David Byrne Spike Lee

Offer Wisdom for Right Now

Exclusive: A Shocking
New Story from
Stephen King

Our Conversation with Francis Ford Coppola

Will Make You Hopeful
CHARLES LECLERC
 TA B L E OF C ON T E N T S
O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

“I try to keep this bizarre, 10

12
EDITOR’S LETTER

THE NEXT
70 ON SLIDE INN ROAD
by Stephen King
The architect of your

futile sense of Oh, it’s FRONT LINE

Food insecurity
nightmares delivers
an unforgettable story.

Friday night at 6:00 P.M.

in America:
how you can help. 76 MATTHEW RHYS
IS BECOMING A
THE SHORT STORIES MATTHEW RHYS

I’ll have a martini.” 15 Inside Francis Ford

Coppola’s quarantine
CHARACTER
by Michael Sebastian
This year, the actor
—“MATTHEW RHYS IS BECOMING A MATTHEW RHYS CHARACTER,” PAGE 76 paradise; the legend has poured himself into
of the Pasha de Cartier; being a dad—and
director Nia DaCosta restoring an old boat.
talks about making the
most relevant horror 86 THIS MOMENT
movie of our times; and IN TIME
the men’s-wear savants These watches offer
who are turning archi- light at the end of the
val designer pieces tunnel—and your sleeve.
into a hot commodity.
92 THE KIDS ARE NOT
F E AT U R E S ALL RIGHT
by Matthew Shaer
43 THE 2020 ESQUIRE Suicide rates are up in
GROOMING AWARDS America. How a group
by Garrett Munce of parents and activists
Yes, being stuck inside in Arizona are working
changed grooming. We to stop the spread of
countered cabin fever self-destruction among
with enthusiastic experi- their community’s
mentation anyway. teenagers.

52 COVER: YOU MAY 104 THE ESQUIRE

FIND YOURSELF EDITORIAL BOARD
by Kevin Sintumuang ENDORSES
David Byrne and Spike Taking dramatically
Lee tell us how they’re to your bed.
getting by.

ON THE COVER DAVID

62 RACISM KILLED BYRNE AND SPIKE
MY MOTHER LEE PHOTOGRAPHED
by Damon Young BY DARIO CALMESE.
Pittsburgh has been ON BYRNE: FLIGHT
hyped as our most SUIT BY GREG LAUREN.
CASTING BY RANDI
livable city. If you’re
PECK. STYLING BY
white, that is. NICK SULLIVAN (BYRNE)
AND ASHLEY LAMPKIN
68 300 JOB (LEE). PRODUCTION
APPLICATIONS BY JEAN JARVIS. SET
LATER DESIGN BY MICHAEL
STURGEON. GROOMING
by Jack Holmes
BY MALU BYRNE
Meet Matt Breen, one
(BYRNE) AND JOANNA
JACKET, SHIRT, AND of millions who have
TROUSERS BY LOUIS “JOJO” RODRIQUEZ
VUITTON MEN’S. lost their jobs as COVID- (LEE). HAIR STYLING BY
19 batters the economy. LAWANDA PIERRE (LEE).

7
 MICHAEL SEBASTIAN JACK ESSIG
EDITOR IN CHIEF SVP, PUBLISHING DIRECTOR & CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER

NICK SULLIVAN_Creative Director CAMERON CONNORS_Executive Director,

BEN BOSKOVICH_Deputy Editor Head of Brand Strategy and Marketing
ROCKWELL HARWOOD_Design Director SAMANTHA IRWIN_General Manager, Hearst Men’s Group
JOHN KENNEY_Managing Editor CHRIS PEEL_Executive Director, Hearst Men’s Group
KELLY STOUT_Articles Director CARYN KESLER_Executive Director of Luxury Goods
KEVIN SINTUMUANG_Culture and Lifestyle Director JOHN WATTIKER_Executive Director of Fashion & Retail
JONATHAN EVANS_Style Director DOUG ZIMMERMAN_Senior Grooming Director
RANDI PECK_Executive Director of Talent JUSTIN HARRIS_Midwest Sales Director
JEFF GORDINIER_Food and Drinks Editor AUTUMN JENKS_Midwest Sales Director
ERIC SULLIVAN_Senior Editor SANDY ADAMSKI_Executive Director
MATT MILLER_Culture Editor KIMBERLY BUONASSISI_Account Director
JACK HOLMES_Politics Editor JOHN V. CIPOLLA_Integrated Account Director, Spirits & Travel
ADRIENNE WESTENFELD, BRADY LANGMANN_Assistant Editors KYLE B. TAYLOR_East Coast Sales Director, Hearst Autos
SARAH RENSE_Associate Lifestyle Editor MARISA STUTZ_Detroit Group Advertising Director, Hearst Autos
MADISON VAIN_Associate Editor, Social Media ANNE RETHMEYER_Western Group Advertising Director, Hearst Autos
JUSTIN KIRKLAND_Staff Writer
PACIFIC NORTHWEST
GARRETT MUNCE_Grooming Editor ANDREW KRAMER_Kramer Media, 510-508-9252
DORENNA NEWTON_Executive Video Producer
TEXAS, ARKANSAS, AND NEW MEXICO
ELYSSA AQUINO_Video Producer
DAWN BAR_Wisdom Media, 214-526-3800
DOMINICK NERO_Video Editor
LAUREN KRANC_Editorial Assistant COLORADO
PATTY RUDOLPH_PR 4.0 Media, 972-533-8665
ART
DRAGOS LEMNEI_Deputy Design Director ITALY

MIKE KIM_Senior Designer SAMANTHA DICLEMENTE, (011) 39-02-6619-3141

ELAINE CHUNG_Digital Designer
CAMERON SHERRILL_Lead Motion Designer EVERETTE A. HAMPTON_Executive Assistant
REBECCA IOVAN_Digital Imaging Specialist YVONNE VILLAREAL, ELISABETH SPIELVOGEL, TONI STARRS,
SAMANTHA WOLF, OLIVIA ZURAWIN_Integration Associates
FASHION
TED STAFFORD_Market Director MARKETING SOLUTIONS

ALFONSO FERNÁNDEZ NAVAS_Market Editor JASON GRAHAM_Executive Director, Integrated Marketing

AVIDAN GROSSMAN_Style E-commerce Editor JANA NESBITT GALE_Executive Creative Director
KAREN MENDOLIA_Executive Director, Events & Promotions
HEARST VISUAL GROUP
ALESANDRA AJLOUNI_Associate Marketing Director
ALIX CAMPBELL_Chief Visual Content Director, Hearst Magazines
MICHAEL B. SARPY_Design Director
JUSTIN O’NEILL_Visual Director
JACLYN D’ANDREA_Marketing Coordinator
SALLY BERMAN_Contributing Visual Director
PETER DAVIS_Research Manager
KELLY SHERIN_Visual Editor
GIANCARLOS KUNHARDT_Visual Assistant ADMINISTRATION AND PRODUCTION
TERRY GIELLA_Advertising Services Manager
COPY
CHRIS HERTWIG_Production Manager
ALISA COHEN BARNEY_Senior Copy Editor
AURELIA DUKE_Finance Director
CONNOR SEARS, DAVID FAIRHURST_Assistant Copy Editors
MARIANNE FAIVRE_Business Assistant
RESEARCH
DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING
ROBERT SCHEFFLER_Research Editor
CHRISTINE HALL_Director
KEVIN MCDONNELL_Senior Associate Research Editor
MICHAEL ROHR_Account Manager
NICK PACHELLI_Assistant Research Editor
CIRCULATION
EDITORS AT LARGE
DAVE HOLMES, DANIEL DUMAS RICK DAY_VP, Strategy and Business Management
WILLIAM CARTER_Executive Director, Consumer Marketing
WRITERS AT LARGE
CHARLES P. PIERCE, KATE STOREY PUBLISHED BY HEARST
STEVEN R. SWARTZ_President & Chief Executive Officer
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
WILLIAM R. HEARST III_Chairman
MITCHELL S. JACKSON
FRANK A. BENNACK, JR._Executive Vice Chairman
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS MARK E. ALDAM_Chief Operating Officer
ALEX BELTH, GABRIELLE BRUNEY, LUKE DITTRICH, ADAM GRANT,
HEARST MAGAZINE MEDIA, INC.
A. J. JACOBS, JOHN J. LENNON, BENJAMIN PERCY, MIKE SAGER
DEBI CHIRICHELLA_Acting President, Hearst Magazines Group,
OTHER CONTRIBUTORS
and Treasurer
HITOMI SATO_Contributing Art Director KATE LEWIS_Chief Content Officer
RASHAD MINNICK_Contributing Fashion Associate KRISTEN M. O’HARA_Chief Business Officer
ESQUIRE INTERNATIONAL EDITIONS CATHERINE A. BOSTRON_Secretary
China, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, GILBERT C. MAURER, MARK F. MILLER_Publishing Consultants
Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Latin America,
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Middle East, Netherlands, Russia, Serbia, Singapore,
CALL: 800-888-5400
Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Kingdom
EMAIL: EsqCustServ@CDSFulfillment.com
KIM ST. CLAIR BODDEN_SVP/International Editorial Director
VISIT: Service.esquire.com
CHLOE O’BRIEN_Deputy Brands Director
WRITE: Customer Service Department, Esquire,
P.O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593

Published at 300 West Fifty-seventh Street, New York, NY 10019-3797. Editorial offices: 212-649-4020. Advertising offices: 212-649-4050 ® www.esquire.com. Printed in the U. S. A.

8 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 After
the Fire
T H I S WAY I N A L E T T E R F ROM T H E E DI TOR

Stella and Elaine

the night after.

THE FIRE STARTED BY THE GARBAGE CANS IN THE BUILDING’S COURTYARD. Since they were born, I’ve told our daughters that we’d never let any-
Someone had just moved out, leaving a pile of wooden furniture and an thing bad happen to them. I’d always thought it was a false promise,
old mattress. It’s unclear what ignited this pile of kindling and fuel—a because one day they’d be beyond our grasp. But now we were fulfilling
smoldering cigarette butt? an overworked heating duct?—but sometime that promise.
after midnight on a hot night in August, a spark set off a conflagration that A bottleneck had formed at the ladder on the second-floor landing, the
by 2:30 A.M. was raging. final stretch to reach the ground. When it was our turn, Sally handed Elaine
“Fire!” my wife, Sally, yelled to wake me. “Michael, fire!” I heard the to me and stepped onto the first rung. Stella was too big to carry; she had
pulsing shriek of smoke alarms and shouting coming from beyond our to climb down herself. “I can’t, Daddy,” she said. “My legs are shaking.”
front door before I fully opened my eyes. Through a haze of yellow smoke, I knelt down to her level and looked her in the eye. “You’re so brave,” I said.
I saw Kelsey Grammer. We’d fallen asleep to Frasier reruns. “You can do this.” She turned around and put her bare feet on the ladder,
I shot out of bed and into the hallway. Smoke was snaking along the with her mom just below her, and together they got down safely.
ceiling, creeping around the corners, circling my bare legs. Sally pushed Holding Elaine in my left arm, I wrapped my right around the side rail.
past me and into our daughters’ bedroom. I followed. She grabbed Elaine, With each step down the ladder, I had to let go, suspending us in the air
nearly two, from out of her crib; her screams joined the din. Stella, five, sat for a brief, terrifying moment before grabbing a hold once more. Once
up in bed, her hair in her face. She looked mystified. down, we joined Sally and Stella. Except for some small scratches and
I followed Sally to the front door. When she opened it, a heat wave bruises, we were unharmed.
knocked us back and black smoke poured in. She shut the door immedi- It was a two-alarm blaze that took the fire department hours to put out.
ately, and we headed back to our bedroom. A few people were hospitalized, but no one was seriously hurt. Parts of
We lived on the fourth floor. Outside was our lifeline, a century-old fire the building were destroyed. Water and broken glass covered the hall-
escape. We opened the window, and the acrid smoke gave way to the way floors. Windows were smashed out. Our unit was spared damage
thick air of late summer. The building is in Hamilton Heights, a Dominican from the fire and the water, but the stench of smoke clung to everything.
neighborhood in West Harlem named after the Founding Father, who We headed to a hotel for the night. Many of the building’s older tenants,
spent his final years in a mansion nearby. Cries echoed through the dark- some who’d lived there for decades, had nowhere else to go. Once the
ness. As Sally and the girls stepped onto the landing, I promised I’d be firefighters were done, they had to go back inside.
right back. “Buddy!” Stella said, panic in her eyes. Her stuffed dinosaur. This year has claimed so much from so many—COVID-19 has killed
She never slept without it. more than two hundred thousand Americans; wildfires and hurricanes
I pulled my shirt collar over my nose and plunged back into the smoke have driven hundreds of thousands from their homes; simmering tensions
to collect a few things. But what? Photographs, Social Security cards, have the nation tearing itself apart. Considering that Sally, the girls, and I
wedding vows? No time to think. I grabbed my wallet, clothes for the girls, made it out okay, and that we’re healthy, we count ourselves among the
face masks, medicine, and Buddy. lucky ones. We’re fortunate to have insurance and savings, and to have
Back on the fire escape, Sally scooped up Elaine, I grabbed Stella, and such generous family, friends, and colleagues. The kindness we received
we began our descent. Thinking now of how near we were to the edge, was overwhelming. I will never forget it.
MICHAEL SEBASTIAN

how rusted the fire escape was, and how fragile the girls felt in our arms, After two weeks of living out of hotels, Sally and I decided it was time
I’m paralyzed by fear. But in the moment, we couldn’t think, just act. Fourth to leave the city. Let’s rent a house, we figured, and reassess in a year.
floor to third. We kept reassuring one another that we were okay. Third And that’s the story of how I ended up moving to the suburbs of
floor to second. A step collapsed under Sally’s foot, but she remained New Jersey.
steady the whole way. —Michael Sebastian

10
 T I M E T O R E AC H YO U R S TA R

DEFY

T H E F U T U R E O F S W I S S WATC H M A K I N G S I N C E 18 6 5
 I T ’ S B E E N N E A R LY A Y E A R
since the virus that changed every-
thing arrived in America, and we’re
starting to grasp the impact the coro-
navirus will have on our bodies and
our communities. Before the pan-
At its food banks,
Feeding America demic, more than 37 million people
serves everything
from canned goods to
in this country lived in households
grab-and-go meals that couldn’t afford or didn’t have
T H I S WAY I N T H E C A L L

for children. Pictured

are some of the or- access to proper amounts of nutri-
ganization’s outposts tious food. It’s a horrifying number
across the country,
including locations that experts believe will grow by as
in Baltimore, Tampa, many as 17 million this year due to
and Houston, the last
of which prepares increasing unemployment rates.
food for up to 5,000
people per day.
To help people in need of meals,
Esquire and its parent company,
Hearst Magazines, have teamed up
with Feeding America. The hunger-
relief organization sets up food
banks around the country. If you’re
able, we encourage you to donate as
well by visiting feedingamerica.org.

EVE EDELHEIT (“8729” SIGN). JARED SOARES (MASKED WORKERS). ARTURO OLMOS (REMAINING).

In partnership with
Feeding America,
Esquire and Hearst
Magazines are commit-
ted to putting an end
to hunger. To help food

THE NEXT
banks feed families
in need, please donate
at feedingamerica.org.

FRONT LINE
The coronavirus pandemic has left
millions of Americans facing the threat of food insecurity.
Here’s how you can do your part to help.

12
 Part of the
Coppola
clan in
Napa,
including
Francis
and Sofia
(left) and
Roman
and
Eleanor
(right).

QUARANTINING WITH
THE GODFATHER
ANDREW DURHAM

What’s it like to spend seven months holed up with Francis Ford Coppola and
25 members of his family? For starters, wine, movies, and zero regrets.
by JEFF GORDINIER

15
 AS QUARANTINES GO, FRANCIS FORD same year: 1979, when Apocalypse Now came
Coppola’s setup in the Napa Valley sounded out and the Coppola family started making
pretty sweet. wine in earnest. (Granted, members of his
I did a couple of Zoom conversations with family had been producing wine in their
the film director and winemaker over the sum- basements and backyards for decades.) “I
mer, and what he described, as I sat by my had spent all the money I had, between these
laptop with yet another tin of tuna, struck me various risky things I did,” he said. Making Get Mellow
as a sort of Italian-American midpandemic wine while making movies may sound like with Melo
Eden. Coppola and his family were seques- a magic formula for going colossally bank-
tered on the expansive acreage of the old rupt (hey, that’s happened to him, too), but A glass of S. R. Tonella
Inglenook estate that he and his wife, Elea- Coppola has managed to push through by with Anthony Anderson.
nor, had purchased back in 1975, when the repeatedly figuring out what the market- A hefty pour of Far
Coppolas were flush with cash from the first place wants next. Niente cabernet with
two Godfather films. And when I say “family,” “What is risk, really?” he told me. “Isn’t Jamie Foxx. Caymus
I mean much of Coppola’s extended clan, risk something that you undertake that’s uncorked at the sight of,
including his children and grandchildren and going to depend on timing? There are a lot well, any famous face.
nephews and apparently anyone else with a of gifts I don’t have, but one I do have is a The conceit of Carmelo
soft spot for cabernet sauvignon and wrap- sense of what’s going to be in the future. I Anthony’s weekly You-
around porches—about 25 people total, have often been right in my estimation of Tube talk show, What’s in
depending on the day, all coming together for what’s going to happen—in an almost Your Glass?, was simple:
group meals and film screenings. uncanny way.” And so, long before celebri- The NBA star and a guest
“When I saw this coming in January, I ties like Brad Pitt and Jon Bon Jovi got into would share a few sips
pushed an alert button,” Coppola, now 81 of their favorite vintages
years old, told me. “Now we’re sort of a fam- while catching up. But
ily bubble.” Naturally I found myself dream- “I DO NOT HAVE as COVID-19 forced us
ing about those film nights. Every Wednesday
and Saturday evening, the Coppola crew
GOD-GIVEN TALENT,” to stay home and a swell
of protests in support
COPPOLA SAID.
C U LT U R E & S T Y L E

would gather in a screening room, as twilight of Black Lives Matter

descended upon the vineyards, to parse land- urged us not just to get
marks by directors like Akira Kurosawa, Yasu- angry, the Brooklyn bal-
jirō Ozu, and Andrzej Wajda. (Here at home, stomping grapes, Coppola was sensing that ler’s lines of questioning
I’ve spent much of 2020 introducing my older the American drinking public might have a changed. As Killer Mike,
kids to movies like Big Night and Fatal Attrac- thirst for a non-Champagne sparkling white Tiffany Haddish, and
tion and Thelma & Louise, but it’s not the (his Sofia blanc de blancs, named after his Snoop Dogg appeared
same when you can’t debate camera angles daughter), and then, a full 15 years before the on split screen, Melo
and casting decisions afterward with the current vogue for a portable buzz, he and no longer cared if they
director of Lost in Translation and her dad the Coppola team were selling even more of liked sangria. Instead,
over a bottle of wine.) Sofia in pink cans. it was what advice the
Reading those names above, you may be So what does the oracle predict now? Cop- Run the Jewels rapper
tempted to add Coppola himself to the list of pola feels that a lot of us are going to come wants all young Black
international cinematic greats, but in our out of this pandemic with a taste for the pre- men to hear; what fears
Zoom chats I found the man quick to brush mium stuff—and a desire to drink it right now, the Girls Trip actress
off that sort of fanboying. “I do not have God- while we can, instead of waiting around for and comedian has about
given talent,” he said. He directed Apocalypse some perfect moment. “I have a wine fridge potentially bringing
Now and Rumble Fish and The Con- like everyone. It’s a small one,” Cop- another Black child into
Rule No. 781 IT’S OKAY TO JUST POINT TO

versation, yeah, but that was a long pola said. “I looked at what I had up this world; why the
time ago, and over the past 30 or so here, and I took all the wines out, Death Row Records
THE WINE YOU WANT ON THE MENU.

years, he has devoted far more of his and I replaced them with all the best alum thinks it’s important
hours and energy to making wine wines that I had in the wine cellar. to own your own art. The
than to making movies. Coppola no Why not put out the best wines that entertainment factor,
longer belongs to the “find what you I have, because I don’t know how it’s worth noting, hasn’t
love and let it destroy you” school of much longer I’m going to live?” wavered. Anthony is a
creativity. If you’ve ever seen the 1991 Guzzle the stockpile? Yes, this charming, curious host.
documentary Hearts of Darkness, you strikes me as an eminently reason- But the show has
know that shooting Apocalypse Now able thing to do. Even when these become a perfect illus-
almost did destroy him. Coppola has tumultuous years have ended, I sus- tration of a man willing
become, instead, a walking testimo- pect I’ll look back on my Zoom ses- to meet this moment, and
nial to the virtues of multitasking— sions with Francis Ford Coppola as of our need to have the
and moving on. a gentle toast to the possibilities of a Big Conversations—best
In fact, the risk and reinvention second act. “Wine is a living thing,” conducted over a few
that led to the growth of his little he told me. “Time tends, just like ounces of red, of course.
Napa Valley utopia are rooted in the with a human being, to mellow it.” —Madison Vain

16
 PASHA DE CARTIER WATCH ($16,600) BY CARTIER; JACKET ($1,520) BY CARUSO; SHIRT ($920) BY VISVIM, MRPORTER.COM.
MYSTERIOUS, and, honestly, HALF THE FUN
The legend of the Pasha de Cartier is MURKY,
THE PASHA DE CARTIER IS, AS THE STORY GOES,
T H E S HORT S TOR I E S TA L L TA L E S

named for the Pasha of Marrakech, who commis-

sioned the timepiece from the French brand in 1933.
He wanted something waterproof—Rolex’s Oyster,
the world’s first waterproof watch, had debuted just
a few years before—that could stand up to his pen-
chant for active sport. Thus a modern icon was born.

by NICK SULLIVAN
Just one thing about that story: It’s not true. ¶ Why
the confusion? Record keeping and self-mythologiz-
ing, mostly. When its namesake fell from power, the
original Pasha watch supposedly disappeared. In
1943, a Cartier special order featured a watch with a
rounded case and a steel cage to protect the glass.
And 42 years later, in 1985, a watch bearing a striking
resemblance to that timepiece—brought to life by
Gérald Genta, the legendary watch designer behind
heavy hitters like the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and
the Patek Philippe Nautilus—hit the market. Its name?
The Pasha de Cartier. How the name became associ-

The Jewel in the

ated with the special order and not the rectangular
1933 one-off is debatable. What seems certain is that
in 1985, in order to take a bold step away from clas-

Crown
sic Cartier shapes, the maison leaned on the rounded—
and, frankly, more interesting—1943 model. ¶ But
none of that historical murk really matters in the end.
In 1985, the Pasha de Cartier created its own instant
myth, oozing solid-gold charm but with a sporty edge
not until then synonymous with Cartier. It was a huge
hit for the brand with fans who liked both its scale
(38mm was big for Cartier) and its unusual good looks.
Takes on the Pasha proliferated for 25 years until it
slipped from production in 2010. Now, however, like
a lot of things from the ’80s, the Pasha is back, this
time in two sizes, a 41mm in steel or yellow gold and
a 35mm in steel or pink gold. With the benefit of a lit-
tle time—and a damn compelling story, true or not—
the Pasha could well be a hit again.

P H OTO G R A P H B Y M A R K C L E N N O N

20
 Will the world always
be this unpredictable?
Will my portfolio weather the storm?
How can I be sure?

For some of life’s questions, you’re not alone.

5PHFUIFSXFDBOÎOEBOBOTXFS

VCTDPNMJGFHPBMT

"T
B
ŖSN
QSPWJEJOH
XFBMUI
NBOBHFNFOU
TFSWJDFT
UP
DMJFOUT
6#4
'JOBODJBM
4FSWJDFT
*OD
PšFST
JOWFTUNFOU
BEWJTPSZ
TFSWJDFT
JO
JUT
DBQBDJUZ
BT
BO
4&$
SFHJTUFSFE
JOWFTUNFOU
BEWJTFS
BOE
CSPLFSBHF
TFSWJDFT
JO
JUT
DBQBDJUZ
BT
BO
4&$SFHJTUFSFE
CSPLFSEFBMFS
*OWFTUNFOU
BEWJTPSZ
TFSWJDFT
BOE
CSPLFSBHF

TFSWJDFT
BSF
TFQBSBUF
BOE
EJTUJODU
EJšFS
JO
NBUFSJBM
XBZT
BOE
BSF
HPWFSOFE
CZ
EJšFSFOU
MBXT
BOE
TFQBSBUF
BSSBOHFNFOUT
*U
JT
JNQPSUBOU
UIBU
DMJFOUT

VOEFSTUBOE
UIF
XBZT
JO
XIJDI
XF
DPOEVDU
CVTJOFTT
UIBU
UIFZ
DBSFGVMMZ
SFBE
UIF
BHSFFNFOUT
BOE
EJTDMPTVSFT
UIBU
XF
QSPWJEF
UP
UIFN
BCPVU
UIF
QSPEVDUT

PS
TFSWJDFT
XF
PšFS
'PS
NPSF
JOGPSNBUJPO
QMFBTF
SFWJFX
UIF
1%'
EPDVNFOU
BU
VCTDPNSFMBUJPOTIJQTVNNBSZ
h
6#4

"MM
SJHIUT
SFTFSWFE
6#4

'JOBODJBM
4FSWJDFT
*OD
JT
B
TVCTJEJBSZ
PG
6#4
"(
.FNCFS
'*/3"4*1$
 Men’s wear with a HISTORY is back,

i ng
but this time around, it’s HITTING DIFFERENT
by JONATHAN EVANS

m
co
T H E S HORT S TOR I E S H E R E W E G O AGA I N

the
d
on
sec

G R O O M I N G : VA L J E A N G U E R R A

22 P H OTO G R A P H B Y M A R K C L E N N O N
FOR MORE INFORMATION VISIT
SEIKOLUXE.COM
 IT’S LIKE THERE’S A GLITCH IN THE
Matrix. Except instead of Keanu (beauti-
ful, sweet Keanu) muttering “déjà vu” at a
black cat, it’s guys catching a glimpse of a
Goodyear-welted boot or a flash of buffalo
plaid and thinking, Wait, haven’t I seen this
before? Yep. Heritage men’s wear—the
sturdy, historically inspired stuff of late-
19 MORE PICKS WITH A PEDIGREE

From the truly old-school to

updated riffs, here’s a look at
wider world of Heritage 2.0
the

2000s obsessions and early-2010s Tum-

blrs—is making its way back into how we VEST BY
POLO RALPH
dress now. LAUREN.
“It definitely feels familiar,” says Todd
Snyder, who fueled Heritage 1.0 when he
was helping popularize Ludlow suits and
Red Wing boots at J. Crew before launch-
ing his namesake label in 2011. This time
SOCKS ($175
around, though, instead of mashing up PER PAIR)
suits and boots, we’re mashing up down BY THE ELDER
STATESMAN.
vests and chamois shirts with sweatpants
and sneakers. The vibe is still informed by
the classics, but there’s enough sports-
wear-flavored modernity at play that this
moment feels distinct from its predeces-
T H E S HORT S TOR I E S H E R E W E G O AGA I N

sor. Call it Heritage 2.0. Why not?

You can see it on city streets, bubbling
up as both counterpoint and complement
to streetwear’s past couple years of domi-
PARKA ($825)
nance. And you can see it in Snyder’s new BY WOOLRICH.
collaboration with L. L. Bean, which
launches this fall and flips Bean mainstays
into pieces that might upset the
purists (he changed the pockets!) Rule No. 782
but feel fresh and free of the fus-
tiness that sometimes comes ACCORDINGLY.
with diving into the archives.
A shirt-jacket gets done up in high-pile
fleece with big hits of safety orange
(inspired, Snyder says, by Bean’s hunting
clothes). The Bean boot gets a similar color
treatment on the sole or, in a brand-new
move, is transformed into a bold knitted BOOTS ($205) BY
BLUNDSTONE.
graphic on a crewneck sweater. These
aren’t gigantic, wildly transformative
design decisions. Instead, Snyder says of
his collabs, which range from Champion
and Timex to this new one with Bean,
“what I try to do is tweak it ever so slightly
that I don’t ruin the sauce. That’s annoy-
ing; I started using food analogies. But I do
think that is how I design.”
Modern fashion moves fast. It can be tir-
ing. Depleting, even. But Snyder doesn’t
think we have to play that game. And this
moment, this resurgence of interest in
things that are meant to last and have a
story to tell, feels optimistic in its trust that
we can keep building on that story. “I think
what’s nice about this,” he says, “is it’s kind
BAG ($350)
of a return to grass roots that makes you AND
feel good inside.” SUNGLASSES
($250),
AVAILABLE AT
PREVIOUS PAGE: VEST ($189), JACKET ($159), BOOTS THE SOCIETY
($279), AND HAT ($40) BY L. L. BEAN X TODD SNYDER; ARCHIVE.
TROUSERS ($268) BY TODD SNYDER. JACKET ($245) AND
SHIRT ($125) BY
TAYLOR STITCH.
24
 Hot Fuzz
o
o It seems almost incon-
CARDIGAN o ceivable, at this point,
SWEATER ($385)
BY CHAMULA.
o
o that polar fleece was
o ever not a part of the
o way we get dressed.
JEANS ($198) o But it’s true: The mate-
BY LEVI’S o
AUTHORIZED
VINTAGE. o rial was invented in
o 1979 by Malden Mills
o and quickly snapped
o up by Patagonia to
o
o make its now-iconic
o Synchilla fabric.
o These days, you can
o get fleeced by every-
o one from the origina-
o
o tor to a new breed of
o innovators, like Aether
o and Martine Rose. No
o matter who it’s from,
o
o though, it’s still cozy—
BACKPACK o and cool—as hell.
($175) BY o
FILSON.
o
o
o
BOOTS
o
($748) BY o
YUKETEN. o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
JACKET ($690) o
BY CLOSED o
X NIGEL o
SHIRTS (FROM
$165 TO $395),
CABOURN.
o
AVAILABLE o
AT THE SOCIETY o
ARCHIVE. o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o ($199)
o
o
o
o
STYLING: CL AIRE TEDALDI/HALLEY RESOURCES

o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
HAT ($82) o
BY EAST
HARBOUR
o NAPA BY MARTINE ROSE
SURPLUS. o ($546)
o
o
o
o
o
 The thirty-year-old director of the CANDYMAN
sequel has made the MOST RELEVANT HORROR MOVIE of our times
by GABRIELLE BRUNEY

nia dacosta is

IN NIA D A COSTA’S FIRST HORROR MOVIE, A BLACK TEENAGE SLASHER DISPATCHES

one victim by stabbing her in her bed. She pushes another down a spiral staircase and drowns
the third in a toilet. Her night’s work complete, the killer collapses into a chair. “I don’t even
know what to say,” she muses. “But what I do know is, the Black girl dies last.” On cue, she
slumps, lifeless. The movie, a six-minute short called The Black Girl Dies Last, can be found
on YouTube. DaCosta made it in high school and now sees it as being “so stupid.” She’s tried
to remove it but, unfortunately, cannot remember her YouTube password. The memory
lapse offers a glimpse into the mind of this emerging artist, whose name is echoing through
Hollywood. Today, she’s a very different filmmaker yet remains hell-bent on changing the
way you experience horror movies. They are still meant to terrify, but DaCosta is reconsid-

P H OTO G R A P H B Y G I O N CA R LO VA L E N T I N E
 FUN ABOUT FUN-SIZE CANDY BARS.
ering who commits the violence onscreen and Canadian border to save her family’s home and pay for

Rule No. 783 THERE IS NOTHING

how. And she’s doing it on the biggest stage her sister’s abortion. It’s a drama, not horror, but DaCosta
possible. Jordan Peele, the man who rein- demonstrates an understanding of the tensions between
vented the genre with Get Out, tapped her to humans and their environment. This is the backbone of
direct the sequel to Candyman, which prom- scary movies. Stress materializes in haunted locales—
ises to be one of the next great chapters in the think Poltergeist (houses), The Shining (hotels), and A
evolution of horror. Nightmare on Elm Street (towns). Horror movies are night-
“I think all horror movies are about trauma mares about people losing the battle against their sur-
in one way or another, but I would love for roundings. The women in Little Woods aren’t fighting
there to be more space even within horror for their town’s ghosts or ghouls but its poverty, isolation,
us to talk about stuff that’s not ‘Being Black is and misogyny.
really sad,’ ” she says. “There are so many fac- The movie, which stars Tessa Thompson, whom you
ets to our existence.” know from Creed and as Valkyrie in the Marvel Cinematic
The original 1992 Candyman, which Universe, was enthusiastically received and won two
includes a now-iconic score from the com- particularly important fans: Peele and his Candyman
poser Philip Glass, is a modern classic. Vir- cowriter and fellow producer Win Rosenfeld. “Nia’s film
ginia Madsen plays a white Chicago grad student fascinated displayed many of the qualities we hoped to bring to this ver-
by an urban legend in the city’s real-life Cabrini-Green pub- sion of Candyman,” Peele tells me in an email.
lic housing project. The lore tells of Candyman: a hook- In DaCosta’s version, it’s the absence of Cabrini-Green that
handed Black man, killed by a racist white mob in the 19th looms large, as all of the high-rise buildings featured in the
century, who has built a word-of-mouth afterlife through 1992 movie have since been razed. The film isn’t haunted by
gory murders. He is summoned when someone says his a monster alone but by the neighborhood of more than 15,000

T H E S HORT S TOR I E S M U R DE R , S H E W ROT E

name five times while looking in a mirror. (Has DaCosta residents reduced to about 140 families who live in the few
given it a shot? “Absolutely not,” she says. “Why invite that original Cabrini-Green row houses that remain. “It almost
into your life?”) feels like a graveyard, and in ways it is,” DaCosta says. “A com-
Black horror fans have long had a complicated relation- munity was destroyed there.”
ship with the original Candyman. Until recently, it was among Candyman explores themes of gentrification and police
the few mainstream American horror films to feature signif- brutality, but it also offers sharp meta commentary, deliv-
icant Black characters while addressing racism. Yet it was ered primarily by art-world gatekeepers who hold sway over
written and directed by a white filmmaker who focused the Brianna’s and Anthony’s careers. One critic, played by
story on a white character. Candyman and the inhabitants of Rebecca Spence, gives Anthony’s work a dim assessment
Cabrini-Green are seen only distantly, as superstitious, poor at first but reverses it in favor of glowing praise as a body
Black people whose lives and community must be explained count mounts around him. It’s a biting critique of the
to the audience. ways Black art is often dismissed until national tragedies
I’m a longtime horror fan, and it’s one of the few scary mov- thrust it into the limelight.
“There were a couple lines in there that were
literally just me saying, ‘I am a Black woman mak-
ing this movie for a white studio, and I’m

killing it exhausted,’ ” says DaCosta. “There’s no reason I

should be in these rooms where Jordan and I are
the only Black people.”
Candyman was initially slated for release in
ies that still terrifies me after repeated viewings. Its perspec- September, then pushed to October, before the studio
tive on race mirrors white concerns about Black criminality decided to move it to 2021 because of the pandemic. In the
in the ’90s, but the story’s roots in white-supremacist vio- meantime, DaCosta’s next project is a musical adaptation
lence mean Candyman stands on more truly frightening of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, set in London’s Soho, but her
ground than most of its genre peers. And no, I’ve never said career received its biggest boost yet in August, when it was
“Candyman” into a mirror, either. reported that she would direct Captain Marvel 2, starring
The new film has been called a “spiritual sequel” to the Brie Larson. When we spoke, DaCosta could “neither con-
original and stars Watchmen’s Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as firm nor deny” that she’d earned the coveted gig. Tessa
Anthony McCoy, an emerging visual artist who develops his Thompson tells me DaCosta would be a great addition to
own fascination with the legend, and If Beale Street Could the MCU. “She has real respect and admiration for sci-fi and
Talk’s Teyonah Parris as his curator girlfriend, Brianna. Both for the comic-book world,” says the actor. “But it’s not pre-
H A I R S T Y L I N G : L A CY R E D WAY. M A K E U P :

characters are Black and well versed in the history of Cabrini- cious to her. I think she’ll be unafraid to really stake her
J A N I C E K I N J O / T H E WA L L G R O U P.

Green, though uneasy about their status as gentrifiers in claim on it, to both pay respect and homage to what’s in the
the neighborhood. canon and to figure out ways to authentically push the
The movie was shot in what remains of Cabrini-Green, and boundaries of where it’s been before.”
location is foundational to the story. DaCosta seems to rec- According to Thompson, DaCosta made quite an impres-
ognize inherently the importance of a place and the people sion on the Marvel bigwigs. “When she was pitching, I was
who occupy it. Her first feature film, 2019’s Little Woods, which as nervous as if I was going to pitch,” says Thompson. “Brie
she wrote and directed, concerns itself with a North Dakota texted me, I think four minutes in, and was just like in all caps,
drug runner who makes one last smuggling trip across the ‘NIA IS KILLING IT.’ ”

27
 H

by JONATHAN EVANS
H
SH H

H
H
Some of
THIS
FALL’S
BEST
CLOTHES
have a lot
to say.
They’re
T H E S HORT S TOR I E S I T ’ S OH S O QU I E T

just not
shouting
about it.

FEAR OF GOD EXCLUSIVELY FOR ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA

What happens when you combine Jerry Lorenzo’s street-style savvy with all the skills of Ermenegildo Zegna’s
ateliers? You get a standard-bearer for a new kind of luxury that puts real-life wearability front and center.
COAT ($3,415), SWEATER ($1,000), TROUSERS ($1,145), AND SNEAKERS ($595) BY FEAR OF GOD EXCLUSIVELY FOR
ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA.

28 P H OTO G R A P H S B Y M A R K C L E N N O N
 FOR A M I N U T E T H E R E , S OM E OF T H E B IG G E ST H IG H - FA S H ION HOUSE S ON T H E
planet got pretty damn loud.
It was fun while it lasted (and for some it’s still going), but the pendulum always swings. And for
BOT TEGA a different breed of designer, a more subtle take on luxury is looking like the way forward. The
VENETA approach is quieter, but it’s also—perhaps paradoxically—one of the most exciting things going on
It may have started in the world of men’s style right now.
with leather goods,
but the Italian label This fall’s collaboration between Jerry Lorenzo’s L. A.–based label Fear of God and Italian men’s-
now applies its
signature blend wear powerhouse Zegna stands as an effective avatar of this movement. “Before we met for the first
of craft and playful- time, we both instinctively knew about this gap between what’s happening culturally and traditional
ness to everything
from turtlenecks to tailoring,” says Lorenzo of the
trench coats. lead-up to his initial meeting with
COAT ($2,650), Zegna artistic director Alessandro
TURTLENECK ($980),
AND SHIRT ($670) BY Sartori. The resulting collection,
BOTTEGA VENETA.
Fear of God Exclusively for Erme-
negildo Zegna, blends exceptional
craftsmanship—the pieces are made
in Zegna’s ateliers—with an aes-
thetic that feels relaxed, refined,
and ready for whatever weird world
comes after [gestures broadly] all
this. Tailored pieces are stripped of
lapels or rendered oversize, while
streetwear-influenced sweats and
overshirts are raised up as some-
thing seriously special.
In other words, this is really, really
nice stuff that’s meant to be part of
your life, not saved for some occasion.
“At this level of quality, with this craft
and with these artisanal types of fin-
ishings and work, this collection
could literally say something differ-
ent,” explains Sartori. But he’s care-
ful to note that there’s a whole
ecosystem of other players pushing
this trend along. There is, of course,
the Row, with its ridiculously high-
end fabrics and savant-level distilla-
tion of classic and unassuming styles
into clothing that’s stratospheric in
execution (and price). Or Bottega
Veneta, purveyors of an exacting sort
of Italian cool that insists on precision
in both material and make. Back state-
AURALEE side, Hilton Turner delivers a style
Founded in Tokyo
in 2015, Auralee that’s a little more louche, with silky
is the brainchild pajama shirts finished with piped seams that look a
of designer Ryota
Iwai. The brand whole lot better with a robe-inspired jacket than they
makes its easy- do languishing in bed. And Japan-based Auralee,
going, elegant
HILTON clothes—think which grafts a dressed-up-but-definitely-left-of-
BY HILTON shades of beige
center perspective onto everything from sweaters to
TURNER and gray, with
Helmed by (and
relaxed fits that suits, proves that labels the world over are crafting
drape just so—
named for) designer entirely in Japan. clothing that’s exquisite and built for every day—or
Hilton Turner, this
L. A.-based label JACKET ($930) at least every day you’re feeling like actually getting
puts the focus AND KNIT ($460) dressed, not just throwing fabric onto your body.
firmly on tailoring BY AURALEE.
but knocks the Assembling an outfit in the morning is a reminder
fusty formality out of the here and now, and if you’re going to put in the
of its suits so that
they feel more effort to get that fit off, maybe it should pay you back.
appropriate for an
NBA tunnel walk
These clothes—precisely cut and painstakingly con-
than the office. sidered but (and this is crucial) just as comfortable
SUIT ($2,895) AND as those old sweats—are designed to make you feel
SHIRT ($1,895; PART
OF SET), HILTON BY better IRL. You’ll know it when you slip them on,
HILTON TURNER. when you move in them, and, sure, when you get
your boy to snap a pic for the ’Gram.

G R O O M I N G : VA L J E A N G U E R R A
 ESQUIRE STUDIOS
FOR KNOB CREEK®

Photography: Michael Marquez

“ T H E WA I T
I S A L WAY S
W O R T H I T.”
fell in love with American denim at a young age. Through
movie and and TV, he became obsessed with the jeans
KNOB CREEK AND ESQUIRE worn in NYC by Harlem hip-hop artists, Bowery punk
musicians, and avant-garde painters in the Village. After
PRESENT REAL STORIES OF working for a couple of decades under a Savile Row-
trained tailor, Glenn finally brought his passion and
EARNING IT, FROM INDIVIDUALS skill to the United States: the birthplace of the blue jeans
he loves so much.
WHO—LIKE BOOKER NOE, THE
In New York he met Daniel Lewis, a textile junkie who
ORIGINAL KNOB CREEK MASTER was himself forever in search of exquisite blue jeans—
and the two set to work bringing old-school denim
DISTILLER—PROVE THAT manufacturing back to Gotham. The philosophy behind
Glenn’s Denim is simple: quality at all costs, no matter
PATIENCE AND DEDICATION ARE how much toil it takes. Both men pull design inspiration
from vintage looks. When they land on a concept, Glenn
ALWAYS WORTH THE EFFORT. begins drafting a pattern while Daniel locates the perfect

HOW I
denim for the new design. Above all, they focus on fit.
“This is the original denim,” Glenn explains, “made in
America on American looms. It’s like apples and oranges,
comparing selvedge denim to commercial denim. As

EARNED IT
you wear selvedge denim, it ages with the movement of
your body.” He pauses, examining the whiskey glinting
in his glass. “You think of aging a nine-year old bourbon
like Knob Creek® . . . Now, just imagine a perfectly aged
nine-year-old blue jean. The wait is always worth it.”

GLENN’S DENIM FOUNDERS GLENN LIBURD AND

DANIEL LEWIS BRING AMERICAN MANUFACTURING
BACK TO ITS HARDWORKING ROOTS

I
n the late 19th century, Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood was a thriving
hub of textile manufacturing. But Gowanus’s manufacturing clout dwindled
in the years following WWII, as one industry after another abandoned
Brooklyn. Today, two fearless souls are helping to bring back the old fighting
spirit—crafting a uniquely American product and drawing on traditional
American characteristics: pluck, determination, and a profound dedication
to quality. Glenn’s Denim NYC cofounders Glenn Liburd and Daniel Lewis
took a break to sip Knob Creek® and talk with Esquire about why they choose
grit and perseverance over “fast fashion”—and why there are few things more
American than bourbon and blue jeans.
In recent years, the Knob Creek Distilling Company has been lifting up local
heroes—spirited entrepreneurs and dedicated craftsmen who truly abide by
the longstanding American principles of commitment, vision, passion and
perseverance. The effort is part of Knob Creek®’s resolution to show that no
one blindly stumbles into excellence; quality must be earned through years
of training and devoted commitment.
Glenn and Daniel possess the exact kind of work ethic and crazy attention to
detail that Knob Creek® loves to celebrate. Hailing from Trinidad, Glenn grew
up in a culture long steeped in a trade mentality. “There were dressmakers,
shoemakers, just tradesman everywhere,” he recalls. “I grew up with a sewing
machine in the house, and we made all of our curtains and cushions.” Glenn
AGED NINE CR
O BE R M O

E EN T
KN
YEARS OUT OF

CL

K
PRINCIPLE,
NOT OBLIGATION.
Two years makes it bourbon.
Seven more makes it Knob Creek®.
 di
sc
T H E S HORT S TOR I E S G E T D OW N TON IG H T

IT’S A LATE-SUMMER AFTERNOON IN LONDON, WHERE KYLIE MINOGUE, ONE OF THE GRANDE
dames of pop, is philosophizing about disco music. It’s transformative, she explains, because
if you’re in the right frame of mind, the music can carry you away on its signature bass lines
and horn sections. “When you’re at a club and you’re surrounded by people, you can still just
shut your eyes and feel like you’re the only person on the dance floor,” she tells me. “Or you
can be the only person in a room and feel like you’re out, surrounded by all this energy.”

o is back

In a year of plague, turmoil, and hardship, the genre known for its hedonistic escapism is
experiencing a third wave. Thank God. BY MADISON VAIN
A L L A N TA N N E N B A U M / G E T T Y I M A G E S ( L E F T ) . C O U R T E S Y B M G ( R I G H T ) .

32
 I am talking to Minogue because in this tumultuous year, sadness, but that hope within the sadness. It’s that sweet spot
disco is experiencing a renaissance. Minogue is among sev- 01 of tears on the dance floor.”
eral artists with new albums in 2020 that sound as if they’re Minogue’s twinkling plea for unity and togetherness did the
echoes of the 1970s. Newly minted superstar Dua Lipa and same for me. The song became my soundtrack to a summer
pop chameleon Lady Gaga each put out chart-topping records spent at home, blaring in the kitchen, the backyard, or the liv-
this spring that served as bombastic revivals. Doja Cat cracked ing room fashioned into a workout studio. It lined the make-
the Top 40 with her single “Say So,” an undeniable Chic call- believe concerts of my mind, drumming up anticipation for the
back. Jessie Ware’s latest is a steamy retro embrace, and even 02 crowds that will (hopefully) gather in 2021 and, more than once,
R&B’s King of the Underworld, the Weeknd, toyed with Tech- despair from missing the throngs of people of years past. It
nicolor production on his 2020 set, After Hours. But Minogue’s prompts the existential question the entire genre faces as it
latest, which debuts in November, is the most on the nose. Its resurfaces: What is dance music without a dance floor? Disco
title: DISCO. was born in the club, and when it returned in the early 2000s,
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” she says of the title. “Let’s 03 it did so as the large-scale festival exploded in America. (Daft
just say what it is.” Punk’s 2006 Coachella set is widely considered the best show
It makes sense that the genre is seeing a revival in this god- the event has ever seen.) But, at least for the time being, any
awful year. Disco—born on Valentine’s Day 1970 in New York revelry is currently confined to quarantine bubbles and at-home
City—was pure fantasy, a strobe-lit, sex-fueled response to the stereos. The clubs are closed, the event calendars cleared. It’s
an oddity Minogue acknowledges. “It’s a kitchen disco,” she
late-’60s uproar and civil unrest. The four-on-the-floor beats
04
invited revelers into a new decade, one in which the dance says. “It’s your lounging disco. A virtual disco.” Reality may be
floors never cleared and the parties never stopped. Incorpo- damned, in other words, but the daydream lives on.
rating salsa, pop, funk, and soul, it promised not just inclusion
but liberation under the mirror ball. As long as you were down
to hustle, pump, and duck, it was all groovy, baby. Now, at the
05 five new essential disco albums

T H E S HORT S TOR I E S G E T D OW N TON IG H T

dawn of another new decade, with enough crises and death to
make the ’60s feel almost quaint, the prospect of beaming into
an alternate existence—imagined or MDMA-induced—is irresist-
ible. “It’s three minutes of escapism and euphoria,” Minogue
says of disco. “People need that.”
Minogue was two years old at the time of disco’s inception,
but the Aussie was the foremost architect of its second coming.
She scored her first hit in 1987 with a cover of “The Loco-Motion,”
which topped the charts all over the world. Her self-titled debut
LP arrived a year later and was effectively the birth of what peo-
ple eventually called nu-disco. The resurgence burbled through-
out the mainstream in the late 1990s and early aughts with
releases from Jamiroquai (“Canned Heat”), Madonna (Confes-
Dua Lipa, Future Nostalgia
sions on a Dance Floor), and Daft Punk (“One More Time”). Even
C O U R T E S Y B M G ( M I N O G U E ) . C O U R T E S Y A R T I S T S ( A L B U M C O V E R S ) . R E D P I X E L . P L / S H U T T E R S TO C K ( D I S C O B A L L ) .

There’s no more obvious heir apparent to Minogue’s mirror ball

U2 wanted to flirt: “Lemon,” from the band’s 1993 record,
than this Brit-bred Albanian pop upstart. The 24-year-old’s thrilling
Zooropa, is bathed in ’70s nostalgia. Minogue followed her debut second album, released at the pandemic’s U. S. peak, is a pledge
with five albums in eight years, collaborated with fellow Aussie of allegiance to cool kids, late nights, and worn-out dance floors.
Nick Cave, and starred in films opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme,
Pauly Shore, and Stephen Baldwin. Róisín Murphy, Róisín Machine
DISCO is as much an ode to the 6:00 A.M. set as it is a musical “This is a simulation,” the Irish electro-pop wizard taunts on the
mission statement for the star, one of the biggest-selling female opening track of her latest. Fine by us. Disco has always been a
artists in history, with just as many honorifics as awards. The fantasy, and across ten songs, Murphy builds the Day-Glo delusion
of our dreams.

Rule No. 784 THERE’S NO NEED TO Lady Gaga, Chromatica

PRETEND YOU DON’T KNOW THE WORDS Mother Monster’s sixth LP is a delightfully messy musical cannonball
TO “DANCING QUEEN.” into dance-pop’s coke-spoon past. And while at times the kinetic
set leans more heavily on disco’s immediate scion—house music—it
basks in the glow of the same strobe light.
album is a return to everything she’s ever done well in song:
gooey melodies, sheeny production, spellbinding reverie. In Jessie Ware, What’s Your Pleasure?
meetings with her creative team and cowriters, which began in “I want people to have sex to it,” Ware said this spring, referencing
person last fall before moving online as London went into coro- her 2020 collection. As clubs remain closed, it’s not a bad backup
plan for the funky, Hi-NRG exploration. The breathy trappings never
navirus lockdown, Minogue says she kept everyone on track by
feel like costume—instead, they’re downright mesmerizing.
routinely pulling up videos of Earth, Wind & Fire. She knew they
were onto something when her longtime collaborator Biff
Qwestlife, Prophecy
Stannard called her in tears after finishing the sparkling lead This tight, jubilant collection from two icons of Europe’s club scene,
single, “Say Something.” It was the first week of mandated quar- Frenchman Tom Laroye and Brit Andy Williams, dropped in March
antine, and London was eerily silent. “We were barely breath- and, according to them, took inspiration from funk and boogie of the
ing,” she says of the pervasive feeling—but the track cut through. late ’70s and early ’80s. Together they mix instrumental music with
Hearing his reaction “made me cry,” she says. “Not just out of electronics for a “human groove,” Laroye says.

33
 In the not-so-distant past,
wearing a tech jacket sig-

shining
naled you were ready to

th e scale K2 or blather endlessly

about your “paradigm-
shifting” app. No longer.
Thanks to just-techy-enough
Two very different brands have found outerwear from actual moun-
a way to give GLOW UP a whole NEW MEANING taineering experts (Arc’teryx,
Descente), futuristic fashion
labels (Acronym, Alyx), or
some mixture of the two
(the North Face, Nanamica),
ditching your topcoat is now
absolutely acceptable.
Just take this jacket from
Stone Island, the OG of tex-
tile innovation and street-
friendly style. Toss it on over
anything from workout gear
(yes, we’re still exercising) to
a suit (yes, we’re still wearing
suits) and it’ll keep you warm
T H E S HORT S TOR I E S B L I N DI NG L IG H T S

and dry while providing

extensive onboard storage.
And that reflective shell isn’t
just cool looking; it’s practi-
cal. A hit of high-octane sil-
ver keeps you visible when
early sunsets and gloomy
days are the norm. Plus,
you can match it with that
Au Départ bag you just
snagged. (Yep, the one on
this page.) —Daniel Dumas

AU DÉPART IS THE OLDEST OF WHAT ARE ACKNOWLEDGED AS THE BIG FOUR

of French luggage houses, along with Louis Vuitton, Moynat, and Goyard. But
there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of it. Despite a timeline that stretches
back to 1834, the brand was basically consigned to history in the ’70s, when it
ceased production. That changed last year, when it made its comeback at Milan
design week, drawing on those historical bona fides while injecting a healthy TOP LEFT: BAG ($3,540) BY AU
G R O O M I N G : VA L J E A N G U E R R A

dose of 21st-century cool—and some serious tech, too. Many of Au Départ’s new DÉPART PARIS; SUIT ($795) BY
B|M|C; SHIRT ($99) BY SUITSUPPLY.
pieces feature this striking update of the original house pattern established in BOTTOM RIGHT: JACKET ($2,670) BY
the early 1900s to differentiate the label from its competitors. The new spin, STONE ISLAND; SUIT ($1,495 FOR
A THREE-PIECE) BY POLO RALPH
though, is that it’s now engineered in a highly reflective woven cloth, called Reflex, LAUREN; TURTLENECK ($90) BY
BANANA REPUBLIC.
that lights up like a Christmas tree when caught in a camera flash or car head-
lights. All the better for taking a perfectly calibrated Instagram shot—or just ensur-
ing you’re easily seen on a nighttime bike ride. —Nick Sullivan P H OTO G R A P H S B Y M A R K C L E N N O N

34
ESQUIRE STUDIO X MONTBLANC
SPIKE LEE
7KHOHJHQGDU\¿OPPDNHU
has been following his
passion since he was a
kid writing stories at the
Pursuing one’s passion doesn’t always kitchen table in Cobble
Hill, when his mother
come easy. It takes dedication, told him “you always
tenacity and the ability to follow your have to be 10 times
dream even—nay, especially—in the better.” Writing from the
heart and by hand (his
face of adversity. Creative talents
left hand), Lee has taken
Spike Lee, Chen Kun and Taron this advice to heart from
Egerton hail from different parts of WKHUHOHDVHRIKLV¿UVW
the globe and are at different stages ¿OP¶V³6KH¶V*RWWD
+DYH,W¶´WKURXJKKLV
in their careers, but all are redefining 2VFDUZLQQHU
the pursuit of success in the 21st “BlacKkKlansman.”
century, and share Montblanc’s belief ,QVSLUHGE\WKHFLW\DQG
people of Brooklyn, his
that “What moves you, makes you.” family and his own
personal experiences,

MARK /HH¶V¿OPVVKRZFDVH
the story of Black
America through his
uniquely witty,

MAKERS
thought-provoking lens.

TARON Synonymous with

EGERTON
excellence in
craftsmanship and
design, Montblanc has
been pushing the
boundaries of
innovation since the
Luxury Maison first
revolutionized the
culture of writing in
1906. Champions of
ingenuity and
imagination,
CHEN KUN Montblanc inspires
you to write your own
An actor, singer, author, mentor and philanthropist, success story.
Chen Kun is always exploring new facets of life while
inspiring others to do the same. As co-founder of The
Dome Studio in Beijing, Kun shares his passion for the Best known for his Golden Globe-winning turn in “Rocketman,” UK-based actor Taron Egerton is clearly a
stage with students, often sending them handwritten VWDULQWKHPDNLQJ&RQ¿GHQWZLWKRXWEHLQJFRFN\(JHUWRQDOZD\VIROORZVKLVRZQSDWKDQG¿QGVJUHDW
letters of encouragement. Spurred by the belief that SOHDVXUH LQ WDNLQJ RQ FKDOOHQJHV KH ¿QGV GDXQWLQJ ZKHWKHU LW¶V VLJQLQJ D WKUHHSLFWXUH GHDO IRU WKH
acting is a profession that requires lifelong learning, Kun “Kingsman” trilogy at age 23, singing alongside Sir Elton John or speaking out for women and LGBTQ
HQYLVLRQHGDFUHDWLYHODERUDWRU\ZKHUHÀHGJOLQJWDOHQWV ULJKWV$VIRUZKDWKH¶OOGRQH[W"³,¶PVWLOO¿JXULQJLWRXW´KHVDLG³,JXHVV,¶OOGRZKDW,DOZD\VWU\WRGR
could come together with storied professionals and Something different.”
discover that there are no limits to what you can do if you
set your mind to it.
 The Seekers of the Grails
A growing community of YOUNG, extremely online, and
DEEPLY EDUCATED FASHION FANS is turning ARCHIVAL MEN’S WEAR into a hot commodity
by AVIDAN GROSSMAN
T H E S HORT S TOR I E S W H E R E’ D YOU G E T T H AT ?

right): YOHJI YAMAMOTO LEATHER JACKET, F/W 1991; JUNYA

Zeke Hemme of Constant Practice with (clockwise from top

AND COMME DES GARÇONS HOMME PAINT-SPLATTERED WORK

WATANABE X NIKE AIR KUKINI; ISSEY MIYAKE RIDER JACKET, S/S
1994; JUNYA WATANABE CONVERTIBLE BAG JACKET, S/S 2005;

PANTS. BACKGROUND: CRAIG GREEN SAMURAI JACKET, S/S 2015.

A N D R E L P E R RY & C O U R T E S Y C O N S TA N T P R A CT I C E ( P R O D U CT S )

Since then, the market for these hard-to-find, historically sig-

nificant items in the world of men’s wear has skyrocketed in value,
inspiring ferocious demand. The figures who are defining how
these pieces are discussed online—and, increasingly, how they’re
valued on the thriving secondary market—are surprisingly young,
scarily knowledgeable, and always on the hunt for the next big
name in archival fashion. Weaned on flipping rare streetwear,
they’re now investing in designer fashion and shaping the future
of how guys get dressed in the process. One particularly prescient

38 P H OTO G R A P H B Y A N D R E L PE R RY
 Handcrafted. Hard-wearing.
Honestly priced.

SCAN
HERE
Get $20 off
your first pair.
MilwaukeeBootCompany.com
 real community for these grail seekers. Kyle Julian Skye Muhl-
friedel, 25, and Clif Shayne, 21, first met on the fan forum Kanye
To The. For both of them, collecting men’s wear started as a
hobby. They paired up in 2018 to create an online marketplace
called Middleman Store, which has racked up hundreds of

“IF WE WERE DOING IT BY OURSELVES, IT WOULDN’T BE THE SAME.”

thousands of followers on the ’Gram. When the rapper Lil Uzi
Vert liked a photo of theirs, Muhlfriedel and Shayne ended up
supplying him with dozens of rare Jean Paul Gaultier pieces
from the designer’s heyday. Now it’s going so well that Shayne
has dropped out of college to work on the account full-time.
(But stay in school, kids—unless you’re about to hit it big sup-
plying vintage JPG to Uzi!)
There’s a “DIY, almost punky vibe” to the archive scene,
Muhlfriedel says. When he first started collecting, “it was a
bunch of kids that were into fashion, and this was our niche.”
Fernando Rangel of Silver League with (clockwise from bottom right):
CAROL CHRISTIAN POELL TWISTED SEAM OVERLOCK JEANS, F/W 2006; Shayne credits an early interest in the streetwear juggernaut
CAROL CHRISTIAN POELL TARNISHED SPIRAL ZIP BOOTS, S/S 2006;
AND CAROL CHRISTIAN POELL LEATHER OVERLOCK JACKET, F/W 2005.
Supreme—a common gateway drug, so to speak, among resellers
BACKGROUND: UNDERCOVER CROSSES RUG, F/W 2002. of a certain age—with sparking an infatuation with the boom-
and-bust nature of flipping rare shit for a tidy profit. With the
fondness of grizzled veterans reminiscing about the good ol’
example: Simons, the designer of that $50K jacket, recently days, both of them recall the “Wild West” feeling of coming up,
announced he’ll be reissuing 100 pieces from his archive in a when the market was less saturated and sizable followings could
bid to get in on the action. (Secure your bag, king!) be built in a matter of months. (The good ol’ days were, like,

C O U R T E S Y S I LV E R L E A G U E ( R A N G E L , P R O D U CT S ) . C O U R T E S Y D O N AV O N S M A L LW O O D ( S H AY N E ) . C O U R T E S Y I A N L I P TO N ( M U H L F R I E D E L ) . C O U R T E S Y M I D D L E M A N ( P R O D U CT S ) .
T H E S HORT S TOR I E S W H E R E’ D YOU G E T T H AT ?

Zeke Hemme is the soft-spoken 28-year-old behind Constant three years ago.) Muhlfriedel, for instance, worked his way up
Practice, an online marketplace hawking the ultrarare men’s the fashion food chain, flipping A.P.C. and other brands before
wear he’s collected for more than five years. Today, he’s among moving on to bigger-ticket items. Like Hemme and Rangel, he
the most prominent figures in this community. Hemme has a and Shayne still share a feeling of pure joy for the thrill of the
wry, unflappable demeanor that belies a deep knowledge of hunt, exchanging jubilant text messages after stumbling across
the genre and masks a competitive streak born from a lifetime particularly rare pieces and “getting way too excited about a
of playing soccer. Speaking to me via video call from his make- jacket or something,” as Shayne endearingly describes it.
shift home office, the Philly-based archivist appears on my The community remains tightly knit, and it’s easy to see why.
computer screen surrounded by the type of out-there designer Talking to Hemme and his archivist coconspirators is like recon-
clothing he routinely spotlights using nothing but a trusty necting with a kid you always fucked with in high school but
iPhone 10. (Tim Cook, cut the fucking check.) When I ask forgot how much you liked. There is a shared fluency to the
Hemme what, exactly, makes the everyday grind that is regu- conversation that makes me think of the best moments in any
larly blessing the masses with unearthed gems worth all the given group chat, when everyone locks in at the same time and
effort, he responds with a shrug: It’s the hunt, man. Putting the inside jokes start flying. Hemme and Muhlfriedel talk all
people on to new shit is just too much fun to stop. the time, swapping tips on, say, how to properly categorize spe-
If Hemme seems a tad young to be collecting clothing about cific Issey Miyake pieces. There’s a sense of camaraderie to the
as old as he is, here’s something that’ll make you feel like a whole thing, underscored by the fact that business is booming
full-blown fossil: He’s one of the movement’s elder statesmen. and no one sees demand slowing down anytime soon.
On Instagram, the social-media center of the archival men’s- “It’s not a zero-sum game,” Muhlfriedel says. “If we were
wear renaissance, a cohort of 20-somethings, as well versed doing it by ourselves, it wouldn’t be the same thing.”
in the late-’90s oeuvre of Yohji Yamamoto as they are in the [Cinematic violins swell.] Maybe, it turns out, the real grails
rapid-fire parlance of transactional DMs, dictate the tone of are the friends we make along the way.
the conversation. For young enthusiasts in particular, archi-
val men’s wear is an opportunity to find not only the pieces
they absolutely must have—in other words, grails—but also Clif Shayne (left) and Kyle Julian Skye Muhlfriedel of Middleman with
(from left): ISSEY MIYAKE CARGO BOMBER JACKET, F/W 1996, AND YOHJI
the items (from other designers or earlier seasons) that YAMAMOTO LEATHER ZIP JACKET, F/W 1991. BACKGROUND: JEAN PAUL
inspired them. It’s not unusual for these hunters to spend
years researching a piece before finally tracking it down.
For 23-year-old Fernando Rangel, it’s his youngest custom-
ers who tend to impress him the most with their knowledge of
men’s-wear arcana. In 2018, Rangel started Silver League, his
own expansive assortment of men’s wear, as a way of tracing
the lineage of piece A to piece Z. He readily admits he’s guilty
of fetishizing the past. (Buddy, who isn’t?!) But around the
same time his peers were busy waiting for their high school
crush to reply to an ill-conceived “just checking in” text, Ran-
gel was buying up pieces from cult Japanese designers like Jun
Takahashi and Takahiro Miyashita. He even created a website
and Instagram account to catalog his growing collection with
detailed background information and crisp photography.
Out of this collective obsession for men’s wear has come a

40
 P RO M OT I O N

STYLE
AGENDA
PRESAGE EXPRESSES A NEW ASPECT OF
JAPANESE ARTISTRY.
Presage, known for unique dials reflecting centuries of artistry, is now
expanding to encompass the fresh and sharp look of contemporary
Japanese design, the intricately patterned dials, are based on the
traditional hemp leaf pattern of the Heian Period (794-1185 AD), a
symbol of growth and prosperity.
(QTOQTGKPHQTOCVKQPXKUKVUGKMQNWZGEQO|||

YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD REALLY TIE

YOUR WARDROBE TOGETHER? MORE
MONEY IN YOUR POCKET.
Not sure where to look? It’s easy. Switch to GEICO today and you
could save on car insurance. Get your free quote!
IGKEQEQO

THE ULTIMATE ADDITION TO

YOUR FALL LOOK
With a line of expertly crafted pieces, the Esquire Men’s Jewelry
collection encompasses the right blend of classic and contemporary,
in a broad range of styles and materials perfect for every look.
5CXGPQYCV|YYY/CE[UEQO'USWKTG,GYGNT[
 s q u i r e

G
R
O
2 0 2 0
O
A

MUNCE
M
W
I

T
A

T
N

E
R
R

R
G

A
I N CA S E I T WA S N ’ T
D

By G
already abundantly
obvious: Yes, being

S stuck inside for months

on end did change some of the cal-
culus of grooming in 2020. Rallying
under the flag of “Who’s going to
see it, anyway?” we countered cabin
fever with enthusiastic experimen-

h
tation. We gave ourselves haircuts,
we tried different facial hair, we
painted our nails, we spent way
more time on skin care. And thanks
to all those endeavors with the new
and novel, we reminded ourselves
of an old standby: Grooming isn’t
always about quantity; it’s also
air about quality. And, hell, we had the
time to find it. So through extensive
trial and error, we discovered
BEST SHAMPOO
Baxter of California updated essentials, revisited a few
Deep Clean Shampoo classics, and reimagined our rou-
Going days without wash-
ing your hair isn’t that bad, tines from the ground up courtesy
but the longer you wait, of these winning products.
the deeper the clean you’ll
need. The apple-cider vin-
egar in this new formula is
like a power wash for your
scalp, removing product
buildup and oil in a flash.
Plus, it’s sulfate-free,
so it won’t leave your hair
feeling dry and brittle. $34

P H OTO G R A P H S B Y B E N A LS O P
h a i r BEST CONDITIONER
Drunk Elephant x
hold. This one would
be top-notch on its
more than that. “It gave
my hair new life,” bragged
BEST CLIPPER
Wahl Elite Pro
Chris McMillan own but has an extra one tester. It could be High Performance
Cocomino Marula kick: dandruff-busting that the salt comes from Hair Clipper Kit
Cream Conditioner pyrithione zinc. $10 real seawater or that the In the Annals of Groom-
This subtly almond- nutrient-rich algae pre- ing, 2020 will always
scented conditioner BEST POMADE vents crunch. Either way, be the year of the DIY
isn’t thick or goopy Scotch Porter we can’t get enough. $28 haircut. This clipper
and won’t weigh your Smoothing Hair Balm was powerful enough to
hair down. The thinner This is not your grand- B E S T T R E AT M E N T mow through the growth
consistency makes it father’s greasy pomade. Briogeo Be Gentle, and user-friendly
a good everyday option The airy texture has just Be Kind Avocado & enough for novices.
even for thin or fine hair, enough hold to keep hair Kiwi Mega Moisture Plus, it comes with
but it doesn’t sacrifice in place, and the formula Superfood Hair Mask a wide variety of guards
the hydration that thick contains kale protein A hair mask can fix a and accessories. $60
or curly hair needs. $25 and biotin to strengthen host of evils, from dry-
strands. Most of all, ness to general unman-
BEST STYLING CREAM though, we love how ageability. Briogeo’s
Head & Shoulders moisturizing it is. $15 is suited for all hair types
Anti-Dandruff and textures and isn’t
Styling Hair Cream BEST TEXTURIZER too heavy. Even using
As our hair grew longer Fellow Mineral Spray it just once a week gave
this year, cream became Like a salt spray, this us the kind of “damn,
our go-to. It smooths spritz imparts a fuller, that’s impressive” hair
frizz and gives a natural tousled look. But it does you see on TV. $36

f
E S QU I R E G RO OM I NG AWA R D S 2020

hours, this eye cream

quickly diminished the
look of dark circles
and puffiness around the
eyes. It’s packed with
vitamin C to brighten
eyes and make them
look more awake, even
when you’re feeling the
opposite. $62
DR. DENNIS GROSS
STRESS RESCUE
SUPER SERUM WITH BEST MASK
NIACINAMIDE My Clarins Clear-Out
Blackhead Expert
Stick + Masque

ace The dual-action vibes of

this mask made it a clear
(pun intended) winner.
The exfoliating stick on
the cap “really feels like
BEST CLEANSER B E S T E X F O L I ATO R Moisturizing it’s doing something”
Neutrogena Peter Thomas Roth Sunscreen to eliminate blackheads,
Skin Balancing Potent-C Power Scrub As the name of this top- according to one tester,
Gel Cleanser Our testers loved this notch product suggests, and the green clay
Many cleansers out scrub because it felt sunscreen is an every- mask absorbs oil and
there force you to like rubbing your face day essential no matter deep-cleans your pores,
choose between getting with “fancy sand that the weather. This one is leaving a spick-and-
gunk out of your pores smells like expensive barely-there thin, rubs in span complexion. $26
and protecting your skin citrus.” The powerful easily with no white cast
from feeling stripped We spent most of the combination of vitamins left behind, and doesn’t BEST SERUM
and dry. Instead of year switching between C and E and ferulic make your skin feel Dr. Dennis Gross Stress
compromising, get one battling skin-drying acid leaves skin feeling greasy. Use it in place of Rescue Super Serum
that does both. This one inside air and fighting instantly smoother and your moisturizer, since it with Niacinamide
uses polyhydroxy acid mask-induced skin looking brighter, and also offers hydration, Even our skin got
to help remove oil and issues like acne. A the cocoa-butter beads or in addition to it. $32 stressed out this year,
dirt from pores but won’t good moisturizer helps moisturize so you’re not and this blend of niacin-
upset the all-important with both problems. left with that uncomfort- BEST EYE CREAM amide, adaptogens, and
skin barrier. $11 This cream protects able tight sensation. $38 Murad Environmental superfoods came to the
and hydrates skin effec- Shield Vita-C Eyes rescue. It targets signs
BEST MOISTURIZER tively without a heavy, B E S T FAC I A L Dark Circle Corrector of aging and fatigue,
First Aid Beauty Ultra greasy feel and controls SUNSCREEN After sleepless nights hydrates, helps diminish
Repair Oil-Control oil and shine when Jaxon Lane Rain and Zoom parties that the look of pores, and
Moisturizer you need it to. $32 or Shine Daily stretched into the wee calms redness. $74

44
b
without any stickiness.
It’s so good, you
may even remember
to reapply. $17

BEST
ANTIPERSPIRANT
Degree Men Victory
72-Hour Antiperspirant
& Deodorant Spray
Sometimes to really
combat sweat and
odor, you need to pull

ody out the big guns. Just

one application of this
antiperspirant spray

IAL
lasted through two days
of at-home HIIT work- N

O
outs before one tester

TIM
B E S T B O DY WA S H noticed even a speck
Bevel Supreme Oak of sweat. Best of all, the
Body Wash quick-drying formula PERFUME GENIUS, MUSICIAN

ES
This “genuinely refresh- doesn’t leave telltale
ing” body wash, as one
tester called it, exfo-
marks on your clothes
or white residue on
T
LEB
CE
I grew my hair out
liates away dead skin your pits. $6 [during lockdown], so
cells gently while giving
dry skin the hydration BEST DEODORANT I’m going for a casual,
it so desperately needs. Bravo Sierra Deodorant
It comes in a variety Our testers noted that slicked-back look I’ve
of scents, but the rich
Supreme Oak aroma (a
this aluminum- and
baking-soda-free
always thought of as
blend of sweet almond, deodorant wore “extraor- “rich-people hair.” It’s
bourbon, and birch) dinarily well” even in the
won it the crown. $10 height of summer heat. very thick and getting
We’d expect nothing
BEST BAR SOAP less from a brand that’s quite curly, but if I
Old Spice Gentleman’s
Blend Aloe & Wild Sage
tested by members
of the U. S. military, who
put in too many pastes
Body & Face Bar
Developed with sen-
demand performance.
Perhaps most impor-
and pomades, it looks
sitive skin in mind, this tantly, we found that the overly oily, and if I
bar soap is dye- and scented and unscented
paraben-free and gentle versions curbed odor do nothing, it becomes
on any skin type. Our equally well. $10
testers liked it for its very frizzy. I use
natural feeling and not-
too-strong scent, but
Number 4 Lumiere
most of all for its gentle, d’Hiver Super Comb
moisturizing formula that
doesn’t compromise Prep & Protect
cleansing power. $5
leave-in conditioner
B E S T A L L- OV E R
SUNSCREEN
spray after the
Bare Republic Mineral
Body Gel Sunscreen
shower and let it
Lotion SPF 30 air-dry. It softens and
This revolutionary
mineral sunscreen is the moisturizes without
antidote to every time
you’ve felt like a mime (or weighing down or
Mark Zuckerberg) on the
beach. The gel formula
greasing up my hair.
goes on clear, stays that
way as it quickly soaks
into your skin, and dries

BRAVO SIERRA DEODORANT

 t
s
a tingly-fresh feeling,

eeth but this one solves that

by using peppermint-
derived menthol (which
also serves as an anti-
septic to kill germs). $5

B E S T F LO S S
By Humankind
B E S T TO OT H B R U S H Refillable Floss
Oral-B iO Series 9 This biodegradable
Rechargeable silk floss is coated in
Electric Toothbrush essential oils so it glides
Allow us to introduce between teeth easily
you to your new favorite and leaves a pleasant
toy. The combination taste in your mouth,
of a dentist-inspired which is what you want
rotary head and artificial most from a dental floss.
intelligence turns brush- We especially love that
ing into a game. Green the glass container
lights tell you when is refillable, eliminating
you’re using the right plastic waste. $15
amount of pressure,
PANASONIC ER-SB40-K
reaching a full two min- BEST WHITENER
utes of brush time earns Spotlight Teeth
you a smiley face, and Whitening Strips

have/Beard everything is stored in

an app that tracks your
Strips are nothing new,
but they do the job
E S QU I R E G RO OM I NG AWA R D S 2020

progress. $300 and do it well. And these

come with a bonus:
B E S T S H AV E C R E A M is one thing (seriously, make your facial hair B E S T TO OT H PA S T E a protective oil for your
Every Man Jack wash your beard), but feel greasy. It’s a tough Colgate Optic White gums, which helps curb
Activated Charcoal conditioner is the flex. line to walk, and this Renewal Teeth the sensitivity that all too
Shave Gel This one—somewhere balm, with moisturizing Whitening Toothpaste often accompanies the
A lot goes into this between a wash and ingredients like cocoa Most whitening tooth- whitening process. $50
shave gel, like activated a balm—can be rinsed and shea butters, does pastes use abrasive
charcoal to soak up dirt out or left in to keep it perfectly. $14 ingredients to scrub
and tea-tree oil to clarify whiskers soft and maybe away surface stains.
pores. Those ingredi- even strengthen them, BEST BEARD TRIMMER This one uses a high
ents work together to thanks to the biotin in its Panasonic ER-SB40-K dose of hydrogen per-
create a rich cream that innovative formula. $19 Sheer cutting power, oxide to remove them
delivered a close shave a rotary length dial that more effectively while
and left our skin feeling BEST BEARD BALM (unlike some others) also tackling deeper-set
smooth and fresh. $7 King C. Gillette includes half-step discoloration. Even our
Soft Beard Balm settings, and a charge testers’ coffee habits
BEST RAZOR Just like pomade for indicator make this an were no match. $7
Harry’s Truman Razor your hair, the ideal balm almost idiotproof trim-
If it ain’t broke, why fix will keep scraggly whis- mer to get your perfect B E S T M O U T H WA S H
it? In this case: because kers in place but won't length easily. $150 Hello Naturally Fresh
you can. This razor Antiseptic Mouthwash
looks the same, but the Alcohol-free mouth-
ORAL-B IO SERIES 9
new blades are sharper washes have a reputa- RECHARGEABLE ELECTRIC
and stay that way lon- tion for not giving you TOOTHBRUSH
ger. That means a
closer shave and fewer
blade changes. $9

BEST BEARD OIL

STMNT Beard Oil This is my second time ever growing a
A good beard oil not
only keeps whiskers
IAL NO
complete beard, and I’m loving it. I haven’t
smooth and hydrated N
trimmed it yet—I want to see how far it
O

.2

but also keeps itch at

TIM

bay. This moisturizing oil

isn’t too heavy, but it’ll
can go before I shape it. My daughter knew
JB SMOOVE, ACTOR
help your beard stay soft how much I love Bevel, so she bought me
ES

all day. On top of that,

“it smells good enough
T
LEB the whole Beard Gang Bundle: beard softener, beard oil,
CE
to be a cologne,” raved
one tester. $22 and beard balm. I use all three. I’m all in. If I see someone
BEST CONDITIONER
with an amazing beard, I’m the one to stop you and say,
Scotch Porter “Hey, man, your beard is nice.” We exchange beard stories
Beard Conditioner
Washing your beard and beard suggestions. It’s like a beard exchange program.
46
 I’ve been wearing Tom
Ford’s Tobacco Vanille
since I was 21. My sister got
IAL NO
me a bottle for Christmas
N
and I made it last six

.3
TIM
years, saving it for only
ALEXANDER HODGE, ACTOR
the most special occasions,

ES
T
LEB
CE
or when I really wanted to feel myself. I still
wear it today—it makes me feel most myself and
reminds me of my early 20s in New York.

Dior Homme gathering on the horizon

Reinvention never in an otherwise clear
smelled so good. A sky, it’s somehow both
E S QU I R E G RO OM I NG AWA R D S 2020

modern interpretation airy and precarious. $54

of the classic, this new
version is fresher and Acqua di Parma
lighter but still grounded Colonia Futura
in notes like cedar, We’re all hungry for the
patchouli, and vetiver, outdoors, and wearing
producing the feeling this fresh, herbaceous
of a smoldering fire just fragrance feels like
below the surface. It’s being in nature even
bold but not off-putting, when we’re . . . not. It’s
like showing up to the all about the clary sage,
opera on a Ducati. $95 which adds an earthy
freshness to the botan-
Aēsop Rōzu ical notes of lemon and
If we didn’t tell you this vetiver. And continuing
fragrance had rose in on a theme, it contains
it, you might never know. 99 percent natural-
It’s floral at first spray origin ingredients. $54
but quickly wears down
to something smokier Gucci Guilty pour
and darker. Spices and Homme
woods jump into the There’s a vintage feeling
mix, giving it a myste- to this cologne. It comes
rious vibe. So can you from the patchouli and
wear a rose cologne? cedarwood punched
Yes. This one. $180 up with a kick of hot chili
pepper, all tempered
Coach Blue with a dash of florals. It’s
A fresh, watery scent is warm but a little badass,

f
a staple. What makes like wearing a velvet suit
this one stand out is the to an after-hours party in
ozone-fueled electricity a dingy basement. $120
running through it and
the grounding layer of Heretic Dirty Vanilla
cedarwood and amber. The name says it all:
Like thunderclouds A fusion of woods
(sandalwood, cedar, ho
wood), musky patchouli,
and spicy coriander
doesn’t overpower the
hint of vanilla but instead

ragrance turns it into something

overwhelmingly sensual.
It’s an attention grabber
that stops people in
their tracks and invites
COACH BLUE them in for more. $65

48
 ADVERTISEMENT

important that you know your source of CBD

and how to use it properly.”
After hearing it from the doctor’s mouth, I
returned to my online poll and was amazed by
the number of close friends and family who were
already on the CBD train. Apparently, I was the
only one without a clue! And funny enough, a
couple of friends who commented were using the
same brand as my buddy—Zebra CBD. There was
no consensus as to why they were using CBD,
but the top reasons given were for muscle & joint
discomfort, mood support, sleep support, stress
and headaches, as well as supporting overall
health & wellness.
Eventually, even the most skeptical of the bunch
can be won over. With a trusted CBD source in
mind, I decided to try it.
When I viewed Zebra CBD’s selection online, I
was impressed by its array of products, including
CBD oils called tinctures, topicals, chewable
tablets, mints and gummies. After reading on
HEALTH their website that all their products are made
with organically-grown hemp, I ordered... and it

WHY YOU SHOULD arrived within 2 days!

The first product I tried was the rub. Now this
stuff was strong. Immediately after rubbing it

SAY YES TO CBD on my knee, the soothing effects kicked in. It

had that familiar menthol cooling effect, which I
personally find very relieving. And the best part
EVERYONE FEELS THE HURT AS YOU AGE, is, after two weeks of using it, my knee pain no
longer affected my daily mobility.
BUT CBD CAN HELP YOU DEAL WITH IT. The Zebra Mint Oil, on the other hand, had a
different but equally positive effect on my body.
Life really does fly by. Before I knew it, my 40s Association, 70% of CBD products didn’t contain To take it, the instructions suggest holding the
had arrived, and with them came some new gifts the amount of CBD stated on their labels. And, as oil in your mouth for about 30 seconds. This
from dear ol’ Mother Nature—frequent knee pain, a consumer, that’s terrifying! was simple enough, and the mint taste was, well,
stress, low energy and sleeplessness. Now, I’m a minty. After about 15 minutes, a sense of calm
If I was going to do this, I needed to trust the
realist about these things, I knew I wasn’t going came over my body. It's hard to describe exactly;
source through and through. My two-fold research it's definitely not a "high" feeling. It's more like
to be young and resilient forever. But still, with process naturally led me to Zebra CBD.
“middle-age” nearly on my doorstep, I couldn’t an overall sense of relaxation—a chill factor.
help but feel a little disheartened. That is until I First, I did a quick online poll—and by that, I Needless to say, I’ve really enjoyed the oil.
found my own secret weapon. Another gift from mean I posed the CBD question on my Facebook While it hasn’t been a catch-all fix to every one
Mother Nature. page. Call me old fashioned but I wanted to know of my health issues, it has eased the level and
if there were people whom I trusted (more than frequency of my aches. And it sure doesn’t seem
It began a few months back when I was anonymous testimonials) who’ve had success like a coincidence how much calmer and more
complaining about my aches and pains to using CBD besides my buddy. That is how I focused I am.
my marathon-running buddy, Ben, who is found out that Zebra CBD has a label accuracy
my same age. He casually mentioned how he All-in-all, CBD is one of those things that you have
guarantee which assures customers like me what to try for yourself. Although I was skeptical at first,
uses CBD oil to help with his joint pain. He is stated on the label is in the product.
said that CBD has given him more focus and I can say that I’m now a Zebra CBD fan and that
clarity throughout the day and that his lingering Secondly, I wanted cold hard facts. Diving I highly recommend their products. My 40s are
deep into the world of CBD research and looking up!
muscle and joint discomfort no longer bothered
him. He even felt comfortable signing up for clinical studies, I came across Emily Gray M.D., Also, I managed to speak with a company
back-to-back marathons two weekends in a row a physician at the University of California at spokesperson willing to provide an exclusive
this year. San Diego (UCSD) Medical School and Zebra offer to Men’s Health readers. If you order this
CBD's medical advisor who is researching the month, you’ll receive $10 off your first order by
That made even this self-proclaimed skeptic effects of CBD. Dr. Gray wrote “early results using promo code “ESQ10” at checkout. Plus,
take notice. with CBD have been promising and we have a the company offers a 100% No-Hassle, Money-
But I still had some concerns. According to one lot of research underway now. I’ve had several Back Guarantee. You can try it yourself and order
study in the Journal of the American Medical patients using CBD with good success. It’s Zebra CBD at ZebraCBD.com.
 IAL NO
N
O

.4
TIM

LEON BRIDGES, MUSICIAN

ES

e
T CE
LEB My friend Lindsay

2020
Rogers in L. A.
perfected my current hairstyle
that I call the Soul Flux—like
DIPTYQUE SOFTENING
little twisted locks. But since HAND RINSE

I’ve been home in Fort Worth,

Texas, my mother and my sister
have been doing my hair, and
ssentials
it’s been a really nice bonding
E S QU I R E G RO OM I NG AWA R D S 2020

gentle enough to use smelling pretty damn

moment. They use Murray’s multiple times a day
without leaving your
fancy. Best of all, it comes
in a jumbo bottle—a
Beeswax Black, classic hands cracked, it smells 2020 must-have. $30
luxurious but doesn’t
Blue Magic Conditioner, overpower everything, B E S T H A N D LOT I O N
and the refillable glass Perricone MD Cold
and Göt2B Styling Spiking bottle is actually some- Plasma+ Hand Therapy
Glue, and there are steps, thing you want to leave
out on your sink. $62
So much handwashing
this year created a need
but I wouldn’t be able to do for hand lotion like we
BEST HAND had never experienced
it myself. They’ve been getting BEST HAND SOAP SANITIZER before. This winner
Diptyque Softening D.S. & Durga Big sinks into skin almost
very creative. I’m grateful for Hand Rinse Sur After Rain immediately with no
quarantine, in a way, for being This year’s biggest
crossover star may have
Hand Sanitizer
Who cares about a
greasy feel and has
more in common with
able to get closer with them. been hand soap, which
you always had to use
Purell shortage when
you can use something
a face moisturizer than
any other hand cream
but suddenly became that smells this good? we’ve tried. It’s packed
A Thing. Naturally, the This nondrying sanitizer with lipids to help main-
dawn of status soap employs one of our tain your skin barrier,
followed, and this hand favorite scents from the and we swear the more
cleanser rose to the niche perfumer’s collec- we used it, the better
top of the pack. It’s tion to leave your hands our hands looked. $29

I used to be strictly anti-bath. But during that grocery-

store panic period, I saw lavender bubble bath on the
IA L
N
NO shelf and thought, Why not? If this thing’s going
to last, I might as well make my apartment feel
O

.5
TIM

BOWEN YANG, COMEDIAN

like a hotel. Then one night I ran a bath and threw
ES

T CE that bubble bath in there. Now I’m extremely pro-bath

LEB
and I have made a ritual out of bath setting. I buy these Tabino Yado Hot
Springs Milky Bath Salts and add bubble bath to it. The candle placement is
intricate. It has to be the right alchemy of things. I’d written off baths as
being very passive, but that’s the point. They are an essential, essential thing.

50
A
Y
We could all use a little more wisdom these days. On the occasion of their first-ever
collab, a filmed version of the stage show American Utopia, we asked seasoned iconoclasts
David Byrne and Spike Lee to tell us how they’re getting by—and how we might, too.
BY KEVIN SINTUMUANG / PHOTOGRAPHS BY DARIO CALMESE / STYLING BY NICK SULLIVAN AND ASHLEY LAMPKIN
DAVID BYRNE’S AMERICAN UTOPI A BEGINS WITH THE SOUND OF ON BYRNE: SUIT BY GABRIELA HEARST; SHIRT
BY BRUNELLO CUCINELLI. ON LEE: JACKET BY EBBETS
birds for close to a minute before revealing the singer, seated alone at a FIELD FLANNELS; SHIRT BY MONCLER; TROUSERS BY
desk, holding a human brain. Otherwise, the stage is empty, save for a cur- GUCCI; HAT BY CITYHATS; “WHAT THE NY” SNEAKERS
BY NIKE; RINGS BY CARTIER; GLASSES, LEE’S OWN.
tain composed of hundreds of thin metal chains that line the walls and shim- PREVIOUS PAGES, ON BYRNE: JACKET BY
GABRIELA HEARST; SHIRT BY BRUNELLO CUCINELLI.
mer like streaks of rain. As in Stop Making Sense, the 1984 Talking Heads ON LEE: JACKET BY DIOR MEN; HAT BY CITYHATS;
concert film, band members emerge as the show progresses. They, like SUNGLASSES, LEE’S OWN.

Byrne, are dressed in gray suits, with no shoes, no socks. It’s a stripped-
down look for a show that is as cerebral and subtly political as it is raucous
and joyful. Byrne wrote or cowrote almost every song in it—a few are from
his 2018 album of the same name, and about half are familiar Talking Heads
tunes, including a version of “Once in a Lifetime” that’s somehow even
more poignant than the original. But it’s a cover of Janelle Monáe’s “Hell
You Talmbout,” one of American Utopia’s last songs, that becomes its soul.
In between, Byrne muses, philosophically and humorously, on whether
babies are smarter than grown-ups and why people are more interesting to
look at than, say, a bag of potato chips.
In the summer of 2019, before the start of the show’s run on Broadway,
Byrne had the idea to adapt it for the screen. He invited Spike Lee, whom
he’d been friendly with for years, to attend previews, then asked whether
he’d like to direct. Lee loved the show—and the idea. The result, which
comes out on HBO in mid-October, is not a glorified theatrical recording.
It’s a real film.
It’s also their first collaboration. Although both made a name for them-
selves in New York, Lee, who’s sixty-three, came along a few years after
Byrne, who’s sixty-eight. The year Lee shot his first short film, 1977, is the
same one that Talking Heads, the new-wave band Byrne fronted that made
him famous, released their debut LP. (It was called, wait for it . . . 77.) By
then, Byrne—handsome, tall like an antenna, and a bit shy—was a regular
on downtown New York’s music scene. Andy Warhol was a fan. Talking
Heads had premiered live two years earlier, on the beer-soaked stage of
CBGB, opening for punk pioneers the Ramones. By the time Lee released
his first feature, She’s Gotta Have It, in 1986, the band had banked six albums
and six Billboard Hot 100 singles, and Byrne had become the unlikeliest
of rock stars.
“Both of us, we have longevity,” Lee says. Sure, he and Byrne have pro-
duced their share of clunkers over the years. But that’s the price of
the quality that unifies and perhaps defines them: creative evolution.
BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Da Five Bloods (2020) are as electric as any
other Spike Lee joint. As for Byrne, he collaborated on one of the best con-
cert films of all time (1984’s Stop Making Sense, directed by Jonathan
Demme), launched a music label that releases recordings from musicians
around the world (Luaka Bop), wrote two books (2009’s Bicycle Diaries
and 2012’s How Music Works), and recently started a website (see page 57).
American Utopia, his second musical, was a hit from the start, and it was
slated to return in the fall before the pandemic shut off the lights on Broad-
way. In the final week of its initial run, the show set the theater’s box-
office record for weekly earnings—$1.4 million. Consistency isn’t why Byrne
is still relevant; it’s his constant transformation. “What I dig about David’s
act is: He’s not going to do the same thing twice,” Lee says. “Take a risk and
not just do what’s safe.” Right back at you, Spike.
In early September, Esquire spoke with them over Zoom about the film,
their personal growth, and life in 2020. Byrne was in his apartment in the
Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, a beer in hand. Lee was at his
Martha’s Vineyard home, where a Kehinde Wiley painting adorned the
wall behind him.

SPIKE LEE: David, can you see me? DB: Cape Cod. potato chips for my brother! edge of the show. How many times
DAVID BYRNE: No, I can’t. All I see is a SL: Ever have Cape Cod barbecue ESQUIRE: Guys, I love the film. I have you seen it?
phone floating in the middle. Maybe if potato chips? think it will be an awesome gift to SL: Well, I first went to Boston,
I scroll—there you are. Now I see you. DB: No, but I’ve had Cape Cod people during this time. It fills you where they were doing previews.
[Lee holds up a bag of chips to the potato chips. They’re pretty good. with hope. Spike, it felt to me like Went up on a Saturday morning
camera.] SL: I have to do an interview eating you have a pretty intimate knowl- and saw the matinee, then the

5 4 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

night show. Then it was on SL: It wasn’t a chore, either. idea to turn this theatrical show on a screen. I mean, Spike immedi-
Broadway. I might’ve went, like, The show is the best! I was doing into a film, I take it. ately zeroed in on all that stuff.
David, five, six times? my homework. I did not know DB: Yeah, I had a sense that it had a SL: It was cinematic!
DB: Yeah. Five or six times. Spike that David had been doing this. beginning and a middle and an end DB: It’s cinematic.
would come by himself or with I didn’t know nothing. and a visual look. So I thought, Let’s ESQ: It was!
family members. ESQ: So, David, you had the initial see if this could be something that works DB: There’s a character—I mean,

55 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 e says. “And that’s an
Byrn ong
” oin
rs , g thin
e

g,
oth

c ha
lle
out

n g
we make ab

in
gt
ho
se
bia
tions

ses that a
mp
su

as

re in
he
dt
an

si d
hat w o

eu
ed

sw
he
THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM ABOVE:
“SHATTERED BACKBOARD 3.0” SNEAKERS th
w

BY JORDAN; JOGGERS AND SOCKS BY er

ine

we
NIKE; JACKET BY ALPHA INDUSTRIES; SHIRT w
m

BY STANCE; JOGGERS BY NIKE; PINS AND an

xa

PATCHES BY PINTRILL X SPIKE’S JOINT; HAT

tt
he
e
to

BY GIORDANA CYCLING X SPIKE’S JOINT; m

to
ave

GLASSES BY VERONIKA WILDGRUBER; b

KIESELSTEIN-CORD NECKLACE AND eo
r no
“We h

NECKLACES, LEE’S OWN; JACKET AND t.”

TROUSERS BY GUCCI; SHIRT BY COMME
DES GARÇONS; SNEAKERS AND SOCKS BY
NIKE; RING BY AMEDEO; HAT BY CITYHATS;
GLASSES AND BRACELETS, LEE’S OWN.
ON BYRNE: SHIRT BY MARGARET HOWELL;
WATCH, BYRNE'S OWN. OPPOSITE: JACKET
AND SHIRT BY PRADA; KILT, BYRNE’S OWN;
SHOES BY DR. MARTENS.
IF THERE’S BEEN ONE was meant as ‘You are a weird, Rogers, in the wake of Robert Reasons to Be Cheerful, a site civic engagement, empathy,
constant over David Byrne’s geeky, creepy guy. You are in F. Kennedy’s death, explains that specializes in stories of and the longing for a better
four-decade career, it’s his your own little world.’ ” Today, the meaning of assassination hope concerning issues that world are all Fred Rogers
perpetual evolution. That, and that’s no longer so. “The to children. “You knew that matter to him, such as climate trademarks.
others comparing him to the consensus on Mister Rogers these kids’ parents were going change. Its latest project, As one of America’s elder
beloved children’s-show host has changed a lot in the last to be talking about this, so he We Are Not Divided, is a statesmen of positive vibes,
Mister Rogers.  few years,” Byrne says. “He’s wanted to be really honest collection of stories on unity does Byrne now feel like a
“When I was younger, seen as kind of a hero now.” and explain it to them.” and shared purpose that’s Mister Rogers for grown-ups?
during my Talking Heads He mentions the scene from In 2018, Byrne made his rolling out in the lead-up to “Maybe in some ways,” he
days, that was not meant as a the documentary Won’t You own foray into explanatory the November election. And says. He lets the idea sink in.
compliment,” Byrne says. “It Be My Neighbor? in which storytelling. He launched American Utopia’s themes of “Okay, okay. Yeah.”
 ON BYRNE: SUIT AND SHIRT BY BRUNELLO CUCINELLI;
SNEAKERS AND SUNGLASSES, BYRNE’S OWN. ON LEE:
JACKET BY ALPHA INDUSTRIES; JOGGERS BY NIKE;
“OBSIDIAN UNC” SNEAKERS BY JORDAN; HAT BY GIORDANA
CYCLING X SPIKE’S JOINT; PINS AND PATCHES BY PINTRILL X
SPIKE’S JOINT; GLASSES BY VERONIKA WILDGRUBER.

it’s me, but it’s also a character who stage like that. I was hooked. us. [Laughs.] I’m sixty-three, you guitar. Then, over a transistor
goes on a journey and ends up in a DB: Oh, good. know, David’s the age he is, and radio, he heard Jimi Hendrix for the
very different place from where he SL: I was happy that I was coming we’re still full of energy, vitality. first time, and the song’s raw, elec-
was in the beginning. It’s kind of liv- back in a couple hours to see the tric energy was like a revolution.
ing inside his head. And by the end, evening show. And I don’t like to Tom Byrne was not a musician. He Byrne kept exploring, and the more
he’s engaging with the whole spend too much time in Boston, as was an electrical engineer and an he learned, the more he wanted to
world. It’s a journey the audience you see from my hat. [Points to his amateur painter. His wife, Emma, know. Through music, an entirely
takes as well. Yankees cap.] was a schoolteacher and a peace new world opened up.  
SL: I’m going to cosign what David DB: I remember that after the sec- activist. He was Catholic, she was
said. It’s a journey. It’s a narrative. ond show up in Boston, you came Protestant, and their families did not ESQ: One of the highlights of Ameri-
The first time I saw the show, and into my dressing room and said, accept their union. So in 1955, three can Utopia is the cover of Janelle
he’s onstage by himself, I’m like, “I want to do this. Let’s see if we years after the birth of their first Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout,” a
“Is that a brain?” [Laughs.] Maybe can get the money.” child, David, they left Scotland, protest song in which you recite the
I was not the only person that SL: Got it done! You see, I’m a big where they’d lived their whole lives, names of Black people who have
said, “Is that a brain he’s holding fan. What I dig about David’s act is: for North America—first Canada, been murdered by the police. In
in his hands?” He’s not going to do the same thing then Baltimore. the show, you explain that you
DB: Spike, I got to ask, at that twice. And I just love artists like As a boy, Byrne set about shed- asked Monáe if you could cover the
moment, when the show begins that. They’re going to do whatever ding his accent. American kids song and she gave you her blessing.
and you just see me sitting it is they’re going to do. They’re couldn’t understand him, and he At what point did the song become
at a desk, holding a brain, going to take a risk and not just do wanted to be understood. But he part of the show? So much has hap-
were you thinking, Oh, shit, what’s safe. Let’s try to explore embraced another element of his pened in the past four years.
this is not what I wanted to get something. You know, just do it! heritage: the music. One of his DB: My band and I were putting a
into here? Love that about David. Both of us, uncles who lived back in Scotland concert together in 2017. I often
SL: No! Dave, I respect you so we have longevity in very, very played the fiddle and the mandolin. end my concerts with a cover
much as an artist and as a human tough industries, music and film. It was the Scottish folk records his song. I’ve done Crystal Waters and
being, you know? And so that We’re going on four decades. I’m parents listened to that the boy fell Whitney Houston and Missy Elliott—
grabbed me. I had never seen a going to tip my cap to the both of in love with. He taught himself the SL: Hold the presses. What Whitney

5 8 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

Houston song? down, was shackled to the hospital make that individual Black. He’s in of giants. That’s how we make what
DB: “I Wanna Dance with bed. And this is 2020. the middle of the street with a we do. But yeah, obviously there
Somebody.” ESQ: In the film version of semiautomatic rifle. Do you think are lines that are hard to define but
SL: “I Wanna Dance with American Utopia, you actually see those police vehicles are going to that you don’t cross. You’re not just
Somebody”? the faces of these Black men go right by? going to steal somebody’s shit and
DB: “I Wanna Dance with Some- and women, and their relatives. ESQ: Nope. say, “This is mine. I did this.” No.
body,” the Whitney song. Was that your addition, Spike? SL: Hell to the no! You just stole that shit. But yes, if
SL: I would not have expected that. SL: Right. You know, I was just lis- you can be inspired by something
DB: It breaks the fourth wall. “I’m tening to the lyrics: “Say their “Will you come see my father play?” and make it your own, then you’ve
going to step out of character and names, say their names.” And there a young Spike Lee and his brother created something new. A year or
give you this gift. Let’s have a great was an opportunity to show their Chris would say to strangers as they two ago, Angélique Kidjo, a singer
time.” But in this case, I thought, faces, too. But here’s the sad thing. handed out flyers in midtown Man- from Benin who now lives in Brook-
Okay, we’re having a great time, but Every time I went to the show, we’d hattan for Bill Lee’s jazz show. “Kid, lyn, covered the Talking Heads
serious things are happening in our say, “Well, here’s another name that get out of here” was the usual reply. record Remain in Light. But she
country. And I felt that I couldn’t we need to add next week. And Bill Lee was a jazz bassist who’d brought more African influences in
just say, “Let’s party!” As citizens, here’s another.” After we finished dabbled in folk, playing for the likes of than what was originally there. She
we have a responsibility to engage. shooting, we added Breonna Taylor, Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul and Mary; and linked the songs with Yoruba
And that’s partly what the show is we added George Floyd. Who’s the Gordon Lightfoot. Then Dylan went chants and praise songs to the
about: somebody growing into that brother that was jogging in Georgia? electric, and everyone wanted electric Yoruba gods and things like that.
responsibility and that engage- DB: Ahmaud Arbery. bass. “Will you play electric bass for And I just thought, All right, she’s
ment. I’d heard that song and SL: And so now we’ve seen what us, Bill?” they asked. Nope. Bill Lee brought it home.
thought, That’s the one to do. Talked happened to Jacob—and I really was a purist, and he hated the electric SL: Here’s the thing: The reason
to the band, talked to Janelle, and want to talk about this: shot seven bass. His work dried up. Lee’s mother, why I love David is that he comes
said, “Okay, we’re going to do this.” times in the back while the officer Jacquelyn, got a job as a teacher at from righteousness. It’s not appro-
SL: Has she seen it? held on to his T-shirt. His three sons Saint Ann’s, a private school in Brook- priation. Everybody can be influ-
DB: No, she’s never seen the show. saw him get shot. I mean, that’s lyn Heights, to support the family. She enced by stuff they dig. Now, when
SL: We should send her the movie horrendous. They’re going to be was a cinephile, and Bill hated Holly- I think about appropriation, I think
before the HBO premiere. Or at traumatized for the rest of their wood movies, so Spike was always her about Pat Boone covering Little
least the song. lives. I heard Jacob’s father say that date to the theater. It’s when he first Richard’s songs. And he made all
ESQ: It reminded me of that he had just come back from the fell in love with film. the money. I think about Otis Black-
moment in Do the Right Thing when hospital to see his son, whose While Jacquelyn earned a living well, who wrote some songs for
Samuel L. Jackson names all of ankles were shackled to the bed. and cared for their five children, Bill Elvis and probably got $10,000 and
these famous Black artists. Where is a man who’s paralyzed focused on his art. He was as passion- a pork-chop sandwich. So it really
SL: The roll call. from the waist down going to run ate as ever, but the audiences were depends on the mind-set. It’s like,
ESQ: The roll call. Yeah. I recently to? That just showed such a lack of not. Sometimes, after his sons had when you say that you made this,
rewatched the movie. Radio empathy, of humanity. It was ani- spent all day passing out the flyers, that this is your creation, that’s
Raheem’s death—he’s choked to malistic. It seems to me that the ten people would attend his show. when you’ve crossed the line.
death by cops—it reminds me so police would try to de-escalate, Sometimes even fewer. “This is how I Dave, you’ve got to talk about
much of what’s happening now. knowing how stuff has been going. was traumatized,” Lee tells me. “To Annie-B for a minute. The choreog-
SL: Like they used to say, “ripped But it’s escalating! It’s really a this day, when I have a movie come raphy in this thing is amazing.
from the headlines.” Here’s the shame that we needed to add more out, I hope that someone’s going to DB: Spike and [cinematographer]
thing about Radio Raheem: I didn’t names to that great song. It’s crimi- show up, and that’s because of my Ellen Kuras consulted with Annie-B
make that up. That was based on nal. [Takes a long pause.] David, you father.” But he says he learned Parson, the choreographer, a lot.
the choke-hold murder of the graf- speak on that, please. another important lesson. “As I got They realized that she had created
fiti artist Michael Stewart. He and DB: Oh, absolutely. I loved the older, I understood that you must a lot of what you see onstage. She’s
Basquiat used to hang out. The song when I first heard it, because have principles. He was not going to great at working with people who
New York City Transit Authority it reminds you of the humanity play electric bass.” were trained in movement, who
police got him in the subway sta- of these people who’ve been mur- can remember all these compli-
tion and choked him out. Then I dered. You know, they are not ESQ: David, from very early on you cated moves, and also with some of
see Eric Garner—that’s Radio just numbers or something you incorporated a lot of African poly- the drummers and myself. We can
Raheem. Then I see George Floyd, read in the newspaper. This person rhythmic stuff into your music. remember some things; our dance
who’s Radio Raheem. had a name. And that takes it out Were you ever called out for cul- vocabulary is limited.
ESQ: Are you surprised that it’s of being some kind of political foot- tural appropriation? SL: Hold on. David, you are a dancer.
2020 and this is still the way it is? ball. It’s something where you DB: I got accused of that on a record DB: Oh, well, Annie-B likes
SL: Well, I’m going to change hats go, “This is not the way we should that I did with Brian Eno, My Life in my dancing.
now. [Takes off his Yankees cap and be with one another.” the Bush of Ghosts. With that one, SL: I like it, too. The point is, you
puts on a hat that reads “1619.”] It’s SL: That seventeen-year-old kid we used a lot of found vocals, love what you do. So don’t knock
been like that since we got here. killed two people in Kenosha with which—well, a lot of people do it your dancing. You’re doing your
Stolen from Mother Africa. Brought a semiautomatic rifle, shot another now, but then it was considered thing, and people love it. I love it.
to Jamestown, Virginia, 1619. person. And after doing that, he wrong. But we went on to doing our And the way you dance is your per-
[Points to the hat.] We were shack- walked down the street and armed music. I mean, we’re all influenced sonality. You’re not trying to be
led then and, most recently, in police vehicles drove right by him. by other things that we see and Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly.
Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Jacob He got to go home. Let me just ask hear, things people have said or DB: Yes. I realized I’m never going
Blake, paralyzed from the waist you a question. Let’s switch it, written. We stand on the shoulders to be able to do that stuff, but I’ve

59 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

got to find my own thing. SL: You didn’t go to Juilliard. Black brothers and sisters looting,” he later years, that everybody’s not
SL: Yes. That’s what you do, and DB: No, I went to art school but says. “It was the first summer of disco. the same. Some artists feel that
that’s what makes it great. not for music. I filmed the block parties, where DJs their job is to entertain, to take peo-
ESQ: David, I love that in your book SL: There you go. were hooking up their turntables and ple’s minds off whatever they’re
How Music Works, there are a lot of speakers to the street lamps.” He edited going through. And I’m cool with
passages about choreography and In the summer of 1977, after his soph- the footage into his first short film, that. You know? I’m cool with that.
movement. I feel like everyone else omore year at Morehouse College, Last Hustle in Brooklyn. ESQ: How about you, David?
considers you a dancer, but you Lee was back in New York and unable Around the same time Lee was DB: I agree. If you’re feeling it, you
don’t consider yourself a dancer. to find a job. One day, he went to see a filming in Brooklyn, across the river, have an obligation to act on what
SL: He’s a dancer. friend who’d just received a Super 8 in lower Manhattan, Talking Heads you’re feeling. But it doesn’t have
DB: I guess it’s because I’m not camera, complete with film. “What were completing their debut album. to be directly engaging with specific
trained, didn’t go to school for it. are you going to do with it?” Lee issues. There are people who, let’s
SL: Hold up. Did you go to school asked when he saw the box. “You ESQ: On a deeper level, much of say, just do comedy. They still allow
for music? have it,” she said. your respective work is about ques- people to see each other in a differ-
DB: I’m self-taught in music, too. Lee spent the rest of that summer tioning the status quo. Do you think ent way. They’re doing something.
SL: You’re contradicting yourself, shooting with the Super 8. “It was the that is an artist’s responsibility? ESQ: One thing I noticed is that both
brother. summer of the blackout. So I filmed my SL: A young Spike Lee would have Do the Right Thing and American
DB: Yes. Thank you. Puerto Rican brothers and sisters and said yes. I’ve come to realize, in my Utopia end with a callout to vote.

ON LEE: JACKET BY EBBETS FIELD

FLANNELS; SHIRT BY MONCLER; HAT
BY CITYHATS; GLASSES, LEE’S OWN.
ON BYRNE: SUIT BY GABRIELA HEARST;
SHIRT BY MARGARET HOWELL.
SL: Get David Dinkins in and get SL: Because this guy [Trump] is You were right. assumptions we make about oth-
Ed Koch out! going to do anything to win. It’s SL: Right twice a day! ers. And that’s an ongoing thing,
ESQ: David, in the show, you men- going to be skullduggery, shenani- ESQ: Do you think this big move- challenging those assumptions and
tion going down to North Carolina gans, subterfuge. And also, I feel ment around racial justice is going those biases that are inside us
and registering people to vote. that if we don’t come out to vote in to make a dent? Do you think it’s whether we want them to be or not.
What are you sensing out there? the numbers we need for a land- going to continue? I may not want to be racist, but if I
DB: I’m scared about the election. slide that’s not in his favor, he’s SL: I think so. Because the young live in a racist country where there
Just the other day, I started reaching going to contest the election. I don’t generation, not just in the United is systemic racism, then it’s inside
out to some voting organizations, think he’s going to want to leave the States but all over the world, took me whether I want it or not. Part of
because I want to see if it makes White House. This thing is not a to the streets. They’re still in the my life’s work is to try to get it out.
sense for me to go to, say, Pennsyl- lock. I don’t care what the polls say. streets marching, kneeling, chant- It’s like a poison that’s in all of us.
vania to get people in a swing state ESQ: Spike, when you were doing ing “Black Lives Matter.” And I So yeah, I’m never done.
to vote, and to make sure that press for BlacKkKlansman, you think that this young generation, ESQ: Do you think you’re a different
everybody who wants a mail-in said that the 2020 election wasn’t they want to be better than their kind of bandmate now than you
ballot gets one. I think I’ll do it. going to be for the president but parents, their ancestors. So that’s were with Talking Heads? It’s my
ESQ: Spike, how about you? for the soul of America. And that been very uplifting, to see the sup- understanding that things could
SL: Well, I’m scared. turned out to be the theme of the port, how this has really spread. get contentious.
ESQ: Yeah? Democratic National Convention. DB: I think I’ve gotten better with
In the mid-seventies, after studying that. I think I sometimes failed
art at the Rhode Island School of at that earlier on. I’m not perfect,
Design in Providence, Byrne was but I think I’ve learned. Yes, there
offered room and board at a paint- are kinds of group skills, and
er’s loft in lower Manhattan in management skills, and all those
exchange for his help in renovating kinds of things. Not that they come
the place. Byrne’s ambition was to out of a book, but I’ve learned to
become an artist with gallery repre- sort of work together with people
sentation, solo shows, and the rest of without yelling at people, by not
it. His work had a sense of humor, telling everybody exactly what to
and some of it was outright funny, do. Letting them have some input,
but nobody seemed to care. you sometimes end up with
Byrne spent more and more time something better.
around the corner from the loft, at a ESQ: You’ve mentioned before
bar called CBGB. Patti Smith and the that there’s bad blood between you
Ramones were there, too. Inspired by and the other members. Is that
the ideas fomenting before his eyes, still the case?
there on the dingy stage of the Bow- DB: We’ve reconciled on some
ery dive, he, Chris Frantz, and Tina things, which is good. Other areas,
Weymouth—two friends from col- no, we don’t see eye to eye. For that
lege—formed a band. A hobby more divorced-couple kind of thing, we
than anything. Byrne started taking actually manage to function okay.
songwriting seriously for the first It’s not purely cutthroat.
time, and the band started getting SL: I’m with David. You just got
booked at CBGB. They called them- to try to get better every single day.
selves Talking Heads. And one of the most important
This time, people cared. Talking things I ever read, as an artist, was
Heads became an instant favorite when I was in film school. Akira
among the tight-knit art scene in Kurosawa is one of my favorite
downtown New York. To Byrne, filmmakers. In fact, Rashomon is
the immediate affirmative response where I got She’s Gotta Have It
felt good. If art was a means to from. I forget if it was for Ran or
express oneself to others, then he’d one of his later films, but he was
struck upon his medium. This is doing press in the United States.
working, he thought. I’m going to A writer asked him, and I’m para-
keep doing this. phrasing: “You’re one of the great-
est filmmakers ever, the master
ESQ: David, in the show, you talk filmmaker. At this stage of your
about how you’ve changed and you life, you must know everything.”
still need to change. Were there And Kurosawa said, “I see it as an
specific things you were thinking eternity for me to learn.” When he
about when you wrote those lines? said that, it was like I was struck
DB: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There was by lightning. One of my favorite
the stuff I’d done in the past, filmmakers in the autumn of his
but also more recently. We have to years, saying that there’s still a
examine what we do and the universe (continued on page 100)

61 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

Pittsburgh has been hyped as our most livable city—if you’re white, that is. My mom’s story—how she

KI LL E D M Y M O T H E R I

62 O C TOBE R / NOV E M BE R 2020

lived, and how she died—offers proof that if you’re a Black woman, it’s one of the worst cities in America.

b y DA M ON YO U NG

St i l l - l i fe ph oto g ra ph s b y TON Y K I M

My mother, Vivienne Leigh Young, as a senior in high school.

S O I ’ D T H O U G H T T H AT T H E L A S T P I C T U R E O F M E A N D M O M
before she died, on a hospital bed in the living room of the Penn Hills house
my parents were renting after the bank foreclosed on theirs of ten years, was
taken in the lobby of Mount Ararat Baptist Church, in Pittsburgh. It was the
day I was baptized, in 2013, which my soon-to-be fiancée convinced me to do
because we liked the church and it was a requirement for joining. My gray
slacks are the bottom half of a Sean John suit I’d bought off a clearance rack.
The red gym bag that hangs on my left shoulder contains the soaked white
shorts and crewneck I’d worn beneath the white caftan provided by the church
for my immersion, in the wading pool behind the altar. I’m smiling, which I
rarely do in pictures but always did with Mom because she’d get mad when
I didn’t. “Why do you look like you’re about to sneeze?” she’d say. But in
Vivienne Leigh Young’s final year on earth, as our family witnessed time—her
time—flattening and narrowing and draining and eventually slimming to a
whisper, we couldn’t afford to waste any more of it with second takes. So I
started smiling first.
Mom is smiling, too. The hair she’d lost during chemo had grown back
enough by then so that her low Caesar looks intentional. Chic. My right arm
is wrapped around her. I remember the shock of that embrace, my hand
feeling bones where flesh and healthy fat once were, scared to squeeze too
tight for fear of breaking something. I hugged her the way you might hug a
Jenga tower.
But on a recent search through my Facebook archives, I realized that I was
wrong. The last picture of us was taken two months later. My parents had de-
cided to join Mount Ararat, too, but by then Mom was at a hospice in Law-
renceville, where she’d stay for three weeks before being discharged to spend
her final five days on earth at home. Two associate pastors came to the hos-
pice to perform the ceremony. She cried. I recorded it on my iPhone. We took
pictures afterward.
I considered sharing this story at her wake, as a segue to how I’d try to em-
ulate her meticulousness and fearlessness with fashion. Like the time in sev-
enth grade I rocked her bolo ties with my school uniforms while most of the
boys at St. Barts wore the clip-ons you’d find at Rite Aid. Which could’ve then
segued to the gray Pittsburgh Saturdays she’d brighten with daylong living-
room comedy marathons. Seems Like Old Times before lunch. Defending Your
Life at three. High Anxiety after dinner. Or how she was named after Vivien
Leigh—my nana’s favorite actress—but her name was spelled Vivienne, be-
cause she was special.
Instead, I led with a story about her scrambled eggs, how I never liked them
because she’d add milk while mixing, and they’d be runny, and I prefer eggs
that remain still. And how I couldn’t tell her that—not because she was so pre-
cious about her food but because my lie had stretched so long. And how I’d
pour salt and pepper on them and make bacon-and-egg sandwiches with
them. Finally, I confessed. “Sorry, Mom,” I smiled from the stage, to the two
hundred people in attendance, “but I don’t like sandwiches that much.”
I think I chose to lead with that story at her wake because I knew the laugh
would be easy, and I needed one then to get me through the rest of the speech.
The rest of the day. The rest of the week. But the memories of that time, like
most seven-year-old memories, are hazy. Even the ones I’m certain I remem-
ber exactly as they happened are wrong in some way. But once exposed, the
false reminiscences still feel just as real. More true than the truth. Some-
times the feeling a story stirs in your gut is the only thing that matters. Not
always. Sometimes.
But it doesn’t matter where or when the very last picture of me and Mom
was taken. Or what I was wearing. Or how many takes it took. Or why I chose
to say what I said at her wake. Such details are gratuitous. The why, though—
why Mom died that year, in the living room of the Penn Hills house my parents
were renting after the bank foreclosed on theirs of ten years—is what festers.
She spent her last years in pain. A mysterious, excruciating pain—in her
back, her stomach, her head. If it seems obvious now, the source of that pain,
it wasn’t so clear to the doctors she saw at the time, who found no consensus

64 O C TOBE R / NOV E M BE R 2020

Clockwise from bottom left: Me and Mom at the East Liberty bus station, in 1991; and at my high school graduation, in 1997; Mom’s mom—
Peggy Freeman—me, Mom, and Dad at my college graduation, in 2001; Mom, my grandmother, and me, in 1995.

65 O C TOBE R / NOV E M BE R 2020

on what was wrong and who advised her to exercise more, drink less pop, burgh’s Inequality Across Gender and Race”—a report by the city’s Gender
drink more water, take a few Advil. Then, a year before she died, a diagnosis: Equity Commission released in September 2019—“arguably the most unliv-
lung cancer. Stage 4. Six months. able” city in the country for Black women. Black women in Pittsburgh are
The medical care Mom received after her death sentence was good. Which more likely to die from cancer or cardiovascular disease or a drug overdose
perhaps is how she stretched those six months to twelve. So good that the sus- or homicide or suicide than Black women virtually anywhere else in the coun-
picion I had after her death—that she might still be alive if she’d been treated try. And are more likely to have their pregnancies end in fetal death. And are
with as much care when she first started seeking treatment—solidified into a more likely to give birth to underweight babies. And are more likely to live in
conviction. When she was a terminal cancer patient, that status was her pri- poverty. And are more likely to be unemployed. And are more likely to have
mary identity when receiving care, superseding race, gender, and class. She the police called on them in high school. And earn fifty-four cents for every
was considered vulnerable. Defenseless. Worthy. Of protection. Of pain re- dollar a white man earns. The health disparities are particularly brutal, con-
lief. Of treatment. Of effort. But when she was just another Black woman, she sidering that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is the larg-
was just another Black woman and treated as such. Of course, I have no hard est nongovernmental employer in the state of Pennsylvania, UPMC Presbyterian
proof of this. Just faith in the consistency and reliability of Pittsburgh’s grift. Shadyside ranks as one of the best hospitals in the country, and UPMC Chil-
And the belief that Vivienne Leigh Young died—was killed—because of her dren’s Hospital ranks as one of the best in the world. There are few better
place in this place. places on earth to be sick than in Pittsburgh. And few worse places in the coun-
try to be sick if you’re a Black woman.
FINDING NATIONAL LAUDS FOR MY HOMETOWN IS LIKE FINDING In response to the commission’s findings, the Reverend Ricky Burgess and
a needle—any needle—in a stack of needles. In 2010, Forbes coronated the Robert Daniel Lavelle, Pittsburgh’s only two Black city-council members,
’Burgh America’s most livable city. A few years later, The Economist declared proposed a bill declaring racism a public-health crisis, which unanimously
the same for the continental U. S. “A hidden gem,” said the Huffington Post passed in December 2019. Modeled after legislation passed in Milwaukee
in “What Pittsburgh Can Teach the Rest of the Country About Living Well,” County, Wisconsin, the resolution committed the city to equitable hiring
which ran two months after Mom died. In 2015, the blog Brooklyn Based practices and diversity initiatives. (Around sixty state and local governments
asked, with no hint of irony, perspective, or shame, if Pittsburgh was “the across the U. S. have passed similar bills; this past September, Senator
next Brooklyn,” then took three thousand words to find the answer. (“We Elizabeth Warren, Representative Ayanna Pressley, and their colleagues in-
think so, maybe?”) A 2017 column from The New York Times’s Frugal Trav- troduced a plan to formally declare racism a public-health crisis nationwide.)
eler made the city sound, well, sexy. The ’Burgh’s resolution was not legally binding or government funded. Still,
There’s so much I can say to back up these proclamations. Pittsburgh is a it felt like something, something heavy, and like more heavy somethings
topographical marvel planted in Appalachia. If approaching from the west on would follow. Yet almost a year later, nothing’s changed.
I-376, you won’t see the skyline until you pass through the Fort Pitt tunnels. With all due respect to August Wilson, this is the new Pittsburgh Cycle. Fund
and release a study articulating the many ways
in which Pittsburgh is uniquely—superla-
tively—bad for Black people. Deploy a few
solemn-faced politicians—some sincere, some
S performing for attaboys while in line at

I KNOW WHY VIVIENNE Pamela’s—to regurgitate the findings and

pledge to change. Wait for the motherfucking
tooth fairy to slip said change under our pil-

LEIGH YOUNG DIED. SHE

H
lows while we sleep. Then it’s report season
once again.

EXISTED IN THE LEAST ST I L L , N ON E OF T H I S S U F F IC I E N T LY

explains why Pittsburgh is so livable for white

LIVABLE BODY IN AMERICA’S

E
people and so unlivable for Black men and
Black teens and Black children and Black ba-
bies and, specifically, Black women.

MOST LIVABLE CITY. The answer can be found between Centre

and Bedford avenues, where the Civic Arena,
the world’s first major sports venue with a re-
tractable roof, was built in 1961. Which is also
where, in the mid-fifties, the city used emi-
nent domain to displace hundreds of busi-
Then, ensconced amid mountains and converging rivers, you’ll come upon nesses and thousands of residents from the predominantly Black Lower Hill
a view so distinct that you’ll want to memorialize it as a tattoo—which is what District. Whether the eighteen hundred families had somewhere to go and
I did on my left biceps two years ago. settle and sit and live and breathe next didn’t matter. They just had to get the
The city’s livability isn’t just an abstraction. I began writing full-time eleven fuck out. The arena was razed a few years ago. Now it’s a twenty-eight-hundred-
years ago, after getting laid off from the college-prep program I managed. I space parking lot for the Pittsburgh Penguins.
survived on long-term unemployment and freelance gigs while building my The answer can be found in East Liberty, where my parents raised our fam-
blog (Very Smart Brothas, now a part of The Root) in a way I wouldn’t have ily, a neighborhood that has changed so much in the past twenty years—
been able to in Philly or D. C. or New York. My rent for a six-hundred-square- demographically, culturally, economically, and even topographically—that
foot apartment in Shadyside, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the it’s like a gentrification meteor crashed and demolished everything under-
city, was just $590 a month. neath it so white people could start afresh.
Yet this beautiful and bountiful and livable place is, according to “Pitts- The answer is that Pittsburgh is a city in the same America that owes its vast-

66 O C TOBE R / NOV E M BE R 2020

 Vivienne Leigh Young, 1953–2013.

ness, power, and wealth to its plundering of Native people and its centuries of Dad called to tell me that my mother—his best friend; my sister Jemelle’s ther-
free labor from enslaved Africans. (And also the same America in which, during apist; my nephew and nieces’ Gida; the woman who at sixteen got into Carn-
the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression, spurred by a pan- egie Mellon; who in 1984 sparked a mini race riot that led to the closure of a
demic that only sharpened its inequities, its billionaires got $637 billion richer.) deli in Squirrel Hill after the white cashier called her and Nana “black nigger
While Pittsburgh has owned up to its disparities, it has never admitted, and bitches”; who made the best French toast ever; who I never beat in Uno or
will never admit, its intent. These things just happen over time, the city tells Connect 4, even when I cheated; who introduced me to Steely Dan and Toni
itself, like how a yard might tell itself that weeds just grow. And it’s this lie that Morrison and banded collars and chicken cacciatore; who came to as many
allows the ’Burgh to smile at itself in the mirror and that drives its Black citi- grade school and middle school and high school and college and AAU and
zens mad. Because Pittsburgh’s livability for white people is possible because summer-league basketball games as she could, driving sometimes, on buses
of what makes it unlivable for Black people. There is no abundance without and jitneys most times; and who my four-year-old daughter and one-year-old
a permanent underclass. Black blood sustains it. Black bodies undergird it. son are named after—had just died. Was killed.
I know why Vivienne Leigh Young died. She existed in the least livable body What do you do when a city you love kills a woman you loved? The obvi-
in America's most livable city. I was there, driving my car, when the woman ous answer is to leave. But I bought a house here two years ago. My wife
who taught me how to drive, and who’d cosigned the loan for that car, cried and I are raising our children here. Dad is still here. My memories of Ken-
when I absentmindedly drove past the house that the bank had snatched from nywood fits, Eat’n Park midnight buffets, first haircut at Wade’s, last dunk
her and Dad. “Damon,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, “don’t ever take on the low hoop at the ’Stein, and Mom, too.
me down this street again.” I remember the morning of October 18, 2013, when Besides, where would I go?

67 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 300 JOB
APPLICATIONS
LATER
Matt Breen bet on himself and thought he’d done everything right.

by JACK HOLMES __ photographs by JONATHAN LANTZ

“THE FIRST THING I DID WAS CANCEL ALL
my little subscription things,” Matt Breen told
Now he’s one of the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs—and,
me. “That’s about a hundred bucks a month,
increasingly, their hope—as COVID-19 batters the nation’s economy. right? Give or take . . . then it was like, ‘Okay,
I’m not gonna get takeout anymore.’ That was
the second thing. Now I’m at the point where
I’m like, ‘All right, eat one meal a day—that
could be okay.’ 
“I’m eating a lot of ramen noodles these
days,” he said.
When we spoke in late August, Breen had
just submitted his three hundredth job
application. He was laid off from his job at
a new Catholic school in Fayetteville, Arkan-
sas, in June. Breen is twenty-seven years old.
He has a girlfriend, but he lives alone with
his mixed Blue Heeler–Catahoula Leopard
dog, Count, in a little apartment in a two-
story, motel-style block. He graduated with
a degree in mathematics from the Univer-
sity of Arkansas two years ago. He wrote his
thesis on pricing derivative securities. He
was doing some tutoring to make money
while mostly looking at research and
financial-analyst jobs back home in Phila-
delphia, where his family still lives. But then
he got an offer to become one of the first
employees of a newly formed school. He
would build the math department—design
the curriculum and deal with the budget.
“Invest in us and we’ll invest in you,” he
remembers the pitch going.
Breen took the job, which offered a salary
of $18,000 in the first year. He kept tutoring
on the side to help pay the bills, but it was a
hit to his finances. “A fat pay cut,” he said. His
role was entrepreneurial. He doesn’t have a
teacher’s license, but his new boss assured
him he wouldn’t need one for the time being.
One of fewer than ten full-time faculty mem-
bers, he put together the system that
recorded grades and absences, making sure
it abided by privacy guidelines. When 2019
turned to 2020, he got a raise to $45,000. He
was building something. Once March came
and the pandemic hit, he said, he wasn’t par-
ticularly worried about losing his job.
“My understanding was that . . . they were
going to cut our budgets,” he said. “So we’d
have to share more of the lab kits for science
class. I couldn’t get our classes a new set of

68 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 “ALL RIGHT, eat one meal a day—that COULD BE okay.”
calculators this year. Just little things like that Breen wrote to conclude his post, “because school, he hopes to use his skills in data anal-
that we’d have to cut back. And then they it feels like I had to tell it somehow.” ysis and coding. For now, he spends many
ended up laying me off.” Maybe his story stood out among all the of his days hunched over a computer in his
He was shell-shocked for a few days. In a others—a Michigan woman struggling for dining area, next to a woodworking station
tone that ranged from numb matter-of- weeks and weeks with the state unemploy- and the walls of bookshelves he built him-
factness to gallows humor, he remembered ment system; a North Dakota petrochemi- self, filling out applications for full-time work.
that he’d been working to revise down his cal engineer weighing whether to take a A lot of this traces back to the federal gov-
budgets in the days before. Now he was the manual-labor job—because it felt like a par- ernment’s decision to respond to the eco-
budget cut. After a few days, he got to work able. Many of the stories on the sub are from nomic disruption of the pandemic by
filing for unemployment insurance. While people tortured by the structures we’ve built funneling people into the unemployment sys-
there are a lot of horror stories about over- to organize our society. But while Breen’s tem, rather than, as many European coun-
whelmed state unemployment systems— had some of that, his was at root a tale of tries did, choosing to subsidize companies’
clunky online portals, hours on hold to fate and circumstance. It is horrifying, then payrolls—even at 70 or 80 percent—to keep
speak to someone, inexplicable delays in enraging, then profoundly sad to learn people employed. The Paycheck Protection
actually getting the money—he found it fairly through experience how little control we Program went some way in this direction,
easy. “It took me like ten minutes. It might really have. We cling to the notion as we nav- but it’s piecemeal by comparison. Plus, it’s
be because I’m computer savvy.” Every Mon- igate the world that if we just make the right not just that people now have to weigh deci-
day since, he’s checked in to answer the choices, we’ll get what we deserve. We sions about when to take on part-time work
questions: Did you look for work last week? almost need to believe this—it keeps us or whether to accept a job they’re overqual-
Were you available to work? Did you accept crawling out of bed each morning. But we ified for after having lost one that fit. A good
any work? Every Monday except when he do not always reap what we sow. job is more than a paycheck—it becomes a
got COVID-19. At the moment, Breen’s in “limbo,” as he piece of the journey, part of the story of a life.
The school paid him a month’s salary in put it. It will be tough for him to get another “For me, the hardest thing is I was up in
severance, which helped. As soon as that teaching job without a license, but besides, Pennsylvania at Shippensburg University,
ended, the full weight of everything fell on what he really enjoyed was building the orga- and I kind of got into a slump there,” Breen
him: His unemployment insurance was said. “I ended up taking a year off, and I was
based on his previous year’s salary of working in a machine shop for about a year,
$18,000. When the $600-a-week supplement and I started going to community college,
Congress provided as part of the CARES Act and I was like, ‘I gotta prove to myself that I
expired at the end of July, that was a further can make it on my own.’
blow. And now he’s got less than a month left “So I was like, ‘All right, what’s the most
to receive any sort of help at all. He already different place than Pennsylvania that I can
cannot pay his student loans. He’ll soon be think of? Arkansas. Arkansas is the most dif-
unable to pay his rent. ferent place.’ I packed up my stuff and I
That’s what led him to post his story on moved down here. I went to the univer-
Reddit’s r/Unemployment forum—which is sity. . . . I was the tutoring supervisor for the
where I found him. athletics department, for their tutoring pro-
“Putting aside the real sense of betrayal, gram. Then I got this job; I had my own place.
I feel like I’m in a pretty bad place,” he wrote I was doing everything that I thought was
on August 21. “It’s hard to hear ‘You’ll find Matt right, you know? I was paying my bills. I was
something soon’ or ‘Keep your head up’ Breen paying my student loans. I had an apartment
when it doesn’t seem like things are chang- did nization. It’s tough now, too, to chase the and a good job that I enjoyed going to.
exactly
ing for the better in the larger sense. I feel quantitative-finance jobs he was headed for “And now for me, the consequences aren’t
what
like I’ve been pretty angry for a while now.” he was coming out of school. “On paper, they have so physical. If I get evicted or I can’t pay my
It’s the kind of post that’s become common supposed no idea if I can do the job,” he said. “They rent, I’m not gonna be homeless. I’m just
in a venue—called a “sub” in Reddit vernac- to do: have to take a chance on me. I know that I’m gonna have to pack my shit up and move
ular—that originally served as a place to got a capable enough to do that kind of job well, back in with my family. But for me, that’s
degree in
troubleshoot problems with securing unem- but it’s hard to get your foot in the door.” not what the issue is. The issue is that for
STEM and
ployment benefits. As the pandemic and eco- worked He also initially made the calculation that someone trying to make it, it feels like I just
nomic downturn have dragged on and in educa- he’d be better off avoiding part-time work, totally failed at it, you know? The rational
Congress has allowed boosted benefits to tion. He because it could threaten what benefits he part of my brain is like, ‘Well, you didn’t cre-
already
lapse, there is a creeping sense of despair in has. When we dug into the literature from ate the coronavirus or have your boss lay
can’t
this community. “I’m sharing my story,” pay his the state Department of Workforce Services, you off.’ But at the same time, we live in a
student it seemed he could still qualify to receive capitalist society, where if you cannot pro-
loans. partial benefits by taking on fifteen or duce any kind of work product, like, what’s
In the coming months, Esquire will highlight
Soon he twenty hours a week at a place like Home your purpose then? I feel aimless, I guess. I
the stories of people who have lost their liveli- won’t
hoods amid the economic turmoil tied to Depot. It might help on the margins, but it’s was building a life for myself here, and it just
be able
COVID-19 and who fear they’ll lose still more. to pay hard to see how a job like that would take feels like it’s gone. It’s not gone; I know it’s
This is the first in that series. his rent. him where he wants to go. If he can’t start a not gone. It feels like it’s gone.”

69 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 G R A N P O P ’ S D I N O SAU R O F A B U I C K STAT I O N
wagon creeps along the dirt road at twenty miles an
hour. Frank Brown is driving with his eyes slitted and his
mouth compressed to a fine white line. Corinne, his missus,
is riding shotgun with her iPad open in her lap, and when
Frank asks her if she’s sure this is right, she tells him every-
thing is fine, steady as she goes, they’ll rejoin the main road
in another six miles, eight at most, and from there it’s just
a hop, skip, and a jump to the turnpike. She doesn’t want
to say that the blinking blue dot marking their location dis-
appeared five minutes ago and the map is frozen in place.
They’ve been married fourteen years and Corinne knows
the mouth her husband is currently wearing. It means he’s
close to blowing his stack.
In the spacious backseat, Billy Brown and Mary Brown sit
flanking Granpop, who has his big old black shoes planted
on either side of the driveshaft hump. Billy is eleven. Mary
is nine. Granpop is seventy-five, a giant pain in the ass as
far as his son is concerned, and too old to have such young
grandchildren, but there they are.
When they set out from Falmouth to see Granpop’s dying
sister up in Derry, Granpop talked nonstop, mostly about
the zipper bag in the backseat. It contains Nan’s baseball
souvenirs. Mad about baseball she was, he tells them. There
are baseball cards that he says are worth a fortune (Frank
Brown fucking doubts this), her college softball glove signed

ON by Dom DiMaggio, and the prize of all prizes, a Louisville

Slugger signed by Ted Williams. She won it in a Jimmy Fund
charity raffle the year before the Splendid Splinter called

SLIDE

It was supposed to be a family road trip to visit an aging relative. Then the car got

stuck in a muddy rut and, well—these things

by

never turn out well, do they?

INN
Stephen
King
The legendary architect of your worst

nightmares delivers another shocking story you

won’t soon forget.

P H OTO GR A P H S

ROAD
BY

C H R I S TO P H E R GR I F F I T H

71 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 Corinne puts a hand on Frank’s arm and gives him
it quits. “Teddy Ballgame flew in Korea, you “Baseballs,” Billy says. “Granpop’s got base- fuck a lifeguard with muscles, a tan, and a daz-
know,” Granpop tells the kids. “Bombed hell ball on the brain. Just read your funny book zling grin full of white teeth, but understands
out of the gooks.” and shut up. Don’t distract me. I’ve made it the difference between hope and fantasy.
“Not a word the children need to know,” to level five.” “Granpop,” Mary says, “why do they call it
Corinne says from the front seat—but without “If Nan had been born with balls, she could the Slide In Road? Who slid in?”
much thought of success. Her father-in-law have played pro,” Granpop says. “That bitch “It’s Inn with two n’s,” Granpop says. “There
grew up in a politically incorrect age, and he’s was good.” used to be a fine one out here, even had a golf
carried it with him. She also thought of asking “Donald!” Corinne Brown nearly shouts. course, but it burned flat. Road’s gotten bad
him what a dying, semi-comatose octogenar- “Enough!” since the last time I drove it. Used to be as
ian was supposed to do with a bat and glove, “Well, she was,” the old man says sulkily. smooth as a baby’s bottom.”
but kept still on that point. Donald Brown has “Played varsity on the University of Maine team “When was that, Dad?” Frank asks. “When
never had much to say about his sister, good that went to the Women’s World Series. All the Ted Williams was still playing for the Red Sox?
or bad, but he must feel something for her or way to Oklahoma City, and almost got sucked Because it sure isn’t up to much now.” They hit
he wouldn’t have insisted they make this trip. up by a tornado!” a big pothole. The Buick jounces. Frank grits
He insisted on his old Buick, too. Because it’s Frank doesn’t contribute to the conversa- his teeth.
roomy, and because he said he knew a short- tion, only peers ahead at the road he never “Whoops-my-dear!” Granpop cries, and
cut that might be a little rough. He’s right on should have gone down and thanks God he when Billy asks him what that means, Gran-
both counts. didn’t overrule his father and take the Volvo. pop tells him it’s what you say when you go
He also tucked a pile of his old comic books Is the road getting narrower? He believes it is. over a bump like that. “Isn’t it, Frank? We used
into the bag. “Reading material for the young- Is it getting rougher? He knows it is. Even the to say that all the time, didn’t we?”
sters on the trip,” he said. Billy doesn’t give name strikes Frank as ominous. Who calls a Mr. Brown doesn’t answer.
shit one for old comic books—he’s playing road, even a piece of shit like this one, Slide “Didn’t we?”
a game on his phone—but Mary got on her Inn Road? Granpop said it was a shortcut to HER Frank doesn’t answer. His knuckles are
knees, reached into the cargo compartment, Highway 196, and Corinne agreed after con- white on the steering wheel.
unzipped Granpop’s bag, and grabbed a stack. sulting her iPad, and although Frank is no fan “Didn’t we?”
Most are cruddy, but some are pretty good. In of shortcuts (as a banker he knows they al- “Yeah, Dad. Whoops my fucking dear.”
the one she’s reading now, Betty and Veronica ways lead to trouble), he is initially seduced “Frank,” Corinne says in a chiding tone.
are fighting over Archie, pulling each other’s by the smooth black tar. Soon enough, how- SWEET Mary giggles. Billy snickers. Granpop bares
hair and such. ever, tar gives way to dirt, and a mile or two lat- his dentures in another leer.
“You know what, back in the old days you er the dirt gives way to rutted hardpan lined SMILE, We’re having such fun, Frank thinks. Gee, if
could go down to Fenway on three dollars’ gas,” on both sides by high weeds, goldenrod, and this trip could only last longer. If only it could
the one that says,

Granpop says. “And you could go to the game, staring sunflowers. They go over a washboard last forever.
snag a hot dog and a beer. . . .” that causes the Buick to shake like a dog after The trouble with the old bastard, Corinne
“And still get change back from a five-spot,” a bath. He wouldn’t care if the high-mileage, thinks, is that he still gets a kick out of life, and
Frank mutters from behind the wheel. gas-guzzling, overweening piece of Detroit stu- people who get a kick out of life take a long time
“That’s right!” Granpop crows. “Damn pidity shook itself to death, were it not for the kicking the bucket. They like that old bucket.
straight you could! First game I ever saw with possibility of being broken down out here in Billy returns back to his game. He’s reached
my sis, Ellis Kinder was pitching and Hoot East Jesus. level six. He has yet to make it to level seven.
Evers was in center field. My, that boy could And now, dear God, a plugged culvert has “Billy,” Frank says, “have you got bars on
hit! He knocked one over the right-field fence washed out half the road, and Mr. Brown has your phone?”
and Nan spilled her popcorn she was cheer- to creep around it on the left, the tires on his I love Billy pauses the game and checks. “One, but
ing so hard!” side barely skirting the ditch. If there had you, it keeps flickering on and off.”
Billy Brown could give shit one about base- been room to turn around he would have “Great. Terrific.”
you big strong man.

ball. “Granpop, why do you like to sit in the said the hell with this and gone back, but Another washboard shivers through the
middle like that? You have to spread your legs.” there is no room. Buick and Frank slows to fifteen. He wonders
“I’m giving my balls an airing,” Gran- They make it. Barely. if he could change his name, ditch his family,
pop says. “How far now?” he asks Corinne. and get a job at some little bank in an Austra-
“What balls?” Mary asks, and frowns when “About five miles.” With MapQuest frozen lian town. Learn to call people mate.
Billy sniggers. she has no idea, but she has a hopeful heart. “Lookit, kids!” Granpop bawls.
Corinne looks back over her shoulder. Which is a good thing. She discovered years He’s leaning forward, and from this posi-
“That’s enough of that, Granpop,” she says. ago that marriage to Frank and motherhood tion is able to overload both his son’s right
“We’re taking you to see your sister and we’re to Billy and Mary weren’t what she had expected, ear and his daughter-in-law’s left. They wince
going in your old car as you requested, so—” and now, as a shitty bonus, they have this un- away in opposite directions, not just from
“And it gobbles gas like you wouldn’t be- pleasant old man living with them because they the noise but from his breath. It smells like
lieve,” Frank says. can’t afford to put him in a retirement home. a small animal died in his mouth, shitting as
Corinne ignores this; she has her eyes on the Hope is getting her through. it expired. He starts most mornings burping
prize. “It’s a favor. So do me one and keep the They are going to see an old lady dying of up bile and smacking his lips afterward, as
nasty talk to yourself.” cancer, but Corinne Brown hopes someday to if it’s tasty. Whatever’s going on inside him
Granpop says he will, sorry, then bares his go on a Carnival cruise and drink something can’t be good and yet he exudes that horri-
dentures at her in a leer that says he’ll do just with a paper umbrella in it. She hopes to have a ble vitality. Sometimes, Corinne thinks, I be-
about whatever the fuck he wants. richer, fuller life when the kids finally grow up lieve I could kill him. I really do. Only I think the
“What balls?” Mary persists. and go out on their own. She would also like to kids love him. Christ knows why, but they do.

72 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 “Lookit there, right over there!” One arthri- able at every five-and-dime. Nothing like the He sighs and puts the Buick in reverse.
tis-bunched finger stabs out between Mr. and old days, yessir! “Try not to run them down,” she says, look-
Mrs. Brown. The horny talon at the tip almost “Well, fuck your fucking shortcut,” he says. ing back over her shoulder. “Don’t tempt me,”
rips into Mrs. Brown’s cheek. “That’s the old “You see where it’s gotten us.” Frank says, and begins to creep the Buick back-
Slide Inn, what’s left of it! Right there! I been “Frank,” Corinne starts, but he gets out be- ward. The ditches are deep on either side of this
there once, you know. Me and my sister Nan fore she can finish and stands staring at the narrow track, and if he drops the rear end in-
and our folks. We had breakfast in our rooms!” place where the road has cracked open. to one of them, they will be Katie bar the door.
The kids look dutifully at what remains of Billy leans over Granpop’s lap to whisper Granpop and the kids reach the driveway
the Slide Inn: a few charred beams and a cel- in his sister’s ear: “Fuck your fucking short- before Frank is even halfway down the hill.
lar hole. Mrs. Brown sees an old panel truck cut.” She puts her hands over her mouth and The old man can see tracks pressed into the
up there, parked in the weeds and sunflowers. snickers. That’s good. Granpop chuckles, weeds. That panel truck looks like it’s been
It looks even older than Granpop’s Buick, the which is even better. There are reasons why there for years, but Granpop guesses that’s not
sides caked with rust. they love him. the case. Maybe someone decided to camp for
“Cool, Granpop,” Billy says, and once more Corinne gets out and joins her husband in a few days. It’s the only thing he can think of.
returns to his game. front of the Buick’s sneery grille. She looks in- There sure can’t be anything up there left to
“Cool, Granpop,” Mary says, and goes back to the crack in the road and sees nothing good. scavenge—any fool could see that.
to her funny book. “What do you think we should do?” Donald Brown loves his son, and there are
The ruin of the hotel slips behind them. The kids join them, Mary on her mother’s many things Frankie can do well (although
Frank wonders if perhaps the owners burned side and Billy on his father’s. Then Granpop Granpop can’t think of any right off the top
it down on purpose. For the insurance mon- comes shuffling along in his big black shoes, of his head), but when it comes to backing up
The boy thinks he might faint. He wishes,

ey. Because, really, who would want to come looking cheerful. that Buick Estate wagon, he isn’t worth a dry
out here to spend a weekend or, God forbid, a “I don’t know,” Frank says, “but we’re sure popcorn fart. The rear end is wagging from
honeymoon? Maine has plenty of beauty spots, not going this way.” side to side like the tail of an old tired dog. He
but this isn’t one of them. This isn’t even a place “Got to back up,” Granpop says. “Back all almost dumps it in the left ditch, overcorrects,
you go through to get to somewhere else unless the way down to the old Slide Inn. You can turn almost dumps it in the right one, and overcor-
you can’t avoid it. And they could have. That’s around in the driveway. No chain.” rects again.
the hair across his ass. “Jesus,” Frank says, and runs his hands “Boy, he’s not doing that very good,”
“What if great-aunt Nan dies before we get through his thinning hair. “All right. When we Billy says.
there, Granpop?” Mary asks. She’s finished get to the main road, we can decide wheth- “Hush up,” Granpop says. “He’s doing fine.”
her comic book. The next one is Little Lulu, er to keep going to Derry or just head home.” “Can me and Mary go up and look at the
and she has no interest. Little Lulu looks like Granpop looks outraged at the idea of re- old Slip Inn?”
a turd in a dress. treat, but after scanning his son’s face—espe- “Slide Inn,” Granpop says. “Sure, go on up
“Well, then we’ll turn around and go back,” cially the red spots on his cheeks and dashed for a minute. Run, and be ready to come back
Granpop says. “After the funeral, accourse.” across his forehead—he keeps his trap shut. down. Your dad’s not in a very good temper.”
The funeral. Oh God, the funeral. Frank “Everybody back in,” Frank says, “but this The kids run up the overgrown drive.
hasn’t even thought about how she could be time you sit on one side or the other, Dad. So “Don’t fall in the cellar hole!” Granpop bawls
dead already. She might even pop off while I can see where I’m going without your head after them, and is about to add that they should
they’re visiting, and then they would have to God in the way.” stay in sight, but before he can do it there’s a
stay for the old bird’s funeral. He’s only brought If we had the Volvo, he thinks, I could use the crunch, an abbreviated honk of the horn, and
he wishes that he’d never

a single change of clothes, and— backup camera. Instead we’ve got this oversized then his son cursing a blue streak. There. That’s
“Look out!” Corinne shouts. “Stop!” piece of stupidity. one of the things he’s good at.
He does, and just in time. There’s another “I’ll walk,” Granpop says. “It’s not but two Granpop turns from the scampering kids
plugged culvert and another washout at the hundred yards.” to see that, after managing to back all the
top of the hill. Only this one goes all the way “Me too,” Mary says, and Billy seconds that. way down the hill without going off the road,
across. The crevasse looks at least three feet “Fine,” Frank says. “Try not to fall down and Frank’s ditched the wagon while trying to make
wide. God knows how deep it is. break your leg, Dad. That would be the final a three-point turn.
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Billy asks, pausing touch to an absolutely wonderful day.” “Shut up, Frankie!” Granpop shouts. “Quit
his game again. Granpop and the kids start back down the that cussing and turn off the motor before you
“What’s wrong, Dad?” Mary asks, stopping hill to the burned-out inn’s driveway, Mary and stall it out!” He’s probably torn off half the
her search for another Archie funny book. Billy holding the old man’s hands. Frank thinks tailpipe anyway, but there’s no point telling
“What’s wrong, Frankie?” Granpop asks. it could be a Norman Rockwell painting: “And him that.
For a moment Frank Brown only sits with his
LOOKED an Old Bastard Shall Lead Them.” Frank shuts off the motor and gets out.
hands at ten and two on the Buick’s big steering DOWN
D O N He gets behind the Buick’s steering wheel. Corinne gets out too, but it’s a struggle. She
wheel, staring over the Buick’s long hood. They Corinne gets in the passenger seat. She puts tears an arc of weeds ahead of the door and fi-
knew how to make ’em back in the old days, a hand on his arm and gives him her sweet- nally manages. The car’s rear end is bumper-
his father sometimes likes to opine. Those, of
THAT
A est smile, the one that says, I love you, you big deep on the right side and the front is angled
course, being the same old days when a self- strong man. Frank isn’t big, he’s not particu- upward on the left.
respecting woman wouldn’t go shopping with- larly strong, and there’s not much bloom left Frank walks to his father. “The ground gave
out first cinching on a girdle and hooking up on the rose of their marriage (a bit wilted, that way while I was turning!”
her stockings to a garter belt, the days when rose, petals going brown at the edges), but she “You cut it too tight,” the old man says.
gay people went in fear of their lives and there needs to soothe him out of the red zone, and “That’s why only your right-side back wheel
was a penny candy called nigger babies avail- long experience has taught her how to do it. went in.”
HOLE.
 He walks to the edge of the long in the ground where the Inn once stood. It’s full of dark water. Charred beams stick up.
“The ground gave way, I’m telling you!” a hand on Billy’s shoulder. The touch is star- gripping, but Billy has an idea it would grip if
“Cut it too tight.” tling, but Billy is too scared to jump. He holds he tried to run. He’s pretty sure the men saw
“It gave way, goddammit!” on to his smile with all his might. him looking into that water-filled cellar hole.
Standing side by side as they are, Corinne “Yup, little problem there,” the fat young He has an idea they are in bad trouble here.
sees how much they look alike, and although man says, peering down, and when Corinne “Hey, guys! Hello, ma’am!” Galen sounds as
she’s seen the resemblance many times before, raises one hand—tentatively—the fat one rais- cheerful as a day in May. “Looks like you got a
on this beshitted summer morning it comes as es his in return. “Think we could help, Galen?” little trouble here. Want a hand?”
a revelation. She realizes that her husband is edge “I bet we could,” says the redhead. “We’ve “Oh, that would be wonderful,” Corinne says.
on time’s conveyor belt, and before it dumps got our own problem, as you see.” And he “Terrific,” Frank says. “Damn road went out
him off into the boneyard, he will actually be- of the points to the flat tire. “No spare.” He bends from under the car while I was turning around.”
come his father, only without Granpop’s sour down to Billy. His eyes are bright blue. There “Cut it too tight,” Granpop says.
but occasionally engaging sense of humor. long doesn’t seem to be anything in them. “Did you Frank gives him an ugly look, then turns
Sometimes she gets so tired. Of Frank, yes, hole check out that hole, Billy? Mighty big one.” back to the newcomers and gins up a grin. “I
but also of herself. Because is she any better? “No,” Billy says. He’s trying to sound natu- bet with you two men, we could push it right
Of course not. ral, unconcerned by the question, but doesn’t out of there.”
She looks around where Billy and Mary know if he’s getting that in his voice or not. He “No doubt,” says Pete.
were, then at Granpop. “Donald? Where are thinks he might faint. He wishes, God he wish- Frank holds out his hand. “Frank Brown.
the kids?” es, that he’d never looked down there. Blue This is my wife, Corinne, and my father,
sneaker. “I was afraid I might fall in.” Donald.”
THE KIDS ARE INSPECTING THE PANEL “Smart kid,” Galen says. “Isn’t he, Pete?” “Pete Smith,” says the fat young man.
truck at the top of the hill, close to where the “Smart,” the fat one agrees, and tosses “Galen Prentice,” says the redhead.
Slide Inn once stood. The tire on the driver’s Corinne another wave. Granpop is now look- There are handshakes all around. Granpop
side is flat. While Mary goes around the front ing up the hill, too. Frank is still staring at the mutters, “Meetcha,” but hardly gives them a
to look at the license plate (she’s always on the Buick’s ditched rear end, shoulders slumped. glance. He’s looking at Billy.
lookout for new ones, a game Granpop taught “That skinny one your dad?” redheaded Ga- “Ma’am,” Galen says, “why don’t you take
her), Billy walks to the edge of the long hole in len asks Mary. the wheel? Me and Pete and your handsome
the ground where the Inn once stood. He looks “Yup, and that’s our granpop. He’s old.” hubby here can push while you steer.”
down and sees it’s full of dark water. Charred “No shit,” Pete says. His hand is still on Bil- “Oh, I don’t know,” Corinne says.
beams stick up. And a woman’s leg. The foot is ly’s shoulder. Billy looks around at it and sees “I could do it,” Granpop says. “It’s my car.
clad in a bright blue sneaker. He stares, at first what might be blood under the nail of Pete’s From back in the old days. They really knew
frozen, then backs away. second finger. how to make ’em back then.” He sounds sulky,
“Billy!” Mary calls. “It’s a Delaware! My first “Well, you know what?” Galen says—he’s and Billy’s heart, which had risen a little, now
Delaware!” leaning down, speaking to Mary, who’s smil- sinks. He thought Granpop might have an idea
“That’s right, Sweetie,” someone says. “Del- ing up at him. “I bet we could push that big about these men, but he doesn’t.
aware it is.” old sumbitch right out of there. Then may- “Gramps, I need you to do the heavy look-
Billy looks up. Two men are walking around be your dad could give us a ride to someplace ing-on. I’m sure Frank’s missus can do the driv-
the far end of the foundation hole. They are where there’s a garage. Get a new tire for our ing. Can’t you?”
young. One is tall, with red hair that’s all oily little truck.” “I suppose . . .” Corinne trails off.
and clumpy. He has a lot of pimples. The other “Are you from Delaware?” Mary asks. Galen gives her a thumbs-up. “Sure you can!
one is short and fat. He’s got a bag in one hand “Well, we been through there,” Pete says. Kids, you stand aside with your gramps.”
that looks like Granpop’s old bowling bag, the Then he and Galen exchange a look and “He’s Granpop,” Mary says. “Not Gramps.”
one with ROLLING THUNDER on the side in they laugh. Galen grins. “Why sure,” he says. “Granpop
fading blue letters. This one has no writing on “Let’s take a look at that car of yours,” Galen it is. Granpop goes the weasel.”
it. Both men are smiling. says. “Want me to carry you down, Sweetie?” Corinne gets behind the wheel of the Buick
Billy tries to smile back. He doesn’t know if “No, that’s okay,” Mary says, her smile grow- and adjusts the seat forward. Billy can’t stop
it really looks like a smile or more like a kid try- ing slightly tentative. “I can walk.” thinking of that leg sticking up out of the murky
ing not to scream, but he hopes it’s a smile. He “Your bro don’t talk much, does he?” Pete water in the cellar hole. The blue sneaker.
doesn’t want these two men to know he was says. His hand, the one not holding the bowling Galen and Pete take spots on the left and
looking into the cellar hole. bag (if that’s what it is), is still on Billy’s shoulder. right of the Buick’s canted rear deck. Frank is
Mary comes around the side of the little “Usually you can’t keep him quiet,” Mary in the middle.
white truck with its flat shoe. Her smile looks says. “His tongue is hung in the middle and “Start her up, missus!” Galen calls, and when
completely natural. Sure, why not? She’s a lit- runs at both ends, that’s what Granpop says.” she does, the three men lean forward, brace
tle girl, and as far as she knows, everybody likes AND “Maybe he saw something that scared him their feet, and place their hands on the station
little girls. quiet,” Galen says. “Woodchuck or fox. Or wagon’s flat back. “Okay! Give it some gas! Not
“Hi,” she says. “I’m Mary. That’s my broth- something else.” a lot, just easy!”
er Billy. Our car went in the ditch.” She points A “I didn’t see anything,” Billy says. He thinks The motor revs. Granpop bends toward Bil-
down the hill, at where her father and Gran- he might start crying and tells himself he ly. His breath is as sour as ever, but it’s Gran-
pop are looking at the back end of the Buick can’t, he can’t. pop’s breath and Billy doesn’t mind. “What’s
and her mother is looking up at them. WOM- “Well, come on,” Galen says. He takes Mary’s wrong, kiddo?”
“Well, hi there, Mary,” says the redhead.
“Good to meet you.”
“You too, Billy.” The fat young man drops
AN’S
LEG.
l hand—this she allows—and they start down the
overgrown driveway. Pete walks beside Billy
with his hand still on Billy’s shoulder. It’s not
“Dead lady,” Billy whispers back, and
now the tears come. “Dead lady in that hole
up there.”
 “Little more!” fat Pete yells. “Goose the heel of her palm. “What were you doing up there?” Corinne
the bitch!” “Easy-peasy-Japaneezy!” Galen cries. “Back asks. She’s left the Buick running, the door
Corinne gives it more gas and the men on the road and good as new! Only we’ve still open. She looks at her husband, who’s smil-
push. The Buick’s rear tires start to spin, got a little problem. Don’t we, Pete?” ing his big banker’s smile, then at her two
then take hold. The Estate wagon comes up “Sure do,” Pete says. “Flat tire on our truck children. Her girl looks okay, but Billy’s face
onto the road. and no spare. Picked up a nail when we druv is white as wax.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Galen shouts. up there, I guess.” He puffs out his stubbled “Campin’,” Pete says. His hand has disap-
Billy has a sudden confused wish that his cheeks, now shiny with sweat, and makes a peared into his bag that isn’t a bowling bag.
mother would just drive away and leave flat-tire sound: Pwsshhh! He put his bag down “Huh,” Frank says. “That’s . . .”
them, that she would go and be safe. But to push, but now he picks it up. And unzips it. He doesn’t finish, maybe doesn’t know how
she stops, puts the Buick in park, and gets “Damn,” Frank says. “No spare, huh?” to finish, and no one seems to know how to start
out, holding down the hem of her dress with “Don’t that suck?” Galen says. the conversation (continued on page 100)

75 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

CHARACTER
PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEBASTIAN KIM _ STYLING BY NICK SULLIVAN

MATTHEW
RHYS

IS BECOMING
 This page Sweater ($850) and
trousers ($840) by Canali; boots
($1,980) by John Lobb.
Opposite Coat ($4,900) by
Fendi; turtleneck sweater ($1,375)
by Loro Piana; trousers ($1,625,
part of suit) by Boglioli; boots
($358) by the Frye Company.

MATTHEW
RHYS

The actor has built a résumé that assures viewers that whatever he’s in must be good.
This year, he’s poured those efforts into being a dad—and restoring an old boat.
78 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020
This page Turtleneck sweater
($1,375) by Loro Piana.
Opposite Coat, sweater ($1,995),
and trousers ($1,195) by Giorgio
Armani; boots ($385) by Wolverine.
E V E RY F R I DAY N I G H T A R O U N D D I N N E R T I M E , part of more superheroes during the day than anyone I
the actor Matthew Rhys conducts a ritual in which he mixes know,” he says. “To stave off screens or boredom, you’re
himself a vodka martini. He prefers it with olives, and some- always trying to come up with something new or imagi-
times the big hit of salt from making it lousy with olive juice. native. What small house can we build to catch a fairy?”
On the rare occasion that he’s out of vodka, Rhys will opt Rhys is an attentive dad. At one point his four-year-old
for gin, but he’s cautious: There’s a reason it’s called “moth- son interrupted our interview.
er’s ruin.” It’s not his first drink of the week. In the past sev- “Dada.”
eral months, Rhys and his partner, the actor Keri Russell, “Yes?”
who joins him for this languid ceremony, have taken to “I said a bad word.”
drinking Pomerol, a merlot from the Bordeaux region. But “That’s okay.”
the martini is a mile marker—another week of this god-aw- “I said ‘shit.’ ”
ful year of pandemic and death and turmoil in the books. “Okay, well, let’s not say it again.”
“I try to keep this bizarre, futile sense of Oh, it’s Friday He also does the bargaining with his partner that all dads
night at 6:00 P.M.; I’ll have a martini. The fucking week is know. Time has always been a precious resource for par-
done,” he says. ents, but in the pandemic, with no break from the onslaught
Rhys, forty-five, is Welsh, so everything he says has a lyr- of requests from children, it has become an even rarer gem.
ical lilt, as if Dylan Thomas (minus about one million packs So parents negotiate with each other. If I distract the kids
of unfiltered Camels) were telling you about the intimate for a while, can I have some time for myself? “I’ll say to Keri:
details of his life. He’s also grown a beard, a big one, start- ‘I’ll take them to the lake for a couple hours,’ which was ba-
ing from the very early days of this pandemic. It lends itself sically just a precursor to saying, ‘If I take them out of this
in a perverse way to the type of actor Rhys has turned into. house for two hours, can I please have maybe an hour and
He’s come to embody characters who are wrestling with a half, or two hours, for myself to go run up a hill?’ ”
disillusionment and searching for hope. A Soviet spy who Now back in Brooklyn, and with Hollywood still figur-
falls in love with his suburban American lifestyle (The Amer- ing out how to make entertainment amid an out-of-control
icans). The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers (The Post). pandemic, Rhys is settling into his role as a Matthew Rhys
An Esquire magazine writer in the throes of an existential character, minus the tragic backstory. A Matthew Rhys
crisis (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). A lowlife drunk character for the rest of us. His agenda includes filming
riddled with PTSD (Perry Mason). It’s the kind of résumé the second season of Perry Mason next year, seeing the
that assures viewers that whatever Rhys chooses to be in kids through another school year, and finishing the reno-
must be good. There are also echoes of the American expe- vation of his ninety-year-old boat. Not in that order.
rience in these roles, which Rhys acknowledges. About that boat. It’s from the 1930s, and there are only
“Growing up, I think we always associated America with four like it in the world. The most famous of them is named
hope—the pictures, the TV shows: Anything is possible, Pilar, which Ernest Hemingway acquired with the help of
justice is always served, and therefore there’s hope,” he Esquire magazine. (Esquire’s founding editor lent Hem-
says. “I’m not so sure these days.” ingway money to purchase the boat, then used that as lever-
For nearly everyone in Hollywood, including Rhys, 2020 age to persuade him to write for the magazine; it now sits
has been quiet. Filming for HBO’s Perry Mason wrapped in dry dock outside Havana.) Rhys’s boat is named Rabbit;
in late January, just before everything shut down. In March, he bought it three years ago and is nearly done restoring
Rhys, Russell, and their three children—one together, two it. “I’ve had more setbacks than the Democrats,” he says
from her previous marriage—headed north from their home of his shipwrighting efforts. With some luck, and a few
in Brooklyn to a house in the Catskill Mountains. They re- more weeks of hard work, Rabbit will be seaworthy by the
mained in the mountains for six months, hence the beard. early fall. He has considered making it a charter, complete
As it was for most families, the early part of quarantine with a 1930s Hemingway experience with gramophones
was chaos for the Rhys-Russells, as they adapted, practi- and cocktails. Rhys might even serve the drinks, dyeing
cally overnight, to homeschooling. “We had three kids on his beard white so it becomes Hemingwayesque.
three screens, and it was just this perennial bargaining to “So, I’m telling Keri,” he explains, “ ‘Look, this beard is
keep them there for their allotted time,” he says. “Then now a part of the charter experience. I don’t have a choice
school finished, and we felt this great sense of freedom.” about shaving it. I have to grow it . . . in earnest.’ ”
There were scripts to read and Zoom calls about poten- He pauses for a moment, allowing the full weight of his
tial projects, but much of the time was given over to ex- Hemingway pun to land.
ploring the outdoors. “I feel like I’ve done my greatest “She thinks that’s a terrible fucking joke.”
canon of work in the Catskill Mountains, as I’ve played the —Michael Sebastian

Coat ($6,995) and trousers ($1,295) by Ralph Lauren; T-shirt ($68) by Taylor Stitch; boots ($1,980) by John Lobb.
This page Jacket ($2,550), shirt ($735),
and trousers ($1,260) by Prada; shoes
($1,020) by Thom Browne.
Opposite Coat ($2,995), suit ($2,545),
shirt ($545), and boots ($1,445) by
Dolce & Gabbana; socks, Rhys’s own.

“I’VE HAD MORE

SETBACKS
THAN THE
DEMOCRATS,” HE SAYS
OF HIS
SHIPWRIGHTING
EFFORTS.
This page Coat ($4,900), jacket ($2,200), shirt ($790), and trousers ($950) by Gucci; boots ($385) by Wolverine; socks, Rhys’s own.
Opposite Coat ($21,900), turtleneck sweater ($900), and trousers ($1,300) by Hermès.

84 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

F O R S TO R E I N F O R M AT I O N S E E PA G E 1 0 2 .
PRODUCED BY BENJAMIN DOBSON.
THIS MOMENT IN TIME

Tudor Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy Blue

For Tudor, the blue thing started in
the 1960s, when the brand debuted
its first dive watch with a blue dial
and bezel. It continued with the Sub-
mariners supplied to the French
navy, or Marine Nationale, until the
mid-’80s, the color of which serves as
the inspiration for the blue hue on
the new Black Bay Fifty-Eight Navy
Blue. The name and the 39mm case,
on the other hand, come from an ear-
lier Sub, from (you guessed it) 1958.
BLACK BAY FIFTY-EIGHT NAVY BLUE ($3,375)
BY TUDOR; TUDORWATCH.COM.

Winter’s
latest
analog
wonders
offer a
light at
the end
of the
tunnel—
and
your
sl
ee
v e

THIS
THIS MOMENT
MOMENT IN
IN TIME
TIME

photographs by jeffrey westbrook

Panerai Luminor Marina Goldtech Breitling Endurance Pro
While divers have been big news in First there were gold and silver.
watchmaking this year, it’s divers Then steel. Now a brave breed of
all day every day for Panerai. watchmaker has started experiment-
The maker started by supplying big, ing with truly new-age stuff like
beefy watches to the Italian navy Breitlight, a polymer amalgam that’s
in the 1930s, and the no-nonsense 3.3 times lighter than titanium (which
display and unique case shape—both makes it nearly six times lighter than
derived from those early pieces—are steel). Couple that with a “thermo-
what still appeal to this day. The compensated” quartz movement
scale, of course, is what gets it
noticed on your wrist. But the gold
in this all-new version, with its blue
sunray dial, will certainly help.
LUMINOR GOLDTECH 44MM ($22,900)
BY PANERAI; PANERAI.COM.
“ Iƭve been th in k in g ab ou t th is,

fea st on ou r t i me. ” —S picoli , J.

Mr. H an d. I f Iƭm h er e a nd

n oth in g wr on g wit h a l itt le

you ’re here, d oesn’t th at ma ke
i t our t ime? Cer t a in ly, the re’s
Montblanc 1858 Chronograph
One of the dilemmas of playing to the
vintage trend in watches is, how old
do you go? Fauxtina, the artificial
pre-aging of a watch to give it the look
of a well-worn beater, gets tired very
fast. Instead, Montblanc draws on
the very real history of the watch-
maker Minerva, which was founded
in 1858 before being acquired by
Montblanc, and artfully folded into its
horological offerings, in 2006. Take
the 1858 automatic here: While the
dial harks back to the 1930s, when
Minerva was known for its excellent
in, A.
chronographs, the deep-blue color, comes soon enough.” —Einste
“I never think of the future—it
ceramic bezel, and calfskin strap give
it a distinctly modern demeanor.
1858 AUTOMATIC CHRONOGRAPH ($4,500)
BY MONTBLANC; MONTBLANC.COM.
 “TIME, HE’S WAITING IN THE WINGS / HE SPEAKS OF SENSELESS THINGS / HIS SCRIPT IS YOU AND ME, BOY.” —BOWIE, D.
Zenith Defy Classic Carbon

DEFY CLASSIC CARBON ($19,500)

BY ZENITH; ZENITH.COM.

89 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

Seiko 5 Sports Street Fighter V Bell & Ross BR 05 Skeleton Blue
Why combine a mechanical watch Bell & Ross found a winning formula
and a classic arcade fighting game? with its squared-off, aviation-inspired
Why not? Seiko has a knack for mak- design, but that hasn’t stopped the
ing really good watches that are company from getting creative with
accessible in both price and attitude, the concept at times. Case in point:
and a special six-part collection the new skeletonized BR 05, with
released in September features a clear blue dial showing the
radical rethinks of the fan-favorite BR-CAL.322 movement beneath and

“ ‘WHAT A CURIOUS FEELING!’ SAID ALICE; ‘I MUST BE SHUTTING UP LIKE A TELESCOPE.’ ” —CARROLL, L.
5 Sports inspired by characters from all the way through to the other side.
the long-running Street Fighter Skeletonizing is the watch world’s
series. This one’s based on Zangief, version of showing your knickers, so
the burly wrestler, with his red trunks it’s a real test of skill to pass muster
and red-and-yellow wristbands. You and achieve the perfect harmony of
might notice the resemblance. function and design required.
5 SPORTS STREET FIGHTER V ($440) BR 05 SKELETON BLUE BY BELL & ROSS;
BY SEIKO; SEIKOUSA.COM. BELLROSS.COM.
 TAG Heuer Carrera
When it was introduced in 1963, the
Heuer Carrera Chronograph bridged
the gap between the gentlemanly
chronographs that preceded it and
the chunkier ones that followed. The
new Carrera is inspired by the clean
design of that original Carrera (ref.
2447), with a stripped-down display
and a focus on visual polish over bells
and whistles. Multiple versions, all
with the in-house Calibre Heuer 02
movement, are available. But for our
money, a steel bracelet and blue dial
perfectly capture the style’s retro-
modern appeal.
CARRERA CHRONOGRAPH ($5,350)
BY TAG HEUER; TAGHEUER.COM.

, D.
S . ” —BY RN E
IME ISN’T AFTER U
US / T L D I NG
T HO
N’
IS
E
M
TI “
Over the past two decades, suicide rates have shot up everywhere in America. As
public-health crisis, a group of parents and activists in the East Valley of Arizona are
 the
kids are
not
all right

researchers test new theories to better understand this massive, mostly disregarded
working to stop the spread of self-destruction among the teenagers in their community.

by MATTHEW SHAER
photographs by ADRIANA ZEHBRAUSKAS

Lorie Warnock holds a portrait of her son, Mitch.

She’s been advocating for suicide
awareness in the East Valley since 2016.

93 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

MARCUS WHEELER LIVED IN A SUN-BLEACHED TRAILER JUST OUT- the school. His phone buzzed. A text from his girlfriend: “It’s Marcus.” Jensen
side of Tempe, Arizona, but for a long time, he told classmates his home was didn’t understand. Why would anyone have Marcus at gunpoint? Then it clicked—
actually across the street, in an upscale apartment complex. Once the lie was his comments about suicide, the mess with his girlfriend, his expulsion from
exposed, no one blamed him. How could they? His friends had supportive the track team. Jensen made a dash for the door, certain that if he could just
families, tidy suburban lives. Marcus had neither. His estranged mother lived talk to Marcus, even for a moment, he wouldn’t go through with it. He got as
in the Philippines and hadn’t spoken to her son in more than a decade, and far as the door before his classmates piled onto him and dragged him back.
his father was a long-haul trucker who thought his son would benefit from a Around 9:00 A.M., Amy Gallagher, a Tempe police officer assigned to Corona
crash course in independence. Marcus was eighteen and alone. del Sol, entered the breezeway and attempted to get Marcus to lower the gun
Or mostly alone: He had a girlfriend, friends, and the other runners on the from his temple. “I can help you. I can help,” she repeated. “No, you can’t,”
Corona del Sol High School track team. One morning in early 2015, Wheeler Marcus replied. He swayed back and forth, glanced down one more time at
arrived at school wearing a bright yellow shirt emblazoned with the logo of his phone, then pulled the trigger.
Central Arizona College, which had offered him an athletic scholarship. His
smile was toothy and broad. Wes Jensen, a teammate of Wheeler’s, could see BECAUSE THE BREEZEWAY WAS STILL CONSIDERED AN ACTIVE CRIME
how proud his friend was. But he also knew Marcus was going through some scene, twenty-seven hundred students were routed out another side of the
stuff. He’d confessed to Jensen that he’d recently come close to killing him- school. Among them was a sophomore named Mitch Warnock. Stocky and
self but that another friend had talked him out of it at the last minute. Jensen strong, Warnock, sixteen, was one of the top pole vaulters in the state; he’d
hadn’t been sure how to respond. Marcus had promised that that part of his competed alongside Wheeler on the Corona track team and had looked up

“I just thought, Something extremely bad is happening here.

This is an epidemic. And we’d all better start paying attention.”

life was behind him, so Jensen had let the matter drop. to the older boy. “I knew Marcus’s death was hitting him hard, like it was hit-
In the spring, Marcus was kicked off the track team for violating its code of ting all of us hard,” a friend of Mitch’s told me. “But we didn’t really get into
conduct—he’d been playing a taglike game called Assassins, and another stu- it that morning, because that wasn’t how Mitch was. For his whole life, he
dent had been injured. Had it been a matter of just losing his scholarship, put out this image of having his shit together.”
Marcus might have been able to cope. But around the same time, his relation- Warnock wasn’t any more forthcoming with his mother, Lorie, an English
ship with his girlfriend fell apart. Marcus, already in a precarious emotional teacher at a nearby high school. “I remember he had this shocked look on his
state, took the breakup poorly. “Help,” he tweeted on May 11. “I want my life face, and I sat him down and said, ‘Mitch, what do you think about what hap-
3 months ago back.” The next morning, he issued a final warning: “There is pened? What do you think about dying by suicide?’ ” Lorie told me. “He said,
going to be a suicide in the school right now.” ‘Oh, no. That would be the worst thing. That would be’—how did he put it? He
That morning, George Sanchez, a biology teacher, was returning to his class- said, ‘That would be giving up the most precious thing, which is your life.’ ”
room with a stack of photocopies when a student alerted him that there was In 2015, the United States was in the midst of what a Newsweek cover story
someone in the breezeway with a gun. Sanchez dropped the photocopies, called declared a “suicide epidemic.” Nearly every demographic was affected: Black
911, and helped clear the area. All the while, he kept his eyes trained on Marcus, people, white people, Latinx people, and especially Native people, whose com-
who was clutching a handgun. “I can’t take it anymore,” the boy was repeating. munities consistently have the highest rates in the nation. Young people, too,
“I just can’t.”  There was a look in his eyes that Sanchez would never forget. like Marcus Wheeler. By the year’s end, more than forty-four thousand Ameri-
As they waited for the police to arrive, administrators ordered the school cans had killed themselves—an average of one suicide every twelve minutes.
into lockdown. In a classroom on the second floor, Wes Jensen picked up his In the weeks and months after Marcus Wheeler’s suicide, Lorie Warnock
phone. Local news stations were reporting that a man with a gun had entered grew concerned about her son. It was obvious to her, and to his friends, that
Mitch was more traumatized by Wheeler’s death than he’d initially let on. “I
think in Mitch’s mind, Marcus had escaped. He’d got out of his pain,” Tyler
Marcus Wheeler had an athletic scholarship to Arizona Central College. “It was Stolworthy, a friend of the two boys’, told me. “To Mitch, that was a green
absolutely amazing to watch him run,” said track light.” Although there was a prayer circle for Marcus in the aftermath of his
teammate Wes Jensen. “He was such a pure athlete, you know?”
death and a balloon-release ceremony on the football field—and although
counselors were made available to the student body—many students wanted
more. They felt as if the school was moving too quickly toward normalcy. “It
was just, ‘This happened, let’s move on,’ ” Stolworthy said. “That was the
mentality that everybody had, I guess.”
In the fall of 2015, Mitch was summoned to a meeting at school. The mes-
sage he got was that if his academic performance didn’t improve, he shouldn’t
expect to get into college. Devastated, Mitch transferred all his hopes for col-
lege admission onto a pole-vaulting scholarship. To help manage the stress,
R O N C E TO N ( W H E E L E R )

he started drinking.
One evening the following school year, Mitch showed up intoxicated to a
Corona football game, barely able to stand. “I was like, ‘Yo, man, are you
cool?’ ” a friend recalled. “Because the security guard at the gate had noticed
how drunk he was, just by his actions.” When the guard pulled Warnock aside,

94 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 “But I thought, What’s the exact strategy here? Are we going to be able to do
something before we lose another kid?”
McPherson had spent more than twenty years in education, first as a high
school teacher, then as a middle school guidance counselor, then as a vice
principal, while raising her four girls. Later, she began advising local schools
on policy and curriculum. She’d worked closely in recent years with the
Tempe Union High School District; she’d attended the meeting where Lorie
Warnock spoke and had made it a point to introduce herself. Warnock, in
turn, asked McPherson to accompany her to a subsequent school meeting—
as moral support, but also because she knew McPherson shared her frustra-
tion with the way the suicides were being handled. “In my mind,” McPherson
told me, “it could have gone a very different way.”
Over the next few weeks, McPherson and Lorie Warnock began brainstorm-
ing about how to make sure both students and faculty were heard—and to
ensure teachers had the training and resources they needed to recognize
signs of mental distress in high school students. In the process, they learned
something chilling: Warnock and
Wheeler hadn’t been the only stu-
dents at Corona del Sol to commit sui-
cide. Two others had taken their own
lives since Marcus’s suicide, includ-
ing a third member of the track team.
“I just thought, Yeah, something
extremely bad is happening here,”
McPherson told me. “This is an epi-
demic. And we’d all better start pay-
ing attention.”

THAT SUICIDE MIGHT BE TRANS-

mittable is not a new idea: History is
rife with episodes of apparently inter-
connected self-harm, such as the
deaths of seventy children in a single
Tyler Hedstrom (far right) had recently gone on tour with a rock band from Phoenix. To keep his spirits up after a Moscow school district in less than
series of setbacks, his brother, Alex (above left), had reminded him that the band had invited him back. “I’ve met
probably twenty families that went through what we went through,” said their mother, Sheila (above right). two years, starting in 1908, or the
drowning suicides of 150 residents of
Budapest in 1928. But it is only
he exploded—Corona del Sol had a zero-tolerance policy on drinking on school recently that scientists have confirmed that in certain circumstances, sui-
property, and he faced suspension. “I’m going to kill myself,” he said. “It’s cidal ideation can travel from person to person like a virus.
over. It’s over! My scholarships are going to be taken away.” The police were One of the first studies on clustering, as the phenomenon is known, was
summoned, and Mitch’s parents were called. When Lorie Warnock and her carried out in 1985 by the CDC in two towns in Texas where fourteen teens
husband, Tim, arrived, they were told what Mitch had said. “Looking at it ret- had died by suicide over a brief period. To map the connections between the
roactively, he was repeating the same verbiage that Marcus had used before deaths, the researchers designed a case-control study, an epidemiological
he died,” Lorie said. “Almost exactly the same, like he’d internalized it.” tool traditionally used to figure out why certain people succumb to a disease
After they got home, Lorie walked in on Mitch attempting to take his own while others prove resistant. Several patterns emerged. Many of those who’d
life. She managed to convince him to spend the night at a psychiatric hospi- died had experienced family instability, substance-abuse problems, or a pro-
tal. He was released the next day and seemed to be doing all right, but about pensity for violence. And several had been connected: Ten victims had been
a week after that, in mid-October, Warnock attempted suicide again. This aware of the recent suicides in the community; six had personally known
time, Lorie wasn’t there to stop him. another victim; and four had known two or more victims.
In December, at a meeting of the Tempe Union High School District’s gov- Some of the interventions the CDC researchers proposed were rudimen-
erning board, Lorie Warnock addressed the group. “I was a mess,” she told tary and centered on limiting “romanticized” or “sensational” media cover-
me. “I was like Skeletor. I dragged myself up there and I said, ‘I am Lorie War- age. As the research on clusters has developed, so too has our ability to
nock and I am Mitch’s mom.’ I unleashed. I just went off.” She was upset about respond to the phenomenon in more nuanced and effective ways. Scientists
her son’s 2015 meeting and shocked that administrators hadn’t been more now understand, for example, that most suicide victims later determined to
proactive about outreach to students in the wake of Marcus Wheeler’s death. be part of a cluster are young men (as is true of nonclustered suicides, too).
(“The response to what happened to Marcus was beyond inappropriate,” They often have a history of mental illness or self-harm. Transmission—a term
Lorie told me.) Soon half the room was crying with her. used frequently in the academic literature on clusters—tends to occur in
The board said it would continue to investigate the issue—“listening a lot . . .  spaces like schools, where, as a 2019 paper in The Lancet titled “Clustering
learning a lot,” as the superintendent described it to me. But to Lorie and of Suicides in Children and Adolescents” notes, “social cohesion contribut[es]
many other mothers in the Tempe area, that wasn’t enough. “Yes, it was to the spread of ideas and attitudes.”
encouraging that people were paying attention, that they were saying they “If you rewound the clock a few decades, the question was ‘Are suicide
wanted to help,” Katey McPherson, a resident of nearby Chandler, told me. clusters actually real? Do they exist beyond chance?’ ” Madelyn Gould, a psy-

95 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

chiatric epidemiologist who coauthored the 2019 paper, told me. “Well, we
now know that yes, they’re real, and they’re a public-health problem. So now
the focus, for a lot of us, is continuing to understand risk factors”—which, in
turn, allows counselors or teachers to gauge which of their students may be
at risk of taking their own lives—“and figuring out the manner, or mechanism,
that clusters can grow.”
A groundbreaking paper published this year in the Journal of Adolescent
Health provides some of the most compelling evidence for how those mech-
anisms operate. For the paper, researchers surveyed students in a commu-
nity in northeastern Ohio where a suspected cluster of teen suicides had
grown to twelve deaths. Of the students who had posted on social media
about the suicides, 23 percent reported having suicidal ideation, and 15 per-
cent went on to attempt suicide. “Suicide interventions,” the researchers
noted, “could benefit from efforts to mitigate potential negative effects of
social media and promote prevention messages.” To put it another way, social
media can be corrosive—it can inspire fear or mimicry—and should be bal-
anced with community outreach.
Recently, Madelyn Gould and several of her colleagues published a set of
“key messages” for how to address suicide clusters. One of their recommen-
dations was to respond proactively, with “bereavement support, provision
of help for susceptible individuals, engaging with the media proactively, and
population approaches to support and prevention.”
When several teens died by suicide in Palo Alto, California, in 2014, this
was the precise advice that the local schools’ superintendent at the time, Max
McGee, followed. “I’m not an epidemiologist,” McGee told me recently. “But
I thought, Okay, this is literally contagious. And I’d spoken to people like Dr.
Gould and Dr. Joshi”—Shashank Joshi, a professor of adolescent psychiatry
at nearby Stanford University—“and my feeling was that we shouldn’t wait
for a miracle cure. We should take community action, and do it quickly.”
He encouraged the local newspapers to avoid publishing details of how
the children had died; he arranged weeks of focus groups and counseling for
all students. When a new death occurred—there were four in all—he emailed
the entire student body and their parents, and instituted a relaxed class sched-
ule. “And this was very important. Maybe the most important: As soon as we
heard about a suicide, we identified the kid’s friend group and their siblings
and we contacted them right away, to check in on them, to talk to them,”
McGee said. “Because I knew from the research that these were the people
who were going to be most at risk.”
Nationwide, the crisis is far from diminished. By one estimate, as many as
13.5 percent of all suicides in the United States are now connected to clusters.
And in recent years, fresh outbreaks have been identified in a range of settings:
rural Appalachia, the Mormon enclaves of Salt Lake City. But recent research
suggests a large number occur among the middle class, in quiet suburbs with
good public schools. Places, in other words, like the East Valley of Arizona.

THE EAST VALLEY EXTENDS FROM THE EASTERN LIP OF PHOENIX

through Tempe and out to the ragged volcanic rock of the San Tan Moun-
tains. Comprising more than a million residents and several municipalities,
the East Valley nonetheless feels like a single, small town: It shares govern-
ments and a newspaper and a population connected through community
organizations and sports leagues and strip-mall corridors of Starbucks and
fast-food joints. “It sounds corny, but it’s a place where everyone at least what I’d seen in Palo Alto. The pressures of school, of getting into college, of
knows of each other,” one East Valley teen told me. “If you’re a kid growing the performance arms race, as I call it.” Any roadblock to that success, such
up in Chandler, you know people in Gilbert, in Tempe.” as trouble with the police, could send a child spiraling.
Which to many onlookers helped explain the increase in adolescent sui- To McPherson and Lorie Warnock, the obvious answer was to begin training
cides statewide—from 2009 to 2015, the rate among Arizona teenagers had teachers and educators on prevention techniques. To be proactive, and to get
risen by 81 percent. By May 2017, two years after Marcus Wheeler died, ten out ahead of the problem before it could worsen. Not everyone was willing to
teens in the area had ended their own lives, including three in Tempe, two listen. “You’d get superintendents saying, ‘Suicide has always been a thing.
in neighboring Gilbert, and three in Chandler. “There was no doubt in my We’re just seeing a bit of an escalation,’ ” McPherson told me. “Then you had
mind—zero doubt—that this was a cluster,” said Max McGee, whom Katey some outright freaking defensive administrators and teachers. But we didn’t
McPherson invited to counsel the school boards of the East Valley on the steps shut up. Not because we were being rude but because the kids kept coming for-
Palo Alto had taken. “And it seemed to me like there was a lot of overlap with ward and saying, ‘The adults aren’t listening. The adults don’t understand.’ ”

96 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 Queen Creek, at the southern end of the East Valley, is the fastest-growing community in Arizona. The desert town also has
reckoned with a cluster of teen suicides.

In 2017, Tatum Stolworthy, a Corona student and Tyler’s sister, founded a tions she’d made across the East Valley school system, McPherson started col-
peer-support organization known as Aztec Strong. Tatum believed the best lecting information. “I’d get a link to a social-media post and there’d be a picture
approach to dealing with suicide was through destigmatization—to talk about of a student who died and hundreds of comments—kids going, ‘I just lost another
the issue, to bring it into the light. McPherson, supported by Stolworthy’s friend.’ Or ‘I’ve lost three friends this year,’ ” McPherson told me. “There were
community efforts, and Lorie Warnock approached a state legislator, Mitzi just so many of them, the suicides, and they had occurred pretty closely together.”
Epstein, with a request that she sponsor a bill mandating suicide-prevention She created a chart on her laptop to keep track. The names on the list weren’t
training for all educators in the state. The bill failed. McPherson and War- just high schoolers. They were recent graduates; they were grade schoolers.
nock pressed forward, taking meetings with every city official and school One evening last fall, I had dinner with Joey, twelve, an East Valley resi-
administrator in the East Valley who would hear them out. “I became, unfor- dent, and his father, Mike. (At their request, I’ve used pseudonyms.) Joey was
tunately, ‘Katey the Suicide Lady,’ ” McPherson told me. slight and brown-haired and shy; he spoke haltingly, his gaze trained mostly
Obituaries for suicide victims rarely list the cause of death. Using the connec- downward. A few years earlier, he told me, he’d met another student whom

97 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

I’ll call Chris. Neither boy had many friends, and they’d formed an instant everything inside. “Freshman year, he took a writing workshop, and all his
bond. “We used to gather acorns in little jars and throw them at the play- stories had cancer in them,” Sheila said. “I realized that he had an abandon-
ground walls,” Joey said. “You know, dumb stuff like that.” ment thing. There was a fear of something horrible happening again.”
“It wasn’t dumb,” Mike interjected. “You were nine.” Sheila and her second husband, Greg, lived with Tyler and his older brother,
Joey shrugged and flashed a half smile. “Still,” he said. Alex, in Queen Creek, a desert town at the southern end of the East Valley.
Chris and Joey never saw each other outside of school—Chris lived with his Thirty years ago, Queen Creek was a railroad outpost surrounded by sand.
custodial guardian, a distant relative, and the man wanted him home imme- But an influx of tech companies, the creation of a regional airport, and the
diately after last period every day. Fifth grade was hard for Chris: He was bul- presence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints helped make the
lied; he performed poorly on tests. “I remember him telling me about his place the fastest-growing community in the state. (Sheila and Greg are not
problems . . . how he wanted to kill himself,” Joey said. “But I didn’t know Mormon; they’ve since moved away from Queen Creek.)
what suicide was. What it meant.” In July 2017, about a week before the start of the school year, Tyler and a
“Did he?” I asked. friend were parked on a neighborhood street when an officer pulled up,
“I know for a fact he did,” Joey said, “because his dad had killed himself searched their car, and found a small bag of marijuana. “The police’s attitude
in prison.” Whether Chris knew about the deaths of his peers around the East was ‘He’s not under arrest, but we are going to turn the drugs over to the DA
Valley is unclear. But as Mike recalled, “This thing for a couple years was such and see what the DA wants to do,’ ” Greg told me. Alex tried to console his
a big talking point in our schools and in our area. It was on the front page all brother by reminding him how much he had going for him: Earlier that month,
the time. All the time.” Ty had gone on tour as the drummer for Anarbor, a rock band from Phoenix;
In 2016, after a class trip to a roller-skating rink, Chris and Joey were hang- he’d been invited to join them again. And the upcoming school year was an
ing out on their school’s playground. “We were throwing acorns at the wall,” opportunity for a reset. “That calmed him down,” Alex said. But then, he
Joey told me. “The bell rang, and I said, ‘See you later.’ Typically, Chris said added, Tyler and his girlfriend broke up.
‘See you later’ first, but that time he didn’t say anything at all. I think he just To Sheila, who is now friends with Lorie Warnock, the similarities between
didn’t want to lie to me.” Tyler and Marcus Wheeler are obvious: Both boys had recently gotten in trou-
The next day, Mike got a text from another parent. Chris had taken his own ble, which they worried might threaten their future. And they had dealt with
life. “We spent hours of trying to come to terms with it,” Mike said. “Me talking the death or the absence of a parent. “I’ve probably met twenty families that
through it with Joey and Joey being like, ‘Oh, it must be someone with the went through what we went through,” Sheila told me, and “that is the one com-
same name. It can’t be my Chris.’ ” mon thread I’ve seen. I’d estimate nine out of ten victims had lost a parent.”
“I remember that,” Joey said. “It was like, first confusion, then disbelief, But in the summer of 2017, Sheila hadn’t yet met the Warnocks or read up
then more confusion and sadness. Then anger. Just half a second of anger.” on Marcus Wheeler’s death. And she was unaware of two additional teen sui-
“What were you angry about?” I asked. cides in Queen Creek. “Tyler never talked to us about suicide,” Sheila told
“I was angry at his family. I was angry at Chris.” me. “He didn’t talk about self-harm; he didn’t talk about the other kids.” She
“Why Chris?” swallowed a sob. “To us, he presented as he always was.”
“Because he should have known how much I’d miss him.” Alex Hedstrom suspects that his brother was affected by the growing num-
“How do you feel these days?” ber of suicides far more than he let on. “I think a seed was planted,” he told
“I mean, I can get on with my life, and it’s not 24/7, but I think about him—” me. When Alex was younger, he’d gone through a hard time and briefly con-
Joey stopped and turned away so I wouldn’t see the tear slip down his cheek. templated suicide. “But I wasn’t just thinking about just killing myself,” he
“I’m better,” he said. told me. “I would think specifics, and those specifics came from influences,
from different—” he paused and waved his hands in the air. “Basically, from
WHEN TYLER HEDSTROM WAS TWO, HIS FATHER, SCOTT, DIED OF inspiration from shit I’d seen before. You read about it a lot, you hear people
cancer, which meant that he was both a stranger and a mythical figure to his talk about it at school, and maybe it gets that much easier to think about kill-
son. Ghost and mirror. Everyone was always telling Tyler how much he resem- ing yourself, you know?”
bled his dad, and as he got older, he saw it himself, in the grainy photographs One evening in July, Tyler posted a despondent message to his finsta, or
his mother, Sheila, kept around their East Valley home. Sheila didn’t say it, fake Instagram, the account he reserved for posting the kind of content he
but Tyler acted like Scott, too. He was sensitive. He felt things deeply but held didn’t feel comfortable sharing under his own name. I’m a loser, he wrote.
I’m a piece of shit.
The next morning was an ordinary one for the family. Sheila and Greg went
Community organizer Katey McPherson has tracked the suicides among East Valley teen- to a Diamondbacks game with her parents, and Tyler had an orthodontist
agers since Marcus Wheeler’s death. There are forty-seven names on her list.
appointment. (Alex was living with his girlfriend at the time.) When they
returned from the game, Sheila and Greg were surprised to find the house quiet:
no thrash of a drum kit, no music leaking out from under Ty’s door. “I had these
big plans that we’d all go out to a family dinner,” Sheila told me. “I’d get some
food in Tyler, and he’d feel better. It would all be better.” Instead, bounding up
the stairs, she saw her son’s body. “I sometimes do the ‘what if’ thing. Like, ‘I’m
a nurse. Maybe I could have somehow saved Ty,’ ” she told me. “But the truth
is, as soon as I walked into that room, I knew there was no saving him.”

ONE OF THE COMMUNITY LEADERS TRACKING THE UPTICK IN TEEN

suicides in the East Valley was Joronda Montaño, the program director at Not-
MYKid, a nonprofit that provides counseling to high schoolers in the area.
Montaño was one of the first people to identify the deaths as a cluster. Mon-
taño told me that “statistically speaking, this area has long had high teen sui-
cide rates. But it’s only pretty recently that you had all these kids looking at
each other, saying, ‘What exactly is going on?’ ” I asked what students had said

98 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

 Rudy Bencomo’s mother, Deanna, and niece, Aria, hold his graduation photo. Deanna is now involved in a suicide-prevention group
cofounded by Katey McPherson. Aria was close with her uncle, and he often appears in her dreams.

to her about the response from their teachers and school administrators. “One After Rudy’s death, his classmates attempted to erect memorials inside
of the things that’s come out is that they don’t feel that the adults care. And the high school—for Rudy and for the others who’d been lost to suicide.
that has everything to do with the way that it’s handled when a suicide hap- Autumn Bourque, a Queen Creek student at the time, wrote a Facebook post
pens. From their perspective, it’s, ‘Oh, you don’t want us to talk about it.’ ” in which she accused school administrators of not encouraging or even sup-
In August 2017, a few days after Sheila found her son’s body, another Queen porting the memorials—of essentially wanting to cover up the problem. “I
Creek mother, Deanna Bencomo, received a call from the school. Her son, am tired of watching my friends cry, and I’m tired of feeling the pain of loss,”
Rudy, hadn’t shown up to class that morning. Deanna was alarmed. Earlier she wrote. “Here the school believes that keeping things quiet is better than
that summer, Rudy, who struggled with anxiety and depression, had checked saying anything at all.” The post went viral locally. I spoke to Bourque in Sep-
into a psychiatric hospital after intentionally cutting himself. “It’s time to tell tember. “It seemed as if the school was embarrassed by the events that took
my story,” he’d tweeted upon his return. “On June 15, I attempted suicide. I place,” she told me, “so tried to hide it.” She recalled that when she’d asked
went to a behavioral hospital and this why I’ve been gone for a min.” He con- why the memorials were a problem, she was told, “It glorifies suicides.”

A new statewide law requires schools to provide teachers with

suicide-prevention training. It’s known as the Mitch Warnock Act.

tinued, “Queen Creek has experienced a lot of suicidal tragedy. . . . It’s heart- (Queen Creek officials told me, “Certain memorials are allowed to stay as
breaking and raises questions. Suicide, successful or not, leaves consequences long as they stay within guidelines provided by school administrators”; they
for everyone. I’m dealing with them now [with] my friends, family, and peo- added that the district has partnered with a local suicide-prevention center,
ple I don’t know. . . . Things are rough. And life is hard. Don’t give up. I am not La Frontera Empact, to help “prevent what is sometimes referred to as the
telling you this for sympathy points. But this shit needs to stop.” contagion effect.”)
Now he was missing. “The people at the school, they go, ‘His friend called and In 2018, Queen Creek invited Suniya Luthar of Arizona State University to
said he has a rope, and we’re worried he’s going to try to hurt himself,’ ” Deanna survey the district’s teenagers with the goal of understanding why so many
recalled. “They’d already started looking for him, and I knew the longer it went, students were struggling. In total, Luthar, who’d run similar studies at schools
the worse it would be.” That afternoon, Deanna found out her son was gone. around the country, collected data from more than (continued on page 102)

9 9 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF ON SLIDE INN ROAD Galen says. “That’s one slutty billfold.”
(continued from page 61 ) (continued from page 75) “Says the man who looks like he warshed his hair
last Thanksgiving,” Granpop says, and quick as a
of cinema for him to learn. So that, I mean . . . going again. Birds sing in the trees. Crickets rub their snake striking out of a bush, Galen slaps him across
I don’t want to stop learning until I’ve taken my reedy legs in the high weeds, which is the universe the face. Mary bursts into tears and puts her face
last breath. they know. The seven people stand in a loose cir- against her mother’s hip.
cle behind the idling Buick. Frank and Corinne ex- “Stop that!” Frank says, as if the thing is not al-
In a 1984 promo video for Stop Making Sense, David change a look that asks, What’s going on here? ready done and his father bleeding from lip and nos-
Byrne appears as different characters and interviews tril. Then, in the same breath: “Shut up, Dad!”
himself. For one character, he wore blackface, and GRANPOP KNOWS. HE SAW MEN LIKE THESE “I don’t let folks sass me,” Galen says, “not even old
brownface for another. He’d forgotten about the skit in Vietnam. Scavengers and skedaddlers. One he men. Old men should especially know better. Now
until recently, when a reporter brought it to his atten- saw stood up against a board fence and shot by Corinne. Let’s get your purse out of the car. Your lit-
tion. Rather than deny it or defend it, Byrne one of his own men after the Tet Offensive wound tle girl can come with us.” He takes Mary by the arm,
announced the revelation himself. “I acknowledge it down, a clusterfuck the grandchildren he’s too the pads of his fingers sinking into her scant flesh.
was a major mistake in judgment that showed a lack old to have will probably never read about in their “Let her alone,” Corinne says.
of real understanding,” he wrote in a statement history books. “You’re not in charge here,” Galen says. Not sound-
released on Twitter in early September, just days Frank, meanwhile, jerks to life like a wind-up toy. ing so gentle now. “Tell me what to do again and I’ll
before we spoke. “It’s like looking in a mirror and see- His your-loan-is-approved smile reappears. He takes change your face. Pete, make Frank and his father
ing someone else—you’re not, or were not, the person his wallet from his back pocket. “I wish we could stand together. Shoulders touching. And if either
you thought you were.” take you to a garage or something, but I’ve got a full of them moves . . .”
What has been the response? “I’m not checking it car, as you see—” Pete gestures with the revolver. Granpop shuf-
all over the place,” he says, “but for the most part, “Your missus could sit on my lap,” Pete says, and fles next to his son. Frank is breathing through his
Spike and those on social media have been very sup- waggles his eyebrows. nose in quick little snorts. Granpop wouldn’t be sur-
portive.” Though he admits, “There’ve been some Frank chooses to ignore this. “But tell you what, prised if he passed out.
places and some institutions that seem to have feel- we’ll stop and send someone back first place we see. “You saw, didn’t you?” Pete asks Billy. “Fess up.”
ings that maybe I’m a little toxic now. But I thought, In the meantime, how does ten apiece sound? For “I didn’t see anything,” Billy says through his tears.
This is not about what I did thirty years ago. This helping us out.” Blubbing like a baby and can’t help it. Blue sneaker.
is about me opening this up for discussion at this He opens the wallet. Very gently, Galen plucks “Liar pants on fire,” Pete says. He laughs and ruf-
point. And so I definitely stand by my decision to it from his hand. Frank doesn’t try to stop him. He fles the boy’s hair.
expose myself.” just stares at his hands, wide-eyed, as if the wallet Galen comes back, folding more bills into his pock-
is still there. As if he can still feel its weight but now et. He’s let go of Mary. The girl is now clinging to her
ESQ: Tell me about the title American Utopia. it’s invisible. mother. Corinne looks dazed.
DB: A friend suggested it to me. And I thought, Oh “Why don’t I just take all of it?” Galen says. Granpop doesn’t waste time looking at his peo-
my God, people are going to think that I’m being “Give that back!” Corinne says. She feels Mary’s ple. He’s watching Galen rejoin Pete, needing to see
ironic. Or they’re going to think that I’m supporting hand creep into hers and she folds her own fingers what passes between them, and he sees pretty much
something that I’m not. And then I realized, No, that over it. “That’s not yours!” what he expected and no sense pretending other-
is what I’m doing in the songs and onstage. It’s sin- “Is now.” His voice is as gentle as the hand that took wise. They can take the Buick and leave the Brown
cere. It’s not ironic. I have to own it. When people see the wallet. “Let’s see what we got here.” family, or they can take the Buick and kill the Brown
it, they’ll understand. He opens it. Frank takes a step forward. Pete takes family. If caught, these two will get life in the Shank
ESQ: Is the show going to come back? his hand out of his not-a-bowling-bag. There’s a re- no matter what kind of score they run up.
DB: We hope so. But nobody knows when. volver in it. Looks like a .38 to Granpop. “There’s more,” Granpop says.
ESQ: Could you ever see that show without your- “Stand back, Frankie-Wankie,” Pete says. “We’re “What’s that?” Galen asks. He’s the talker. His fel-
self in it? doing business here.” low outlaw seems to be the fat silent type.
DB: I often ask myself that. Could this go into Galen removes a small sheaf of bills from the wal- “More money. Quite a bit. I’ll give it to you if you
repertoire? let. He folds them over, puts them in the pocket of let us be. Just take the wagon and let us be.”
SL: Nope, that ain’t going to work. his jeans, then tosses the wallet to Pete, who puts it “How much more?” Galen asks.
DB: Nah, it ain’t going to work. in the bag. “Gramps, let’s have yours.” “Can’t say for sure, but I put it around thirty-three
SL: There’s no understudy for David. [To Byrne] “Outlaws,” Granpop says. “That’s all you are.” hundred. It’s in my go-bag.”
What’s the title of the show? “That’s right,” Galen agrees in his gentle voice. “Why would an old fuck like you be driving around
DB: American Utopia. “And if you don’t want me to lash this boy upside the williwags with three thousand and change?”
SL: It’s David Byrne’s American Utopia. his head, give me your wallet.” “Because of Nan. My sister. We were going up to
ESQ: The show is very hopeful. But if we end up That does it for Billy; his bladder lets go and his Derry to see her before she passes away. Won’t be
having the same president after November . . .  crotch gets warm. He starts to cry, partly out of long, if it hasn’t happened already. She’s got the can-
DB: I knew that’s where you were going. shame and partly from fear. cer. It’s all through her.”
ESQ: . . . what’s the way forward for the show? Do Granpop digs his old scarred Lord Buxton from Pete has put his not-a-bowling-bag down again.
you change it? Do you tweak it? the front left pocket of his baggy pants and hands Now he rubs two of his fingers together and says,
DB: I think I would have to. I couldn’t not acknowl- it over. It’s bulging, but mostly with cards, photos, “This is the world’s smallest violin playing ‘My Heart
edge that. and receipts going back five or more years. Galen Pumps Purple Piss for You.’ ”
SL: You’d need to write another song. pulls out a twenty and a few ones, stuffs them in Granpop pays no attention. “I cashed out most of
DB: I might have to. his pocket, and tosses the Lord Buxton to Pete. In- my Social Security to pay for the funeral. Nan hasn’t
SL: [Long pause to think the unthinkable.] Night- to the bag it goes. got squat, and they give you a discount if you pay
mares. The world is bananas. “Ought to clean it out once in a while, Grampy,” cash.” He pats Billy’s shoulder. “This boy looked it

10 0 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

all up for me on the Internet.” ville Slugger. “Signed by Ted Williams, the Splen- Billy picks up the fallen revolver. He holds it out to
Billy did no such thing, but except for another did Splinter himself. Put it on eBay, it’d fetch seven his father, but Frank only looks at it. Granpop takes it
chest-hitching sob or two, he keeps quiet. He wish- thousand. Seven at least.” and puts it in the pocket where his wallet was. Frank
es he and Mary had never gone up to the Slide Inn, “How’d your sis come by it?” Galen asks, interest- just stands there, looking at Galen, lying facedown in
and when he looks at his father through blurry eyes, ed at last. He can see the signature, faded but legi- the weeds with the top of his head stove in.
he feels a moment of bright hate. It’s your fault, Dad, ble, on the barrel. “Granpop, Granpop!” Billy says, tugging the
he thinks. You ditched the car and these men stole our “Just gave him a smile and a wink when he came old man’s arm. His mouth is trembling, tears are
money and now they’re going to kill us. Granpop knows. down Autograph Alley,” Granpop says, and swings streaming down his cheeks, and snot lathers his
I can see he does. the bat. It connects with Galen’s temple. His scalp upper lip. “What if the fat one has another gun in
“Where’s your go-bag?” Galen asks. pops open like a window shade. Blood flies up. His their little truck?”
“In back with the rest of the luggage.” eyes squeeze shut in pain and surprise. He staggers, “What if we just get the hell out of here?” Gran-
“Get it.” one hand out and flailing, trying to keep his balance. pop says. “Corinne, you drive. I can’t. Kids, get in
Granpop goes to the Buick, which is still idling. “Get the other one, Frankie!” Granpop shouts. back.” He’s not even sure he can sit, he’s fucked up
He gives a grunt as he raises the tailgate; that’s his “Take him down!” his back most righteously, but he’ll have to do it, no
back trying to cramp up. Back goes first, pecker Frank doesn’t move, just stands there with his matter how much it hurts.
goes last, everything else in between, his own fa- mouth open. Corinne closes the tailgate. The kids take one more
ther used to say. Pete stares at Galen, for a precious moment com- look up the overgrown driveway to see if Pete is com-
The bag is just like Pete’s, with a zipper along the pletely stunned, but the moment passes. He turns ing back, then they run for the wagon.
top, except it’s longer—more like a duffel bag than the gun toward Granpop. Billy springs at him. Granpop goes to his son. “You had a chance and
a bowling bag. He runs the zipper and spreads the “No!” Corinne shouts. “Billy, no!” just stood there. You could have got me killed. Got all
bag open. Billy grabs Pete’s arm, bringing it down, and of us killed.” Granpop slaps Frank across the face just
“No gun in there, Gramps, is there?” Galen asks. when Pete fires the gun, the slug goes into the as he, Granpop, was slapped by the man who now
“No, no, that’s for boys like you, but looka this.” ground between his feet. Galen straightens, one lies dead at their feet. “Get in, son. Maybe you’re too
Granpop brings out a battered old softball glove. hand clutching the station wagon’s raised tailgate. old to help what you are, I don’t know.”
“The sister I was telling you about? This was hers. I Granpop winds up, ignoring a howl of protest from Frank walks to the front passenger side like a man
brought it for her to look at if she hasn’t passed on his back, and hits the redhead in the ribs with 33 in a dream and gets in. Granpop opens the door be-
yet. Or in a coma. She wore it in the Women’s World ounces of solid Kentucky ash. Galen’s knees buck- hind him and finds he can’t bend down. So he falls
Series, out in Okie City. Played shortstop. Before the le and his gasp—“Pete, shoot this fucker!”—is hard- backward onto the seat, pulling his legs in after him
Second World War, if you can believe it. And lookit ly more than a whisper. Granpop raises the bat. with little whimpers of pain. Mary crawls over him
this!” He turns the glove over. There’s another shot, but he’s not hit (at least he to close the door and that hurts, too. It’s not just his
“Gramps,” Galen says, “all due respect but I don’t doesn’t think so), and he brings the bat down on back, feels like he’s busted his gut.
give a chicken-fried fuck.” Galen’s lowered head. Galen falls facefirst in one “Granpop, are you all right?” Corinne asks. She’s
“Yeah, but here on the back,” Granpop persists. of the Buick wagon’s tire treads. looking back. Frank is staring straight ahead through
“See it? Signed by Dom DiMaggio. Joltin’ Joe’s broth- Pete tries to shake Billy off, but Billy holds on like the windshield. His hands are on his knees.
er, you know.” a ferret, his eyes bulging and his teeth digging in- “I’m all right,” Granpop says, although he isn’t.
He tosses the glove aside and burrows into the to his lower lip. The gun waves here and there and He’d like to have about six of the painkillers his sister
bag again. “Got about two hundred baseball cards, goes off a third time, sending a bullet into the sky. no doubt has from her oncologist, but Nan is a hun-
some signed and worth money—” “Now you, motherhump,” Granpop snarls. dred miles from here and he doesn’t think they’ll be
Pete grabs Billy’s arm and twists it. Billy screams. Pete at last flings Billy away, but before he can seeing her today. No, not today. “Drive.”
“Don’t!” Corinne screams back. “Don’t hurt raise the gun, Granpop brings the bat down on his “Did you really have that money, Granpop?” Bil-
my boy!” wrist, breaking it. The gun drops onto the ground. ly asks as his mother starts back the way they came,
“It’s your boy’s fault you’re in this mess,” Pete says. Pete turns and runs, leaving his not-a-bowling-bag going much faster than Frank dared to. Wanting to
“Snoopy little brat.” Then, to Granpop: “We don’t on the ground. put the Slide Inn behind them. And the Slide Inn
want no fuckin’ baseball cards!” The two children fling themselves at Granpop, Road—that, too.
Mary is crying, Corinne is crying, Billy sees his dad hugging him and almost knocking him over. He push- “Course not,” Granpop says. He wipes tears from
looking ready to pass out, and Granpop doesn’t seem es them away. His old heart is hammering and if it his granddaughter’s face and hugs her against him.
to care about any of them. Granpop has retreated just gave out, he wouldn’t be a bit surprised. It hurts, but he does it.
into his own world. “What about funny books?” he “Billy, get the fat one’s bag. Our goods are in it and “Granpop,” she says, “you left Aunt Nan’s spe-
says. He brings out a handful and brandishes them. I don’t think I can bend over.” cial baseball bat.”
“The Archies and Caspers wouldn’t fetch nothing, The boy doesn’t, maybe the gunshots deafened “That’s all right,” Granpop says, stroking her hair.
but there’s a few old Supermans . . . and a Batman or him a little, but the girl does. She throws the bag in- It’s all sweaty and tangled. “Maybe we’ll get it later.”
two, one where he fights the Joker. . . .” to the back of the station wagon and then rubs her Frank finally speaks. “We passed a Red Apple
“I think I’m going to tell Pete to shoot your son hands on the front of her unicorn tee. store on 196 just before we turned off. I’ll call the
if you don’t stop stalling,” Galen says. “Is the mon- “Frank,” Granpop says, “is that redhaired police from there.” He turns and looks at the old man.
ey there or not?” boy dead?” There’s a red mark on his cheek from the slap. “This
“Yeah,” Granpop says, “down at the bottom, but I Frank doesn’t move, but Corinne kneels next is your fault, Dad. It’s all on you. We had to bring
got something else that might interest you.” to Galen. After several seconds she looks up, her your fucking car, didn’t we? If we’d had the Volvo—”
“I’m all done being interested,” Galen says. He eyes very blue under her pale forehead. “He’s not “Shut up, Frank,” Corinne says. “Please. Just
steps forward. “I’ll just get the money myself. If it’s breathing.” this once.”
there at all. Get out of my way.” “Well, that’s no great loss to the world,” Gran- And Frank does.
“Oh, wake up,” Granpop says. “This would fetch pop says. “Billy, get that gun. Keep your hands away
twice what I got for cash.” He brings out the Louis- from the trigger.” Thinking of Flannery O’Connor.

101 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

THE KIDS ARE NOT East Valley. In Queen Creek, Sheila and Greg, Tyler
CREDITS
ALL RIGHT Hedstrom’s parents, and Deanna Bencomo got STORE INFORMATION
involved with a nonprofit cofounded by Katey For the items featured in Esquire, please consult the website or
(continued from page 99)
McPherson, Project Connect Four, to draw atten- call the phone number provided.
1,750 students, ranging from grades nine to twelve. tion to the deaths of local teens. The group had
The Short Stories, p. 20: Cartier watch, cartier.com. Caruso jacket,
Last March, she presented her findings at a public demonstrated outside Queen Creek High School, mrporter.com. P. 22: L. L. Bean x Todd Snyder vest, jacket, boots,
meeting. Queen Creek’s teens, she told the audi- holding up signs that read, YOU MATTER. and hat, toddsnyder.com. Todd Snyder trousers, toddsnyder
ence, were at or below average levels in several cat- As far as McPherson could tell, there had been .com. P. 24: Polo Ralph Lauren vest, similar styles on ralphlauren
egories, from substance abuse to “rule breaking.” just four teen suicides in the region in the first nine .com. The Elder Statesman socks, elder-statesman.com. Wool-
But when it came to anxiety and depression, the months of the year, a marked decrease from the rich parka, woolrich.com. Blundstone boots, blundstone.com.
rates in the town were “elevated and notable.” year prior. Like many of the East Valley parents I The Society Archive bag and sunglasses, thesocietyarchive.com.
Around 40 percent had reported not having a sin- spoke to, she believed the drop was largely due to Taylor Stitch jacket and shirt, taylorstitch.com. P. 25: Levi’s Autho-
rized Vintage jeans, 646-613-1847. Chamula cardigan sweater,
gle adult at school in whom they could confide. the programs and policies that schools and gov-
standardandstrange.com. Filson backpack, ŵOVRQFRP &DUKDUWW
Last fall, I met with several community leaders ernments were putting into place. “Right now,
WIP trousers, us.carhartt-wip.com. Yuketen boots, yuketen
from Queen Creek in a conference room of a thank God, it’s been really quiet,” she said. “We’re
.com. The Society Archive shirts, thesocietyarchive.com. Closed
municipal complex in the town’s small downtown. making progress.” She knocked on the tabletop. x Nigel Cabourn jacket, closed.com. East Harbour Surplus hat,
The mood was strained. “I came from a district in “I hope we’re making progress.” eastharboursurplus.com. Aether Apparel jacket, aetherapparel
northern Arizona, and we were bordered by a Whether the progress will hold is unclear. In .com. Patagonia jacket, patagonia.com. Napa by Martine Rose
Navajo reservation—very different dynamic, high response to the coronavirus, many schools in the jacket, ssense.com. P. 28: Fear of God Exclusively for Ermeneg-
poverty. And we had suicides there, too,” Perry East Valley have been maintaining online-only or ildo Zegna coat, sweater, trousers, and sneakers, zegna.com.
Berry, the Queen Creek School District superin- hybrid schedules this fall, and perhaps beyond. The P. 29: Bottega Veneta coat, turtleneck, and shirt, bottegaveneta
tendent, told me. “I would assume that if you talk community’s various awareness and prevention .com. Auralee jacket and knit, ssense.com. Hilton by Hilton
Turner suit and shirt, hiltonturner.com. P. 34: Au Départ Paris
to other districts throughout any part of the state, efforts have been hampered, too. Organizations
bag, audepart.com. B|M|C suit, a Made to Measure offering
it’s happening. Do you know what I’m saying?” have done their best to adapt—NotMYKid, Joronda
available through B|M|C Personal Tailoring on bmcstudio.com.
But all that proved was the magnitude of the prob- Montaño’s group, has been running mental-health-
Suitsupply shirt, suitsupply.com. Stone Island jacket, stoneisland
lem, not its absence. awareness sessions over Zoom that focus on cop- .com. Polo Ralph Lauren suit, ralphlauren.com. Banana Republic
I pressed Berry and assistant superintendent ing skills and self-care; Deanna Bencomo moved turtleneck, bananarepublic.com.
Cord Monroe about the criticism of the town’s her fundraising efforts for suicide-prevention pro- Matthew Rhys, p. 76: Fendi coat, fendi.com. Loro Piana turtle-
response to the deaths. Monroe said that the school grams online. In September, at a high school in neck sweater, loropiana.com. Boglioli trousers, bogliolimilano
was bound by the wishes of the victims’ parents, Chandler, Arizona governor Doug Ducey and state .com. The Frye Company boots, thefryecompany.com. P. 77:
some of whom may not want it publicly known health director Cara Christ held a press conference Canali sweater and trousers, canali.com. John Lobb boots,
how their child died. “It’s a delicate balance” he to address the issue. Christ said that it would be sev- johnlobb.com. P. 78: Giorgio Armani coat, sweater, and trousers,
armani.com. Wolverine boots, wolverine.com. P. 79: Loro Piana
said. Berry added that the district had improved eral months until they had concrete data regarding
turtleneck sweater, loropiana.com. P. 81: Ralph Lauren coat and
its outreach efforts. “We got a lot smarter about the effect the pandemic has had on suicide rates.
trousers, ralphlauren.com. Taylor Stitch T-shirt, taylorstitch.com.
communicating with teachers, communicating Ducey noted that researchers had reported a three-
John Lobb boots, johnlobb.com. P. 82: Dolce & Gabbana coat,
with fellow students.” fold jump in depression since the start of the pan- suit, shirt, and boots, dolcegabbana.com. P. 83: Prada jacket,
demic. “Many of them are struggling during this shirt, and trousers, prada.com. Thom Browne shoes, 212-633-
RECENTLY, I PRINTED OUT A MAP OF THE time of increased isolation and heightened stress,” 1197. P. 84: Gucci coat, jacket, shirt, and trousers, gucci.com.
East Valley. Using little red pins, I marked the site he added. “And we must be there for them.” Wolverine boots, wolverine.com. P. 85: Hermès coat, turtleneck
of each death, from Marcus Wheeler until the lat- There’s reason to believe that the East Valley sweater, and trousers, hermes.com.
est, in early August of this year, in an attempt to will follow through on that promise. A new bill,
(ISSN 0194-9535) is published six times a year (with
create a sky-level view of the cluster. It didn’t take S.B. 1468, went into effect at the start of the school combined issues in April/May, Summer, October/November, and Winter, and
long for the map to become a wash of red. There year. The legislation, a revived version of the one when future combined issues are published that count as two issues, as indi-
cated on the issue’s cover), by Hearst, 300 West 57th St., NY, NY 10019 USA.
were the loose groupings, separated by a few miles that failed three years ago, requires school dis- Steven R. Swartz, President and Chief Executive Officer; William R. Hearst III,
or a town line. Then there were the tighter bun- tricts and charter schools in the state to provide Chairman; Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Executive Vice-Chairman. Hearst Magazine
Media, Inc.: Debi Chirichella, Acting President, Hearst Magazines Group,
dles of victims from the same school, or even the suicide-prevention training to teachers and guid- and Treasurer; John A. Rohan, Jr., Senior Vice President, Finance; Catherine
same sports team. Forty-seven names in all. Even- ance counselors working with students in middle A. Bostron, Secretary. © 2020 by Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All rights re-
served. Esquire, Man at His Best, Dubious Achievement Awards, The Sound
tually, I ran out of pins. school and high school. “Suicides can be pre- and the Fury, and are registered trademarks of Hearst Communications,
Inc. Periodicals postage paid at N. Y., N. Y., and additional entry post offices.
In September 2019, I had lunch with Katey vented when a student displaying warning signs Canada Post International Publications mail product (Canadian distribution)
McPherson at a café in Gilbert. She was about to is identified and counseled,” Sean Bowie, the sales agreement no. 40012499. Editorial and Advertising Offices: 300 West
57th St., NY, NY 10019-3797. Send returns (Canada) to Bleuchip Internation-
launch a program called One Gilbert, a sui- young state senator who cosponsored it with fel- al, P. O. Box 25542, London, Ontario N6C 6B2. Subscription prices: United
cide-awareness program backed by the then- low Democrat Mitzi Epstein, said in a statement States and possessions, $7.97 a year; Canada and all other countries, $19.97
a year. Subscription services: Esquire will, upon receipt of a complete sub-
mayor, Jenn Daniels, a young mother of four who after the bill became law last year. “Our bill pro- scription order, undertake fulfillment of that order so as to provide the first
was committed to raising awareness and increas- vides a critical tool for educators to spot those copy for delivery by the Postal Service or alternate carrier within four to six
weeks. From time to time, we make our subscriber list available to com-
ing services in her town. McPherson said she was warning signs in their students who are at risk.” panies that sell goods and services by mail that we believe would interest
our readers. If you would rather not receive such mailings via postal mail,
tired. But she was also cautiously optimistic. Local It’s known as the Mitch Warnock Act. please send your current mailing label or an exact copy to Mail Preference
politicians were giving voice to the problem in a McPherson attended the signing ceremony. After Service, P. O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593. You can also visit preferences
.hearstmags.com to manage your preferences and opt out of receiving
way they never had. And more residents were it ended, she sent me a photograph from the state- marketing offers by e-mail. For customer service, changes of address, and
actively working toward destigmatizing the topic. house. In it, the governor, sitting at a desk, is hold- subscription orders, log on to service.mag.com or write to Customer Service
Department, Esquire, P. O. Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593. Esquire is not respon-
Lorie Warnock and several of her friends had ing up the inked copy of the Mitch Warnock Act while sible for unsolicited manuscripts or art. None will be returned unless accom-
formed Parents for Suicide Prevention and were a small crowd looks on. Directly behind him stand panied by return postage and envelope. Canada BN NBR 10231 0943 RT.
Postmaster: Please send address changes to Esquire, P. O. Box 6000, Harlan,
distributing pamphlets to families throughout the Lorie and Tim Warnock. Both are clapping. IA 51593. Printed in the USA.

102 O C TOB E R / NOV E M B E R 2020

TIME INSTRUMENTS
FOR URBAN EXPLORERS
 T H I S WAY OU T DEC LA RAT IONS

104
ROOTED
IN NATURE
DIGESTION • IMMUNIT Y • VITALIT Y
We believe Mother Nature is the world’s greatest healer. That’s why
our Synergy raw kombucha embodies Nature’s perfect gifts of active
nutrients with naturally occurring probiotics that revitalize your body
from the inside out.

gtslivingfoods.com