Zach Helfand

1 month ago | businessandamerica.com | Zach Helfand

Stulman’s willingness to have the police settle the dispute gave him the upper hand. Ultimately, Messer went to his car and relinquished Elvis. “We figured it was over,” he said. On Great Jones Street, Stulman put the bust back on display. “You’re hunting for Elvis?” Gaver asked. She explained that they’d given it back already. “Here’s the deal,” Tufano said. “A complaint was made about the Elvis bust, O.K.? We’re not, like, booming your door and dragging you outta here in handcuffs.

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Zach Helfand

When someone stole the Great Jones Street Elvis, a few years ago, a lot of people viewed it as a sign that the old East Village was officially dead. The Elvis was a chalk-plaster bust that had stood in the window of 54 Great Jones for thirty-seven years. It started out in the Great Jones Café, a gathering spot for the downtown arts scene in the eighties, and after the café closed, in 2018, it continued on in a new restaurant there called Jolene. The theft was unusually brazen.

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Zach Helfand

Everywhere you look these days, norms are collapsing, rules are disappearing, and chaos prevails among the élites. The latest: last week, the Yankees decided to eliminate their long-standing ban on beards. Depending on one’s leanings, the ban was either a quasi-authoritarian assertion of corporate control over personal expression or a symbol of professionalism and institutional stability.

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Zach Helfand

Many books exist, but many more don’t. Why does a book come about? There’s ego, politics, the human condition, man’s yearning for understanding. Books fail to exist for the same reasons. Authors destroy books because of ego. Emperors destroy them because of politics. Books get lost because of misunderstandings: Hemingway’s partially completed first novel vanished after he asked his wife to meet him in Lausanne with the manuscript.

Dec 15, 2024 | newyorker.com | Zach Helfand

Tazewell is the costume designer for the new “Wicked” movie and is considered a favorite for an Oscar. He was out for a walk in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which is around the corner from his home, and whose flora had provided inspiration for a lot of his designs—bluebells, Fibonacci spirals, ferns. “Nature seemed really appropriate,” he said.