At Esquire, Ian Frisch writes of the love he and his mom share for poker, and of how his mother turned to the game not only as a way to deal with the hand life dealt her, but also to attempt to support him and his sister after the sudden death of their father.
My mother had first started playing poker for the fun and for the intellectual challenge. Returning to competition twenty years later, she rediscovered old pleasures. She was playing not only to make money but also as an emotional escape. At the table, she wasn’t a single mother without a steady job mourning her husband’s death. It was the only place she felt comfortable playing the villain, cutthroat and cruel, lying to strangers’ faces and getting paid for it. “I love having a nemesis at the table,” she once told me. “It gives me purpose.” To this day, at every table, she picks a player and slowly, steadily, hand by hand, tries to destroy them.
Playing poker with my mother has made me realize that life isn’t anything more than a series of well-timed bets, and that sometimes things don’t work out and there’s nothing you can do about it. A run of bad cards—during a poker game or in life—cannot be escaped, only endured.
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A baseball hat is more than just protection for your noggin and shade for your eyes. That structured object of cotton, wool, and/or polyester can speak volumes. Michael Clair’s fascinating dive into the simple headwear explores how teams came to adopt it in the first place, and — most interestingly — how a utilitarian piece of uniform crossed over into the fashion realm. (The visuals are great, too. From older styles to portraits of rappers donning their favorite caps, there’s a nice mix of vintage and modern.) I won’t look at my own collection quite the same.
“We can go to a seminal moment in the late ’80s when NWA emerges, particularly when Eazy E emerges in the White Sox hat,” Dr. Jabari Evans, an Assistant Professor of Race and Media at the University of South Carolina, said. “It’s one of those things that went from being something that was associated very strongly with where you’re from, and very strongly with being a fan of the sport, to transcending that and saying a statement about cool and saying a statement about aesthetics and saying a statement about athleisure and lifestyle.”
No longer was the cap merely a way to talk about your favorite ballclub, or even about the city you were from. It had now become a piece of fashion — one that was often synonymous with the people wearing them.
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Ken Eto was a numbers kingpin for Chicago’s biggest organized-crime syndicate — until that syndicate sent two hitmen after him in an empty parking lot. From an Idaho detainment camp to the streets of the Windy City, Dan O’Sullivan serves up an absolute barnburner of a story about the man known as Tokyo Joe.
“The sole goal of organized crime is to enrich the members. That’s all they care about,” says John J. Binder, author of Al Capone’s Beer Wars. And, while not Italian, Ken Eto was one of its biggest moneymakers. Eto’s lofty position in the Chicago underworld was unusual for an outsider, but the syndicate had always been more farsighted than other crime families in promoting gangsters of other ethnicities.
It was less a mark of tolerance than proof of its ambition. Ever since Capone first employed his squad of “American Boys” — a gang of Midwestern killers who looked more like police officers than Mafia hit men — non-Italians had occupied important positions in the Outfit. But all these men had been white. Ken Eto was not. And he wasn’t some despised underling; he was one of the bosses.
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Talk to any music journalist and you’ll hear a story of a song that entranced them on first listen, only to disappear into the ether forever. For The Believer — welcome back! — Ross Scarano pulls together a veritable Moth session of such stories, from a lost Johnny Cash number to a Kelis track that lives only on YouTube. A perfect reminder that for any cultural text we consume, an iceberg of what-could’ve-been lurks below.
In 2013, her favorite artist at the time, the Atlanta rapper and heart-on-his-sleeve balladeer Future, played an in-progress version of his sophomore album Honest for the magazine’s staff. One track, a gem of brooding horniness called “Good Morning,” imprinted on her in such a way that when a version of the song, with a similar melody and different lyrics, appeared months later as the Beyoncé single “Drunk in Love,” she felt as heartsick as she did proud. Both songs were produced by Detail and seemingly written around the same time, with the bigger star unsurprisingly winning rights to its release. (Future does not have a writing credit on Beyoncé’s song.) “‘Drunk in Love’ is an incredible song,” she says, “but it felt tragic that Future never released his version, which I thought proved his talent beautifully and which I had been waiting to hear again for months.” “Good Morning” was never commercially released, but there are rips and performances of it online. A decade later, Future remains a chart topper, but the real heads will always wonder about the path not taken.
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Kickstart your weekend by getting the week’s best reads, hand-picked and introduced by Longreads editors, delivered to your inbox every Friday morning.
A year in the life of a grieving mother. An afternoon of outcry. A peek into the life of a celebrity ghostwriter. A witness to a monarch migration. And the friendship behind sushi’s arrival in the U.S. Our favorite reads of the week (and a bit of pickled ginger for after), chosen from all of our editors’ picks.
Skip Hollandsworth | Texas Monthly | May 8, 2023 | 7,580 words
Years from now, when I think about this story — which will happen, because it’s that good — I will hear, no, feel the pounding of feet. Skip Hollandsworth’s profile of Kimberly Mata-Rubio opens with the subject jogging through Uvalde, Texas, pausing at a mural of her daughter, Lexi. The scene echoes the moment when, immediately after learning that there had been a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, Mata-Rubio began to run, barefoot over asphalt and through traffic, toward the building where her daughter was in the fourth grade, only to learn that Lexi was dead. “Kim could feel her feet throbbing,” Hollandsworth writes. “They were so bloodied and bruised she could barely walk.” A year after the massacre, the jog past Lexi’s mural is one of several ritual motions Mata-Rubio has adopted. She also goes to her daughter’s grave once, sometimes twice a day, never leaving Lexi alone for more than 24 hours, and regularly drives to the state Capitol to lobby for gun control. Mural, grave, Austin: Mata-Rubio goes and returns, again and again, like the tide. Other Uvalde parents do the same. Their patterns, like those of so many people who have lost loved ones in mass shootings, remind me of a Robert Frost poem: “The heart can think of no devotion / Greater than being shore to ocean / Holding the curve of one position / Counting an endless repetition.” How many more parents, children, spouses, friends will join this grieving army in their aching, unspeakable form of love? Will you be one of them? Will I? —SD
When Jordan Neely was killed on a New York City subway car last week, a special kind of ugliness broke the surface of our society. I don’t mean afterward, when columnists and commentators used Daniel Penny’s lethal chokehold as some kind of ideological litmus test. I mean the killing itself. At the time, it was hard for me to articulate what exactly that ugliness was, but Arielle Isack clearly had no such difficulty: Her searing piece for n+1, which chronicles a subway platform vigil-turned-demonstration, makes no secret of her anger and hurt, and is all the better for it. Isack manages to render events and emotions with equal clarity, even as her sentences careen headlong through the afternoon, propelled by their own power. “A man in a faded Saints cap and glasses that magnified his eyes into giant watery lakes wailed 450,000 EMPTY APARTMENTS IN NEW YORK CITY! a figure that arced over the commotion and landed in the very center of our rage,” she writes of one moment. “I heard that number again and again throughout the afternoon; it focused everything into a dizzying lucidity we were thankful for, and furious about.” This isn’t argument, it’s testimony. It’s catharsis even in the absence of redemption or justice. And above all, it’s a call to remember that agitation — the very thing that supposedly made Jordan Neely a threat — is sometimes the only possible human reaction. —PR
J.R. Moehringer | The New Yorker | May 8, 2023 | 6,850 words
In mid-January, you may have noticed a little memoir called Spare hit the shelves. (If you were perusing certain Spanish bookshops, you might have noticed it even earlier.) The accompanying giant roar of publicity meant that even if you didn’t read the book, you couldn’t escape Prince Harry’s tales of fisticuffs with his brother, behind-the-pub escapades, and even his frostbitten penis. While the stories may have been his, though, the words were distinctly collaborative — and in this fascinating essay, ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer illuminates what it’s like to write for somebody else. Yes, he talks about Harry stuff, but he also addresses his own writing career and struggles with the anonymity of ghostwriting (at one point screaming “Say my name!” at a TV in a B&B). I enjoyed Moehringer’s honesty, self-awareness, and thoughtful analysis of the particular psychology this sort of writing requires — as well as the tidbits of gossip about people who are hell to work with. Moehringer got lucky with Harry; they had the right chemistry, and the success of Spare has brought the art of ghostwriting out of the shadows. (If you want to read about Harry’s blink-and-you-miss-it appearance at King Charles III’s coronation last weekend, along with some joyful descriptions of hats, I recommend Helen Lewis’ wonderfully amusing “King Charles’ Very Hobbity Coronation” from The Atlantic.) —CW
Romina Cenisio | Atmos | May 8, 2023 | 3,526 words
I once visited the butterfly garden at our local zoo. Witnessing so many of these colorful, delicate beings in person was a magical experience. The peace and tranquility in that space was palpable, something I wanted to bottle and release as needed. Romina Cenisio’s Atmos piece on the monarch butterfly migration recalls the singular joy that butterflies bring, along with critically important reminders of our role as humans to ensure the well-being of butterflies for generations to come. “As I lie on the ground with my eyes closed, a sound reminiscent of light rain surrounds me, subdues me,” she writes. “Yet unlike the steady drum of rain, the sound seems to move around from left to right, up and down, in both unison and disorder. At times a ticklish, ASMR sensation overcomes me as the sound gets closer, but no raindrops land on me. Opening my eyes moves me out of this gentle trance, reminding me that there is no rain; rather, there are millions of monarch butterflies shimmering overhead.” —KS
Daniel Miller | Los Angeles Times | May 3, 2023 | 3,855 words
In 1965, Noritoshi Kanai and Harry Wolff Jr. were on a trip to Japan, looking for an interesting food product to import to the U.S. Instead, one of their dinners in Tokyo led them to another idea: sushi. Daniel Miller recounts how the two men brought the Japanese cuisine to Los Angeles, at a time when the city felt primed for something new. Which restauranteurs and chefs were the first to add sushi to their menus? When were the sushi bar and the California roll invented? Accompanied by lovely illustrations by Yuko Shimuzu, this is a fun piece of regional foodie history — one that ultimately explores whether food can truly bring different people and cultures together. —CLR
Audience Award
It’s time for the piece our readers loved most this week — and the oversized trophy goes to:
Kate Wagner | The Baffler | May 9, 2023 | 3,375 words
In this smart critical essay, Kate Wagner, the writer behind the popular blog McMansion Hell, examines the McMansion: the uniquely American, 3,000-square-foot-plus, made-to-order home that’s a “durable emblem of our American way of life.”
Wagner explores the aesthetic of the latest generation of McMansions (from manufactured modern farmhouse to Disneyfied Craftsman), the evolution of its floor plan, its enduring popularity, and its alternatives in a time of environmental crisis. —CLR
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In something straight out of “The Great British Bake Off,” King Charles III declared an official quiche for his coronation. Helen Lewis ruminates on this and other glorious frivolities in this lovely essay, where she demonstrates a particular aptitude for hat descriptions. A piece that will get you quietly chortling, in a polite British way.
Petronella Wyatt offered my single favorite paragraph on the whole hoopla: “It is particularly disturbing that the Earl of Derby has not been asked to provide falcons, as his family have done since the 16th Century. These little things deprive people of their purpose in life.”
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It’s true that the national media, spurred in large part by culture-war opportunism, has unfairly painted San Francisco as a city in a death spiral. However, it’s also true that in certain quarters, gutted by the pandemic and vaporizing tech money and apathy, the most palpable vital sign is human misery. What that means for the city at large remains an unanswered question — but Elizabeth Weil’s Curbed piece, one of the few national stories written by an actual SF resident, tries to engage with it as well as one person can.
A note to my fellow San Franciscians: I’m sorry. I know. There’s always some story in the east-coast press about how our city is dying. San Franciscians hate—HATE—these pieces. You’re a stooge and a traitor for writing one. When I set out reporting, I wanted to write a debunking-the-doom piece myself. Yet to live in San Francisco right now, to watch its streets, is to realize that no one will catch you if you fall. In the first three months of 2023, 200 San Franciscans OD’ed, up 41 percent from last year.“It’s like a wasteland,” the guard said when I asked how San Francisco looked to him. “It’s like the only way to describe it. It’s like a video game — like made-up shit. Have you ever played Fallout?”
I shook my head.
“There’s this thing in the game called feral ghouls, and they’re like rotted. They’re like zombies.” There’s only so much pain a person can take before you disintegrate, grow paranoid, or turn numb. “I go home and play with my wife, and we’re like, ‘Ah, hahahaha, this is SF.’”
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