of the last ones,” she said. Larry’s eyes widened beneath the brim of his TRUMP-embroidered baseball cap. “Wow,” he said. “Thank you.” Larry—“the meat guy”—is a local rancher who always comes bearing gifts. It was the first Friday of October in Plainville, Kansas, and he’d stopped…

WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE, a friend died, and for weeks afterward, I thought I saw him everywhere. I didn’t suspect him of haunting me; it was more that people resembled him so strongly I believed, temporarily, that he was still alive. In September, when I learned another young friend had died in a tragic accident, I wondered if I’d see him, too. Human beings are uncomfortable with absence. We like to find patterns, fill in blanks. An individual death creates a void in reality, and almost two years of constant death has left most of us groping in the dark. By the start of October, more than 700,000 people had died of COVID-19 in the United States. A recent memorial on the National Mall takes this absence and renders it…

WHEN MYRTLE MCKINNEY first moved into the Carter G. Woodson Houses in 2004, she felt lucky to be there. The complex is one of only 38 public-housing developments in New York City reserved for seniors, and the waiting list for a one-bedroom can stretch on for years. A Jamaican emigrant in her early 70s, she had raised seven kids working as a housekeeper in Florida and the Bahamas before relocating to Brooklyn to live with her daughter. By the time her application was approved, she was desperate for a place of her own. After settling into apartment 6M, McKinney quickly jumped into the bustling social scene enjoyed by the development’s 450 residents. She joined a knitting circle in the first-floor senior center and spent her mornings relaxing with friends amid the rows…