Two months after a wildfire burned through Paradise, Calif., in 2018, Kevin Phillips, then a manager for town’s irrigation district, walked from one destroyed home to another. Burned out cars, the occasional chimney and the melted skeletons of washers and dryers were the only recognizable shapes. “You started to actually be shocked when you saw…
Max Krauss, a social worker by day and a guitarist by night, left his home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, one morning in mid-February 2018, and headed to his parents’ Manhattan apartment, perched high above the Hudson River on West 125th Street, where he grew up. Like most visits to his former residence, Mr. Krauss, 38,…
PARIS — The old story of the American ingénue who moves to Paris, succumbs to the city’s sensual pleasures (usually by way of a French lover) and masters its hardened customs (never smiling at strangers) is a perennial crowd-pleaser — if the crowds are American, that is. Parisians, however, like to rail against the clichés…
There are no real parties. Concerts? Canceled. Fashion shows are either digital or distanced. So who would dare throw a party-concert-fashion show in the middle — or the beginning or the end — of this? Rihanna, obviously. Last year, the Savage x Fenty show ushered in a new era of lingerie, replacing the airbrushed fantasy…
Charming is probably not a word most people would use to describe a legal argument. But Sean Mirski’s was just that, when he set out to persuade Courtney Stone, in 2018, that she should forego her inclination to eschew booze for the month of January. He wanted her instead to have a glass of red…
Susanne Bliss Stansell excitedly recapped the festivities of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in May 2018 to Jordi van den Heiligenberg during their first date at Nix, a vegetarian restaurant in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. “She gave a very elaborate summary,” he said with a laugh. He attentively listened to her rundown of the…
In late February, Jordan Tyler saw a TV commercial for the dating app Match, and while “not big on an online thing,” decided, nonetheless to give it a try. In late February, Brittany Swoboda, also took note of a television spot for Match, perhaps, Mr. Tyler later speculated, the very same ad that had inspired…
One day in 2016, the Republican minority leader in the Connecticut House of Representatives, Themis Klarides, received an email that raised an eyebrow. After she read it, she strode into her chief of staff’s office and held up her phone. “What does this mean to you?” Ms. Klarides recalled asking. The message in her palm…
Right about the time Lindsey Scannapieco was losing faith in online dating, in the summer of 2016, the dating app Tinder matched her with Sandy Machin. “I wasn’t enjoying online dating,” she said. “I guess some people do. But I wasn’t.” It took the two about six weeks to finally meet at a pop-up beer…
Their first date lasted seven hours. It still wasn’t enough time. After a three-mile walk and conversation about their travels and favorite authors that ebbed seamlessly between Spanish and English, Lucia Macias, 37, and Matthew Jaffe, 40, both found themselves wanting more time with one another. The two, who met online on a dating website…