July is just around the corner, and so is . . . Philadelphia. The combination of our puny dollar and the high cost of travel has folks thinking of US destinations this summer. Here’s our take on three namesake magazines that highlight the best – and worst – their cities have to offer.
“For all of LA’s deficiencies – let’s throw in a deep racial and economic divide and the lack of shared conversation – I still find it a welcoming place,” writes Los Angeles Editor-in-Chief Kit Rachlis. As if to prove the point, the magazine appears to focus exclusively on one side of the divide – the sushi-eating, cocktail-lounging, furniture-shopping side. The new Nobu in West Hollywood is neither “profound” nor “frothy,” and that’s not altogether good, a review concludes. Sorry, but we couldn’t bring ourselves to slog through “How Obama, Clinton, and McCain became this season’s must-see TV.” And a rambling feature on the new head of the water and power department, H. David Nehai, treats us to such pearls of insights as “Water is the sexier, and potentially more troublesome, part of Nahai’s portfolio.”
Hunkering for good “al fresco” eats near “Havahd Yahd,” or a “killah chowdah” in Brookline? Boston has it covered in its lead feature “The 25 Best Al Fresco Spots.” Sadly, that’s about all the mag has going for it in its July issue, which can take credit for wasting ink in an overly detailed piece on how a US military contractor stationed in Iraq got bounced from his duties because of his appetite for porn. Some redemption, though, comes in the form of a feature about questionable methods used by a center that treats mentally impaired students. It’s a well-written, thoroughly-reported article, but it’s also a 15-page jaunt through the magazine that in the endcould have been summed up with the question, “To shock or not to shock?”
Long before Philly was christened the sixth borough, we were crashing at our friend’s house on Lombard Street after catching the Black Crowes at the Tower or G. Love and Special Sauce at the Electric Factory. And while it is considered a major metropolis, we Manhattanites have found the city more charmingly quaint. Philadelphia magazine has the same unassuming appeal. Sure, the mag’s society page is a joke. (When Comcast’s octogenarian founder Ralph Roberts is the most recognizable face, it might be time to kill the page.) But the mag serves its niche well with service pieces like this month’s cover on the city’s best outdoor dining – a great summertime feature for a city whose culinary creations expand far beyond the cheesesteak. The editors could have put more imagination into its list of “49 Ways to Have More Summer Fun,” which contains such inane advice as “buy yourself a cookie” or “boogie on down at the roller rink.” They make up for that travesty, however, with city teacher Frank Burd’s moving piece detailing how his neck was broken by two students in a school hallway last February. Read it and weep for the future.
With apparent zeal to get the story first, Newsweek this week celebrates the shared centennial birthday of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, which comes Feb. 12, 2009. The cover story comparing these two great men is stretched about as thin as one could expect – “both men were compulsive scribblers and note takers, and the clarity of their writing enhanced the power of their ideas.” One suspects that if Franklin Delano Roosevelt shared a birthday with Galileo, we’d be learning how both were fanatics about details and fascinated by the workings of nature, even if it came at the expense of their married lives.
While Newsweek devotes an entire page to the tell-tale signs that Anne Hathaway’s ex-boyfriend was “big trouble” before she finally dumped him, Time provides the most striking analysis to date on the Italian con man Raffaello Follieri – namely that he is “Zach Braff-looking.” That hadn’t yet occurred to us. Elsewhere, Time provides a pretty good update on difficulties in Afghanistan, explaining how the Taliban are mucking up efforts to rebuild a hydroelectric dam. We also liked the short piece on “the twisted, tragic mind of a female suicide bomber.” But the special prize (on page 4, no less!) goes to the feature about geriatric porn stars in Japan. “People of my age generally have shame,” says 73-year-old Shigeo Tokuda, who typically is cast as an elderly master of the erotic arts. “But I am proud of myself doing something they cannot.”
Investigative hound Seymour Hersh reports in the New Yorker that the Bush administration is feverishly ramping up covert operations inside Iran under a program approved late last year by Congress. The program, budgeted at up to $400 million, sounds like classic, discombobulated US foreign policy, “passing money” to a grab bag of sketchy opposition groups, some with anti-American pasts. The initiative also could be an awkward fit for Barack Obama, who has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.