Lifestyle
The New Yorker Celebrates 100 Years
On Tuesday evening, Art Spiegelman and Françoise Mouly were sitting at a sidewalk table outside Jean’s, a chic night spot in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. Nearby, writers, critics and cartoonists streamed past a black rope and a bouncer to attend The New Yorker’s 100th anniversary party.
Mr. Spiegelman, the graphic novelist who has been a contributor to the publication since 1992, puffed on a slender e-cigarette. Ms. Mouly, the magazine’s longtime art editor, took in the scene. The two have been married almost 50 years.
“The New Yorker is the last of its kind standing, and tonight we’re celebrating that,” Mr. Spiegelman said. “I still remember meeting the great writer Joseph Mitchell in the magazine’s hallway. I felt like I was in the presence of a monument.”
Ms. Mouly, who recently curated a centennial exhibit of the magazine’s covers for L’Alliance New York, a French cultural center, also reflected on the big night.
“A hundred years of The New Yorker is a vindication of what I believe in,” she said. “Now there’s TikTok, and all the minutes people spend on it, but to me a magazine is a magazine is a magazine. That copies of The New Yorker used to pile up at the foot of the bed was once the magazine’s curse, but to me now that’s a point of pride.”
The choice of Jean’s as the venue for a party meant to celebrate a publication known for deeply reported articles and literary fiction came as a bit of a surprise to Hua Hsu, a Pulitzer Prize winner who writes about music and culture for the magazine.
“I guess part of me was hoping the party might be at some stuffy old uptown spot,” he said. “But this magazine can only be what it is because of the young people who keep coming through it and imparting their vision, so I think this venue nicely reflects that.”
As Iggy Pop and Fleetwood Mac played from the speakers, the place was packed with bookish guests who squeezed past one another on their way to a seafood platter.
David Remnick, who became the magazine’s fifth editor in 1998, roamed the floor, as did his predecessor in the job, Tina Brown.
“It would be the height of presumption to think anything can last another 100 years, and I know we’re all obsessed with every new thing that comes down the highway,” Mr. Remnick said. “But I absolutely believe that people will always want what we do at The New Yorker.”
He grew pensive as he considered two stalwarts of the magazine who were now gone. “I miss Janet Malcolm, and I miss Roger Angell,” he said. “I’ll always remember sitting with him in the left field stands for the Yankees. It was one of the great nights of my life.”
A pack of fiction writers — Zadie Smith, Jennifer Egan, Jeffrey Eugenides and Jonathan Lethem — gathered by the bar. The club was also flooded with staff writers including Rachel Aviv, Adam Gopnik, Jia Tolentino, Naomi Fry, Vinson Cunningham, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Helen Rosner, Kelefa Sanneh, Rachel Syme, Kyle Chayka and Doreen St. Félix.
“The New Yorker doesn’t really change, which can be seen as a marker of conservatism, but there’s something to be gleaned by consistency,” Ms. St. Félix said. “We’re entering an era where there won’t be many things that last a hundred years.”
As waiters offered fries in Anthora coffee cups, bartenders served cocktails with New Yorker-appropriate names. The gin-based Tipsy Tilley referred to the magazine’s foppish mascot, Eustace Tilley, who appeared on the cover of the first issue, dated Feb. 21, 1925. Versions of the character, created by the cartoonist Rea Irvin, appear on the six cover variants the magazine rolled out for its anniversary issue this month.
“I think that in this day and age, endurance means something,” Susan Orlean, a longtime staff writer, said. “Tonight is like celebrating the centennial of the United States. We made it.”
The critic Emily Nussbaum danced beneath a disco ball alongside editors, fact-checkers and editorial assistants. Also present at Jean’s were the cartoonist Roz Chast and the writers Daniel Mendelsohn and Bill Buford. Roger Lynch and Jonathan Newhouse were among the executives at Condé Nast, the publisher that operates The New Yorker, who made the party.
Judith Thurman, who started writing for the magazine in 1987, made her way to the coat check. She said the party was a little more boisterous than she had expected.
“You could be wearing a garbage bag here, it’s so dark,” she said. “I don’t know if this venue is that great for those of us with hearing problems.”
“At first I thought this was my 100th birthday party, but then I remembered I’m only 78,” she added. “The more A.I. takes over, and TikTok takes over, the more there’s going to be a resistance to it one day. And The New Yorker will be here, more necessary than ever.”
As the party wound down, Patrick Radden Keefe reminisced about stepping into David Grann’s office to get structural advice on his stories. The film critic Richard Brody and the food writer Hannah Goldfield traded notes on “The Brutalist” and the merits of intermissions.
Calvin Trillin, who started writing for the magazine in 1963, was holding court by the bar as Blondie’s “Heart of Glass” blasted from a speaker.
“I’m 89 now, so I haven’t been here for all of the hundred years, but I’ve been here for quite a few,” he said. “Tonight I’ve thought about Joseph Mitchell, and how in awe I was of him. My wife used to say to me, ‘Why don’t you just ask him if he wants to go to lunch with you?’ But I didn’t have the nerve to.”
He swiped a cookie from a passing tray.
“A hundred years is a long time,” he said, “but I hope The New Yorker will go on for another hundred. There’s no good reason not to.”
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
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The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
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Abriana Vicioso is the host of the Flower Hour, which takes place monthly.
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Each flower carries a personal history. For Abriana Vicioso, the calla lily was her parents’ wedding flower — a symbol of her mother’s beauty. “She had this big, beautiful white calla lily in her hair,” Vicioso says. “I love my parents. They’re the reason I’m here. I’ll never forget where I came from.”
The Flower Hour begins with Vicioso announcing, with a warm smile: “Today is about touching grass.” The florist-by-trade gestures behind her to hundreds of flowers contained in buckets — blue thistles, ivory anemones and calla lilies painted silver — all twisted and unfurling into the air. “Tonight is going to be so sweet and intimate,” Vicioso says, eyeing the beautiful chaos at her feet. A grin buds across her face.
Moments before the workshop, participants sit at candlelit tables exchanging horoscopes and comparing their favorite flowers. A mention of the illustrious bird-of-paradise flower elicits coos and awe from the women. Izamar Vazquez, who is from Jalisco, Mexico, reveals her fondness for roses, which make her feel connected to her Mexican roots.
Vicioso hosts her flower-themed wellness workshop near the iconic Original Los Angeles Flower Market in downtown L.A. In January, the first Flower Hour event sold out, prompting her to make it a monthly series. Vicioso describes the event as a “three-part journey” where participants are invited to drink herbal tea, smoke rose-petal-rolled cannabis joints and create a floral arrangement. “The guide is to connect with the medicine of flowers,” Vicioso says.
Rose petal joints, tea and flower arranging are all part of The Flower Hour event’s offerings.
The event is hosted at the Art Club, a membership-based co-working space. “The Flower Hour is really beautiful. Everyone gets to explore their creativity while meeting new people,” says Lindsay Williams, the co-owner of the Art Club.
The idea for Flower Hour came to Vicioso during a conversation with her mother. “We joke all the time that flowers were destined to make their way into my life,” she says. She works as a florist and models on the side, even appearing in the pages of Vogue. Vicioso grew up in a Caribbean household, where flowers and offerings were part of daily life. “In my culture and religion, a lot of my family practices — an Afro-Caribbean religion — we build altars.”
Like many cultures, flowers carry sentimental value in her religion. “I’m Caribbean, so a lot of my family practices a Yoruba religion, which comes from Africa. In the Caribbean, it’s well known as Santería.”
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After a difficult year and a breakup, Vicioso wanted to marry her love of flowers with community building. Because Vicioso uses cannabis medicinally, the workshop naturally includes a smoking component. “My family has smoked cannabis for a lot of reasons for a long time. It’s a really healing plant,” she explains.
In the workshop, even the cannabis gets the floral treatment. Vicioso presents her rose-petal-wrapped joints on a silver platter at each table. She rolled each by hand. “If you’ve never smoked a rose-petal-rolled joint, the difference with this is it’s going to have roses that have a slight tobacco effect,” she announces.
During the workshop, Vicioso stresses the importance of buying cannabis from local vendors. The cannabis provided was purchased from a Northern Californian vendor. The wellness workshop aims to reclaim the healing ritual of smoking cannabis. “This is a plant that has been commercialized,” Vicioso says. “There’s a lot of Black and Brown people who are in jail for this plant.”
The resulting workshop is what Vicioso describes as “an immersive wellness experience that is the intersection of wellness, creativity, community and an appreciation of flowers.” The workshop serves as a reminder to enjoy Earth’s innate beauty in the form of flowers — including cannabis. “It’s this gift that the universe gave us for free and that I have this deep connection with,” Vicioso says.
Conversation cards to generate discussion among participants (top, letf). The workshop serves as a “third space” for Angelenos to engage in tactile creativity and community building outside of traditional nightlife settings.
After enjoying lavender chamomile tea and smoking a joint, Vicioso introduces the flowers to the group before inviting them to pick their own. She emphasizes each flower’s personality traits, describing green dianthus as a “Dr. Seuss” plant. Then, there are calla lilies with their “main character moment.” It gets personal. “Start thinking of a flower in your life that you can discover,” she says. “If you’re feeling like you need inspiration, you can always remember that these flowers have stories.”
Vicioso infuses wisdom into her instruction on floral arrangements: There are no mistakes. Let the flowers tell you where they want to go, she urges. Intuition will be your guide — the wilder, the better.
“Hecho in Mexico” reads a sticker on a bunch of green stems. “Like me,” says Vazquez with a laugh. “They’re all doing their own thing. Like a family,” she says later, arranging stems.
The Flower Hour participants and Vicioso, center, chat as they build their own floral arrangements at the sold-out event.
Two participants — Vazquez and Rebeca Alvarado — are friends who run a floral design company together called Izza Rose. Like Vicioso, the friends have a connection to flowers through their Latin American culture. They met Vicioso in the floral industry and were overjoyed to discover her workshop.
“This is a great way to connect with other people,” says Vazquez.
Alvarado agrees, adding: “You’re getting to know people outside of going to bars. You can connect in different ways when there’s an activity.”
Vazquez uses flowers to stay connected to her Mexican heritage, adding that she prefers to support Mexican vendors. In recent months, the downtown L.A. flower market has struggled to recover from ongoing ICE raids. “Some are scared to come back,” says Vazquez.
Hand-rolled cannabis joints wrapped in rose petals are presented on a silver platter at The ArtClub (top, right). The Flower Hour aims to reclaim the healing rituals of cannabis and flowers.
Another participant, Barbara Rios, was attracted to the workshop for stress relief. “You can hang out with your friends, but it’s nice to do things with your hands,” she says. “I work a stressful job, and it’s nice to have that third space that we’re all craving.”
On this February night, the participants were predominantly women, save for one man. In the future, Vicioso hopes that more men learn to engage with flowers. “There’s a statistic about men receiving flowers for the first time at their funerals, and I think we have changed that,” she says.
To conclude the workshop, Vicioso encourages participants to build lasting friendships and incorporate flower arranging into their daily practice — even if it’s just with a small, inexpensive bouquet.
“Get some flowers together, go to the park, hang out with each other and hang out with me,” she says. Participants leave with flower arrangements in hand. In the darkness of the night air, it briefly looks as though the women carry silver calla lilies that are blooming from their palms.
An underwater view shows US’ Lilly King competing in a heat of the women’s 200m breaststroke swimming event during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Paris La Defense Arena in Nanterre, west of Paris, on July 31, 2024. (Photo by François-Xavier MARIT / AFP) (Photo by FRANCOIS-XAVIER MARIT/AFP via Getty Images)
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This week’s show was recorded in Bloomington, Indiana with host Peter Sagal, judge and scorekeeper Bill Kurtis, Not My Job guest Lilly King and panelists Alonzo Bodden, Josh Gondelman, and Faith Salie. Click the audio link above to hear the whole show.
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Our panelists tell three stories about a travel hack in the news, only one of which is true.
Not My Job: Olympic Swimmer Lilly King answers our questions about Lil’ Kings
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All the news we couldn’t fit anywhere else
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