ON A SWELTERING summer afternoon, a welter of yelps rose from the playground in the northeastern corner of Greenpoint’s leafy, tidy Monsignor McGolrick Park. The playground had been lined with a sturdy foam in 2018 to soften the landings of children—but there were still injuries to be had. And the heat would not deter the meeting of the Greenpoint Fight Club, a group of 5-to-7-year-olds that gathers after school on most days for combat with the approval of the parents.
Had this been a true fight club, of course, it would have remained secret. As any passing fan of Chuck Palahniuk knows, the first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club. (It is also the second rule.) But then, on an early Thursday evening in May, a parent posted a question on the “Williamsburg/ Greenpoint Families” section of the Facebook group Brooklyn Baby Hui. “Did anybody see the kids’ ‘fight club’ happening at McGolrick playground today?” she wrote. “I don’t know how else to describe it … I was a bit shocked at how aggressive it was and it was apparently parent-sanctioned as there was a group watching.”
Bu hikaye New York magazine dergisinin July 19 - August 1, 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Bu hikaye New York magazine dergisinin July 19 - August 1, 2021 sayısından alınmıştır.
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Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
THE BEST ART SHOWS OF THE YEAR
IN NOVEMBER, Sotheby's made history when it sold for a million bucks a painting made by artificial intelligence. Ai-Da, \"the first humanoid robot artist to have an artwork auctioned by a major auction house,\" created a portrait of Alan Turing that resembles nothing more than a bad Francis Bacon rip-off. Still, the auction house described the sale as \"a new frontier in the global art market.\"
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A STRANGE THING happened with podcasts in 2024: The industry was repeatedly thrust into the spotlight owing to a preponderance of head-turning events and a presidential-election cycle that radically foregrounded the medium's consequential nature. To reflect this, we've carved out a list of ten big moments from the year as refracted through podcasting.
THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - BEST BOOKS
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IT'S BEEN a year of successful straight plays, even measured by a metric at which they usually do poorly: ticket sales. Partially that's owed to Hollywood stars: Jeremy Strong, Jim Parsons, Rachel Zegler, Rachel McAdams (to my mind, the most compelling).
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE YEAR
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IT WAS SURPRISING how much 2024 felt like an uneventful wake for the Peak TV era. There was still great television, but there was much more mid or meh television and far fewer moments when a critical mass of viewers seemed equally excited about the same series.
THE BEST COMEDY SPECIALS OF THE YEAR
THE YEAR IN CULTURE - COMEDY SPECIALS
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PEOPLE LOVED Megalopolis, hated it, puzzled over it, clipped it into memes, and tried to astroturf it into a camp classic, but, most important, they cared about it even though it featured none of the qualities you'd expect of a breakthrough work in these noisy times.
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