“Turf wars. Protection money. Scientology. And my boss, a man who’s half-convinced he really is Santa.”
New York City
Posted inEditor's Pick
Taro and Mishi Take Manhattan
“The charming tale of how two humble rats made it from Bed-Stuy to become New York magazine cover stars”
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To All the Brooklyn Brownstones I’ve Loved Before
In this essay, Beth Boyle Machlan writes about possibility, desire, real estate, finding one’s home, and coveting the Brooklyn brownstone. The piece is part of Machlan’s Catapult column, Unreal Estates, which explores issues of housing in America through a very personal lens. To me, back then, that brownstone stood for everything I wanted: solidity and […]
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The Tragedy of Jayquan McKenley
From the current New York issue’s package on drill music comes this urgent, saddening profile of Jayquan McKenley, a sweethearted teenager and burgeoning artist whose murder sparked a new wave of handwringing around the rap subgenre. Even to drill’s defenders, it seemed clear that social media had sped up a cycle of retaliatory shootings; the Bronx’s […]
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Extraordinary Circumstances
Kenneth Watkins’s son, Kenny, was 6 days old when he was taken away by ACS, New York City’s child-welfare agency. Kenny was then placed with an affluent foster family. To regain custody, Watkins had to prove that being poor didn’t make him a bad father. Despite Watkins’ constant efforts, it took years to get Kenny […]
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How the Taxi Workers Won
“Then, in 2011, Uber arrived in New York. Lyft followed in 2014. Tens of thousands of additional cars flooded the streets, and yellow cab ridership fell by half. In late 2014, the medallion bubble burst. By 2018, medallions were selling for as little as $160,000. Seeing an opportunity to make a profit, Marblegate Asset Management, […]
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The Marathon Men Who Can’t Go Home
“Each had come to America with the hope of making life-changing money that they could send back home to their families. What they found was an often desperate existence in their adopted homeland.”
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Living in New York’s Unloved Neighborhood
“But the neighborhood used to feel to me like a rough part of a softer place, and nowadays the roughness feels more general, and this makes it harder to cheer for a neighborhood that is so loud and dirty and uninterested in or unfit for human life.”
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The Death and Life of the Greatest American City
“The city feels simultaneously attacked, abandoned, and bereft of competent leadership. It also feels very, very alive.” In an essay at GEN, Glynnis MacNicol explores New York City’s #NoFilter era.