Table of Contents

July 17, 2006 Issue

Cover Story

Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness

Psychologists and economists are increasingly obsessed with what makes people happy. What they’re finding out about the value of community, family, faith, and financial homogeneity confirms every New Yorker’s worst fear: Those smug Middle Americans have had it right all along.
Plus: Happiness: A User's Manual

Features

Nine Blocks From Home

Tiesha Sargeant went from Crown Heights to Brearley, Wesleyan, Credit Suisse First Boston, and Condé Nast—but something drew her back to Crown Heights, where she ended up dead.

Would You Buy Stock in This Man?

Dick Grasso, the former stock-exchange chief who went down in a dispute over his excessive pay, has big plans to show his enemies just how wrong they were.

Intelligencer

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Clinton at intermission.

Lit Non-Hoax Revealed

Pseudonyms don’t move units.

Further Lane Barn Burner

Buy this house, get seven for free?

Grass-Fed Beef in City Parks

Is ersatz turf unsafe?

MySpace, But For Models Only

Too many uglies out there.

Returns Accepted

As the city basked in the rockets’ red glare above New York Harbor, it was a week to savor many happy returns.

Notes on Camp

Executives quit the rat race to manage the sack race.

Battle of the Bulgur

Work-weary Park Slopers flee hippie-era food co-op for parking spots, diet coke at Fairway.

Body and Seoul

New Yorkers line up for a chance to become Miss Korea.

Taxhampton

Will Southampton’s ballooning property assessments destroy the town?

Strategist

Best Bets

The ideal beach read, Nike Air high heels, and other great buys.

Ask a Shop Clerk

Claudia Strasser of The Paris Apartment.

Shop News

Store openings this week.

Look Book

An aspiring R&B star from East New York.

The Restaurant Review

Excellent, reasonably priced food on a very small scale.

In Season

How to make blueberry pie like the Union Square Cafe.

Restaurant Openings

Week of July 10, 2006: Trestle on Tenth and Japonais.

Travel

Manhattan hotels for every type of visitor.

Craze

Analyzing the highbrow-sex-toy explosion.

Real Estate

What happens when co-op sale prices go public?

Artifact

Looking back at the grandest Hamptons estate of the Jazz Age.

The Culture Pages

Hot Hot Hot?

A comeback by the New York Dolls, rock and roll’s most deprived legends.

The Movie Review

More of the same from Johnny Depp and the rest of Disney’s pirates—which isn’t such a bad thing.

New York Screen: The Worst of the Worst

For the scariest New Yorker of all, head to Film Forum to see Kirk Douglas in Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole.

An Afternoon in Chelsea

The best of the summer shows in Chelsea.

The Book Review

Entertainingly evil characters exploit tragedy in Ken Kalfus’s 9/11 divorce novel.

Read and Approved: Eclectic Beach Fare

Alternative beach fare.

The TV Review

Showtime’s Sopranos ripoff is humorless but sharp.

In Defense of Star Jones Reynolds

Defending Star Jones Reynolds.

Watch This Instead

An oasis in the summer TV wasteland.

Sharp-Dressed Man: Tim Gunn

Q&A with the Parsons' Chair and Project Runway mentor.

The Theater Review

A retelling of Che Guevara’s last days that’s a bit too sympathetic.

The Pop Music Review

Films about the Minutemen and Luna document the changing face of rock’s minor leagues.

The Approval Matrix

Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies.

Columns

The Power Grid

As evidenced by their attack on Joe Lieberman, the Daily Kos gang has more fighting spirit than the Democratic Establishment—but do they have more ideas?