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The Desperado (Ciara O’Rourke for the Atavist)
Around 12:45, he finished his coffee, took a deep breath, and left the diner. Averill walked to a traffic light and crossed the street, leaning on his cane with each step toward the bank. He hadn’t been nervous when he woke up, but as he approached the building he couldn’t help but worry. What if something bad happens? he thought. What if the teller has a gun and decides to be a hero?
Can a Bar Feel Like a Bar Without Booze? (Allegra Hobbs for Munchies)
Listen—which also hosted a Dry January happy hour series at Von Bar in NoHo—is one of three alcohol-free bars coming to New York City in the next year. Getaway Bar in Greenpoint and karaoke bar Mini Rex in the Lower East Side—a divided concept with a booze-stocked bar in one room and a sober bar in another—both have plans to open in the first quarter of 2019. Each is slightly different, but looked at collectively, they signal a possible reimagining of the role alcohol plays in our social lives, in our gathering spaces, and in our concepts of fun.
The Quest for the Multigenerational City (Megan Kimble for CityLab)
I hadn’t lived in the same city as my parents since I was 22, the same year my last grandparent died. In Tucson, a city of snowbirds, I hadn’t noticed the generational homogeneity in my life—the fact that I wasn’t close to a single person over 60 who I wasn’t related to. But when I got to Austin and wanted to learn more about this city, I decided I needed to spend some time with people who had been here a while.
You Know the Lorena Bobbitt Story. But Not All of It. (Amy Chozick for the New York Times)
Even though she has physically transformed, now the picture of an upwardly mobile 49-year-old suburban mom with wispy blond hair, she has the same, sad, dark, orb-like eyes. And even though she goes by her maiden name and, shortly after the trial, the media moved on (thank you, Tonya Harding), people meet Lorena in Manassas and it doesn’t take long for them to make the connection that she is that Lorena in Manassas. “I live here. This is my home. Why should he have the last laugh?” she said when I asked why she didn’t move away.
The Last Fish Shack on the River (Alexandra Marvar for Bitter Southerner)
Zarem thinks he’s been going to Desposito’s since he was about 12 years old. Maybe longer. That would put him in an old wooden chair at a newspaper-covered table room in the late 1940s, picking apart a basket of boiled shrimp, even before Carlo Desposito took it over.
Photo: llee_wu