I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with pale rosé. In these latter days of summer, my preferred potion is not blush in color, nor the electric orange of an Aperol spritz. It’s a gleaming shade of ruby, and served in a condensation-covered glass. Yes: chilled red wine.
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Who knew a pie could be beachy? Chef Bill Smith’s Atlantic Beach Pie—a magical layering of crumbly crust, lemon custard filling, and frothy whipped cream—achieves this wonderful feat. The crust, made from saltine crackers, is buttery, sandy and, of course, salty. The citrus filling is bright and sunny, and has enough acid to cut through the cool froth of fresh whipped cream on top.
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Maybe I shouldn’t admit this as a lifestyle reporter, but my pinnacle of personal luxury is a cold beer in a hot shower—ideally after a day spent in the ocean. I’m pretty sure I picked up this habit at the University of California Santa Barbara, but for over a decade in New York City, I let it lapse. Last Christmas—my second one after moving back to southern California—I received this shower beer caddy as a gift from my boyfriend. I’ve never felt so seen.
The Aperol Spritz—the electric-orange potion of Aperol, prosecco, and club soda that’s swirling in globe-shaped glasses in bars, pool parties, and patios worldwide—has been declared “violently refreshing” and the drink of summer 2018 in the New York Times.
Happy Shark Week! Let’s start by clarifying that you are highly unlikely to encounter a shark anywhere other than your TV.
Lauren Groff is the author of two short story collections and three novels, including the Obama favorite Fates and Furies. She is also a mother of two children. In a recent interview by the Harvard Gazette, Groff was asked how she negotiates the coexistence of these facts: “Can you talk about your process and how you manage work and family?”
As a kid playing sports at school, I was a frequent recipient of the “sportsmanship award.” I only understood years later why this used to make my dad crack up—that receiving a trophy for sportsmanship was essentially an acknowledgement that while you weren’t exactly a gifted athlete (or even kind of sucked), you had a generally good attitude and probably shared your snacks.
Over the last few months, plastic drinking straws have become a focal point for environmentalists, celebrities, consumers, and the corporate board members who wish to appease them. (And ostensibly, to shrink the environmental footprints of their businesses.) The disposable plastic straw has become, in a sense, the new plastic bag: a handy symbol for the toxic and persistent scourge of single-use plastic, and an everyday item that can be easily eliminated from use. In the US, cities such as Seattle and Malibu have already banned them, and today Starbucks announced it would phase them out from its stores by 2020.
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On Tuesday (June 26), a 28-year-old community organizer from the Bronx named Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won the House Democratic Primary in New York, unseating the longtime incumbent, Joseph Crowley, in an upset that appeared to stun even Ocasio-Cortez herself.
There’s a certain kind of Instagram user who is expert at inciting desire, or even envy. Their feeds are peppered with well-lit shots of the good life: bountiful cheeseboards strewn with fresh fruit; un-scuffed sandals resting by a beach-house door; tabletops set with artfully mismatched porcelain and bloom-stuffed vases. Sometimes, a product—for example, a pale wooden handbag in a half-moon shape or fiddle-leaf fig tree in a modern planter—translates so well in this medium that it becomes a sensation. Such is the power of Instagram users who are adept at tapping into and capturing our material aspirations. Influencers, we call them.
Whether it’s a beauty tutorial, a shot of sandals on a colorful tiled floor, or a succession of carefully curated hashtags, most of us have encountered the work of influencers. They are social-media marketers who use personal accounts on platforms like Instagram and YouTube to sell products and services, offering brands an “authentic” connection to a group of highly engaged followers.
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Cannes, France
Cannes, France
Cannes, France
I was a bit sheepish bringing Melissa Broder’s The Pisces to the checkout line. Not only does the book’s cover feature a woman with pin-up curls passionately embracing a silhouette of a fish, but the enthusiastic blurbs seem to suggest that contemporary literature has been incomplete until this, a fictional compendium of genuinely hot merman sex. Yes—merman sex.
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Culver City, CA
“CBD is the new avocado toast,” stated the caption on an Instagram that recently appeared in my feed—a photo of a chalkboard outside at a Williamsburg, Brooklyn café advertising a “magical CBD latte.”
In a video from June 6, the opening night of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s On the Run II tour in Wales, a towering black screen blazes with stark capital white letters, lighting up with the words, one-by-one: “THIS … IS … REAL … LIFE.”
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