Search Results for: Brooklyn

Homelessness in the Age of Bloomberg

Longreads Pick

We had four options: join Ready Willing and Able’s program, which prepared men to become street sweepers and janitors; sign up for a Bloomberg administration program which presents participants with a one-way ticket out of town, so long as the applicants could provide a contact person in the destination city who would agree to host them; enter the city’s shelter system, which the liaison accurately portrayed as a horror show, with gang-and-drug-infested death traps like Wards Island (Said one of my brethren, “Yo, I was at Wards Island one night, woke up and a dude was laying there dead, all cut the fuck up.”); or hop in the van with him to tour Brooklyn’s three-quarter sober houses, which were private residences that sounded a lot more promising than a shelter.

Published: May 21, 2011
Length: 10 minutes (2,518 words)

Almost Amis

Longreads Pick

And so Martin Amis and his wife, the author Isabel Fonseca, are coming to Cobble Hill. And what’s it like being a writer in Brooklyn? “I expect it’s like writing in Manhattan,” Colson Whitehead once wrote in The New York Times, “but there aren’t as many tourists walking very slowly in front of you when you step out for coffee.” More likely, there are other writers walking in front of you. It’s a zone of infestation. Not only of novelists but reporters, pundits, poets and those often closeted scribblers who call themselves editors and agents. Not to mention bloggers, or whatever counts for being an online writer these days.

Published: Apr 26, 2011
Length: 12 minutes (3,132 words)

Body Snatchers

Body Snatchers

pegb: Longreads: new and old favorites

pegb:

Pirate’s Booty by Dave Gardetta

Technosexual: One Man’s Tale of Robot Love by Addy Dugdale

Et Tu, Brooklyn? by Allison Silverman

The Golden Suicides by Nancy Jo Sales

Addiction Files: Recovering From Drug Addiction, Without Abstinence by Maia Szalavitz

Addiction Files: How Do We Define Recovery? by Maia Szalavitz

Secret of AA: After 75 Years, We Don’t Know How It Works by Brendan Koerner

Detroitism: What Does 'Ruin Porn' Tell Us About the Motor City?

Detroitism: What Does ‘Ruin Porn’ Tell Us About the Motor City?

A Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

A Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

A Solitary Jailhouse Lawyer Argues His Way Out of Prison

Longreads Pick

There was no crusading journalist, no nonprofit group taking up his cause, just Inmate 95A2646, a high-school dropout from Brooklyn, alone in a computerless prison law library. Jabbar Collins pried documents from wary prosecutors, tracked down reluctant witnesses and persuaded them, at least once through trickery, to reveal what allegedly went on before and at the trial where he was convicted of the high-profile 1994 murder of Rabbi Abraham Pollack.

Published: Dec 24, 2010
Length: 11 minutes (2,762 words)

Foster Kamer: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010

Foster Kamer (ex-BlackBook + Gawker + Village Voice) is online features and news editor at Esquire


***

2010 was an incredible year for writing, bottom line. Despite the proliferation of things whose output is mostly antagonistic to great writing — like faceless “content farms” churning out hollow, Google-gaming information lacking anything of substance — great writing persisted. Twitter’s evolving as an aesthetic, yielding profundities from the most unlikely of sources, and a few performance artists, too. Blogging continued to evolve as a craft: some of its once loudest critics are now some of its most significant contributors. More and more people care about things being well written, and they remember them, even if they’re intended to be as disposable as a piece of produce. It’s an encouraging sign of what’s to come.

Putting together this list, I felt like I should make some omissions, like my (previous) employer, The Village Voice. There are too many great pieces I got to work with, but three worth noting were:

·  Steven Thrasher’s ranted-essay, White America Has Lost Its Mind, a pitch-perfect picture of America pre-2010 midterms.

·  All five installments of Graham Rayman’s The NYPD Tapes, undeniably some of the best investigative reporting in 2010. 

·  Live from Insane Clown Posse’s Gathering of the Juggalos. Camille Dodero took an empathetic look at a part of America that’s almost unanimously discarded, viewed like a freak museum exhibit. It was feeling, it was fair, it was compelling in every way an assessment of a subculture should be.

Putting this list together is a little torturous. That aside, these are my five favorite — and most personally important — things I read this year. I think you’ll like them. I’m very, very conscious about the omission of women — or anything really other than White Dudes — on this list, and I apologize for my narrow, singular selection. 

5. Profiling bands sucks. No matter how provocative the subject, writing about and interviewing “famous people” — but especially musicians — is a sharp, royal pain in the balls. Getting them to elaborate on their art? Inherently awkward. Both parties know exactly how fruitless and overreaching these things are. Nicholas Dawidoff’s April profile of The NationalforThe New York Times Magazineshould have been one of those things. [New York Times writer interviews five white dudes from Brooklyn making Pitchfork-approved music.] Face value: “Groan.” But Dawidoff managed to get as close to understanding this band’s creative process — really, not that complicated of one, either — as anybody in it, and we’re right there with him as it happens. It helps if you’re a fan or a young Almost Famous aspirant, but the story of just some guys becoming one of the most famous rock acts in America over a decade, and doing it without becoming celebrities or selling out fans? And writing the story well? It’s an anomaly. Some people left the piece the way a great band leaves you after a concert: wanting more, but satisfied no less. I did.

4. Michael Chabon’s introduction toFountain Cityis the most motivational thing I’ve read all year. It’s a four-chapter booklet packaged with the latest issue of McSweeney’s. It’s the epic Chabon started that he never finished, a novel “wrecked” by the author …until he decided to annotate what was written. In the introduction, Chabon — yeah, the same guy who wrote Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay — writes about the terrible, beautiful way the 20-something iteration of himself that went on to write those books failed at this book. As it turns out, it’s the same panicked, procrastinating, and eventually depressing way so many of us fail, too. It’s sad, sure. But: Chabon admits he even fell short annotating Fountain City, as he only revisited the first four chapters before watching it “sink” again. Yet that failure yielded the most successful and brutally honest meditation on failing as I’ve ever read. It’s barely ten pages, if that. Hopefully, McSweeney’s or Chabon will put it online. It’s too good to sit trapped in this $24 box, lest McSweeney’s fail something they don’t have to.

3. Technically released late last year, but I read it this year while writing about job changes at the New York Observer, a 23 year-old pink, weekly paper, that’s (mostly) historically striven to be classically New York in every way a contemporary publication born here should be: brilliant, but accessible; hysterical, yet never a joke; above all, true to its citizenry – Manhattanites – for better or worse. There wouldn’t be a Gawker without the Observer. Vanity Fair wouldn’t be the same, because the Observer was the last job Graydon Carter had before he was beckoned there. It was the birthplace of Sex and the City, some of the best writers and editors in New York City, and also, too many trend pieces that took hold nationally to count. And it was the place where Peter Kaplan (the longtime, former editor of the New York Observer) was given rise. You’ll understand why after reading Peter Kaplan’s introduction forThe Kingdom of New York, the Observer ”clippings” book, which tells the entire history of a publication — and the modern era of this city — in 11-ish pages. It’s hysterical and perfect and a little heartbreaking in the way great sentimentalizing and romanticizing — the kind that will make you nostalgic for things you’ve never experienced — often is. But also, endlessly inspiring: as a writer, as a New Yorker, as a reader, and as someone who tries to recognize a good moment when it’s in front of them. And thanks to the magic of Google, you don’t even have to buy the book to read it. Whattatown.

2. Every time you hear about those people who have risen from the most adverse and traumatic conditions a kid could be presented with, into prominence, they’re celebrities or writing a memoir (or both). A blogger is, in so many ways, the furthest thing from that. Some bloggers know this guy’s name, his longtime readers from when he used to blog for The Consumerist know who he is. But none of those people likely know anybody else in the same way they now irreversibly know him after Joel Johnson’s February 2010 post entitled Why I’m Funny. Some people spend years on their memoirs, hundreds of pages of public therapy, a backwards, sick competition where brand-name writers compare how fucked up their childhood was to the next person’s. I don’t know how long Joel spent on this, which begins with the sentence “The first time I ever came in anyone’s mouth, it was into the mouth of my stepfather.” But 6,215 words later, they should all be ashamed, because I know exactly how long it’s going to stay with me: forever, or at least until I write for the last time.

1. Like The Village Voice, I should probably also omit my top Longread of the Year, because it comes from the new job I started at on Monday. But I can’t, because Chris Jones’ profile of Roger Ebert in the March 2010 issue of Esquire was undisputably the best and most memorable thing I – and plenty of others – read this year. It introduced him to a new generation of people unfamiliar with the man and his impact. It made people who couldn’t give a shit about magazine profiles or Roger Ebert sob. [I’ll admit it, I got weepy.] But maybe most significantly, it redefined Roger Ebert to America. This wasn’t investigative journalism or the most hard-hitting interview ever conducted. It was quite simply — and incredibly — the product of great magazine writing. F. Scott Fitzgerald, you want a second act? Well, here’s a third. “Old Media” publications, like Roger Ebert, are supposedly dying. Yet, neither have seemed more alive than this in the last ten years. 

Gillian Reagan: My Top 5 Longreads of 2010

Gillian Reagan is an editor at Capital New York. She does other stuff, too. 

***

My rule was to steer clear of Capital articles (although you will recognize some bylines from contributors). These articles that weren’t necessarily the best writing of the year, but have frequently popped up and rolled around in my brain long after I read them for the first time. Sometimes it was because of the beautiful prose. But, mostly, the ideas are what stayed with me. 

Zachary Woolfe, “A Quiet Place of Dysfunction and Dystopia,” (The New York Times, October 21)

“As the motorcade carrying the body of Leonard Bernstein passed through Brooklyn on its way to Green-Wood Cemetery 20 years ago, construction workers removed their yellow hard hats and called out, ‘Goodbye, Lenny!’ It was a gesture of affection unthinkable for any other classical musician. In death, as in life, Bernstein was the exception: capable of anything and, almost, everything.”

Paul Ford, “Real Editors Ship,” (Ftrain.com, July 20)

“People often think that editors are there to read things and tell people ‘no.’ Saying ‘no’ is a tiny part of the job. Editors are first and foremost there to ship the product without getting sued.”

Sady Doyle, “Sex Offender Week: Rivers Cuomo Messes You Up Forever,” (The Awl, April 27)

“We speak not of the Rivers Cuomo that was, nor of the Rivers Cuomo that is, nor yet of the Rivers that shall be. We speak, now, of the Platonic ideal of a Rivers Cuomo: The Rivers Cuomo you have never met, nor ever can meet, nor can ever be sued by (subsequent to writing a blog post that uses his name quite a lot), but who lives, nevertheless, within your brain. Specifically, if you happen to have grown up in the 1990s, and are heterosexual, and also a girl.”

Steven Hyden’s entire “Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation?” series, The Onion’s AV Club

“I remember the ’90s, but it’s like I wasn’t there. Like many people of my generation—including practically every band that was originally associated with the term—’grunge’ for me has become something to live down, like cuffed jeans or bad Luke Perry sideburns.”

Josh Allen, Chokeville.

I swear, I was going to put this in before Paul Ford did. “The goal is to tell every single story of this city…The site will be frequently updated with new material. Sometimes stories, sometimes a song, a photograph, a movie, illustration, radio show, encyclopedia entry, comic strip, field recording, whatever, etc…A good place to start is Welcome to Feddema Global. It features Allison Hull, who’s from out of town and also has no idea what’s going on, so maybe you can relate to her.”

Additional shout-outs: Peter J. Boyer, “The Covenant,”The New Yorker; Camille Dodero, “Live From Insane Clown Posse’s Gathering of the Juggalos,” Village Voice; Natasha Vargas-Cooper’s entire “Live From Las Vegas election coverage” on The Awl; Timothy Garton Ash, 1989!, New York Review of Books; Zach Baron, “The End of the Story,” The Believer.

Signposts in a Strange Land: Writers Roundtable on New Orleans

Longreads Pick

“The Bywater, two neighborhoods down from the French Quarter, where I live and work, is the most active new art scene—it’s totally exploded recently. We’ve been calling it Williamsburg South because we keep meeting kids from Brooklyn and we can’t keep up with the new writers and artists who’ve been moving into the neighborhood. New coffee shops, new galleries—we don’t know what’s going on, but it’s kind of exciting. And also scary, I mean, what do they want with us? Rents aren’t that cheap since Katrina.”

Published: Nov 10, 2010
Length: 29 minutes (7,306 words)