The hundreds of people who show up each week to party at Mister Sunday are out for a good time. What the carefree fun-seekers likely do not realize is that they are also a part of a powerful real-estate developer’s plan to remake Industry City—and the Sunset Park community in which it sits—into the Next […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes, Reading List
‘This Story Isn’t For Everyone’
Today, Matter published a story by reporter Luke Malone about a group of young men struggling with the realization that they are pedophiles and seek help to prevent themselves from becoming future offenders and from using child pornography. It’s a difficult story to read (warning: the story contains graphic details of child abuse), and raises […]
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He Looked Like a Detective in the Movies
The door opened. Two men in suits walked in. The man in front was a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, thin-waisted, thick-haired fellow with deep-set, dark eyes and an icy glare. The precinct detective knew this man. He’d seen him around the precinct. It was hard to miss him. He looked, colleagues often said, how a detective in […]
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How Prop Money From a Hollywood Blockbuster Ended Up Confiscated by Secret Service
In late 2000, the producers and crew for action flick Rush Hour 2 gathered at the now-defunct Desert Inn in Las Vegas and prepared to blow up a casino. The scene, which pitted policemen and Secret Service agents against a counterfeiter attempting to launder $100 million in superdollars, was to culminate with hundreds of thousands […]
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Joyce Wadler’s Throwback Thursday
If you missed knowing me when I was 26, Throwback Thursday gives you the chance to see me in my physical prime, which I know is very important to you, particularly those 3,426 Facebook Friends who did not know me then. Or now, actually. What, another Throwback Thursday already? O.K., here is a picture of […]
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The Founder of Flickr and Slack on the Psychological Torture of Selling Too Early
Stewart readily admits he sold Flickr too early. “If we had waited six months we would have made much more money. If we had waited a year we would have made 10 times more money,” he says. He regrets it now. But at the time, after the dotcom crash, the Nasdaq plummet, and September 11, […]
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Why So Many Bottled and Canned Coffee Drinks Taste So Bad
It took Blue Bottle a year and a half to get to the point where they could regularly produce iced coffee at this scale. The seed of the idea was a can of cold cappuccino that James Freeman had on a plane to New York in late 2011. “I got this canned cappucino for, like, […]
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How Joe Cocker’s Version of ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ Ended Up as the Theme Song for ‘The Wonder Years’
Cocker originally performed “With a Little Help From My Friends” at Woodstock in 1969, and that version ended up being used for the show.
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What It Was Like to Hear Nina Simone Live
Nina Simone’s explosiveness was well known. In concert, she was quick to call out anyone she noticed talking, to stop and glare or hurl a few insults or even leave the stage. Yet her performances, richly improvised, were also confidingly intimate—she needed the connection with her audience—and often riveting. Even in her best years, Simone […]
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How Many People Does It Take To Power Times Square?
Times Square is one big, busy machine. Powered by American ingenuity and more than a few megawatts of electricity, these six square blocks stay bright 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You’ve seen Times Square in movies and on TV a million times. A lot of you have probably seen it in real life, teeming […]