Longreads

N. Nitrogen. Atomic number seven. Unnoticed, untasted, it nevertheless fills our stomachs. It is the engine of agriculture, the key to plenty in our crowded, hungry world. Without this…

Looking back on Hunter S. Thompson's classic work of gonzo journalism:

"The telephone rang at Warren Hinckle's San Francisco home at about 3:30 in the morning on Wednesday, April 29, 1970. When Hinckle picked up the receiver, he heard the unmistakable voice of Hunter S. Thompson, calling from Aspen, proclaiming, "Goddammit, Scanlan's has to cover the Derby. It's important."

The pitch, even at the late hour and the late date (barely 72 hours before the race itself), was fairly irresistible.1 Send Thompson, still finding his distinctive voice in countercultural journalism, to his hometown of Louisville to cover the drunken, debauched scene at Churchill Downs for Scanlan's, the anti-establishment (some would say subversive) monthly magazine for which Hinckle was co-editor.

Hinckle agreed on the spot, booked Thompson a ticket, wired him expense money, and then set about finding an artist to provide illustrations for the story. Originally, he had hoped to send a photographer to shoot the event, but after haggling with Thompson, he instead hired the English illustrator Ralph Steadman."

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I have wronged the state of Kentucky, but compared to the Kentucky Fried Chicken people I am an innocent. All I did was to pass on the information that a friend of mine named Marshall J. Dodge…

by Sy Montgomery Published in the November/December 2011 issue of Orion magazine Photograph: Brandon Cole ON AN UNSEASONABLY WARM day in the middle of March, I traveled from New Hampshire…

Which brings me to M. Wells, a metal-clad diner as shiny as a magpie's trinket, situated on a corner in Queens as dead-drab as one of the borough's countless cemeteries. A little more than a year ago, the diner was an abandoned shell, and now it symbolizes the renewal of Long Island City as surely as the MoMA PS1 art museum and the Silvercup film studios. I don't know what a burger once cost at the derelict diner that became M. Wells, since I never ate there, but I'm betting it was about $2.99. M. Wells sells one for $42, proof that gentrification is thriving in Queens. ... My experience there was like no other. The motto is "All's well at M. Wells." I assure you it is not.