The Origins of Sprawl
On William Gibson, Sonic Youth, and the genesis of the American suburb.
On William Gibson, Sonic Youth, and the genesis of the American suburb.
I stood up when they called my name, and began to read from the piece of notebook paper in my hands:
Well, I’ve got something to say
I killed your baby today
And it doesn’t matter much to me
As long as it’s dead
Sweet lovely death
I am waiting for …
Some people revere Jean-Luc Godard, others obsess over finding subliminal messages in the films of Stanley Kubrick. Much as I love the work of these masters, the filmmaker whose work I tend to think the most about is John Hughes. From the iconic film…
At the age of fourteen, one year removed from the forced tribalism brought on by being a bar mitzvah–age Jewish boy, I decided I wanted to define myself by something besides my recent readmission into the Chosen. Your typical suburban weirdo, I sta…
People who live in New York might agree that there is very little reason to find yourself between Fourteenth and Forty-Second Streets unless you absolutely have to. Go past Union Square, and you’re liable to bump into everything from confused tourist…
We’re out this week, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2012 while we’re away. We hope you enjoy—and have a happy New Year! In a 1940 letter to his daughter written six months before his death, F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Once I …
One could hardly call the area around Fifty-second Street, between Park and Madison Avenues in Manhattan, off the beaten path. The sleekly designed New York City Ferrari dealership sits two blocks away on Fifty-fifth, the Cartier American flagship st…
I recently found myself in need of an inexpensive suit that didn’t look like I picked it up at a Salvation Army. Like countless other men in the same position, I headed to J.Crew. As I walked over the wide-planked wood floors of the store, I adm…