“And How Political is Their Notorious ‘Girl Power’?”: Kathy Acker’s 1997 Spice Girls Profile

Fifty-second street. West Side, New York City. Hell’s Kitchen – one of those areas into which no one would once have walked unless loaded. Guns or drugs or both. But now it has been gentrified: the beautiful people have won. A man in middle-aged-rocker uniform, tight black jeans and nondescript T-shirt, lets Nigel, the photographer, and me through the studio doorway; then a chipmunk-sort-of-guy in shorts, with a Buddha tattooed on one of his arms, greets us warmly. This is […]

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Afternoon Bites: Lunch at the NYPL, Cats With Money, Charles Portis, and more

Pegged to an exhibition on lunch (!) that’s opening at the New York Public Library on Friday, there’s a brief history of the Automat over at the NYT. “Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians! I am genuinely stunned by this. Since you appear to love first generation Indie Rock, and as a founding member of a first generation Indie Rock […]

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