A Perfect Weekend in Asbury Park, N.J.

To call Asbury Park a secret would betray its tumultuous and storied history: A wellspring of American music, tucked around the swamps of Jersey. A home to national icons. A vibrant L.G.B.T.Q. community. A city that bears the scars of the civil rights movement, blighted for decades by mismanagement and mistrust, that’s now in the…

The Power of Talking to Yourself

As a kid, I knew that if I talked to myself on school grounds, I risked becoming That Freak Who Talks to Himself, and that the act’s popular associations — acute psychosis, maladjustment — tend toward the negative. Stigma kept me quiet, but its potency diminished as I aged. Also: Look around. People walk the…

Can’t Couture Just Be Fun?

Courtesy of the designers; Getty Images Style Points is a weekly column about how fashion intersects with the wider world. Couture is planting its feet firmly in the past. For a few years, the medium has been advancing an argument for why it still makes sense in the 2020s; see: last season’s futuristic, sci-fi take…