Reporting
- Dept. of Gaming
LARPing Goes to Disney World
On a “Star Wars” spaceship, the company has taken live-action role-play to a lavish extreme. Guests spend days eating, scheming, and assembling lightsabres in character.
- Letter from Vichy
Seeking a Cure in France’s Waters
Can three weeks of hydrotherapy and enforced leisure fix what ails us?
- The Sporting Scene
Kai Lenny Surfs the Unsurfable
The big-wave surfer tackles some of the most fearsome swells on the planet. On the surface, it looks like he’s just having fun.
- Profiles
Flight Attendants Fight Back
Sara Nelson, the head of the largest flight attendants’ union, leads her members through turbulent times and mounts a major organizing drive at Delta.
The Critics
- Books
Bicycles Have Evolved. Have We?
From the velocipede to the ten-speed, biking innovations brought riders freedom. But in a world built for cars, life behind handlebars is both charmed and dangerous.
- Books
The Rules of Rhyme
True rhymes are marvels; a slant rhyme’s a sin. Or is it vice versa? Let the battle begin.
- Books
Would the World Be Better Off Without Philanthropists?
Critics say that big-time donors wield too much power over their fellow-citizens and perpetuate social inequality. But don’t cancel Lady Bountiful just yet.
- The Theatre
Mottled Morals and a Fight for Justice in “Golden Shield”
Anchuli Felicia King’s play reimagines a lawsuit in defense of Chinese dissidents.
- The Current Cinema
“Top Gun: Maverick” Far Outflies Its Predecessor
The original is less good than you remember, but Joseph Kosinski’s beautifully shot sequel, with Tom Cruise as the Dorian Gray of the U.S. Navy, manages to make absurd triumphalism disarmingly puppyish.
The Talk of the Town
Amy Davidson Sorkin on Buffalo and gun laws; Andrey Kurkov’s pathological optimism; antique finds; driver’s ed, supersized; a brother act at the Friars Club.
- Comment
A Consequential Gun Ruling After the Buffalo Massacre
The racist killings showed the horror of firearms; the Supreme Court may be about to make the problem worse.
- Visiting Dignitary
Andrey Kurkov Is Banned in Russia but a Hit at PEN
Following in the footsteps of Hitchens and Rushdie at the World Voices Festival, the writer muses on Russian fatalism, on printing a novel on sandwich-wrap paper in Kyiv, and on the lamentable deaths of his childhood pet hamsters.
- L.A. Postcard
How Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, and Joan Rivers Begat “Hacks”
Paul W. Downs, one of the series’ creators, on what went into figuring out Jean Smart’s Deborah, the show’s hard-as-nails standup legend.
- Here To There Dept.
Supply-Chain Problems? Teen-Age Truckers to the Rescue!
Mr. Forry’s driver’s-ed class, in Pennsylvania, is training eighteen-year-olds to drive eighteen-wheelers as Congress lowers the minimum age for driving a big rig across state lines, in an attempt to ease the country’s logistical woes.
- The Boards
Old Funny Guys Playing Old Funny Guys
Billy Crystal and David Paymer kibbitz at the Friars Club about “Mr. Saturday Night,” their 1992 movie turned Tony-nominated musical, and about no longer requiring old-age makeup.
Shouts & Murmurs
- Shouts & Murmurs
Coming Up with Torture Ideas Is Harder Than You Think
Biting snails? Powerful suction cups? Nah. The search for the next iron maiden is on.
Cartoons
Fiction
- Fiction
“Invisible Bird”
“Occasionally, increasingly, we’d stay in a hostel if we had the money, or else on the street if we didn’t.”
Puzzles & Games Dept.
Poems
Goings On About Town
- Dance
DanceAfrica Keeps Traditions Alive
BAM’s festival focusses on the theme of “homegrown” for its forty-fifth edition, showcasing local companies and schools, including the Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble.
- Tables for Two
Victoria Blamey Distinguishes Herself at Mena
The Chilean-born chef’s new Tribeca restaurant is serving some of the best seafood in the city, in deceptively simple dishes that evoke the experience of plunging into a bracing ocean wave.
