It’s time to feel the spray of the sea or to hear the squeal of the reel when a big fish catches your line. For the best in summer water fun, read on.
If you and your family are heading to a lake or the seashore for a summer vacation, remember the bug spray … and Boating magazine. While Kevin Falvey, editor of the Bonnier title, has a lot of ground to cover between the covers — boats, accessories, water scooters, safety tips, engines, road tests — the June issue does a fantastic job for beginners like us. We particularly enjoyed the feature on inflatable tow tubes. Now that is simple family fun. The dockside dining story was lame for this reason: If you live in the area, you know all about it. If you don’t, what are the odds you’re going to sail your boat there? We would have liked to have seen more on choosing the right water scooter.
Are you angling for some fishing out on Jamaica Bay? Sport Fishing magazine will get you in the mood with its nice layout, but largely lacks the local touch. There are features on catching huge yellowfin among porpoise pods in Costa Rica, and salmon fishing in Northern California. There is a pictorial in the events calendar about the first Montauk shark catch-and-release tournament July 27 but that is about it for local reach. We liked helpful stories on keeping your catch alive, and how best to fly commercial with your gear. In a question and answer session, we learn not to eat pufferfish. When they puff up, they can release deadly toxins.
What’s with all the middle fingers? That might be your first question after picking up Surfer and noticing the first ad, the first story and then another photo, deeper in, that all feature some surfer with middle finger extended. We thought the traditional gesture was the hang 10 and that surfers were laid back. Guess not. Well, right back at you, Surfer. The magazine gets a big middle finger for the boring read. The features drone on way too long about topics no one cares about if they are reading a surf magazine. We don’t care about the beautiful texture of 8 mm film or the narco tragedy in Mexico. Just point us to the waves.
Another issue like this one and divers won’t be the only thing underwater at Scuba Diving. A sinking sensation certainly comes on fast for readers of the Bonnier publication forced to suffer through soulless prose and cluttered layouts. And the writing certainly isn’t carrying the day, with Editor-in-Chief Eric Michael signing off this: “halting your drift like Batman skidding along a sidewalk” almost immediately followed by “you toss out a reef hook, whipping like a kite in the current” in one simile-laden cover feature on “drift dives.” A life buoy can’t even be had in the underwater photos of marine life in the glossy, which delivers poorly lit, low resolution shots. To the point where “gray sharks” look gray indeed and a photo of a humphead wrasse comes off looking like so much watercolor murkiness.
For the optimists who think they’re never going to get sick, New York magazine’s “Best Doctors” issue can be as much fun as reading the phone book. But this will make you feel great. There’s the feature on the zany office set-up at Menlo Industries, where the staff works without a boss — and share computers and code. The feature writer seems skeptical and frequently reminds the reader of evidence chickens produce more eggs under competitive hierarchies. For some “House of Cards”-style political intrigue, New York delivers with a piece on Nelson Castro, a Bronx pol who ended up wearing a wire for the DA. For fun there’s a photo feature on knee-high gladiator sandals, and a great “urbanist’s guide” to Amsterdam that includes the non-touristy stuff. And if you are into the medical reviews, there’s a photo spread of some artificial body parts.
Like a $10 palm reader, Hendrik Hertzberg’s Talk of the Town column on NSA snooping tries hard to cover all the bases in the New Yorker. First he argues The Guardian/Washington Post scoop really only reconfirms what other outlets have already reported and suggests that we have — so far — no evidence that the government’s detection program has been conducted unlawfully and little to suggest anyone has been harmed. It’ s a contrarian view, and while Hertzberg seems to present the government’s case he pivots halfway and argues there is some harm — to American’s reputation for open society. Wisely, Hertzberg adds his concern that more than a million corporate executives have top secret clearance.
We know Time readers are old, but the mag covers the topic of death with some frequency. It’s a relief then to read Josh Sanburn’s fascinating piece on our changing attitudes towards cremation. The piece kicks off with an anecdote about a guy, Big Al, who dies in an accident and has his ashes scattered on a reef in Florida. Who knew that cremation is also the cheaper option at just $2,570 versus a $7,755 funeral? Teed-off NSA contract worker Edward Snowden is cover boy, and the story frames him in the context of the rise in hacktivist culture. We’d rather see writer Steve Brill on the case again, doing some real investigative grunt work into big data. A phone poll was more eye-opening. Americans don’t seem as angry about government data collection as you might expect. Elsewhere, TV critic James Poniewozik’s piece on the spy TV genre helps explain why we all seem so informed.