In the East Village, Waiting for the Wrecking Ball

It was 1976. Ms. Stewart could never have forecast the waves of change that would first lap at the East Village and then overwhelm it, a steady march of restaurants and fancy apartment buildings that would come to colonize the neighborhood. Now, the buildings are in their last days, set to be torn down in August and replaced by the sort of glossy glass tower that has been sprouting up in the city in recent years. With the buildings dies another piece of an older, messier New York, one made remarkable by the fact that it has existed for so long.

Published: Jul 15, 2011
Length: 10 minutes (2,615 words)

Invasion of the Minnesota Normals

An anxious hush fell over the room as the exams were passed out. Within minutes, however, the silence was breached by a stir of astonishment. “People were looking around at each other with this expression of ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’” Staples recalls. The questions in front of them had nothing to do with renting furniture, or managing employees, or keeping the books. “My sex life is satisfactory.” “I have diarrhea once a month or more.” “I would like to be a florist.” “Everything tastes the same.” “My mother was a good woman.” “I am a special agent of God.”

Source: The Believer
Published: Aug 1, 2004
Length: 30 minutes (7,523 words)

Star-crossed

Nevertheless, the award of Michelin stars can add up to 30 per cent to takings, according to restaurant owners. The wealth just isn’t shared by the Guide Michelin, which is haemorrhaging more than €15m annually. Accenture, the consultancy firm, was brought in last year and issued a dire warning: the company needed to change rapidly or risk becoming a ­forgotten relic in the digital age. A year later, Michelin is still pondering what to do. And seven months after Naret’s departure, it has yet to announce a new editorial director.

Source: Financial Times
Published: Jul 16, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,121 words)

The Woman Who Fell to Earth: A Love Story

“See you below,” he yelled to Deborah as he flew through the air. Five seconds into his fall, the static line engaged his chute, which opened above. Randy clutched the handles around his shoulders, terror in his throat, resolving never to skydive again. He landed in the drop zone at the Antioch, Calif., airfield with a thud when he
heard screams and turned to see Deborah, her partially opened white chute wrapped around her like a shroud as she streaked toward the ground. Her main chute had never opened, and she was frantically clawing her way to her reserve chute.

Published: Jul 16, 2011
Length: 16 minutes (4,186 words)

Climbers

(Featured Longreader Joe Spring’s pick of the week.) In 2007, a national cycling team was established, and shortly before Gasore began riding his taxi-bike the team set up its training camp twenty-five miles east of Sashwara, in the town of Ruhengeri. As he plied his trade routes, Gasore watched the helmeted racers whiz by, dazzling in their tight Team Rwanda jerseys and shorts—in the national colors of blue, yellow, and green—crouched over the curved handlebars of their slender road bikes, pedalling in close formation. “I would chase them,” he told me. “Even when I had a passenger, I would race after the racers.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jul 11, 2011
Length: 52 minutes (13,087 words)

Daniel Ek’s Spotify: Music’s Last Best Hope

Without Spotify, labels know only when an album is sold. If a CD is ripped for a friend or borrowed for a party, they know nothing. Spotify gives them a record, by location, age, and gender, of every single time a track is played. Jay-Z used to think he was big in London, based on U.K. album sales; it turns out he’s big in Manchester. Spotify has discovered that radio plays—on real, terrestrial, electromagnetic spectrum—still drive interest in artists, as do Sweden’s summer talk shows. Sundin has a Spotify chart tracking Rihanna and Lady Gaga over seven weeks. Both show a bump on Friday and a spike on Saturday. They are weekend artists. Spotify knows when your party plays Gaga.

Source: Businessweek
Published: Jul 13, 2011
Length: 19 minutes (4,977 words)

Will You Be My Black Friend?

My Craigslist post said, among other things, “I’m a 36-year-old white guy. I grew up in a diverse neighborhood and have always gone to diverse schools. I’ve always had a decent number of black friends. That’s changed over time. I work in the publishing industry, which is super white, and I’ve realized that my group of friends is getting whiter and whiter.… It’s amazing to me that almost everyone I know has either black friends or white friends, but not both. We could have a black president, and still not have a very mixed country.” Then I added a few more lines about don’t let me show up at the bar and you’ve got a horse tranquilizer for my drink. I guess you could say the post ran a little long. I guess you could say I was worried about the possibility of a misunderstanding.

Source: GQ
Published: Nov 1, 2008
Length: 29 minutes (7,416 words)

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Couldn’t Lose

Oral history of NBC’s “Friday Night Lights.” “I was really worried. Connie and Kyle developed a very flirtatious, precocious relationship right off the bat. And Kyle, of course, is married. They announced they were going to drive to Austin together from L.A. to move out, and I threw myself in front of that bus. I said it was a horrible idea for multiple reasons. They ignored me. Connie dismissively told me she knew what she was doing and she didn’t need my advice. I was convinced they would be having some torrid affair by the time they reached Santa Fe and Kyle’s marriage would be over by the time they got to Austin. I was wrong about that, thank God.”

Source: Grantland
Published: Jul 14, 2011
Length: 26 minutes (6,580 words)

Lily

(Fiction) Careering toward Lily Stith in a green Ford Torino were Kevin and Nancy Humboldt. Once more they gave up trying to talk reasonably; once more they sighed simultaneous but unsympathetic sighs; once more each resolved to stare only at the unrolling highway. At the same moment, Lily was squeezing her mop into her bucket. Then she straightened up and looked out the window, eager for their arrival. She hadn’t seen them in two years, not since having won a prestigious prize for her poems.

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jul 1, 1984
Length: 14 minutes (3,548 words)

Weekend At Kermie’s: The Muppets’ Strange Life After Death

Muppet trailers are making the rounds of the Internet these days. There are a few spoofs: rom-com, superhero and heist parodies, and then the official trailer for the new movie, which promises “muppet domination” this Thanksgiving. Presumably, this domination will mean a return to the box-office and critical success of days of old. And I have to admit: it’s exciting. Anyone who remembers the Muppets remembers them fondly. If there’s an anti-Muppet faction out there, they’ve kept quiet.

Source: The Awl
Published: Jul 13, 2011
Length: 20 minutes (5,096 words)