newyorker--2020-09-01--The Inevitable Tragedy of a Summer on Edge in Portland

All through the summer , through the haze of tear gas and assaults by federal agents , amid nightly clashes between Portland police and protesters , an incident like the one on Saturday night seemed not only possible but inevitable .
On the ninety-third day of protests in response to the murder of George Floyd , a bullet struck and killed .
And although much remains unknown—the location of the suspect , the details of the dispute captured on grainy video—the conditions in Portland , played out on a long enough timeline , were always going to lead to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Second Avenue and Alder Street .
Thinking otherwise was self-delusion—like flipping a coin once and believing that for the next ninety-two tries it would keep coming up heads .
Even before right-wing groups reappeared on Portland ’ s streets a few weeks ago , the situation downtown was a high-anxiety game of Waiting for the Awful Thing to Happen .
In July , I stood in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S .
Courthouse with hundreds , sometimes thousands , of protesters , who waited every night for the federal agents inside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of a clock .
Hours could pass with nothing much happening beyond spirited chants and drumming .
Yet there remained the sense that , any minute , something very bad might go down .
Could a truck find its way past the barricades and into the throng of demonstrators ?
There were certainly enough raised four-wheel-drives on the periphery , circling the cordoned off protest area , engines revved in taunting , thundering displays .
Could a bullet pop off in the crowd , puncturing an organ or sparking a lethal stampede @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anonymous in masks .
The person beside you could be anyone .
The unseen coronavirus no doubt rode the currents of our collective breath .
Then , late in the night , usually after the crowd began to thin , figures costumed in camouflage military fatigues would pour out of the courthouse , firing flash bangs and tear-gas canisters , thumping demonstrators with so-called less-than-lethal munitions .
The exhale of the federal agents from the building offered a strange kind of relief .
State violence , yes .
A violation of First Amendment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oddly reassuring .
The imagined Ford F-150 had not rolled through the barricade .
The 9-mm .
slug hadn ’ t left its casing .
Everyone stuck to a script .
You protest for hours ; the feds come out , beat the shit out of you , make some arrests .
Repeat .
My experience was limited to a few blisteringly hot summer days and nights .
Indefatigable demonstrators—along with some of the most resilient and resourceful local reporters in the country—endured clashes with the Portland police for weeks , both before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the feds more or less stood down .
Then , in mid-August , an old threat reëmerged : right-wing groups , long agitators at Portland protests and counter-protests , returned to antagonize those who were peacefully assembling for Black lives .
Patriot Prayer , Proud Boys , and other right-wing factions had been fixtures at local demonstrations since at least 2017 , particularly after Jeremy Christian , an avowed white nationalist , murdered two men on the MAX Light Rail .
On May 26th of that year , Christian verbally threatened two teen-age @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of whom was wearing a hijab , with a violent , anti-Muslim screed .
When three male passengers intervened , Christian killed two with a knife and injured the third .
Nine days later , while the city still mourned , the founder of Patriot Prayer , Joey Gibson , who lives across the Columbia River , in Vancouver , Washington , led a “ Trump Free Speech Rally.
” Others joined .
“ Proud Boys show up in big numbers .
Oath Keepers and Three Percenters also show up , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neo-Nazis there , ” Joseph Lowndes , a professor at the University of Oregon and the co-author of “ Producers , Parasites , Patriots : Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity ” told me .
Similiar rallies continued for the next two and half years in parks and other public spaces around western Oregon and Washington , often resulting in bitter fights with anti-racist and anti-fascist demonstrators .
Gibson ’ s club in particular seemed to relish the brawls—often literal fisticuffs—Lowndes said .
This summer , the right-wing cliques had been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Floyd and against the presence of federal agents in Portland .
That changed last month .
With the feds mostly out of the picture and the crowds smaller , the groups started showing up again .
On August 15th , they blasted anti-racist protesters with paint-ball pellets ; the driver of a Toyota Corolla fired two rounds from a handgun but didn ’ t hit anyone .
On August 22nd , members of a pro-police rally clashed again with Black Lives Matter protesters near the Multnomah County Justice Center , paintballs firing in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ later , came the caravan .
On Saturday afternoon , for what was billed on Facebook as “ Trump 2020 Cruise Rally , ” nearly a thousand vehicles , most of them four-wheel-drive trucks festooned with Thin Blue Line and Trump reëlection flags , assembled in a mall parking lot in the suburb of Clackamas .
The planned caravan route was along the interstate and highways that loop Portland .
Yet many drivers broke from the parade and rolled into downtown , their truck beds filled with rowdy Trump fans—paint-ball guns and bear-spray @ @ @ @ @ @ @ belched through the city streets , past gauntlets of antiracist protesters and left-wing groups , blitzing them with pellets and mace .
The protesters returned fire by throwing water bottles and other objects .
One demonstrator on the sidewalk lit a Trump flag ablaze .
A truck struck a handful of protesters who managed to scramble out of the way before being run over .
( Retweeting footage of the violence against peaceful protesters , President Trump said that the “ big backlash going on in Portland can not be unexpected.
” ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and on social media , but I imagined that the people on the ground experienced what I did back in July : the bad thing , seemingly creeping toward Portland all summer , must have felt imminent .
And it was .
“ We all saw this coming , ” the mayor , Ted Wheeler , would say at a press conference the following day .
Around 8:45 P.M. , near the corner of Southwest Third Avenue and Alder Street , a videographer captured what looks like an altercation across the street .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ shouting , then two pops of a gun .
People scramble and a white man in a black T-shirt and light-colored shorts takes a few steps and crumples onto the asphalt .
Street medics rush in to help .
Police arrive soon after .
The man died at the scene .
Photos of the body reveal that he wore a Patriot Prayer baseball hat .
The victim was identified as Aaron ( Jay ) Danielson .
Gibson , the Patriot Prayer founder , told an Associated Press reporter that Danielson was a “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supporter .
On Facebook , Gibson mourned him , writing , “ God bless him and the life he lived.
” Trump mourned , too : “ Rest In Peace Jay !
, ” the President tweeted .
A suspect has been identified as a forty-eight-year-old white man who on social media describes himself as “ 100 percent Antifa.
” The details of the confrontation are still unclear .
But the known facts are enough to greatly exacerbate tensions in Portland and around the country : a self-described antifacist is alleged to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after a pro-Trump rally .
As I write these words , I keep stopping and slipping back into an old habit , one that I thought I broke .
I check the President ’ s twitter feed to see what he ’ s saying , in this case about the shooting .
It ’ s not good .
“ Portland is a mess , and it has been for many years .
If this joke of a mayor doesn ’ t clean it up , we will go in and do it for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been inevitable all summer : the conditions in Portland would likely lead to a loss of life , and the President and his allies would pounce on it .
Now that both have happened , we head into a new season , one even more volatile and less predictable .

All through the summer, through the haze of tear gas and assaults by federal agents, amid nightly clashes between Portland police and protesters, an incident like the one on Saturday night seemed not only possible but inevitable. On the ninety-third day of protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, a bullet struck and killed. And although much remains unknown—the location of the suspect, the details of the dispute captured on grainy video—the conditions in Portland, played out on a long enough timeline, were always going to lead to the kind of tragedy that unfolded at Southwest Second Avenue and Alder Street. Thinking otherwise was self-delusion—like flipping a coin once and believing that for the next ninety-two tries it would keep coming up heads.
Even before right-wing groups reappeared on Portland’s streets a few weeks ago, the situation downtown was a high-anxiety game of Waiting for the Awful Thing to Happen. In July, I stood in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of protesters, who waited every night for the federal agents inside to emerge from boarded-up portals like cuckoos out of a clock. Hours could pass with nothing much happening beyond spirited chants and drumming. Yet there remained the sense that, any minute, something very bad might go down. Could a truck find its way past the barricades and into the throng of demonstrators? There were certainly enough raised four-wheel-drives on the periphery, circling the cordoned off protest area, engines revved in taunting, thundering displays. Could a bullet pop off in the crowd, puncturing an organ or sparking a lethal stampede? We stood shoulder to shoulder, anonymous in masks. The person beside you could be anyone. The unseen coronavirus no doubt rode the currents of our collective breath.
Then, late in the night, usually after the crowd began to thin, figures costumed in camouflage military fatigues would pour out of the courthouse, firing flash bangs and tear-gas canisters, thumping demonstrators with so-called less-than-lethal munitions. The exhale of the federal agents from the building offered a strange kind of relief. State violence, yes. A violation of First Amendment rights, absolutely. Yet it felt oddly reassuring. The imagined Ford F-150 had not rolled through the barricade. The 9-mm. slug hadn’t left its casing. Everyone stuck to a script. You protest for hours; the feds come out, beat the shit out of you, make some arrests. Repeat.
My experience was limited to a few blisteringly hot summer days and nights. Indefatigable demonstrators—along with some of the most resilient and resourceful local reporters in the country—endured clashes with the Portland police for weeks, both before the feds and I arrived and after the feds more or less stood down. Then, in mid-August, an old threat reëmerged: right-wing groups, long agitators at Portland protests and counter-protests, returned to antagonize those who were peacefully assembling for Black lives. Patriot Prayer, Proud Boys, and other right-wing factions had been fixtures at local demonstrations since at least 2017, particularly after Jeremy Christian, an avowed white nationalist, murdered two men on the MAX Light Rail. On May 26th of that year, Christian verbally threatened two teen-age girls of color on the train, one of whom was wearing a hijab, with a violent, anti-Muslim screed. When three male passengers intervened, Christian killed two with a knife and injured the third.
Nine days later, while the city still mourned, the founder of Patriot Prayer, Joey Gibson, who lives across the Columbia River, in Vancouver, Washington, led a “Trump Free Speech Rally.” Others joined. “Proud Boys show up in big numbers. Oath Keepers and Three Percenters also show up, and then you’ve got all these neo-Nazis there,” Joseph Lowndes, a professor at the University of Oregon and the co-author of “Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity” told me. Similiar rallies continued for the next two and half years in parks and other public spaces around western Oregon and Washington, often resulting in bitter fights with anti-racist and anti-fascist demonstrators. Gibson’s club in particular seemed to relish the brawls—often literal fisticuffs—Lowndes said.
This summer, the right-wing cliques had been conspicuously absent during the protests for George Floyd and against the presence of federal agents in Portland. That changed last month. With the feds mostly out of the picture and the crowds smaller, the groups started showing up again. On August 15th, they blasted anti-racist protesters with paint-ball pellets; the driver of a Toyota Corolla fired two rounds from a handgun but didn’t hit anyone. On August 22nd, members of a pro-police rally clashed again with Black Lives Matter protesters near the Multnomah County Justice Center, paintballs firing in both directions.
Then, a week later, came the caravan. On Saturday afternoon, for what was billed on Facebook as “Trump 2020 Cruise Rally,” nearly a thousand vehicles, most of them four-wheel-drive trucks festooned with Thin Blue Line and Trump reëlection flags, assembled in a mall parking lot in the suburb of Clackamas. The planned caravan route was along the interstate and highways that loop Portland. Yet many drivers broke from the parade and rolled into downtown, their truck beds filled with rowdy Trump fans—paint-ball guns and bear-spray canisters at the ready.
The trucks belched through the city streets, past gauntlets of antiracist protesters and left-wing groups, blitzing them with pellets and mace. The protesters returned fire by throwing water bottles and other objects. One demonstrator on the sidewalk lit a Trump flag ablaze. A truck struck a handful of protesters who managed to scramble out of the way before being run over. (Retweeting footage of the violence against peaceful protesters, President Trump said that the “big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected.”)
I observed these scenes via live stream and on social media, but I imagined that the people on the ground experienced what I did back in July: the bad thing, seemingly creeping toward Portland all summer, must have felt imminent. And it was. “We all saw this coming,” the mayor, Ted Wheeler, would say at a press conference the following day.
Around 8:45 P.M., near the corner of Southwest Third Avenue and Alder Street, a videographer captured what looks like an altercation across the street. In the footage, we hear indecipherable shouting, then two pops of a gun. People scramble and a white man in a black T-shirt and light-colored shorts takes a few steps and crumples onto the asphalt. Street medics rush in to help. Police arrive soon after. The man died at the scene. Photos of the body reveal that he wore a Patriot Prayer baseball hat.
The victim was identified as Aaron (Jay) Danielson. Gibson, the Patriot Prayer founder, told an Associated Press reporter that Danielson was a “good friend” and a Patriot Prayer supporter. On Facebook, Gibson mourned him, writing, “God bless him and the life he lived.” Trump mourned, too: “Rest In Peace Jay!,” the President tweeted.
A suspect has been identified as a forty-eight-year-old white man who on social media describes himself as “100 percent Antifa.” The details of the confrontation are still unclear. But the known facts are enough to greatly exacerbate tensions in Portland and around the country: a self-described antifacist is alleged to have killed a member of a right-wing group after a pro-Trump rally.
As I write these words, I keep stopping and slipping back into an old habit, one that I thought I broke. I check the President’s twitter feed to see what he’s saying, in this case about the shooting. It’s not good. “Portland is a mess, and it has been for many years. If this joke of a mayor doesn’t clean it up, we will go in and do it for them!”
At least two things have been inevitable all summer: the conditions in Portland would likely lead to a loss of life, and the President and his allies would pounce on it. Now that both have happened, we head into a new season, one even more volatile and less predictable.


newyorker--2020-09-01--The Streets of Kenosha and the National Stage

A burly bearded man named Justin Tawwater stood at the edge of the park and watched the others practice tricks .
“ He just liked to skate , ” he said of Huber .
The two men had hung out at Tawwater ’ s house , which was near the protest , the night before Huber died .
“ He didn ’ t go out there looking to get shot , that ’ s for sure , ” he continued .
“ He wasn ’ t a communist .
I see a lot of people saying that he ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like , a super radical and all of that .
It ’ s not a thing.
” “ Anthony might have been radical , but not , like , in a political way , ” another friend , Mathius Durkee , said .
“ Yeah , it was more like ‘ radical .
.
.
bro , ’ ” Tawwater said , making the “ hang loose ” symbol .
“ I know , when he went to my crib the night before , he told me he was trying to be in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another friend of Huber ’ s , Nathan Peet , who had been recording and live-streaming the protests on Facebook since the day of Blake ’ s shooting .
We stood in the sun , in the center of Civic Center Park , as the cicadas droned in the trees overhead .
Like several protesters I met , Peet had attended the demonstrations armed and thought of his role as protecting protesters as well as marching against police brutality .
He told me that he had mistrusted the Kenosha Police Department ever since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him and his siblings in foster care as children .
Because of his videos on Facebook , Peet had attracted derision from right-wing activists on social media , and he was not the only person I spoke to who had received threats .
His boss had asked him not to speak to his co-workers about his involvement in the protests .
“ It ’ s directly reflective of the shit show that we ’ re in with this Administration , ” Peet said .
“ We ’ re sitting here calling Americans that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out here labelling them domestic terrorists .
It ’ s really sad.
” Peet told me that he had been in contact with some of the militia members who were there the night of Huber ’ s death .
He found that some of them shared his disgust about the loss of life .
“ They want to clear the air about what happened that night , ” he said .
Like Peet , the militia members he spoke with wanted to be seen as guardians and protectors .
Apparently noting my skepticism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Huber had died trying to stop an active shooter .
“ They ’ re upset that they ’ re being blamed for what happened , and that people are assuming Kyle was part of that militia , because he wasn ’ t .
Kyle was a lone actor.
” In the week since Blake was shot , his family members have become nationally known figures .
Blake ’ s sister , Letetra Widman , gave a speech that went viral .
His father , Jacob Blake , Sr. , became a recognizable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they were in Washington , D.C. , speaking before a crowd of thousands at the “ Get Your Knee Off Our Necks ” march .
On Saturday , they were back in Kenosha , where several hundred people gathered outside of a Boys & Girls Club , on Fifty-second Street , then marched again to Civic Center Park .
The march included members of the original Black Panthers chapter of Madison , Wisconsin ; a group wearing T-shirts that identified them as part of the African Lions of America ; a biker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ motorcycle club in Waukegan ; and lots of young people and families with children .
A black-clad security detail , led by a large man wearing a filtered mask and a fez and holding a cutlass , protected the Blake family .
Mandela Barnes , the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin , was there , along with the son of Fred Hampton , the activist and Black Panther Party leader who was shot and killed in a police raid in 1969 .
Also present , holding a photograph of his son , was Michael @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Jr. , an unarmed white man who was shot and killed by a Kenosha police officer after refusing a breathalyzer test in 2004 .

After four days of protests, the storefronts of downtown Kenosha were boarded up on Thursday afternoon. The small city of a hundred thousand people, on the shore of Lake Michigan, an hour and a half north of Chicago, was under a 7 P.M. curfew. Lingering news crews set up their tripods on Kenosha’s street corners, recording standups in front of the Car Source auto lot, with its incinerated vehicles, or propped before groups of volunteers, who were painting the plywood with hearts and rainbows and apolitical messages: “Be the Light”; “Do small things with great love”; another, over a painting of a lighthouse next to stormy waves, read “Even in our darkest hours our beacon still shines brightly.”
On Sunday, August 23rd, a twenty-nine-year-old Black man named Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times by Rusten Sheskey, a white officer with the Kenosha Police Department, while Blake opened the door of the car where his three children were waiting for him. In the next two days, protesters filled the city. They were met by the Kenosha Police Department with tear gas and rubber bullets, and soon began damaging and burning around thirty local businesses and a Wisconsin Department of Corrections Probation and Parole office.
On Tuesday, August 25th, a group of self-styled militia members convened a Facebook group called the Kenosha Guard, which posted an event titled “Armed Citizens to Protect our Lives and Property.” A leak published by BuzzFeed later revealed that Facebook moderators had allowed the group to remain on the site, despite the fact that it was flagged by users as dangerous four hundred and fifty-five times—some two-thirds of the complaints that Facebook received that day.
On Tuesday night, Kyle Rittenhouse, a seventeen-year-old Donald Trump supporter and an aspiring police officer from across the state line in Antioch, Illinois, drove to Kenosha, where he shot and killed two protesters, Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum, and wounded another, Gaige Grosskreutz, with an assault rifle. After the killings, Rittenhouse, who is white, walked past a phalanx of police officers with his arms raised and drove home to Illinois, where he turned himself in to police the next day. Later, video emerged from before the shootings, in which police officers gave Rittenhouse bottles of water and thanked him. “We appreciate you guys. We really do,” a police officer can be heard saying.
By Thursday, Rittenhouse was in custody in Illinois and charged with two counts of first-degree homicide and one count of attempted murder, among other charges. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Department of Justice had continued its investigation into the shooting of Blake. Jacob Blake, Sr., the victim’s father, told CNN that his son—who as a result of the shooting had suffered kidney and liver damage and a severed spinal cord, and had part of his colon removed—had been shackled to his hospital bed. Sheskey, who has not been charged with a crime, is on administrative leave.


newyorker--2020-09-01--Trump Says He Deserves No Blame for State of America Because He Has Not Actually Worked for Past Fou

Trump Says He Deserves No Blame for State of America Because He Has Not Actually Worked for Past Four Years

WASHINGTON ( The Borowitz Report ) —Pushing back against attempts to brand the United States of 2020 as “ Trump ’ s America , ” Donald Trump said that he deserves no blame for the state of the country , because he has not actually done any work for the past four years .
“ I could understand people blaming me for things if I had actually been doing my job , but , quite frankly , I haven ’ t , ” he said .
“ Anybody who claims otherwise is a terrible person.
” “ CNN , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s the White House ’ s fault for this and the White House ’ s fault for that , ” he added .
“ Well , I ’ ve hardly been at the White House , so , once again , they ’ re wrong.
” Attempting to answer the question of whose America it is , if not his , Trump said , “ The last President who actually worked at the White House was Barack Obama .
So if this is anybody ’ s America it ’ s his and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saying that .
They ’ re sick of living in Biden ’ s America , and we can not give Joe Biden another four years.
” He rejected any suggestion that , as President , he must own the current conditions in America , asserting , “ I know what I own and what I don ’ t own .
I own Bill Barr .
I own Mitch McConnell .
I don ’ t own America .
”

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Pushing back against attempts to brand the United States of 2020 as “Trump’s America,” Donald Trump said that he deserves no blame for the state of the country, because he has not actually done any work for the past four years.
“I could understand people blaming me for things if I had actually been doing my job, but, quite frankly, I haven’t,” he said. “Anybody who claims otherwise is a terrible person.”
“CNN, which is a disgrace, says that it’s the White House’s fault for this and the White House’s fault for that,” he added. “Well, I’ve hardly been at the White House, so, once again, they’re wrong.”
Attempting to answer the question of whose America it is, if not his, Trump said, “The last President who actually worked at the White House was Barack Obama. So if this is anybody’s America it’s his and Sleepy Joe’s. People are saying that. They’re sick of living in Biden’s America, and we cannot give Joe Biden another four years.”
He rejected any suggestion that, as President, he must own the current conditions in America, asserting, “I know what I own and what I don’t own. I own Bill Barr. I own Mitch McConnell. I don’t own America.”
Read More Satire from the Borowitz Report


newyorker--2020-08-31--Mario Dedivanovic, the Makeup Artist at Ground Zero of Internet Beauty Culture

In 1953 , Marilyn Monroe asked her longtime makeup artist Allan Snyder to sneak into the hospital where she was briefly admitted after filming “ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes , ” so that he could powder her nose .
According to Snyder , Monroe also asked that he do the same after her death , and gave him an engraved money clip to remind him to get to her while she was “ still warm.
” In 1962 , Snyder touched up Monroe ’ s visage for her funeral , and served as one of her pallbearers .
Not long ago @ @ @ @ @ @ @ twelve years painting the face of the reality-TV mogul Kim Kardashian West , and who considers Snyder a spiritual mentor , texted me an article from a women ’ s magazine revealing Snyder ’ s “ eight beauty secrets.
” He noted that Snyder had used Vaseline as a highlighter—Dedivanovic does , too , though he prefers another emollient jelly , Elizabeth Arden ’ s Eight Hour Cream , which is the color and consistency of linden honey .
Snyder was known to dust the tip of Monroe ’ s nose with blush @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of being more snubbed ; Dedivanovic often engineers a similar trompe l ’ oeil on West ’ s nose , applying dark powder onto either side—part of the process known as contouring—to make it appear narrower .
“ Omg the similarities are uncanny , ” Dedivanovic wrote .
“ I often wonder what it was like .
I can imagine actually what it was like.
” West , who has a hundred and eighty-six million Instagram followers ( only five people , including West ’ s half sister Kylie Jenner , have more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sport the “ soft glam ” look that Dedivanovic first gave her in 2008 : airbrushed skin , sculpted cheekbones , peachy-pink blush , a “ bronzy eye , ” long false eyelashes , and dewy highlighter , all “ baked ” —an industry term for setting with loose powder—to a matte finish , like the shell of a cage-free egg .
Dedivanovic ’ s method is a twist on a practice that dates back to the Elizabethan era , and that was later adopted by the drag community .
Contouring was ideal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ light and shadow , and was used in early Hollywood by makeup artists such as the Polish beautician Max Factor ( né Maksymilian Faktorowicz ) .
It also proved , a century later , to look great on Instagram .
West started using the app to post selfies in 2012 , and her signature look seemed to replicate spontaneously on the site : countless mini-Kims with pouty nude lips ( dubbed , with no small amount of snickering misogyny , “ duck face ” ) , beige on every surface , and hair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it doubled as an eye lift .
In 2015 , contouring was a “ priority category ” at Sephora , which began to sell a wide variety of contouring “ palettes , ” featuring powders and creams in tones from vanilla to espresso bean .
Some kits came with instructions : paint stripes of dark color on features you want to recede ( jowls , hairline , chin ) and light color where you want to draw focus ( cheekbones , the bridge of the nose , the philtrum ) , then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The legendary makeup artist Bobbi Brown said in an interview in 2015 , “ When I see contouring on people ’ s faces , it looks like dirt.
” That year , Pati Dubroff , a makeup artist for Charlize Theron and Dakota Johnson who now works for Chanel , posted a picture on Instagram of a contoured face in progress , which was striped like the skin of a lionfish , and wrote , “ i would NEVER SUFFOCATE THE SKIN or create a MASK LIKE CREATURE like this.
” The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ visual field .
( With the exception of Kendall Jenner , a high-fashion model , West ’ s sisters all wore the look . )
Previously , makeup artists had worked almost in secret ; Dedivanovic soon found himself in an unexpectedly public position .
West seemed genuinely fascinated by Dedivanovic ’ s ability to mold her face into different shapes , and she spoke often about his work , to anyone who would listen , with the giddy enthusiasm of a college student who has just discovered existentialism .
When Dedivanovic would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , such as Ben Nye ’ s “ banana powder , ” a pale-yellow talcum mixture from a theatrical-makeup brand that has been in business since 1967 , it would sell out , or quickly triple in price .
( Dedivanovic , for his part , uses banana powder less than he once did , having found that the daffodil color , on certain skin tones , turns slightly garish when illuminated by flashbulbs . )
Dedivanovic , who is thirty-seven , grew up in the Bronx .
His parents are Albanians from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lupine jawline and the bifurcated mustache of a young Errol Flynn .
He is soft-spoken and , by his own admission , sometimes insecure .
He is prone to crying , particularly when talking about his mother .
For years , he hated the way his nose looked , and contemplated rhinoplasty .
He did not talk at all in interviews or videos about his private life , and maintained the same discretion with his celebrity clientele .
“ Mario is probably one of the only people that I could trust—like really trust @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , don ’ t tell anyone I ’ m pregnant ’ kind of trust , you know ?
” West told me last year by phone , from Los Angeles .
“ I ’ m not pregnant , by the way , ” she added .
Dedivanovic came up in the industry before the advent of “ beauty influencers ” —online personalities who present cosmetics tutorials on platforms like YouTube and TikTok—but he is arguably at ground zero for contemporary Internet beauty culture .
Arabelle Sicardi , a journalist who is currently writing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beauty as terror , ” described Dedivanovic to me as “ the Venn-diagram middle point of Internet and celebrity.
” His client roster has expanded beyond West to include other famous women , such as Kate Bosworth , Naomie Harris , Jennifer Lopez , Salma Hayek , and Demi Lovato .
He did Lovato ’ s makeup for the most recent Grammys , where she shed a single tear during her performance .
Dedivanovic , who was watching her on a monitor from about twenty feet away , told me that he briefly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over ” if her mascara ran .
It stayed put .
Dedivanovic is perhaps best known for the Masterclass , a live event attended by aspiring makeup artists , who pay as much as seventeen hundred dollars ( when West sits as the model ) to observe him doing makeup for up to eight hours .
A natural pedagogue , Dedivanovic told me that he feels his main purpose now is to educate other artists on how to pare back the excess that he himself partially inspired .
He uses contouring only sparingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ told me , on very pale skin .
Earlier this year , he taught a group of students in a small workshop in Chelsea .
“ My goal was to get them in there and see the type of work that they ’ re doing and then help them to sort of elevate a little bit , ” he said .
“ And I literally , you know , I went one by one to all the students , like , ‘ No , don ’ t contour her nose .
No , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I probably redid ninety per cent of the eyebrows.
” Makeup can be a form of personal expression , but , for a professional makeup artist , one of the allures of the job is the ability to have total control—over how a person looks and over products that require precise implementation .
What bothered Dedivanovic most about watching the contouring trend explode , he told me , was that it “ took on a life of its own ” —one that he could not contain .

In 1953, Marilyn Monroe asked her longtime makeup artist Allan Snyder to sneak into the hospital where she was briefly admitted after filming “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” so that he could powder her nose. According to Snyder, Monroe also asked that he do the same after her death, and gave him an engraved money clip to remind him to get to her while she was “still warm.” In 1962, Snyder touched up Monroe’s visage for her funeral, and served as one of her pallbearers. Not long ago, Mario Dedivanovic, who has spent twelve years painting the face of the reality-TV mogul Kim Kardashian West, and who considers Snyder a spiritual mentor, texted me an article from a women’s magazine revealing Snyder’s “eight beauty secrets.” He noted that Snyder had used Vaseline as a highlighter—Dedivanovic does, too, though he prefers another emollient jelly, Elizabeth Arden’s Eight Hour Cream, which is the color and consistency of linden honey. Snyder was known to dust the tip of Monroe’s nose with blush in order to give it the impression of being more snubbed; Dedivanovic often engineers a similar trompe l’oeil on West’s nose, applying dark powder onto either side—part of the process known as contouring—to make it appear narrower. “Omg the similarities are uncanny,” Dedivanovic wrote. “I often wonder what it was like. I can imagine actually what it was like.”
West, who has a hundred and eighty-six million Instagram followers (only five people, including West’s half sister Kylie Jenner, have more), has inspired countless women to sport the “soft glam” look that Dedivanovic first gave her in 2008: airbrushed skin, sculpted cheekbones, peachy-pink blush, a “bronzy eye,” long false eyelashes, and dewy highlighter, all “baked”—an industry term for setting with loose powder—to a matte finish, like the shell of a cage-free egg. Dedivanovic’s method is a twist on a practice that dates back to the Elizabethan era, and that was later adopted by the drag community. Contouring was ideal for black-and-white film, a medium of light and shadow, and was used in early Hollywood by makeup artists such as the Polish beautician Max Factor (né Maksymilian Faktorowicz). It also proved, a century later, to look great on Instagram. West started using the app to post selfies in 2012, and her signature look seemed to replicate spontaneously on the site: countless mini-Kims with pouty nude lips (dubbed, with no small amount of snickering misogyny, “duck face”), beige on every surface, and hair pulled back into a bun so severe that it doubled as an eye lift.
In 2015, contouring was a “priority category” at Sephora, which began to sell a wide variety of contouring “palettes,” featuring powders and creams in tones from vanilla to espresso bean. Some kits came with instructions: paint stripes of dark color on features you want to recede (jowls, hairline, chin) and light color where you want to draw focus (cheekbones, the bridge of the nose, the philtrum), then furiously blend. The backlash came swiftly. The legendary makeup artist Bobbi Brown said in an interview in 2015, “When I see contouring on people’s faces, it looks like dirt.” That year, Pati Dubroff, a makeup artist for Charlize Theron and Dakota Johnson who now works for Chanel, posted a picture on Instagram of a contoured face in progress, which was striped like the skin of a lionfish, and wrote, “i would NEVER SUFFOCATE THE SKIN or create a MASK LIKE CREATURE like this.”
The Kardashian family face continued to flood the visual field. (With the exception of Kendall Jenner, a high-fashion model, West’s sisters all wore the look.) Previously, makeup artists had worked almost in secret; Dedivanovic soon found himself in an unexpectedly public position. West seemed genuinely fascinated by Dedivanovic’s ability to mold her face into different shapes, and she spoke often about his work, to anyone who would listen, with the giddy enthusiasm of a college student who has just discovered existentialism. When Dedivanovic would casually mention a product in an interview, such as Ben Nye’s “banana powder,” a pale-yellow talcum mixture from a theatrical-makeup brand that has been in business since 1967, it would sell out, or quickly triple in price. (Dedivanovic, for his part, uses banana powder less than he once did, having found that the daffodil color, on certain skin tones, turns slightly garish when illuminated by flashbulbs.)
Dedivanovic, who is thirty-seven, grew up in the Bronx. His parents are Albanians from Montenegro. He has an angular, lupine jawline and the bifurcated mustache of a young Errol Flynn. He is soft-spoken and, by his own admission, sometimes insecure. He is prone to crying, particularly when talking about his mother. For years, he hated the way his nose looked, and contemplated rhinoplasty. He did not talk at all in interviews or videos about his private life, and maintained the same discretion with his celebrity clientele. “Mario is probably one of the only people that I could trust—like really trust, like ‘Oh, my God, don’t tell anyone I’m pregnant’ kind of trust, you know?” West told me last year by phone, from Los Angeles. “I’m not pregnant, by the way,” she added.
Dedivanovic came up in the industry before the advent of “beauty influencers”—online personalities who present cosmetics tutorials on platforms like YouTube and TikTok—but he is arguably at ground zero for contemporary Internet beauty culture. Arabelle Sicardi, a journalist who is currently writing a book about the concept of “beauty as terror,” described Dedivanovic to me as “the Venn-diagram middle point of Internet and celebrity.” His client roster has expanded beyond West to include other famous women, such as Kate Bosworth, Naomie Harris, Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek, and Demi Lovato. He did Lovato’s makeup for the most recent Grammys, where she shed a single tear during her performance. Dedivanovic, who was watching her on a monitor from about twenty feet away, told me that he briefly feared that his “career would be over” if her mascara ran. It stayed put.
Dedivanovic is perhaps best known for the Masterclass, a live event attended by aspiring makeup artists, who pay as much as seventeen hundred dollars (when West sits as the model) to observe him doing makeup for up to eight hours. A natural pedagogue, Dedivanovic told me that he feels his main purpose now is to educate other artists on how to pare back the excess that he himself partially inspired. He uses contouring only sparingly these days, and never, he told me, on very pale skin. Earlier this year, he taught a group of students in a small workshop in Chelsea. “My goal was to get them in there and see the type of work that they’re doing and then help them to sort of elevate a little bit,” he said. “And I literally, you know, I went one by one to all the students, like, ‘No, don’t contour her nose. No, don’t contour her chin.’ I probably redid ninety per cent of the eyebrows.” Makeup can be a form of personal expression, but, for a professional makeup artist, one of the allures of the job is the ability to have total control—over how a person looks and over products that require precise implementation. What bothered Dedivanovic most about watching the contouring trend explode, he told me, was that it “took on a life of its own”—one that he could not contain.
In November of last year, Dedivanovic accepted the Artistic Achievement Award at the second annual American Influencer Awards, in Los Angeles. West, dressed in a scarlet Dior gown with a high neck, presented him with the prize. “We’ve worked together for eleven years,” she said. “Eleven years of fights. You guys, we fight like, you don’t even understand, we fight like brother and sister. But he’s created some of my most magical memories, and really, I believe, made me who I am today.”
In his speech, Dedivanovic came out in public, calling himself “a proud gay man.” He said that, in the summer of 2018, he had purchased a plot of land in rural Montenegro, where his father was born. “But I can’t build the home that my father dreams of,” he said, weeping openly, “because I still feel ashamed when I set foot on that land.” The revelation might have seemed a relic of another time—but, the following month, Dedivanovic told me that it had changed everything. “I was always ashamed,” he said, as we sat in his office space in midtown. “In my mind, I was in a prison.” He no longer wanted a nose job. “I love my nose right now—I would never change it,” he said. “And I would go naked right now, honestly, in the middle of the street, and not give a shit. My life has opened up. Every block that I had built, every defense mechanism that I’ve built from the age of two or three, has just one by one been coming down.” His sister had given him a pumpkin pie, and he offered me a slice. “I eat pie now,” he said.
He was also ready to realize a dream that he had been harboring for two decades: to launch a makeup line of his own. While some have suggested that the beauty market is so saturated that even a major name like Dedivanovic’s could have trouble drawing customers, he explained to me that what would make his line stand out was his almost maniacal attention to detail. Dedivanovic had spent years testing and refining products. Most laboratories allow the brands they work with to make three tweaks on a product before it is manufactured. Dedivanovic told me that he had far exceeded that number, often asking for dozens of tweaks.
The packaging for his brand, Makeup by Mario, had been finalized when, in March, New York City went on lockdown. Overnight, Dedivanovic, who lives on the Upper East Side, found himself without an income. He cancelled his celebrity bookings and scuttled the remaining Masterclass sessions on the calendar. The industry was in chaos. It seemed ludicrous to painstakingly dab on concealer that would be covered by a mask. Still, he believed that there was a need for a line that would enable beauty enthusiasts to do their faces like professionals. When things are chaotic, order and ritual become even more crucial. “I’m creating a legacy brand,” he told me. “Every product is going to help people out there to fix things and to clean things up.”
The Masterclass is run by Dedivanovic’s older sister Marina, his cousin Diana Benitez, and another cousin’s wife, Gina Dedivani. On a sweltering day last summer, Dedivanovic met them at the Bronx home of his parents, to discuss an upcoming class in Chicago. The house, which is ranch style, in a suburban neighborhood called Country Club, smelled of potpourri and fried sausages. Lula, Dedivanovic’s seventy-three-year-old mother, a petite woman with a chestnut bob, had set out a full Albanian buffet, including a bowl of boiled beets and a tray of pickled cabbage.
In the dining room, Marina, a forty-year-old former nurse, with straight ash-blond hair and wire-framed glasses, sat at the head of a cherrywood table in a black cardigan, taking notes on a laptop. Dedivanovic sat across from her in a white T-shirt and baggy black athletic shorts, stroking the tiny skull of a Chihuahua perched on his lap and worrying about the quality of the projector at Chicago’s Victory Gardens Theatre. Next to Marina sat the Masterclass’s social-media manager, Bana Beckovic, who is not related to Dedivanovic (although, he told me later, “she is also Albanian”). Beckovic was the only person at the table wearing the type of heavy makeup, including false eyelashes, that evoked West’s. In the living room, Dedivanovic’s father, Tom, a tall, gruff man with a woolly mustache, sat on the couch watching Fox News.
Lula took a seat next to Dedivanovic. “Mario is the best child,” she said, beaming. “The best one.” Lula grew up in a shepherding family in a mountain village called Tuzi, in Montenegro, a tiny country wedged between Serbia and Albania. She did not go to school. She knew of Tom, who worked as a mail carrier, through a cousin. She saw him when he came to ask her father for her hand in marriage, she explained, and “maybe one other time, in church.” The next time she saw him was on their wedding day. The Dedivanovics emigrated in 1974. Tom eventually found work as the superintendent of an apartment building in the Bronx, where he, Lula, and their three children—Mario is the youngest—occupied a small apartment. When Mario was three years old, Lula went to work as a cleaner in Manhattan, in lavish Upper East Side homes and at the corporate headquarters of the cosmetics conglomerate L’Oréal. Lula didn’t wear makeup—she still doesn’t—but she often brought free products home from work for her two daughters.
Dedivanovic remembers an early attraction to the L’Oréal swag. “I would see a product in the bathroom or somewhere in the house when I was alone, and I would pick it up and feel it,” he said. “I wouldn’t have dared to touch my face with it, but I definitely swatched and touched and felt them.” When he was in elementary school, he often asked his father to drive him north of the Bronx to see “the beautiful gardens in Westchester,” which he liked for their symmetry. “My dad wasn’t really fond of it,” he said. Dedivanovic was twelve when he got his first job, bagging groceries. His next job was at the Bronx Zoo, where he sold pretzels and was later promoted to manager of the hot-dog stand. He then began busing tables on the weekends at a red-sauce restaurant in Little Italy. In 2000, when he was seventeen, he and his mother walked past the tri-level Sephora flagship store, on Fifty-first Street and Fifth Avenue. The French multinational beauty chain, whose black-and-white striped exterior resembles a travelling-carnival tent, had opened its first outlets in Manhattan the year before. It was a novelty concept: half department store, half professional supply cabinet.
That day, Dedivanovic applied to become a Sephora “cast member.” (Sephora’s terminology has an operatic quality: the store is known as “the stage,” the shelves are called “gondolas.”) He got a job in the fragrance department of the Nineteenth Street store. Cast members at the time wore a single black glove; female employees had to wear red lipstick. Dedivanovic bleached his hair and got a fake I.D. so that he could go to downtown clubs like Limelight and the Roxy with his new co-workers. Karina Capone, who now works in product development for cosmetics companies including Estée Lauder and Revlon, worked in makeup—what Sephora calls the “color department.” Dedivanovic, Capone recalled, was “this slick, skinny blond kid who kind of looked like Leonardo DiCaprio, but super nice, you know?” She continued, “Slowly, I could see makeup was pulling him in. Always, when we had a shortage of staff on the floor, he was very excited and willing to help the customers that were looking for the foundation.”


newyorker--2020-09-02--Hannibal Lecter Would Like to Apologize

Hannibal Lecter Would Like to Apologize

This is Dr. Lecter—or , as many of you know me , Hannibal , or H-ball .
I am writing to you because a few people have been talking about some unsavory ( to be honest , it ’ s all savory—but this is not something I intend to make light of ) things I ’ ve done in the past .
I wanted to say , in my own words , directly , to all of you , that I am so sorry for my long history of cannibalism .
When I set out to become a psychiatrist , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and to pay off some medical-school debts—sheesh ! )
, and as I grew my practice I swore that my office would be a place of trust , empathy , and emotional vulnerability .
But that emotional vulnerability often led to crying , which , to me , is just face seasoning .
I am so sad to learn that I have hurt even one of you .
Anybody who knows me knows that I want to do right by everyone , so to learn that my actions—specifically , eating humans—were ever at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hurt almost as much as when I ate that competitive hot-dog eater .
As my career took off and my appetite grew , I started to lose touch with humanity , and the only real connection I had to people was digestive .
In no way do I want to defend what I ’ ve done , but it was a different time .
This was all before whatever Nutella is—this was back when our only snack was quaaludes , back when we looked the other way when someone did something wrong .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ mid-nineties , and the late nineties .
It was the two-thousands and then a few times it was 2019 .
I want to assure all of you that I am learning and growing .
I have grown because of the work that other people before me put into themselves right before I ate them .
It is my responsibility as a citizen of this world and as a psychiatrist to look inward—not with the eyes of the stomach , but with the eyes of a head , which I will no longer refer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” or “ person caviar.
” I will make a concerted effort to better myself , to learn from all of you , and to become the man whose nickname is no longer “ Hannibal the Cannibal ” but , rather , “ Lecter the Reflector.
” Finally , I want to thank each and every one of you for calling me out and calling me in .
I can ’ t imagine how scary it is to confront someone who might eat you .
It must be how David felt with Goliath @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hungry Hippos .
I am so glad that you brought this to my attention and I am , again , so sorry to have hurt anybody , especially my surviving friends whom I respect and cherish so dearly ( but have not been drawn to gustatorially—nothing personal ) .
I just wanted to thank you again for reading this .
It means the world .
I can ’ t wait to have you all for dinner .
And , no , not like that .
I mean eat you .

Hi, friends,
This is Dr. Lecter—or, as many of you know me, Hannibal, or H-ball. I am writing to you because a few people have been talking about some unsavory (to be honest, it’s all savory—but this is not something I intend to make light of) things I’ve done in the past. I wanted to say, in my own words, directly, to all of you, that I am so sorry for my long history of cannibalism.
When I set out to become a psychiatrist, I did it to help people (and to pay off some medical-school debts—sheesh!), and as I grew my practice I swore that my office would be a place of trust, empathy, and emotional vulnerability. But that emotional vulnerability often led to crying, which, to me, is just face seasoning.
I am so sad to learn that I have hurt even one of you. Anybody who knows me knows that I want to do right by everyone, so to learn that my actions—specifically, eating humans—were ever at anybody’s expense makes my heart hurt almost as much as when I ate that competitive hot-dog eater.
As my career took off and my appetite grew, I started to lose touch with humanity, and the only real connection I had to people was digestive. In no way do I want to defend what I’ve done, but it was a different time. This was all before whatever Nutella is—this was back when our only snack was quaaludes, back when we looked the other way when someone did something wrong. It was the early nineties, the mid-nineties, and the late nineties. It was the two-thousands and then a few times it was 2019.
I want to assure all of you that I am learning and growing. I have grown because of the work that other people before me put into themselves right before I ate them.
It is my responsibility as a citizen of this world and as a psychiatrist to look inward—not with the eyes of the stomach, but with the eyes of a head, which I will no longer refer to as “hors d’oeuvres” or “person caviar.” I will make a concerted effort to better myself, to learn from all of you, and to become the man whose nickname is no longer “Hannibal the Cannibal” but, rather, “Lecter the Reflector.”
Finally, I want to thank each and every one of you for calling me out and calling me in. I can’t imagine how scary it is to confront someone who might eat you. It must be how David felt with Goliath, or how marbles feel around Hungry Hungry Hippos. I am so glad that you brought this to my attention and I am, again, so sorry to have hurt anybody, especially my surviving friends whom I respect and cherish so dearly (but have not been drawn to gustatorially—nothing personal).
I just wanted to thank you again for reading this. It means the world. I can’t wait to have you all for dinner. And, no, not like that. I mean eat you.
XO H.L.


newyorker--2020-09-02--A Community Organizer Takes on White Vigilantism

In the months since George Floyd ’ s death , as large-scale Black Lives Matter protests have materialized around the country , groups of white men—claiming to be defending law and order—have gathered to confront protesters .
In Snohomish , Washington , the mayor lauded a group who waved a Confederate flag while drinking and “ protecting ” a stretch of shops downtown .
In Minden , Nevada , a white “ Blue Lives Matter ” mob—clad in camouflage fatigues , carrying semi-automatic rifles , and claiming to defend the local sheriff ’ s office—clashed with a much smaller group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kenosha , Wisconsin , last week , Kyle Rittenhouse , a seventeen-year-old “ Blue Lives Matter ” supporter , stood among a group of armed men who claimed to be defending a service station , and shot three protesters , killing two of them .
Noel Cazenave , a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut and the author of “ Killing African Americans : Police and Vigilante Violence as a Racial Control Mechanism , ” sees such resistance as part of a long history of white vigilantism .
“ Racial oppression @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” he told me .
In the nineteen-fifties and sixties , white Americans posted signs in so-called sundown towns telling Black people that they would be met with violence if they were found outdoors after dark .
Cazenave believes that today ’ s white mobs see Black Lives Matter activists as mounting a challenge to white dominance similar to the one mounted during the civil-rights era .
“ They ’ ve been told by Donald Trump that these are the people who are coming to take away their basic value , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invasion.
” Although the white groups are extrajudicial , many have sought to align themselves with police .
Cazenave finds this unsurprising .
“ Police and vigilante violence not only have common origins and functions , and not only do they often complement one another , but they are often comprised of the same people , ” he said .
“ Racist neighborhood culture and racist police culture fuel one another in an intense cycle of hatred directed toward those deemed to be racial outsiders.
” Mark Pitcavage , who researches extremism at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , although some white vigilantes are affiliated with groups that openly advance extremist agendas , others are more muddled in their ideology , motivated by cultural conservatism and class resentment in addition to race .
Some of the anger of the mobs—which are usually composed of white , working-class , right-wing men—has been directed at the white , middle-class protesters who support Black Lives Matter .
Pitcavage drew a historical analogy to the hard-hats—men who confronted people protesting the Vietnam War in the seventies .
They had little sympathy for the Vietnamese people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were outraged by the antiwar hippies , whom they saw as children of privilege .
Racist resentments have been building in Fishtown for decades .
Since the early twentieth century , the neighborhood has been largely populated by the descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants , who worked in local factories .
In the early two-thousands , Kensington , a neighborhood with a large Black population next to Fishtown , became the center of Philadelphia ’ s opioid epidemic .
In Fishtown , young white men were already peddling OxyContin ; an MTV @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the national hub of the trade .
Nevertheless , locals fixated on the heroin dealing in Kensington , which became the focus of intense anti-Black hostility .
Mike Mulvenna , a white construction worker and one of the Bat Boys , told me that he and other men kept a close eye on the streets to keep dealers from Kensington , whom he referred to as “ wolves , ” out of their white neighborhood .
Around 2005 , Fishtown began to gentrify , and a young , racially diverse , middle-class group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that local men had kept the streets safe , only to be pushed out .
As in many right-wing circles , animosities toward racial minorities and toward so-called liberal élites coexist among longtime Fishtowners : in June , a small group of white residents picketed a hip , Black-owned café called Franny Lou ’ s Porch , which offers items such as the Anti-Capitalist , an egg dish topped with wild greens , and Songs for the People , a mixture of herbal elixirs .
Rivera , the community organizer , bought a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago .
A few days after he and his wife moved in , someone spray-painted an ethnic slur on their front steps .
Since then , he has earnestly tried to foster a sense of community in the neighborhood .
Rivera spends his days working with special-needs kids awaiting trial in a youth-detention facility , and runs a community garden and a local playground association .
He has hosted public dialogues between groups in Fishtown , including a discussion about how to use a public park where longtime Fishtowners often worked on their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ open green space .
He initiated a tense conversation about whether to preserve a mural of the Irish flag at a public playground in an increasingly racially diverse part of town .
He has also worked to persuade white parents not to call the police on poor children , especially Black and brown kids , when they see them misbehaving , because of the potentially dire consequences .
In all instances , he has tried to reduce racism among white residents .
When he saw footage of the Bat Boys , their use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him— “ that ’ s socially acceptable in that group , ” he said—but the beatings did .
“ The violence is disturbing , ” he told me .
On June 5th , Rivera , wearing a neon-green bandanna as a mask , took me to a community garden that he runs , and we sat at a picnic table .
At 4:30 P.M. , Esposito ’ s gray pickup truck pulled up across the street .
He got out sweating , with a red face and a bushy beard , and took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flowering arugula .
He launched into a stream of nervous explanations .
“ I know I was there , and I know , I mean , like , it ’ s kind of messed up , the whole situation , ” he said .
“ We shouldn ’ t have had weapons.
” But he said that he had heard that looters were breaking windows and setting cars alight , and had seen a Facebook post claiming that Antifa was on its way to “ fuck up the white racists of Fishtown.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ My grandmother came off the boat from Poland , and this is where she ended up , ” he said .
He attempted to claim that the Bat Boys were not motivated by race , discounting their use of racial slurs and violence .
Rivera told Esposito that , after the rally , he felt a responsibility to talk to him .
“ I think , in the future , if that occurs , and people find out you ’ re my neighbor , then they ’ re gon na be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ did you do ?
’ You know what I mean ?
” he said .
“ Like , ‘ You have this guy who ’ s right next to you , you know , who was there .
You ’ re having these conversations about how fucked up it was .
And you just did nothing ?
’ ” He urged Esposito not to commit further violence with the group .
Then he broached the possibility of hosting future discussions between some of the Bat Boys and other Fishtowners , and Esposito seemed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s almost like having rival gangs all living around each other , but nobody knows who the heads of the different gangs are , ” Rivera said .
“ So now there has to be a call , ‘ Hey , if you ’ re a leader of a gang , we need you at this table .
’ ”

At 5 P.M. on Monday, June 1st, in Fishtown, a neighborhood in northeast Philadelphia, several dozen men—most of them white—began to cluster outside the Twenty-sixth District’s police station. They were carrying baseball bats, hammers, pipes, and golf clubs. The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, one week earlier, had sparked Black Lives Matter protests all over Philadelphia; unfounded rumors were circulating among residents of Fishtown, mostly via Facebook, that looters and members of Antifa were coming to the neighborhood to break store windows and wreak havoc. Justin Haskell, a neighborhood football coach and amateur mixed-martial-arts fighter who goes by the nickname Homicidal, had rallied the men outside the station, ostensibly to help the police and defend nearby business owners. The group came to be known as the Bat Boys because of the baseball bats some of them carried.
Late that afternoon, at a large rally downtown, police shot rubber bullets and cannisters of tear gas into a crowd of protesters who were kneeling with their arms above their heads, causing them to scatter. The police forced them onto an embankment, trapping them there, and continued tear-gassing them. Among those trapped were Kara Khan, a photographer, and her boyfriend, Matt Williams, both thirty-one. They eventually escaped and began biking to their home in Fishtown, trying to beat a 6 P.M. curfew, their skin still burning from the tear gas. As they rode down Girard Avenue, they saw a protester arguing with an officer outside the Twenty-sixth District station and raised their fists in support. The Bat Boys threw water bottles at them and jeered. When Khan dismounted to ask officers standing nearby for help, one of the Bat Boys pushed Williams off of his bike. Others beat and kicked him. The mob taunted Khan (whose mother is white and whose father is Burmese and Afghan), repeatedly shouting the N-word and asking her, in graphic terms, if she liked to engage in sexual acts with Black men. “They seem to be framing this story as if they were protecting the neighborhood, and they say it has nothing to do with race, when it has everything to do with race,” she told me. Khan asked the officers why they weren’t intervening. “They said, ‘Well, now you know how we feel.’ Like, ‘We’ve been dealing with protesters all week.’ ” She asked the officers to escort her home. “I live right over fucking there,” she said. But the officers refused, she told me, and said that, since she “cussed,” she needed to learn some manners.
The Bat Boys on Girard Avenue, in Fishtown, on June 1st. Photograph by David Maialetti / The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Bat Boys grew rowdier and more violent. As images of the men began to appear on “Fishtown Is AWESOME OLD/NEW/EVERYONE!,” a public Facebook group for locals, people went down to the precinct to see them firsthand. Thirty-six people called 911 to report “a person with a weapon.” Katherine Scholle, a social worker who lives in Fishtown, called twice. According to Scholle, a police dispatcher asked if she had a problem with the men protecting the area, and then another told her that officers didn’t have time to deal with the mob. (Several days later, after Scholle posted a video of the men, she was inundated with vitriolic comments on social media. One message read, “We here in Philly back the blue, not pieces of shit like you. May you die a slow painful death you police-hating cunt!”)
Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s D.A., told me that he was troubled by what he saw as a double standard in the treatment of protesters by police. At the protest downtown, a cop pulled down a participant’s mask and pepper-sprayed her in the face. The Bat Boys, in contrast, were treated in a friendly manner. “How come a whole lot of people, many Black, with nothing in their hands, were arrested, while aggressive white men out after curfew endured none of that?” he asked. (Krasner’s office and the city’s Department of Internal Affairs are investigating how police handled the incident in Fishtown. A spokesperson for the police declined to comment.)
Around 6:30 P.M., Jon Ehrens, a producer for WHYY, the local public-radio station, went out to document the chaos. He was nervous to record the men, but, at first, the Bat Boys didn’t seem to care. “I’m ready to fuck shit up,” one man said. “You know, I’ve been looking for a fight for the past six months.” Around eight-thirty, Haskell, the ringleader, announced that the men had made their point. As the group walked away, about two dozen men gathered to listen to Haskell speak. Ehrens began to record the speech, and Haskell shouted at him, telling him to leave. When Ehrens turned to leave, four of the men followed and jumped him, beating him and breaking his nose. Ehrens later tweeted a photograph of his bloody face. Soon after, he began to receive death threats.
That evening, Julius Rivera, a forty-three-year-old community organizer who lives in the Fishtown area, was in his back yard when his wife, Melissa, called him inside. She was panicked and asked him to help her close the curtains and lock the doors. Rivera is a dark-skinned Latino man, and Melissa is a Black, indigenous, Latina woman. A friend had just messaged her on Facebook, telling her to stay inside and warning her about a group of white men walking around Fishtown, threatening to assault Black people. A week later, Rivera was watching coverage of the attacks on the local news. Among the Bat Boys, Rivera recognized his next-door neighbor, a white man in his early thirties named Vinny Esposito. Esposito is a plumber who has done work in Rivera’s house. “I wanted him to know that I knew what he’d been up to and wanted to hear why he was there—if he hated brown people, I wanted to know,” Rivera told me. “Is this really who you are and how you roll?” He sent his neighbor a text. “Saw you in the video with the oldhead crew,” he wrote. “I would like to talk with you about it.”
In the months since George Floyd’s death, as large-scale Black Lives Matter protests have materialized around the country, groups of white men—claiming to be defending law and order—have gathered to confront protesters. In Snohomish, Washington, the mayor lauded a group who waved a Confederate flag while drinking and “protecting” a stretch of shops downtown. In Minden, Nevada, a white “Blue Lives Matter” mob—clad in camouflage fatigues, carrying semi-automatic rifles, and claiming to defend the local sheriff’s office—clashed with a much smaller group of Black Lives Matter protesters. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, last week, Kyle Rittenhouse, a seventeen-year-old “Blue Lives Matter” supporter, stood among a group of armed men who claimed to be defending a service station, and shot three protesters, killing two of them.
Noel Cazenave, a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut and the author of “Killing African Americans: Police and Vigilante Violence as a Racial Control Mechanism,” sees such resistance as part of a long history of white vigilantism. “Racial oppression has always been maintained through violence,” he told me. In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, white Americans posted signs in so-called sundown towns telling Black people that they would be met with violence if they were found outdoors after dark. Cazenave believes that today’s white mobs see Black Lives Matter activists as mounting a challenge to white dominance similar to the one mounted during the civil-rights era. “They’ve been told by Donald Trump that these are the people who are coming to take away their basic value,” he said. “This is a literal invasion.” Although the white groups are extrajudicial, many have sought to align themselves with police. Cazenave finds this unsurprising. “Police and vigilante violence not only have common origins and functions, and not only do they often complement one another, but they are often comprised of the same people,” he said. “Racist neighborhood culture and racist police culture fuel one another in an intense cycle of hatred directed toward those deemed to be racial outsiders.”
Mark Pitcavage, who researches extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, told me that, although some white vigilantes are affiliated with groups that openly advance extremist agendas, others are more muddled in their ideology, motivated by cultural conservatism and class resentment in addition to race. Some of the anger of the mobs—which are usually composed of white, working-class, right-wing men—has been directed at the white, middle-class protesters who support Black Lives Matter. Pitcavage drew a historical analogy to the hard-hats—men who confronted people protesting the Vietnam War in the seventies. They had little sympathy for the Vietnamese people being killed in the war, and were outraged by the antiwar hippies, whom they saw as children of privilege.
Racist resentments have been building in Fishtown for decades. Since the early twentieth century, the neighborhood has been largely populated by the descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants, who worked in local factories. In the early two-thousands, Kensington, a neighborhood with a large Black population next to Fishtown, became the center of Philadelphia’s opioid epidemic. In Fishtown, young white men were already peddling OxyContin; an MTV documentary from 2001 characterized the area as the national hub of the trade. Nevertheless, locals fixated on the heroin dealing in Kensington, which became the focus of intense anti-Black hostility. Mike Mulvenna, a white construction worker and one of the Bat Boys, told me that he and other men kept a close eye on the streets to keep dealers from Kensington, whom he referred to as “wolves,” out of their white neighborhood.


newyorker--2020-09-03--What to Stream: An Amateur Filmmaker Takes on “The Great Gatsby” and Its Scholars

It takes a cinematic and academic outsider to leap into the deep waters of scholarly disputes with impetuous verve , as Robert Steven Williams does in the documentary “ Gatsby in Connecticut : The Untold Story ” ( which is streaming on Amazon ) .
The film is rooted in the same theory that Barbara Probst Solomon ( who ’ s the main interview subject in the film ; she died in 2019 ) put forth in a remarkable 1996 piece in The New Yorker : that F. Scott Fitzgerald ’ s prime model for Jay Gatsby ’ s West @ @ @ @ @ @ @ property that Nick Carraway rents isn ’ t Great Neck , Long Island , but , rather , Westport , Connecticut .
For Williams , as for Solomon , who was a Westport native , the matter was as much personal as historical .
Williams , a music-industry executive , moved to Westport in 1992 and became interested in local history .
He heard gleanings of Fitzgerald ’ s Westport connection and eventually , after Solomon ’ s article appeared , joined forces with the local historian Richard ( Deej ) Webb to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the stakes in academic disputes are low , but Williams enthusiastically shows , in the course of the film , that the geographical reference is more than a footnote—it ’ s a key to an apt appreciation of both Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald ’ s literary artistry .
The case presented both by Williams and by Solomon begins with the geography of the Westport property where the newlywed Fitzgeralds lived , for five months , spanning the summer of 1920 , soon after the publication and acclaim of Scott ’ s first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” The young couple ( Scott was twenty-three ; Zelda , nineteen ) lived in a cottage at the edge of a rich man ’ s estate , similar to the one that Nick inhabited in West Egg ; the shore at the edge of that waterfront property provided a view across the bay to a magnificent dock ( the one that belonged to the palatial home in which Solomon was raised ) , akin to the one celebrated in “ Gatsby.
” What ’ s more , the secretive and wealthy baron @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from whom the Fitzgeralds rented and whose mansion was on the seaside part of the estate , gave parties of colossal frolic and frenzy , with circus animals and Broadway stars and Harry Houdini and John Philip Sousa hired to perform .
( Lewis ’ s pool also had a tower akin to the one from which Gatsby ’ s guests dove . )
The Fitzgeralds attended at least one of his parties—and behaved scandalously enough to be barred from any of his future ones , though he still let them have access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and energetic research leading to the identification of the novel ’ s prime site is only one of “ Gatsby in Connecticut ” ’ s many virtues , which all arise from Williams ’ s role as a cinematic newcomer .
When he started work on the project , in 2013 , having never made a film before , he planned to make a short for local use , but its scope expanded along the way .
As an enthusiast who came to scholarship by chance , he approaches the details of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fresh eye and an unjaded sense of wonder .
He develops in rapt and poignant detail the story of the Fitzgeralds ’ wild summer of 1920 , emphasizing the rush of wealth and fame that went to their heads when “ This Side of Paradise ” became a widely acclaimed critical success and an instant best-seller .
Interview subjects and archival citations ( including one from Dorothy Parker ) detail their glamour , their fame , their allure ; Williams calls them “ America ’ s first rock stars.
” In particular , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year 1920 as a critical moment of transition from tradition to modernity—and the very celebrity of the Fitzgeralds , their youth , and their uninhibited freedom along with their artistic cachet , as both an emblem and an engine of that change .
The film quotes from Zelda ’ s novel “ Save Me the Waltz , ” from 1932 , which includes details of that wild summer from a decade ’ s remove—and also devotes extended consideration to Scott ’ s second novel , “ The Beautiful and Damned , ” from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heat of the spectacular romantic flameout that is itself the story of the novel .
Williams matches the action of “ The Beautiful and Damned ” to a map of the town and photographs of the period and quotes a letter in which Scott wishes that the novel had been more “ mature ” because it has the distinctive virtue of being “ all true.
” This , too , is among the virtues of “ Gatsby in Connecticut ” : its rehabilitation of “ The Beautiful and Damned , ” which I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thrilling , and emotionally flaying novel .
It ’ s not a cut gem like “ Gatsby , ” it ’ s not an epic tragedy like “ Tender Is the Night , ” but it ’ s Fitzgerald ’ s most convincing and least inhibited elaboration of scenes from a marriage , an unsparing and agonized portrait of a couple , as he wrote , “ wrecked on the shoals of dissipation ” ; as Fitzgerald himself asserts , they didn ’ t do it to each other : they did it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Scott may have been going easy on himself : Williams also unfolds Scott ’ s dependence on—and appropriation of—Zelda ’ s inspiration and artistry , and traces out the twisted strands of anguish that resulted from his use of her diaries and letters in the novel , and the brazen control that he exerted over her life and her art alike . )
Williams evokes the Fitzgeralds and their era with voice-over narration ( performed by the actor Keir Dullea ) joined to illustrative film clips and stills , archival publications and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all bound together by recordings of music from roughly ( sometimes very roughly ) the same period .
It ’ s a familiar , even conventional , format , but Williams goes at it as enthusiastically as if he ’ d discovered it himself , energetically reanimating the Fitzgeralds and their times .
His sense of astonishment and joy in discovery carries over to his way with scholarly research , too , as when he does some remarkable detective work to locate the diaries of Alexander McKaig , Fitzgerald ’ s college friend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with detailed dismay the couple ’ s riotous behavior .
The research is integrated into the film with a spontaneous cinematic inventiveness and a cheerful reflexivity , as Williams films himself and Webb in the company of a variety of scholars , in classrooms and also in the Fitzgeralds ’ onetime house in Westport—along with Charles Scribner III ( the grandson of F. Scott Fitzgerald ’ s publisher ) and Sam Waterston , who portrayed Nick Carraway in the 1974 film of “ The Great Gatsby.
” They also film a moving interview @ @ @ @ @ @ @ granddaughter and a biographer in her own right , who shares the findings of her own research , and do some revealing local research among neighbors in Westport .
The academic controversy that Williams unfolds was sparked by the publication of Solomon ’ s article .
After it appeared , Matthew Bruccoli , the longtime leading Fitzgerald scholar ( who died in 2008 ) , rejected her findings high-handedly .
In “ Gatsby in Connecticut , ” several participants take him to task for his proprietary approach to Fitzgerald ’ s life story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the specific ideas it details , the movie considers the very notion of literary scholarship and what it ’ s for .
Though “ Gatsby in Connecticut ” illuminates mysterious corners of “ The Great Gatsby , ” it does far more—in wrenching scholarship into life and rendering the process of research personal and passionate , it shows that the stakes of such disputes are surprisingly and enduringly high .
In the process , the film both exposes and corrects the peculiar processes by which canons and hierarchies are established and perpetuated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ Gatsby in Connecticut ” is a valuable work of literary criticism in cinematic form .

A new documentary develops in poignant detail the story of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s wild summer of 1920. Photograph from Minnesota Historical Society / Getty
It takes a cinematic and academic outsider to leap into the deep waters of scholarly disputes with impetuous verve, as Robert Steven Williams does in the documentary “Gatsby in Connecticut: The Untold Story” (which is streaming on Amazon). The film is rooted in the same theory that Barbara Probst Solomon (who’s the main interview subject in the film; she died in 2019) put forth in a remarkable 1996 piece in The New Yorker: that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s prime model for Jay Gatsby’s West Egg estate and the cottage on his property that Nick Carraway rents isn’t Great Neck, Long Island, but, rather, Westport, Connecticut. For Williams, as for Solomon, who was a Westport native, the matter was as much personal as historical. Williams, a music-industry executive, moved to Westport in 1992 and became interested in local history. He heard gleanings of Fitzgerald’s Westport connection and eventually, after Solomon’s article appeared, joined forces with the local historian Richard (Deej) Webb to investigate further. It’s said that the stakes in academic disputes are low, but Williams enthusiastically shows, in the course of the film, that the geographical reference is more than a footnote—it’s a key to an apt appreciation of both Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s literary artistry.
The case presented both by Williams and by Solomon begins with the geography of the Westport property where the newlywed Fitzgeralds lived, for five months, spanning the summer of 1920, soon after the publication and acclaim of Scott’s first novel, “This Side of Paradise.” The young couple (Scott was twenty-three; Zelda, nineteen) lived in a cottage at the edge of a rich man’s estate, similar to the one that Nick inhabited in West Egg; the shore at the edge of that waterfront property provided a view across the bay to a magnificent dock (the one that belonged to the palatial home in which Solomon was raised), akin to the one celebrated in “Gatsby.” What’s more, the secretive and wealthy baron of industry, Frederick E. Lewis, from whom the Fitzgeralds rented and whose mansion was on the seaside part of the estate, gave parties of colossal frolic and frenzy, with circus animals and Broadway stars and Harry Houdini and John Philip Sousa hired to perform. (Lewis’s pool also had a tower akin to the one from which Gatsby’s guests dove.) The Fitzgeralds attended at least one of his parties—and behaved scandalously enough to be barred from any of his future ones, though he still let them have access to his private beach.
The diligent and energetic research leading to the identification of the novel’s prime site is only one of “Gatsby in Connecticut” ’s many virtues, which all arise from Williams’s role as a cinematic newcomer. When he started work on the project, in 2013, having never made a film before, he planned to make a short for local use, but its scope expanded along the way. As an enthusiast who came to scholarship by chance, he approaches the details of the Fitzgeralds’ life and work with a fresh eye and an unjaded sense of wonder. He develops in rapt and poignant detail the story of the Fitzgeralds’ wild summer of 1920, emphasizing the rush of wealth and fame that went to their heads when “This Side of Paradise” became a widely acclaimed critical success and an instant best-seller. Interview subjects and archival citations (including one from Dorothy Parker) detail their glamour, their fame, their allure; Williams calls them “America’s first rock stars.” In particular, Solomon’s insights pinpoint the very year 1920 as a critical moment of transition from tradition to modernity—and the very celebrity of the Fitzgeralds, their youth, and their uninhibited freedom along with their artistic cachet, as both an emblem and an engine of that change.
The film quotes from Zelda’s novel “Save Me the Waltz,” from 1932, which includes details of that wild summer from a decade’s remove—and also devotes extended consideration to Scott’s second novel, “The Beautiful and Damned,” from 1922, which he wrote in the heat of the spectacular romantic flameout that is itself the story of the novel. Williams matches the action of “The Beautiful and Damned” to a map of the town and photographs of the period and quotes a letter in which Scott wishes that the novel had been more “mature” because it has the distinctive virtue of being “all true.” This, too, is among the virtues of “Gatsby in Connecticut”: its rehabilitation of “The Beautiful and Damned,” which I consider Fitzgerald’s most moving, thrilling, and emotionally flaying novel. It’s not a cut gem like “Gatsby,” it’s not an epic tragedy like “Tender Is the Night,” but it’s Fitzgerald’s most convincing and least inhibited elaboration of scenes from a marriage, an unsparing and agonized portrait of a couple, as he wrote, “wrecked on the shoals of dissipation”; as Fitzgerald himself asserts, they didn’t do it to each other: they did it to themselves. (In saying so, Scott may have been going easy on himself: Williams also unfolds Scott’s dependence on—and appropriation of—Zelda’s inspiration and artistry, and traces out the twisted strands of anguish that resulted from his use of her diaries and letters in the novel, and the brazen control that he exerted over her life and her art alike.)
Williams evokes the Fitzgeralds and their era with voice-over narration (performed by the actor Keir Dullea) joined to illustrative film clips and stills, archival publications and illustrations, maps and current-day footage, all bound together by recordings of music from roughly (sometimes very roughly) the same period. It’s a familiar, even conventional, format, but Williams goes at it as enthusiastically as if he’d discovered it himself, energetically reanimating the Fitzgeralds and their times. His sense of astonishment and joy in discovery carries over to his way with scholarly research, too, as when he does some remarkable detective work to locate the diaries of Alexander McKaig, Fitzgerald’s college friend, who was on hand to observe with detailed dismay the couple’s riotous behavior. The research is integrated into the film with a spontaneous cinematic inventiveness and a cheerful reflexivity, as Williams films himself and Webb in the company of a variety of scholars, in classrooms and also in the Fitzgeralds’ onetime house in Westport—along with Charles Scribner III (the grandson of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s publisher) and Sam Waterston, who portrayed Nick Carraway in the 1974 film of “The Great Gatsby.” They also film a moving interview with Bobbie Lanahan, the Fitzgeralds’ granddaughter and a biographer in her own right, who shares the findings of her own research, and do some revealing local research among neighbors in Westport.
The academic controversy that Williams unfolds was sparked by the publication of Solomon’s article. After it appeared, Matthew Bruccoli, the longtime leading Fitzgerald scholar (who died in 2008), rejected her findings high-handedly. In “Gatsby in Connecticut,” several participants take him to task for his proprietary approach to Fitzgerald’s life story and even to his texts. Apart from the specific ideas it details, the movie considers the very notion of literary scholarship and what it’s for. Though “Gatsby in Connecticut” illuminates mysterious corners of “The Great Gatsby,” it does far more—in wrenching scholarship into life and rendering the process of research personal and passionate, it shows that the stakes of such disputes are surprisingly and enduringly high. In the process, the film both exposes and corrects the peculiar processes by which canons and hierarchies are established and perpetuated. In its hearty and individualistic vigor, “Gatsby in Connecticut” is a valuable work of literary criticism in cinematic form.