Leah Mandel

1 month ago | van-magazine.com | Leah Mandel

“We have to find the Mystical Man,” my father said, in a room of Renaissance paintings on the ground floor of the recently reopened Frick Museum. Which Mystical Man? “He used to be here. You’ll recognize him.” We ventured upstairs to the newly accessible second floor, by way of the old staircase, once perpetually roped off, the organ above just barely in sight. In the sitting room among Medieval religious images was Hans Memling’s “Portrait of a Man,” from 1470, and I did indeed recognize him.

2 months ago | nyra.nyc | Leah Mandel

I was greeted by the disembodied voice of Robert Moses, proclaiming his intent to bring visitors “together in our shrinking globe.” “I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE,” proclaims a pin in the permanent collection of the Queens Museum, designed by Norman Bel Geddes for General Motors’ Futurama Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair.

Sep 25, 2024 | i-d.co | Leah Mandel

Cross-legged in the grass of Central Park’s Great Lawn, Bailey Wollowitz is playing Mastodon’s “Megalodon” on their phone. The song is from the prog metal band’s 2004 Moby Dick-themed concept album, Leviathan; Wollowitz got hip to the megalodon – an ancient species of shark that went extinct during the Pliocene and grew to almost 70 feet long – by way of this epic ode to oceanic legends and giant jaws.

Apr 28, 2024 | pitchfork.com | Leah Mandel

LustSickPuppy—who makes a madcap meld of punk, digital hardcore, rave, and rap—typically exerts a hyper-confident lusty indignation. It’s not that Tommy Hayes, the mind behind LustSickPuppy (LSP to the heads), doesn’t ever mention romance or melancholy within the turbulence of their mostly self-produced discography, which now totals 27 songs and a tad over 45 minutes, all counted.

Mar 14, 2024 | van-magazine.com | Leah Mandel

He’d never been to the opera, and I’d never been to the opera alone. Actually, I had never been to the opera without my father, and I was pretending to still be in love with my boyfriend even though I knew that I wasn’t, so I took him as my date. We’d almost broken up, taken a break, ended the break, broken up, and gotten back together within the span of two months, our ups-and-downs near-Verdian in their melodrama.