Seven years ago, Jonathan Van Meter, the writer and Vogue contributing editor, published an essay in New York magazine called "I Hate Brooklyn." Here is how it begins:

From there, the piece proceeds to many places you'd expect (hipsters, gentrification) and, [...]

In this coming Monday's New York magazine: "Tomorrow’s Hot Neighborhoods Today." Pack your bags, kiddos! You can only hope to live in "Twenty under-the-radar microneighborhoods that may just be the Next Big Thing, from McGolrick Park to the Lower East FiDi. Including: Four micro-micro-neighborhoods that are blossoming on side streets, thanks to a slew of new storefronts." Okay, if you are proposing McGolrick Park—Greenpoint's stretch of Nassau and Driggs on the far side of McGuinness, then times are strange. Mmm, the screaming emanating from PS110! And the Polish weeping at Arthur's Funeral Home! How delicious, a nine-block walk to the Nassau G train stop. Great for the unemployed! At [...]

The "Who Runs New York?" edition of New York magazine is surprisingly free-floating and pleasantly daft, stepping as it does right into the intellectual space ceded by the New York Observer. (Don't believe me? The inclusion of the phrase "moguls and machers, pooh-bahs and potentates" in New York's introduction is a dead giveaway.) And so who does run New York? The Brooklyn pullout goes for Cobble Hill heroes Jonathan Ames, writer and troublemaker, and Rebecca Collerton, proprietor of New York City's best sandwich shop, Saltie. The photo of City Hall's open plan office is fantastic. The mini-profile of Gawker Media blog honcho Nick Denton [...]

Today's blockbuster on Why Parents Hate Parenting really tries to wrap up on a sunny note. After a huge stretch explaining how children became parents' bosses instead of household servants, and how everyone with a child is pretty much miserable and has no life, the article tries to put on the big spin that people are happier if they've has a "purposeful" life: "About twenty years ago, Tom Gilovich, a psychologist at Cornell, made a striking contribution to the field of psychology, showing that people are far more apt to regret things they haven't done than things they have. In one instance, he followed up on the men and [...]

Dear New York magazine,

My baby. My baby! Recently my baby had some tests. My baby is 2.5 months old. My baby! Sometimes my baby seems different than other babies. My baby should have be accepted to a very good college in the year 2025. My baby likes yams and dislikes all loud noises that are not the sound cows make. My baby has good arm strength but bad color-name recognition. My baby! Last night I had a dream that my baby had a prehensile tail, and when I woke up, I confess that I wished it was true. Oh, sometimes I think my baby is really listening to [...]

This weekend, I found myself in a bathroom that time forgot, and there was a copy of New York magazine's 1991 fall fashion issue. The third best part: the fashion edit was spectacular. It was like the first round of new wave flashbacks, and it was like a neon sign shop threw up on Taylor Dayne, with Samantha Foxx singing backup. Girls on the wet streets with smoke machines, with a hand sassily on the hip! The second best part was that David Blum was listed as a contributing editor. But the absolute first best part was the blow-in subscription card.

Oh dear, here we go again: “Wall Street is a meritocracy, for the most part,” an irate but of course unnamed onetime Citigroup executive confides to junior father confessor Gabriel Sherman in this week’s hallucinatory New York magazine cover story, “The Emasculation of Wall Street.” “If someone has a bonus, it’s because they’ve created value for their institution.”

In the jumpy, suggestible universe of Gabe Sherman, Wall Street sleuth, things really are that simple: The beleaguered financial overclass creates value, in a rationally ordered system of maximally awarded talent. And the clueless public sector, intoxicated on post-meltdown regulatory prerogative, meddles with the primal forces of nature, skews executive [...]

New York mag editor Adam Moss finally goes on the record: he is not, contrary to the last ten years of reports, a micromanager. "I totally dispute it." God bless!

The confusing end of this bit by New York Times blogger Jeremy Peters seems to indicate that New York magazine loses money: "So has all that attention translated into being profitable? [Publisher Lawrence] Burstein pauses. [Editor Adam] Moss interjects, 'We're not,' he said. 'We do expect to be profitable next year.'" Pictured: The March 10, 1975 ad for New York inside New York.

Big news! Coming in Monday's New York magazine! A plot twist in the long-established narrative of New York City rich people parenting! The Misery of the American Parent, by Jennifer Senior "Social-science researchers keep coming to the same conclusion: having children makes adults unhappy. Why? Maybe it's because American parents are demanding more of themselves than ever before. Or maybe it's because we've forgotten what 'happiness' actually means. A look at why parents hate parenting."

Do you know what everyone is eating? The English breakfast. That's right: "Lately, that morning meal has become all the rage in New York," says New York. English breakfast should not to be confused with the Irish breakfast, which comes with "black pudding" (that's congealed blood!) and "white pudding" (that's fat and oatmeal, essentially). Why aren't you stuffing your face with sausage right now, you bollockey bastard bloater?

So there's a huge Joe Hagan article in New York mag with the undeliverable-upon headline "Is Goldman Sachs Evil?" (Not answered.) Hagan sets up the article because he sees something menacing and threatening in the fact that Goldman brought a giant team to the big emergency meeting between banks led by Hank Paulson at the Federal Reserve, where the goal was to "save" AIG. But Goldman brings a huge team to a meeting of the Ladies' Sunday Afternoon Tea Society. Any in-house conversation at Goldman involves cc:ing 20 or 30 people on an email. It's their culture, and there's not anything menacing in it-it's just irritating, and probably time-wasteful. [...]

I can summarize the well-informed tripartite New York magazine cover story on Wall Street, while eliding all the details: pretty much no one learned anything, rich people really enjoying spending money, it's not unlikely there'll be a round two mortgage debacle, Wall Street is more consolidated than ever and poses a "greater systemic risk," we're off to enjoy/exploit the BRICs (and CIVETs and EAGLEs, et al), even though Goldman Sachs, among others, took a bath on them over the last few years, slightly fewer Harvard MBA graduates are going straight into Big Finance (they're all becoming consultants, which, same diff!), and lots of people on Wall [...]

Sarah Palin is displeased with New York magazine. In an interview with Mary Hart of "Entertainment Tonight," the former Alaska governor complains that restaurant critic Adam Platt "lacks the sparkle and wit of [predecessor] Gael Greene, and confuses didacticism for profound culinary insight… Platt seems to think that economical prose is the mise en place of proper food criticism, when, really, you want the ambiance and flavor to sing out from each walloping word." Kidding! She's actually upset with the current cover story, which is a silly piece about how she could be elected president. But wouldn't the other thing be kind of awesome?

The word is douche bag. Douche space bag. People will insist that it's one closed-up word-douchebag-but they are wrong. When you cite the dictionary as proof of the division, they will tell you that the entry refers to a product women use to clean themselves and not the guy who thinks it's impressive to drop $300 on a bottle of vodka. You will calmly point out that, actually, the definition in Merriam-Webster is "an unattractive or offensive person" and not a reference to Summer's Eve. They will then choose to ignore you and write it as one word anyway.

I know this because, during my three-plus years as [...]

"You schmoes of America, rally 'round your bard! You sad sacks in sweaters, undershirts untucked and dangling below your belts! You frustrated artists, you terrified fathers: Do not be ashamed of your increasing girth, your outré sexual fantasies, your rampant neck-beard. One lonely man sings your song. His name is Sam Lipsyte, and right now he is eating a jelly doughnut." -Reviewing Sam Lipsyte's new book was obviously just a way for Awl pal Dan Kois to justify neck-beards and middle-aged belly creep in New York Magazine.

Monday, in New York magazine! "Dog-walking with the novelist and vegetarian polemicist Jonathan Safran Foer"! Also! "Circumcision: For and Against"!

The most bizarre portion of New York magazine's story on lawyer-swindler (tautology! ok, sorry) Marc Dreier, about his son Spencer:

With his mother waiting outside, Spencer delivered his speech. "He said no one should be deserting his father because his father gave them so much," says someone who was there. "It was bizarre." The lawyers in the room were livid. One even started shouting: "I'm not going to listen to you! You have no place in here! This is a partnership meeting. You're not a partner!" Spencer even apparently came back to 499 Park Avenue the next day, trying to get in, when the guards stopped him. "He said, [...]