The New Yorker

[Wilfrid]

I did enjoy Rosner's piece on Cecchi's.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-food-scene/the-eternal-question-of-food-versus-service

 

[MitchW]

As I said to friends, we had no service issues whatsoever - but we sat at the bar.

[Wilfrid]

You have to read the Rosner piece online. The paper copy includes a hideously truncated version in the miserable ruins of Goings On About Town.

I can't imagine why the New Yorker destroyed a genuinely useful section of the magazine. The paper feels cheaper too.

[Wilfrid]

Maybe I am right about the paper.

It's not just that a currently useful resource has been ruined. It's that the rich, priceless archive of city life, going back to 1925, has simply been turned off.

Not enough to make me unsubscribe, but plenty enough to make me angry.

[MitchW]

And it's not as if the subscription price is going down any time soon!

We're doomed.

[StephanieL]

3 hours ago, Wilfrid said:

Maybe I am right about the paper.

It's not just that a currently useful resource has been ruined. It's that the rich, priceless archive of city life, going back to 1925, has simply been turned off.

Not enough to make me unsubscribe, but plenty enough to make me angry.

Me too.  What a stupid move.  I guess they think that listings should all be online now.

[MitchW]

5 minutes ago, StephanieL said:

Me too.  What a stupid move.  I guess they think that listings should all be online now.

You know, if people were smart, they would just subscribe to this.

[Wilfrid]

That is great but the scope is appropriately narrow. I really did take frequent music, art, movie etc recommendations from the New Yorker, but if they are listing just one movie instead of six, it’s rarely going to be useful.

[Wilfrid]

In better news, Lepore’s review of the new Musk bio is savage; brutal to Musk, not kind to the author. Suffice to say that the person who comes out of it all best is Douglas Adams.

[Wilfrid]

I enjoyed the Fall Style and Design issue. The features on Thom Browne and Jeremy O. Harris were great and Taylor Russell modeling for Loewe must be the best fashion photo not featuring Zendaya this year.

But here's the kind of thing I get fixated on:

Quote

"(Thom Browne and me) met up in New York later in July, at Sant Ambroeus, an Italian café on Madison Avenue. ...Browne is still a creature of habit. Since he and Bolton moved to Sutton Place, on the far East Side, in 2021, he has gone to Sant Ambroeus each morning to pick up his to-go breakfast—a sugar croissant and an espresso."

That would be a forty minute walk each way, a three and a half mile round trip. Okay, so he's fit (and maybe doesn't know there's a Sant Ambroeus much nearer to him in the Loew's Regency).

But here's the thing. The espresso would be stone cold half way home. Does he stick it in the microwave? Can he not afford an espresso maker? Two years and he hasn't figured out a better way?

[Wilfrid]

Okay, maybe Browne told the writer he went to Sant Ambroeus every day and the writer assumed he meant the branch they were sitting in. There's no sign the writer knows it's a mini-chain. But an editor with knowledge of New York would surely say, wait, he really does that? That's nuts.

[Sneakeater]

On Eater they'd have met him in the one on Madison, said it was the one in Soho, but identified it as being on the Lower East Side.

 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Wilfrid]

Last week's Alex Ross report from London: in the course of one column, the Arts Council is referred to as "Arts Council" (which is like calling the Senate just "Senate") and he has copied the "Rule Britannia" words from some online source giving the original lyrics not the lyrics as actually sung. And what it has to do with "colonialism" god knows. Jingoism, yes.

[Wilfrid]

The Pick Three section of the ruined Goings On About Town is like a bad imitation of [i]Vanity Fair[/i]. “Fall to me is the most glamorous season…”

[Sneakeater]

That almost sounds like Eliot!

[Wilfrid]

Another outstanding piece by Rosner, this time on Bazaar at the NoMad. She has a lot of problems with it; it’s because she can describe the dishes knowledgeably and in detail that the reader is convinced.

It appeared on the app today. If it makes it to the print edition it will doubtless be severely truncated.

(Also on Newyorker.com.)

[voyager]

I dunno.    IMHO this article parallels Eater's latest hit piece.    I can't say that I'm convinced.

 

[Wilfrid]

Quote

Another dish, the kangaroo tartare had transformed into mush by the time it arrived at our table. The kangaroo shipped from Australia may indeed be lean, but it also has no flavor you might distinguish from beef. The dish came sided with a thick black blob said to be eggplant...

Versus

Quote

The “escabeche air” that topped a clutch of plump, raw oysters enticingly resembled sea foam but tasted more like air than like escabeche, and the “green apple ‘pearls’ ” promised within were just tiny spheres of raw apple, one per oyster, a measly hidden treasure. 

The latter seems much more precise and informative to me. Of course, I may be biased having eaten the first dish and not the second. I mean, the kangaroo tastes like kangaroo and the eggplant very much like eggplant. What is he saying?

[MitchW]

39 minutes ago, Wilfrid said:

Versus

The latter seems much more precise and informative to me. Of course, I may be biased having eaten the first dish and not the second. I mean, the kangaroo tastes like kangaroo and the eggplant very much like eggplant. What is he saying?

They better not send Sietsema to Bazaar. As Helen notes:

Quote

and, really, it had better be, at $64 for a single big shrimp

 

[Sneakeater]

On 10/5/2023 at 1:16 PM, Wilfrid said:

Last week's Alex Ross report from London: in the course of one column, the Arts Council is referred to as "Arts Council" (which is like calling the Senate just "Senate")

But ya know, I do have to say that we Americans find it um unidiomatic the way British writers are always sticking definite articles where we don't think they belong.

You always read British music writers, for example, talking about concerts at "the" Carnegie Hall.  NO ONE in New York would call it that.

[hollywood10]

But when they are sick, they go to hospital.

[Wilfrid]

13 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

You always read British music writers, for example, talking about concerts at "the" Carnegie Hall.  NO ONE in New York would call it that.

That is equally objectionable. I would never think of calling it that. But come to think of it, it is the Royal Albert Hall. 

 

[Sneakeater]

Sure, it's the same mistake in reverse (you don't make it cuz you're now Mid-Atlantic).  British writers refer to American places with British usage; American writers refer to British places with American usage.

But in a way, you could say it isn't a mistake when they're writing for their native audiences.  For example, it was "the" Kingsway Hall (when it still was standing).  But to an American reader, that would look weird.  So maybe it wouldn't have been a crime for a writer writing in America for an American readership to just have called it Kingsway Hall, as we would have if it were here.

Edited October 27, 2023 by Sneakeater

[Simon]

On 10/24/2023 at 8:57 PM, voyager said:

I dunno.    IMHO this article parallels Eater's latest hit piece.    I can't say that I'm convinced.

 

While I've only been to the Bazaar in D.C. and not in New York, and the concepts somewhat differ, based on my experience, Rosner's account is highly plausible.

[Wilfrid]

9 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

Sure, it's the same mistake in reverse (you don't make it cuz you're now Mid-Atlantic).  British writers refer to American places with British usage; American writers refer to British places with American usage.

But in a way, you could say it isn't a mistake when they're writing for their native audiences.  For example, it was "the" Kingsway Hall (when it still was standing).  But to an American reader, that would look weird.  So maybe it wouldn't have been a crime for a writer writing in America for an American readership to just have called it Kingsway Hall, as we would have if it were here.

It’s not a UK/U.S. usage thing. I would never have put a definite article before Carnegie Hall even when I was in the UK. And I bet knowledgeable American journalists would not write “Arts Council.” Queen Elizabeth Hall has no “the” in front of it.

And if anyone but you called me “mid-Atlantic” I would deliver a Bronx cheer.