Lifestyle

My Week in ‘New York’: All You Need Is Hate

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February 4, 2023:
A “frictionless” food court, crumbling floors, and the tantalizing pleasure of contrarianism
Cynthia Nixon and Sarah Jessica Parker are seen filming “And Just Like That…” in Greenwich Village on February 2, 2023, in New York City.    Photo: Gotham/GC Images
This week’s newsletter is brought to you by Emma Alpern, a senior copy editor who also edits crossword puzzles for New York and writes about culture, food, and disability.
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A couple of years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to someone as “a hater.” My new acquaintance, he said, was a hater too, so we’d get along great. I laughed at the time, but it was a little embarrassing to realize that this was something people might have noticed about me — I had long tried to suppress the urge to go around shouting about how much this or that sucked. As a teenager, the peak years for self-righteous cynicism, I leapt at any chance to ruin a movie or band someone else loved. Cringe. I stifled the habit in college when I noticed how irritating it was when someone spouted off about how, say, Moby-Dick was not that great in a Melville seminar.
But judiciously applied, in the right company, hating can be a real pleasure — I think I had as much fun whining my way through Glass Onion as I did watching many of last year’s more lovable movies. And I’m still enough of a hater that I’ll enjoy a takedown of something I haven’t even watched, so Jackson McHenry’s essay, “The Empty Sentiment of The Last of Us,” struck a chord with me this week — especially after seeing tons of people gushing about the new HBO mushroom-zombie show and waxing poetic about how much they loved the episode Jackson critiques. A classic contrarian take achieves something mathematical, a pure balancing of the scales of popular opinion that’s inherently satisfying.
One Thing I Loved This Week
I had an uncomfortably pricey salad at the Tin Building a couple weeks ago, so I appreciated Adam Platt’s assessment of the “frictionless” scene at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s luxe Financial District food court. While it’s an absolutely beautiful space (the candy shop is particularly Wes Anderson–y), it made me feel a little unreal, like a toy ballerina spinning in a jewelry box. As Platt puts it: “There was no sense of context or continuity … it felt as if we were at some VIP Disney restaurant, or a discreet high-roller noodle den at a Vegas casino, or onboard a cruise ship bobbing out on the ocean, a thousand miles from home.”
One Thing I Did Not Love This Week
The fact that the Oculus’s floors are already crumbling, as reported by Curbed. One possible reason: They’re made from relatively soft Lasa marble, which is not hard enough to withstand the trudging of commuters.
I Couldn’t Resist
As a trudging commuter once again, I ate at Pret a Manger twice in the past week, despite the fact that its egg-salad sandwich is suddenly $9. Mayor Adams, do something! (The lentil soup remains excellent, and it now comes with a free “soup topper.” I love this innovation.)
What I’m Watching This Weekend
I hope to finally see EO, especially after talking to a friend about its similarity to 18th-century “it-narratives,” or novels that follow an object in circulation, like a coin or a pincushion or, maybe, a poor mistreated donkey.
If You Only Read One Thing
Lane Brown picked apart a New York real-estate mystery in his latest column “New Yorkers Never Came ‘Flooding Back.’ Why Did Rents Go Up So Much?” He gets beyond the standard broker-babble about booming demand, analyzing USPS data and calling more than a dozen New York–area moving companies (“They all told me they’re still moving more people out of the city than into it”). Lane’s conclusions are downright scandalous, involving empty apartments and mass warehousing. (Side note: According to New York’s new rules of etiquette, you are allowed to ask how much people pay in rent.)
This Blew My Mind (For the Second Time)
I love the writer Akhil Sharma and foist his novel Family Life onto anyone I can. This week I reread his astounding New Yorker essay about becoming a father in his late 40s and cried just as hard as I did the first time. That description probably makes the column sound sappy, but it’s really not; it’s a wise, elegant story that I’ve been turning over in my head since it came out.
I’m Not Convinced …
… By the $600ish “Oh-So-Popular Popcorn Dress.” It looks a bit like one of those scrunched-up, wrinkly shirts you might have bought at a mall kiosk around 2002. But I also want one? Maybe? The dress confuses me — and several of the people interviewed for the Cut’s story: “‘My theory about this dress is it’s like ‘the Mr. Big of dresses’ because it’s $200 too expensive, so we all idealize it,” says Vogue writer Emma Specter. “That said, I would sell my soul for one.”
Screenshot of the Week
I didn’t expect to feel inadequate for not knowing who the Father of Whist is.
Next Week in New York
Next week’s newsletter will be helmed by Joanna Nikas, deputy style editor at the Cut.
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