Table of contents for the January 24, 2005 issue of New York Magazine.

January 24, 2005 Issue

Cover Story

Stress: The Urban Detox Guide

Includes: What to do when absolutely nothing’s going your way • Trends in anti-anxiety drugs • Relief for victims of stress—including the hard-charging businessman and the overworked mom • Treatments for each part of your body • Six new spas

Features

Next month, The Gates, one of the most audacious public art projects in history, will be unveiled in Central Park, the climax of an odyssey that consumed 26 years of the lives of its creators, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his tireless wife. These days, it’s quite a scene inside their Soho loft. He’s furiously drawing and she’s furiously flogging his drawings, as they scrounge the last of the $20 million cost.

Plus: An original Christo collage. (Save this issue, and the artists will sign it on Tuesday, February 15, at the Central Park Boathouse, from 4 to 6:30 P.M.)

Susan Superstar

After becoming a luminary by destroying the snobbish distinction between high and low culture, Susan Sontag spent the rest of her life at war with her own celebrity.

The Capitalist Spirit

The much-heralded post-9/11 return to traditional religion fizzled quickly in New York. But the city became a boomtown for New Age healers and mystics who will cleanse you, your pets, or the apartment you’re trying to sell—for hundreds of dollars an hour.

Strategist

Best Bets

The Bar Room at MoMA, plus Vijay Singh’s driver and Marc Jacobs sunglasses

Market Research

Reviewing umbrellas

Mating

After the bar scene and the Internet, a resort to game theory.

The Look Book

A nursing student and would-be Top Mode

Real Estate

How FreshDirect feeds gentrification

Shop News

Store openings this week

Ask a Shop Clerk

Jeff Ayers of Forbidden Planet

The Best Seller

Strolling Pet Carrier, $129.95

Sales & Bargains:
This week's hottest sales & bargains

The Restaurant Review

Brooklyn’s Bouillabaisse 126 earns its name

In Season

How to make candied pomelo peel

Restaurant Openings & Buzz

Week of Jan. 17, 2005: Gari, Bond 45, Baked, Pukk, Babu, Carl's Steaks, and Chop't. Plus, City Bakery's Hot Chocolate Festival, sweet relief, and more.

Ask Gael

Do we really need yet another Italian restaurant?

Eats Village

A guide to the new St. Marks Place restaurant row

Orange Alert

Sometimes nothing will do but a comforting crock of macaroni and cheese.

Brew Masters

In the darkest depths of winter, the tea ritual is one way to warm up an afternoon.

Intelligencer

Intelligencer Gossip

A new Hamptons spa—for cars, the porn world’s Grammy nominee, and more.

It Happened Last Week

While the rest of the nation gave itself over to other preoccupations, the city insouciantly carried on with the ordinary business of life.

Psychic Family Network

Born to be a medium (like her brother and sister and . . .), she ﬁnds New Yorkers easy reading—when they aren’t giving off “a meteor shower of stresses.”