Best of 2020: Talk of the Town

Illustration by João Fazenda, from Michael Shulman's "Ruins"

Here are my favorite “Talk of the Town” stories of 2020 (with a choice quote from each in brackets):

1. Ian Frazier’s “Still Open,” April 6, 2020 (“By ten-fifteen, the line stretched to Twenty-eighth Street, around the corner, and down the long block between Ninth Avenue and Eighth. A soup-kitchen employee in a jacket of high-visibility green was walking along the line and urging those waiting to maintain spaces of six feet between one another. They complied, reluctantly, but somehow the line kept re-compressing itself”). 

2. Ian Frazier’s “Bringing in the Comfort,” April 13, 2020 (“The Navy hospital ship Comfort went under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge at about nine-twenty last Monday morning. Trucks on the bridge blew long blasts of welcome on their horns. The ship appeared suddenly in the overcast day as if out of nowhere; the medical-clinic white of her hull and superstructure blended in with the sea and the sky”).

3. Ian Frazier’s “Biting Back,” October 19, 2020 (“From a distance, a vertical view would include the table, covered with a white cloth; a Martini in a Martini glass (yellow dab of lemon peel); a pack of Marlboros; a brushed-chrome Zippo lighter; the seated artist, deliberately unshaved, dressed in a white T-shirt and a gray knit hoodie (unzipped; purchased at a Salvation Army store); the awning of the gallery, which says ‘American Artist, Scott LoBaido’; and, atop all that, on the roof, an unrelated billboard for a personal-injury law firm, with the words ‘Bite Back’ in big letters and a picture of a snarling dog in a spiked collar”).

4. Ian Frazier’s “Ballistic,” November 23, 2020 [“The names of some of the different windows in subway cars are: full-picture windows (the main windows in the middle), half-picture windows (the same as full-picture, except smaller, to leave room for the vents), door windows (oval, self-explanatory), vent windows (long and narrow, ditto), and motorman’s-vision windows.]

5. Nick Paumgarten’s “Old Drug,” March 2, 2020 (“Midtown Manhattan, 5:30 a.m., Huey Lewis riding shotgun”).

6. Nick Paumgarten’s “Pointillism,” March 9, 2020 (“On Central Park West, he pointed out a painted railing and said, “That, I wouldn’t worry about. You’ve got ultraviolet light, wind.” But on the C train he wrapped an elbow around a pole and said, “I look at the world differently than you do. I see surfaces in a pointillistic ¬fashion”).

7. Alexandra Schwartz’s “Lady from Shanghai,” March 9, 2020 (“Outside Wu’s Wonton King, Yan struggled to light some sparklers she had just bought. An elderly passerby stopped to cup his hands around Yan’s, shielding the flame from the elements. ‘He says it’s raining and it’s windy,’ Yan said, when he’d left. ‘There’s a metaphor in here somewhere.’ She produced a party popper from a bag and began to twist. Tiny hundred-dollar bills shot into the air. Yan squealed and took a photo. Then she headed off, shedding miniature Benjamins as she walked. Maybe there was a metaphor in there, too”).

8. Alexandra Schwartz’s “Together Again,” November 23, 2020 (“As an homage to Lawrence’s distinctive palette, she wore a royal-blue jacket and a new blue checked scarf. ‘I usually like earth tones,’ she said. ‘So it was, as they say, bashert’ ”).

9. Michael Shulman’s “Ruins,” May 25, 2020 (“ ‘So you are really into philosophy, just not Greek philosophy,’ Coogan said, not quite impressed. ‘You’re into pistachio philosophy.’ Brydon, pleased with his progress, displayed his bowl of nuts”).

10. Naomi Fry’s “Dread by the Pool,” November 23, 2020 [“Stepping over a trail of ants rushing along a pavement (‘Do you know that some ants can live for up to thirty years? That always makes me feel guilty about killing them’), David headed toward a pond”].