So much has been written about the beauty and mythology of this city that maybe it’s superfluous to add even a little more to the ledger. If he ever got to heaven, Herb Caen, the town’s beloved old chronicler, once said, he’d look around and say, “It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco.” The cliffs, the stairs, the cold clean air, the low-slung beauty of the Sunset, the cafés tucked along narrow streets, then Golden Gate Park drawing you down from the middle of the city all the way to the beach. It’s so goddamn whimsical and inspiring and temperate; so full of redwoods and wild parrots and the smell of weed and sourdough, brightly painted homes and backyard chickens, lines for the oyster bar and gorgeous men in chaps at the leather festival. But it’s maddening because the beauty and the mythology—the preciousness, the self-regard—are part of what has almost killed it. And I, now in early middle age, sometimes wish it weren’t so nice at all.
It may appear as a gimmick or pretense to create Golden State allure in a nation of dark booths and gloomy weather. But SOLA is Michelin-starred fine-dining, a top-rated destination in London’s bustling Soho district that’s made its name since pandemic-era restaurant rules eased last year and Britons returned to eating out in one of Europe’s biggest and most ethnically diverse cities.
In a country brimming with intoxicating cuisine — few things better than the local chicken rice, roti prata and crab beehoon — California’s fuss-free style of fine dining is having an unlikely culinary moment in a city where top dollar is usually reserved for the ambiance and decors of more stuffy European and Japanese restaurants.
In her new collection, Egypt-born poet Marwa Helal plays with language to challenge the way we approach our problems. The poet wants us to be more open and curious, so that we can better understand how we see the world and what connects us to one another.
It’s March 16, 2020, and Joseph Osmundson is stocking up on red onions. Yesterday, public schools were shut down. The day before that, an 82-year-old woman became New York City’s first Covid death. A professor of microbiology at N.Y.U., Osmundson sees clearly that the coming months will bring many more, but at the moment he’s thinking of the past: “I often find myself mourning the voices that I wish we still had to write us through a present crisis, even in line at the grocery store.” In this, his third book, Osmundson has tried to do just that. “Virology” is composed of 11 essays whose connective tissue — parts queer theory, molecular science and social criticism — consists mostly of what Audre Lorde calls the only answer to death: “the heat and confusion of living.” The subtitle, “Essays for the Living, the Dead and the Small Things in Between,” is significant; these are essays not about but for. These are love essays.
“The Facemaker”, a new book, looks at the other aspect of plastic surgery—that which focuses on reconstruction, in many cases after trauma. Lindsey Fitzharris, a medical historian, describes the pioneering work done by Harold Gillies in the early 20th century. The powerful weaponry used in the first world war, including shells, grenades, mortar bombs and automatic guns, killed millions of men. It maimed many others: as Ms Fitzharris notes, “before the war was over, 280,000 men from France, Germany and Britain alone would suffer some form of facial trauma.” Such injuries had rarely been seen before, and there was no established method for treating them. As one nurse at the time put it: the “science of healing stood baffled before the science of destroying”.
This book is bad news for anyone who thinks we should use facts and evidence to change people’s minds. It is disappointing for lovers of debate. It reveals the psychological and evolutionary reasons why all humans are certain we are right, and why “certainty” is nothing but an illusion. But it’s an optimistic, illuminating and even inspiring read. Because while you can’t talk someone into changing their mind, you just might be able to listen them into it, and David McRaney thinks he can show you how.
The street hangs from the sky, held in suspension
by summer’s dark hair lazily in a braid,
exhausted power lines. Someone has thrown a pair
of sneakers, joined together by knots,
One of my toddler’s favorite books is Dr. Seuss’s ABC. I like the narcotic effect of the sing-song rhymes, she likes getting praised whenever she correctly screams a letter, and we both like the goofy little drawings. Every time I get to H, though—”Hungry Horse. Hen in hat. H…h…H”—I ask myself the same question. Not “What begins with H?” but: did Dr. Seuss go his entire life without seeing a horse? Or a photograph of a horse? Or an oil painting of a horse, standing next to Napoleon or Tony Soprano?