The Eagle Has Landed
The behind-the-scenes story of how NFL prospect Michael Sam came out:
The plan was set. The story would break right after the NFL Combine simultaneously on ESPN, The New York Times and Outsports. There might be a couple interviews after that, but otherwise Sam would focus on football.
The timing, however, would quickly change. Even as the plan was being formulated, it was like outrunning an avalanche. Every day it became more apparent that too many people knew what was coming. While Collins had kept his coming out a secret held among just a few trusted confidants, Sam’s sexual orientation would soon become the worst-kept secret in the sports media.
Welcome to Bakersfield, California
Carl Cole escaped to Bakersfield, Calif. hoping to build a better life for his family. He ended up helping make the town a “foreclosure capital of America”:
Crisp & Cole began paying straw buyers up to $20,000 each so they would pose as home buyers on loan application documents, federal prosecutors say. The properties were then flipped from “owner” to “owner”, generating fees for the firm and profits for people with pieces of the deals. “What we found is that local people with knowledge of how the system worked were taking advantage,” says Kirk Sherriff, an assistant US attorney in Fresno, California, where the case is being prosecuted.
Being Gay in Russia Today: A Reading List
This week’s picks from Emily include stories from n+1, GQ, and The New York Times.
‘That “distressed baby” who Tim Armstrong blamed for AOL’s benefit cuts? She’s my daughter’
Author Deanna Fei speaks out on the fight to save the life of her daughter, who was born just five months into her pregnancy, at 1 lb., 9 oz.—and what happened when AOL CEO Tim Armstrong pointed to their family as a reason the company had to cut benefits:
I take issue with how he reduced my daughter to a “distressed baby” who cost the company too much money. How he blamed the saving of her life for his decision to scale back employee benefits. How he exposed the most searing experience of our lives, one that my husband and I still struggle to discuss with anyone but each other, for no other purpose than an absurd justification for corporate cost-cutting.
Diary of a 24-Hour Dive Bar
What does a 24-hour bar look like at 7 a.m.? Sarah Baird pulls up a round-the-clock barstool at NOLA’s Brothers III to experience the full lifecycle of nightlife’s greatest cultural intersection—the dive bar:
It’s 10 a.m., and Spider is sweeping cigarette butts from the floor with all the finesse of a waiter cleaning up crumbs between courses at Le Veau d’Or. A scruffy, waiflike man who bears a startling resemblances to the broom with which he’s sweeping, Spider hollers through the empty bar, spittle flying in the morning light, “They just throw ‘em on the floor—don’t care a thing for ‘ol Spider! No damn respect.”
The mid-morning sun is cracking through the front window of Brothers III, where I’m anchored at the bar spinning one of the perfectly clean ashtrays with my index finger. In a world so saturated with craft cocktails and drowning in mixologists, the dive bar has become, perhaps, the last true rara avis. While I’ve spent many a long, rowdy night at Brothers III, I wondered: what does a dive bar like this look like when the sun’s rising? What does it look like at high noon? With those questions, my journey to capture the 24-hour life cycle of a bar began in earnest.
Grief Has No Deadline
She spent two decades as a local reporter covering L.A.’s grisliest crimes. But when the victim is a member of her own family, she learns what hard news feels like from the other side:
Memories of that night are a mosaic: the flashing lights, police cars, yellow tape, and Lil Bit’s car, stopped in the middle of the intersection of Century and San Pedro, where the shooting took place. Then to the lobby of Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, where we multiply—more family, more friends. We form an entourage. A guard directs us to the hospital’s chapel, where the matriarchs of the family are sitting—Lil Bit’s grandmother, Alberta, and my mother, Ida. The room fills with us: aunts, uncle, sisters, brother, stepmother, cousin. Then his twin walks in, not knowing what has happened—until he looks around the room at everyone who has gathered, at everyone’s faces, and he knows. “No!” he says, and I remember wanting to make this go away, to bring Lil Bit back for all of us, but especially for him.
Had I been reporting the story, I would have taken notes to remember the details, like the tears in the eyes of the hospital’s social worker as she talks to us.
You Can Explain eBay’s $50 Billion Turnaround With Just This One Crazy Story
How an employee secretly recruited a team to fly to Sydney and redesign eBay’s homepage, without the direct signoff of the CEO:
But now, in that cab at the airport, the manic high had for a moment worn off, and Abraham was suddenly facing reality. The reality was his plan had a few problems.
Abraham listed them off in his head. For starters, almost no one at eBay knew what he was up to — including Donahoe himself. It was unclear who was going to pay for the trip. Abraham had gotten the six tickets to Sydney through eBay’s travel service, but technically, he’d never actually gotten approval. As for the rest of the trip’s costs, his plan was to foot the bill and then expense it. Maybe they’d sign off, maybe they wouldn’t.
Then there was the little matter of where he and his team would sleep. There was a possible Airbnb apartment, but no confirmation.
Into the Pines
A man, deep in debt, hides in the woods of East Texas for several months, stealing from the residents of a small community:
Few residents were willing to discuss the run of break-ins—the sheriff estimates at least 35 in all—that spanned most of 2013. Dyes Kountry Katfish, the last spot in town where locals might gather to gossip about the mystery over iced teas and fried lunch, went out of business in 2011. But privately, in homes or at the school nearby in Woden, residents spun their theories. Popular opinion first blamed delinquent youth on spring break; investigators even pulled kids out of classrooms for questioning. The sheriff’s department rushed out for calls about suspicious vehicles that could be the thieves’ getaway cars. Deputies patrolled Melrose at night in unmarked cars and called in the Texas Department of Public Safety to fly over the area. But the break-ins continued—cars, homes and abandoned trailers—without a sign of the culprit. Cash and Social Security cards disappeared from wallets, but oddly, not checks or credit cards. The thief plucked food, guns and other tools of the outdoors from their homes, but perhaps most disturbingly, he robbed residents of the secluded security they prized above all.
How the Beatles Went Viral
At the end of 1963, very few people in America had heard of the Beatles. Then six weeks later, they blew up. Greenberg explains how the band finally broke through after multiple false starts trying to gain traction with radio airplay:
Transglobal licensed “She Loves You” to a tiny indie, Swan Records of Philadelphia, which released it stateside on Sept. 16. Swan had even less success with the Beatles than Vee-Jay: The song failed to chart at any station, and was roundly rejected by audiences when it was played at all. DJ Murray the K at WINS New York spun “She Loves You” on Sept. 28 in a five-way “battle of the hits,” where it came in third. He continued to play it every night for a week solid, but got no reaction. Swan convinced “American Bandstand,” which broadcast from the label’s hometown, to play the song in its “Rate a Record” segment, where it received a score of 73 out of 100. Worse, the teens on “Bandstand” laughed when host Dick Clark held up a photo of the moptopped Beatles. After that incident, Clark recalled, “I figured these guys were going nowhere.”
The Big Book of Black Quarterbacks
A comprehensive history of every black quarterback to play in the NFL, dating back to 1920:
More than a compilation of names, this was an opportunity to find and publish these men’s stories. Some are brief; others are long. We penned longer pieces on the most notable players, like Fritz Pollard, Warren Moon, Steve McNair, Michael Vick, the immortal Akili Smith, and many more, but every player on this list is part of a broad narrative that traces the history of football and its relationship with the broader society.
As part of this, we tested old stereotypes and answered old questions. Do black quarterbacks run more or less than whites? Are they more accomplished passers? You’ll find answers here.
You must be logged in to post a comment.