Art is where you find it. Adam Iscoe finds it in the most unlikely places. In “Under the Hood” (January 25, 2021), he visits a tow-impound yard (“Three balding men from Staten Island reviewed a list of Vehicle Identification Numbers neatly written on a sheet of notebook paper; a tow-truck driver explained the difference between numerators and denominators to his daughter; a South Brooklyn scrap-yard boss kibbitzed with his competition, a younger man from the Bronx. A guy sitting on the curb, repairing his sneakers with rubber cement, eavesdropped”). In “The Smell Test” (March 1, 2021), he observes a K-9 inspection (“Nearby, a woman wearing spandex leggings and a ripped jean jacket shouted, ‘Yay! I don’t have COVID,’ and a wobbly man, who smelled of Bud Light, said, ‘I think this is dumb as fuck, and you can quote me on that’ ”). Now, in “Back at It,” in this week’s issue, Iscoe describes the reopening of a movie theatre (“An employee with long green and blue fingernails yawned into her elbow”). The piece ends terrifically with the popping of thirty-five pounds of popcorn:
Quintana, a five-year veteran of the concession stand, wandered behind the candy counter. He found a thirty-five-pound bag of popcorn kernels in a storage closet. “At one point during the pandemic, I bought popcorn, just to try to relive the experience,” he said, as he poured buttery salt powder along with the kernels into a popcorn machine. “It wasn’t the same.” A minute later: pop-pop-pop. “Yeah, this is it,” he said. Pop-pop-pop. “This is movie-theatre popcorn!”
I enjoy Iscoe’s work immensely.
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