1. “YES @NYMag CHEAP EATS. #bestweekever,” tweeted @valentinamonte, about Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld’s annual list of the city’s finest affordable food (“Eat Cheap 2012,” July 16–23). “Overwhelmed by @NYMag’s Cheap Eats issue. Want to go to Mission Chinese, Parm and Jack’s Wife Freda tonight,” tweeted @maurakutner, who must have been very hungry. Other readers found the issue something of a mixed blessing: “I’m not sure there’s anything more defeating than eating a granola bar while reading @NYMag’s Cheap Eats issue,” bemoaned @kmmpatke. “Restaurants to avoid for the next 6 months,” tweeted @veropie. And of course, commenters on nymag.com chimed in with their own opinions on what we missed, especially in our roundup of the city’s post-Momofuku pork-bun revolution. “Y’know … Buddakan actually makes a phenomenal pork-belly bao,” suggested one. “Nothing here beats the [buns] you can get at Taiwanese night market or little stalls on the side of the streets,” argued another. “The versions here are all ‘Americanized’ and sometimes just bizarre.”
2. In Will Leitch’s long chat with Spike Lee, the Brooklyn auteur held forth on gentrification, basketball, and the timidity and enduring racism of Hollywood (“In Conversation: Spike Lee,” July 16–23). “Even when we don’t agree with him, we like to listen to Spike Lee talk about pretty much anything,” wrote Hannah Miet at the Atlantic Wire. Readers at nymag.com thought so, too: “Love him or hate him, and I’m somewhere in the middle, Spike is a necessary voice and a local treasure,” wrote one. Another went further: “I have been saying this for years, and I am happy it’s still true: Spike Lee is an American treasure.” Praised another: “Great interview. Very probing and kind of intense, but also conducted with humor and class on both sides.” One reader got especially excited about a particular exchange, about stoop ball, stickball, and cocolevio: “Will Leitch: please, please tell Spike Lee to make a short film explaining the brief history and rules for ‘New York street games.’ ”
3. Reddit users took to Reddit, predictably, to pick apart Matthew Shaer’s chronicle of the mega–message board’s recent real-world user meetup in Central Park for being too much the work of an outsider glancing in (“Reddit in the Flesh,” July 16–23). Went one thread: “I don’t think it was meant for Redditors at all”; “it sounded like ‘Redditors are people!’ ”; “Which we all know not to be true”; “I would say people-ish.” Another got a little more serious: “This article once more showed that it really doesn’t make any sense to act as if Reddit is one community/website”; “It’s almost like there’s two Reddits: the homepage Reddit (described in the article) and then non-homepage subreddits”; “I was struck with the feeling that things that make sense on the Internet don’t work so well IRL”—that’s “in real life,” for the web novice. Others argued the meetup was not at all representative. “The impression I have is that the Redditors that go to meetups are a specific type that are more social than some,” wrote one Redditor. Another responded: “As a person that regularly attends Reddit meetups, I totally agree. Not that I don’t enjoy the company of nearly everyone I’ve met there, but our meetups do tend to alienate people, especially the less social. Perversely, any time someone actually does try to schedule an event that caters to something more low-key, it is poorly—or literally not at all—attended. It’s an interesting paradox.” And a number of users argued that the attempt to take stock of the community by attending a meetup was flawed from the get-go. “The author doesn’t seem to have spent much time on Reddit itself to get the nuances of it, and honestly there wasn’t much need for him to have done that. The article was really just to give the broadest possible overview for the New York Magazine readership, who likely had no idea that Reddit even exists.” Another commenter was snarkier: “Aw, look, the outside world is trying to understand an Internet community. How cute.”
4. “So in honor of all the horror and heartwarming (yes, there are some!) and interesting taxi experiences, read New York Magazine’s Everything Guide to Taxis,” wrote Terrie on Tumblr The Story So Far (“The Everything Guide to: Taxis,” July 16–23). “Yes, it’s set in N.Y., but riding a taxi is universal, and the taxi driver is a genus of humanity that exists everywhere.” At nymag.com, readers were a little pricklier: “Why do I tip a cabdriver?” asked one. “Leg room that doesn’t accommodate a toddler (I’m six-four and leggy), that annoying TV, funny smells, the out-of-control driving, all that mold and yeast you mentioned, barely ever a ‘hello’ or ‘thank you.’ Why can’t the fare be enough?”This story appeared in the July 30, 2012 issue of New York Magazine.
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