Current Issue
It’s All Good: Harry Connick’s Wide-Ranging Success
Harry Connick, Jr. is bringing his show to Broadway. Larry Getlen talks to the multitalented star about a career that’s made music, acting, and even helping save his city seem like a walk in the park.
There are artists whose artistry comes primarily from laboring at their craft for decades, and then there are those for whom preternatural talent somehow flows through their DNA. While you could never say that New Orleans native Harry Connick Jr. hasn’t worked hard over the years to excel at music, acting, philanthropy, and seemingly everything else he turns his mind to, there is no question that when it comes to natural talent, he is one of the blessed.
The Fire Inside
What are the limits of spicy food consumption? Diana Spechler goes in search of the hottest, most intestine-burning food in all of New York, and (barely) lives to tell the tale.
Like most sources of pain, my penchant for spicy food dates back to childhood. At Mexican restaurants, my father would heroically drag his chips through the hottest salsa while I, his reverent daughter, tried to keep up. I wanted to be brave like my dad, the man who escorted me into haunted houses, sat me beside him in the front car of every roller coaster, and took me scuba diving in impossibly strong currents in perpetual search of sharks. By the end of my childhood, thanks to my fearless father, very little could scare me, and no food was hot enough for my tongue.
Take Me Out to the Ball Game … But Which One?
Bruce Cherry examines the options available for New York sports fans, and finds that you can tell a lot about a person by the team they choose.
One of the best things about living in New York City is choice. From bars to entertainment to variations on Famous Original Ray’s Pizza, New York offers limitless alternatives. So big is this metropolis that it even offers sports fans a choice of professional franchises in all four major sports—baseball, football, basketball, and hockey—a situation unrivaled anywhere else in America.
Killing Barney
The Deedle-Deedle-Dees make kids music infused with intelligence and devoid of genre limits. Larry Getlen talks to the band about how their songs transcend the typical pablum of the kids music industry.
In 2003, local musician Lloyd Miller was asked by his wife, a teacher at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights, to write and play some songs for her second grade class’ production of “The Epic of Gilgamesh.”
Miller found the show far more satisfying than performing for sparse crowds of jaded Williamsburg hipsters at one in the morning, and enjoyed the experience so much that he duplicated it soon after.
“I got some guys together and asked them to do a show of songs from the Gilgamesh show,” he says. “We did a kids show, and we got a really good response. So we decided to do another one, and we kept getting asked to do more.”
Preston Who?
Test your knowledge of our great city parks with this quiz from Williamsburg Spelling Bee host Jennifer Dziura.
1. In order to purchase a key to the privately held Gramercy Park, you need to meet which two requirements?
A. Live in a building that faces the park
B. Be the descendant of a key holder
C. Pay an annual fee
D. Write an essay about what exclusivity means to you
Global Cuisine in the Great Outdoors
Summer is the season for outdoor dining. Mitchell Martin shows us how the streets of New York can satisfy, no matter which country’s cuisine you hunger for.
The garden at Le Jardin Bistro could be a sun-dappled courtyard almost anywhere in France, covered as it is by a trellis adorned with grape vines that also scale the surrounding buildings.
That French feeling is reinforced by the well-executed, traditional bistro fare, such as toast with a creamy pate de foie gras that arrives warm enough to melt the fat, a boneless poached salmon special with nary an imperfection in its chilled pink flesh, or a cool and vaguely tomato-inflected steak tartare. Continue
From Meteors to Marshmallow Men, New York has a Future.
Bruce Cherry looks at future visions of our fair city, and shows us how even killer tsunamis and unkillable politicians can’t kill what makes New York special.
What does the future hold for New York City? This is a question endlessly speculated on by everyone from scientists to filmmakers, and their answers tend to break down into two categories: idealistic utopian visions, and apocalyptic nightmares. The idealistic visions tend to come from the scientists, while apocalyptic nightmares are more the province of moviemakers. This works out well, since it would be very disturbing if scientists were seriously predicting that giant mutant lizards would soon emerge from the East River to begin devouring New Yorkers. Conversely, nobody wants to watch a movie about happy people bicycling around a city powered by smart renewable energy sources. To be sure, there are plenty of scientists who predict a dour future if we don’t mend our ways, but they generally also offer a version of an eco-friendly paradise as an alternative, to entice us into changing our act.
