Jael Goldfine

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Jael Goldfine

The line for the new Bed-Stuy outpost of the Jamaican restaurant Juici Patties snaked down the block on a recent hot evening, making the intersection of Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue even more jammed than usual. Lawrence Wang, a thirty-seven-year-old political-communications strategist, was happy to see a crowd; he was looking for people to use in a man-on-the-street video.

Jun 20, 2024 | nyra.nyc | Jael Goldfine

I AM WALKING AROUND Hell’s Kitchen like a French Marxist. This is to say: slowly and weirdly. Dangerously. I have been told to “set aside all of my usual motives for movement and action,” and follow only what draws my attention. Stepping into Fifty-Fourth Street to beeline toward a crushed bed of magenta flowers sprinkled with dog shit, I am almost hit by a car. I am performing what’s called a dérive, which loosely means “drift” in French.

Oct 31, 2023 | nyra.nyc | Jael Goldfine

The middle class today telegraphs its status through gleaming marble countertops, stainless-steel appliances, and “home sweet home” pillows from Wayfair. In sixteenth-century England, the emergent “middling sort” of merchants—slotted below the land-owning gentry but above peasants—made a show of acquiring biblical textiles and washbowls.