The Magazine
New York: A Centenary Issue
May 12 & 19, 2025
Goings On
Goings On
Disco Balls and Roller Skates, at Xanadu
Also: indie-rock legacy in “Pavements,” Jonathan Groff crooning Bobby Darin in “Just in Time,” the teeming embroideries of Madalena Santos Reinbolt, and more.
Goings On
Our Favorite “Only in New York” Spots
New Yorker writers muse on sui-generis spots around New York City.
The Food Scene
The Caribbean Restaurant Reinventing the Momofuku Empire
At Kabawa, the chef Paul Carmichael gets scholarly without sacrificing the fun.
The Talk of the Town
Alexandra Schwartz on spring and the soul of the city; Sean Duffy gets real; Ed Helms wonks out; the weirdest instrument at the Met; a few good Popes.
Comment
The Promise of New York
Other cities have better infrastructure, fewer rats, cleaner streets, plentiful public toilets, more elbow room. Yet people continue to flock here.
Wind On Capitol Hill
Kathy Hochul’s Turf War with a Reality-TV Star
When he was on “The Real World,” Trump’s Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, joked about a roommate’s “crusty undies.” What can New York’s governor learn by watching reruns of her congestion-pricing opponent?
Henny Penny Dept.
Ed Helms Dives Into Disaster
In a new book, the boundlessly curious “Hangover” star probes history’s greatest blunders—like how the C.I.A. tried to make Castro’s beard fall out—as a way to face the present.
New Kid Dept.
The Man to Call When You Need a Cimbalom. (A What?)
Chester Englander is a big name in a small world: he is playing the cimbalom, a jumbo hammered dulcimer that resembles an inside-out piano, in John Adams’s “Antony and Cleopatra” at the Met.
Sketchpad
Great Moments in the Papacy
Who can ever forget Wyatt VII, the Cowboy Pope, or Gary III, the Secular Pope?
Reporting & Essays
Around City Hall
Why Can’t New York Have Nice Mayors?
As the Trump Administration encroaches on the city, Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams try to salvage their political careers.
The Sporting Scene
If the Mets Are No Longer Underdogs, Are They Still the Mets?
New York’s other baseball team has the league’s richest owner and just poached one of the game’s best hitters from the Yankees. They may never be the same.
On and Off the Avenue
My New York City Tour of Tours
Things I learned by embedding with the tourists: the Ramones loved Yoo-hoo, Peter Stuyvesant was uptight, and how to do “a quick Donald Trump dance.”
The Weekend Essay
Why I Broke Up with New York
Most people accept the city’s chaos as a toll for an expansive life. It took me several decades to realize that I could go my own way.
A Reporter at Large
Twelve Migrants Sharing a Queens Apartment
In New York City, a shadow economy helps new arrivals find a place to sleep. Sometimes it’s just a bed and a curtain.
Annals of Transportation
No-Parking Zone: The Perils of Finding a Spot in N.Y.C.
Why do city drivers waste two hundred million hours a year circling the block?
Takes
Takes
Michael Schulman on Lillian Ross’s “The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue”
The piece runs sixteen hundred words—long for Talk of the Town, short for an instant classic.
Takes
Rachel Syme on Kennedy Fraser’s “As Gorgeous as It Gets”
The article, about the launch of a new perfume, treats what might be considered a frivolous subject with exhaustive attention.
Fiction
Fiction
“Travesty”
No thought was so devastating to Prima as the thought that she was ascribing wisdom and seriousness to something that would turn out to be stupid.
The Critics
A Critic at Large
The Battling Memoirs of The New Yorker
A host of accounts by the magazine’s staffers covers a full century of its history, but the trove of recollection is fraught and jumbled.
The Wayward Press
Why I Can’t Quit the New York Post
The city’s least self-conscious, Rupert Murdoch-owned daily newspaper sticks to its story, new information be damned, yet holds real clout in liberal New York.
Books
Keith McNally’s Guide to Making a Scene
The Manhattan restaurateur’s new memoir shows a canny instinct for the finer aspects of dining.
Books
Briefly Noted
“Ghosts of Iron Mountain,” “Turning to Birds,” “The Imagined Life,” and “My Name Is Emilia del Valle.”
The Current Cinema
“Caught by the Tides” Is a Gorgeous Vision of Loss and Renewal
More than two decades in the making, Jia Zhangke’s mostly archival film embodies the sweeping transformations of modern China in its very construction.
Poems
Poems
“her disquietude absorbed.”
“By an attendant memory she is walking / alongside the child on his cycle.”
Poems
“What Happened to New York”
“On the table in my room, cigarettes, knife, notebook, 7 P.M. I sit down to write so my head don’t blow up.”
Cartoons
Puzzles & Games
The Mail
Letters should be sent with the writer’s name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.