Category Archives: Talk of the Town

A Parting Glass for the Ritz-Carlton’s Norman Bukofzer

May 22, 2023 New Yorker cover
May 22, 2023

Sendoff Dept.
A Parting Glass for the Ritz-Carlton’s Norman Bukofzer
by Zach Helfand

One of the late, great barman’s best customers, Liam Neeson, presided from a “fecking” sickbed upstairs as drinkers toasted the guy who’d served Jodie Foster, Ralph Fiennes, Bono, Joe Torre, and Bette Davis.

A Secret Voyage Across the Seven Seas of Central Park

April 4, 2022 New Yorker cover
April 4, 2022

Explorers Club
A Secret Voyage Across the Seven Seas of Central Park
by Ben McGrath

Two urban Shackletons braved the elements for a clandestine, moonlit canoe excursion down each of the Park’s waterways, from the Harlem Meer in the north to the Pond in the south, dodging the police and “Star Wars” reënactors along the way.

A Sense of Where He’s Been

January 24, 2022 New Yorker cover
January 24, 2022

A Sense of Where He’s Been
by Thomas Beller

Bill Bradley, a staid member of the rarefied (the Rhodes Scholarship), the very rarefied (the U.S. Senate), and the super-rarefied (the Knicks’ two championship teams), premières his autobiographical one-man Broadway show, “Rolling Along.”