January 12, 2004 Issue
Cover Story
Girls Gone Wild
The media have long depicted lesbians as sexless beings in lumberjack shirts whining endlessly about the patriarchy. This month, Showtime’s hot new series The L Word tears away the flannel to reveal a group of L.A. lesbians as obsessed with sex, success, and shoes as Sex and the City’s hetero quartet ever was. As it happens, New York’s lesbian community is ready for an image makeover, too. Plus: ’Atta Boi. Freed from old ideas about sexual politics, writes Ariel Levy, many young lesbians are going beyond butch (the new word is “boi”) to experiment with a new generation of sex roles. Welcome to the play-boi mansion.
Features
Where’s the Party?
They’re young and hip, they’re New Yorkers, and they’re . . . Republicans. With their party’s membership outnumbered five to one, New York’s young Republicans are fighting back aggressively and packing a punch with their checkbooks.
Our Savior Isiah
Listless, creaking, saddled with a bloated payroll, lacking quickness almost completely, the Knicks were basketball’s walking dead. Then along came Isiah Thomas, their new director of basketball operations, and a string of sudden—fun, even—wins. Is this a miracle? And can the resurrection last?
Departments
Letters to the Editor
Readers sound off on celebrities gone wild and more.
Help Desk
Coping with co-worker crushes and music snobs; flirting with security; breaking up (with your colorist) is hard to do
Smart City
Best of New York
Bella Blu’s hearty homemade minestrone soup may be the best medicine for keeping winter at bay
Best Bets
Limited-edition Pumas, merino- wool pillows, and jelly sandals by Salvatore Ferragamo
Warp Drive
A designers’ clubhouse grows in Brooklyn.
Who Can Update My Fur Coat?
My mother gave me one of her best furs, but it’s a little too Dynasty for my taste. Is it possible to alter the style without ruining it?
Test Drive
The bottom line on the city’s richest hot chocolates
Sales & Bargains
Deal of the Week: Contain your excitement: Colorful wastebaskets from the Container Store
Plus, this week's sale listings
Intelligencer
Intelligencer Column
David Blaine's next stunt. Plus, Keifer Sutherland's ba-humbug Christmas.
Last Gasp
How would you wrap up the final season of Sex and the City?
Let Us Eat Steak!
Particularly if it’s prime meat. New Yorkers blithely brave the right sort of beef.
Saying Good-bye to Greeting Cards
What darling children! Now, where’s the recycling bin?
Shabano . . . What?
It looks and feels like a shahtoosh, but it's legal!
The Hunger Artist
A jailed Basquiat faker goes without food so that he can make (and sell) art.
Before the Fall
Timely new books about the old New Economy.
Columnists
This Media Life
Dethroned press lord Conrad Black is a Citizen Kane for our time—but what was his Rosebud?
The City Politic
Why Democratic Party animal and inevitable gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer is spending so much time and energy in the state’s lesser precincts
Critics
Movies
Restored and enhanced, Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 Battle of Algiers is a stunningly provocative—and timely—study of terrorism and the meaning of liberation
TV Notes
John Leonard reviews Degas and the Dance, Forbidden Iran, and more.
Theater
In Rose’s Dilemma, Neil Simon creates a ghost story trapped in the memory of his own past comic triumphs; revisiting the assassination of JFK, Frame 312 leaves you wanting more—as do two engrossing plays about the art of cooking; The Last Letter is a haunting, intimate tale of a doomed mother and her surviving child
Underground Gourmet
Alias gets a new chef and an evolving menu of full-flavored dishes; sublime Turkish specialties abound at Divane
The Week
Restaurant Openings & Buzz
Spicy & Tasty: Flushing's newly relocated Sichuan hotspot lives up to its name
New On DVD
This week: Jeepers Creepers 2, Out of Time, The Days of Wine and Roses, Ikiru, Sitcom
In the Dumps
Every January, smart audiences catch up on the Oscar contenders that opened in December, while studios dump their disasters.
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