On a recent Tuesday evening at 4 Charles Prime Rib, in the West Village, shortly after my party of four had settled in for dinner, a man who bore the gentle air of owning the place arrived at a neighboring table. As our server delivered our cocktails, she gestured at him and said, with a wink, “This is Gary. He’s a regular. I’m so sorry you have to sit next to him. Let me know if you want me to put up a curtain to block him out.” Everyone laughed. “Gary’s full of wisdom,” the maître d’ added as he passed by. Gary—round but trim, with a shaved, shiny pate and a distinct Long Island accent—smirked and said, “Yeah, like, drink a Martini if you’re driving, and tequila if you’re not.”
Gary is more than a regular at 4 Charles; he’s one of only a few people who can get a table there at all. The restaurant is ostensibly open to the public, but if you’re not Gary—or Taylor Swift, whom Gary told me he’d been seated next to a few nights prior— you’re probably not getting in. According to more than one thread on Reddit, your chances of booking a reservation even the instant a batch of them is released on Resy, at 9 A.M. each day, are slim to none. By the restaurant’s calculations, you’d be competing with anywhere from nine hundred to fifteen hundred other hopefuls. Moreover, nearly half the tables in the very small dining room are already reserved, for “standing guests,” like Gary.
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Denne historien er fra March 25, 2024-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
PRESIDENT FOR SALE
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.