Pete Hamill ‘Ain’t Done Yet’

After 9,000 or so bylines, Pete Hamill has probably earned the opportunity to write the lead of his own profile. “Oh, I thought about it,” Mr. Hamill said on a recent Friday morning, hunched over a walker in the kitchen of his brownstone apartment in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. “‘Pete Hamill is 84,’”…

A Montreal Bagel War Unites Rival Kings

MONTREAL — Irwin Shlafman, the owner of Fairmount Bagel, boasts that his bagels were the first in outer space, when his astronaut cousin brought them to the International Space Station. He also says Fairmount, founded in 1919, is the oldest bagel joint in town. Just don’t tell that to his arch-bagel-rival, Joe Morena, the jovial…

What Makes a ‘Narrative Violation’?

There’s an easy way to sound smart and edgy in the tech world: First, identify a broad idea that people seem to agree on. Then, cherry-pick a single piece of data that refutes it. Call it a “narrative violation.” And tweet it bumptiously. Venture capitalists, the tech world’s philosopher-kings, have embraced narrative violations. Earlier this…

The Amazon Coat, One Year Later

A few weeks ago, during another unseasonably warm fall day, my husband, in a pensive tone, posed a question: “Will it be embarrassing for you, to put your coat on again this year?” This seemed like an odd query, but I understood immediately what he was saying because my winter coat has a capital “c”…