★★★ A sunburst as big around as a pencil flared through the bottom corner of the door of the empty apartment across the hall, where the weatherstripping failed to meet the jamb. Outside, the sun was down in among the lumber propping up the plywood construction wall where the next apartment tower will go. Light worked its way around the cross streets by the Flatiron. Months of accumulated insulating side-thatch of hair were now left behind on the barbershop floor, and where the straight razor had scraped the skin bare, the air was cold tonic. In Madison Square Park, the light caught the pale angles of the sculpture of nested polyhedra exactly the way it caught the pale angles of the tree branches above it.

Two hearts, separated by time and history, yet united by later time and later history: This is the story of America’s most beloved public figures, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, and the deep relationship they shared.

It was a different time, in the 1990s, and our society was not ready for these two men to publicly show such affection for one another. Like so many before them, Clinton and Nixon confined their relationship to letters and the occasional televised media event at the White House. Correspondence between the two star-crossed presidents is part of a new exhibit at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.

In another glimpse into their relationship, a handwritten note will be on display from Nixon to Clinton that praises the former Arkansas governor’s 1992 presidential campaign that helped put him in the White House. Nixon said the campaign was one of the best he had ever witnessed.

“The strongest steel must pass through the hottest fire. In enduring that ordeal you have demonstrated that you have the character to lead not just America but the forces of peace and freedom in the world,” Nixon wrote.

[Clinton] led the nation in paying tribute to Nixon at his funeral in California in April 1994, declaring, “May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.”

On this Valentine’s Day, perhaps we can all learn a lesson from these two great men. Perhaps we can love one another, after all.

Photo courtesy of the William J. Clinton Library.

“If you want to know who is more likely to spout any racist beliefs they may have, scientists say you should study their face. A study found men with wider, shorter, faces were more likely to express racial prejudice. This facial shape has been shown to indicate higher than average testosterone levels and linked to more aggressive behaviour. However, researchers from the University of Delaware believe in this case those with wide faces are less likely to bow to social pressure.”

The Best New York Stories From Marc Spitz’s ‘Poseur,’ Mapped

by Sarah Stodola

The new book by music critic Marc Spitz, Poseur: A Memoir of Downtown New York City in the ’90s, out this week from Da Capo Press, is a wistful, candid recounting of Spitz’s struggles with career, love and drugs as he made his way into adulthood. The memoir’s also enjoyable for its many anecdotes of downtown New York during the 90s, the time when Chloë Sevigny was coming off Kids, the actress Adrienne Shelly was the reigning indie queen, and Bennington graduates seemed to be everywhere. Spitz’s anecdotes about the actors and musicians he meets have a wayward namedropping charm — they also, all together, form a fascinating portrait of the people and places that made that era in the city so vivid. Below, a map to 16 of the most notable encounters.

ALLEN GINSBERG, POET
St Mark’s Church
131 E 10th Street at 2nd Avenue

St. Mark’s Church, always an auspicious location for a Ginsberg sighting. Spitz got his on the books on New Year’s Day 1989 during the church’s annual poetry marathon, where Ginsberg’s partner Peter Orlovsky was reading. Ginsberg entered and approached Spitz, clearly expecting him to give up his front-and-center seat. Spitz was too dumfounded to move, but a neighbor made room for the poet. First impression of Ginsberg: “Older gent, gray bearded and balding in a well-made tweed coat and complex patterned ‘Cosby’ sweater, the kind my Grandma D would have loved to knit me.”

SHIRLEY CLARKE, FILMMAKER
Chelsea Hotel
222 West 23rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues

Knowing how many great artists had passed through the Chelsea, Spitz secured a room there while working at The Kitchen, an experimental art space nearby. One night, while having tea with a couple new neighbors in the hotel, an old woman came in and sat next to him on the couch. “I thought this was merely a cool-looking, frail, artsy-fartsy old duck here,” Spitz writes. It wasn’t. It was avant-garde filmmaker Shirley Clarke. They later went to see Born on the Fourth of July and eat dinner at El Quijote, in the basement of the Chelsea. What did Clarke think of the Cruise movie? She tsked loudly, said “Oh my god” a lot, then fell asleep midway through leaning against Spitz.

JULIA CHAPLIN, WRITER
Holiday Cocktail Lounge
75 St. Mark’s Place between 1st and 2nd Avenues

Boy walks into a bar, boy meets writer from his favorite magazine. That’s the stuff New York dreams are made of, and it happened to Spitz one evening at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, one of the classic dive bars in the old East Village. “I’m a cool hunter,” she told him. “What the fuck is a cool hunter?” he responded, a few drinks in. But they became friends anyway. The writer was Julia Chaplin, then of Spin. (Spitz would make a name for himself at the magazine a few years later.)

ADRIENNE SHELLY, ACTRESS
Two Boots
201 W 11th Street at Greenwich

Magnolia Bakery
401 Bleecker Street at W 11th

Spitz met Shelly in the baggage claim after a JetBlue flight to New York from LA, and the two shared a cab into the city, where Shelly, sensing Spitz was in a bad (drug-induced) way, looked out for him, making him an impromptu gift of sixty dollars. Period detail: Shelly had just appeared on the cover of Spin “tongue-kissing Evan Dando” above the cover line, “’S’ Is for Sex in the ‘90s.” They met up again some time later near Shelly’s West Village apartment. After pizza at Two Boots, she bought him a banana pudding (also my favorite) at Magnolia. “Every time you feel like it’s getting too much, I want you to go in there and get a banana pudding,” she told him.

GORDON LISH, EDITOR
Apartment Building
5th Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets

When Spitz learned that Gordon Lish was his cousin, he believed he’d found his big break. “Gordon Lish could make you into something,” Spitz recalled thinking. Lish took an initial interest in Spitz, getting him into his infamous writing seminar, which Spitz proceeded to despise. He made it to the second class before getting himself kicked out for a rash of contemptuous smirks and the donning of a t-shirt bearing the name of Philips Exeter, the prep school which had itself kicked out Lish.

SUCHI ASANO, IGGY POP’S WIFE
Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore
716 Broadway at Washington Place

As he recovered from a drug breakdown, Spitz took a job at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. When a woman with pink hair and crazy clothes began working there, no one knew where she’d come from. Turns out she was Suchi Asano, Iggy Pop’s wife, which didn’t stop Spitz from making out with her after drinks one night.

CHLOË SEVIGNY, ACTRESS
Don Hill’s
511 Greenwich Street at Spring St.

Max Fish
178 Ludlow Street between Houston and Stanton

Spitz met Sevigny in the bathroom line at Don Hill’s, the Soho club that used to host a popular dance party called Squeezbox. (Into every New York hipster’s bathroom line, a little Chloë Sevigny once fell. It happened to me one time at Lit.) He accidentally burned her with his cigarette, then made an attempt at small talk, figuring the ice had been broken for him. Then: “She went to the bathroom, and I went to the bathroom, and when I came out, she was gone. If I find her again, it’s meant to be,” he told himself. He did find her. “Do you dance?” she asked him. And he did, with her, until she left the club, having written her number on his hand. They subsequently went on two dates, one at Holiday Cocktail Lounge, one at Max Fish, before realizing that in fact, it was not meant to be.

TONI COLLETTE, ACTRESS
Halo
49 Grove Street at Bleecker

The cast and crew of a play Spitz had written decamped one night to Halo. Toni Collette, who’d recently starred in the rock biopic Velvet Goldmine and who was a friend of a friend, tagged along in a crowd that also at times included Jennifer Connelly, Josh Hamilton and Peter Dinklage. As Spitz tells it, Collette called him cute and then “entered into a debate with this woman about whether or not I actually was nice looking.” The debate must have come out in Spitz’s favor, because he got her number. After a single awkward coffee date, he never heard from her again.

LEGS MCNEIL, MUSIC WRITER
Bob Gruen’s apartment
The Westbeth
55 Bethune Street between Washington St and the Westside Highway

Spitz went to a party at rock photographer Bob Gruen’s apartment in the famous Westbeth, and was introduced to one of his true heroes, the legendary music writer Legs McNeil. Spitz expressed trepidation about a punk book he was writing. Legs’ advice? “Just write about who was fucking who,” he laughed. “Seriously.” Spitz calls it one of the happiest nights of his life.

JOE STRUMMER, LEAD SINGER OF THE CLASH
Toad Hall
57 Grand Street at West Broadway

Bar 13
35 E 13th Street at University Place

Amongst a group of friends at Toad Hall one night were Damien Hirst, Blur’s bassist and, most importantly to Spitz, Joe Strummer. A few drinks (and joint hits) in, Strummer declared, “Let’s go fucking dance, man. I know just the place.” The place was Bar 13, and they had a blast. Strummer would be dead less than a year later.

RYAN ADAMS, MUSICIAN
Niagara
112 Avenue A at E 7th

Ryan Adams had already hit it big with his first two solo albums, Heartbreaker and Gold, when Spitz was sent to cover his work on a third one in New Orleans. They remained friends back up in New York, bonding over their mutual loves of music and hard drugs, sometimes at Adams’ New York apartment and sometimes at the bar 7B. Most often, though, it seemed to be Niagara, where they’d sneak off to the bathroom for some heroin. “He kept not dying,” Spitz observed, bemusedly.

JULIAN CASABLANCAS, LEAD SINGER OF THE STROKES
The Library Bar
7 Avenue A at Houston

The night of the party for his first book, held in the Tiki Lounge basement area, Spitz eventually retired to the Library bar with the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas. While there, they closed down the bar with “a couple of hipster girls,” whom they brought back to Spitz’s apartment. No funny business though, at least according to the memoir. Just enough coke to see them through to dawn. (Earlier in the night Sevigny, who had a cameo in the book, had dropped by the party with Tara Subkoff.)

“JT LEROY,” WRITER
The Tribeca Grand
2 6th Avenue at White

Insofar as one could actually meet JT LeRoy, Spitz did so after an email friendship had developed, when both attended a Spin party at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. They got backed into a corner by photographers “because we were the two freaks in the room.” Spitz liked the attention. JT — or more accurately, Savannah Knoop, whom, as you may remember, acted as the public stand-in for the woman actually writing Leroy’s novels, Laura Albert (Knoop was her sister-in-law) — did not.

Related: What It Cost Eight Women Writers To Make It In New York

Sarah Stodola is a freelance writer who blogs here and tweets here.

“A 25-year-old drunken man tried to have sex with an ambulance, a court heard.”

(Warning: nudity, neon phallic symbol)

(These next three songs are all about the same thing that love does today.)

“I run the website Splitsider and the associated comedy podcast network. In addition, I’ve been performing improv comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and elsewhere around New York City for years. You can see me pretty much every Saturday night at 10:30pm at the UCB East in NYC with my group Airwolf. I’m also a freelance writer who has worked at and written for such places as Gizmodo, GQ, Spin, Fast Company, Discover, Dvice, and others. Ask me anything.”

4 Fill-In-The-Blank Poems For You To Steal This Valentine’s Day

It’s not too late! Valentine’s Day can be salvaged, you procrastinators! Duane Reade may be wiped out of everything except Strawberry-flavored Three Musketeer bars (Ew. And then also Yum. And then back to Ew.) I may think that love is an illusion. And that Valentine’s Day is not actually about love, it’s about out-loving everybody else with the perfection of your relationship’s love. When your relationship probably needs some work, like everybody else’s. But that’s no reason for you to get jacked up by your sweetie for screwing up Valentine’s Day (possibly again?). I’m your poetry pal. And poetry is only useful culturally when you want to get laid or when you have to bury your grandmother. And at the very last minute, when all other options have faded from view. Like a Carnival cruise line boat spinning out of control in the Gulf of Mexico. Don’t let your Valentine’s Day stink of unflushable toilets!

Poems are great Valentine’s Day gifts. Especially when paired with one of the other food groups: Flowers, Chocolates, Diamonds or Money. And poetry goes down a lot easier with a little red wine. When we’re drunk, everything seems deep and meaningful. You could probably write a perfectly good poem of your own, but who’s got the time? There’s less than 12 hours until the least actually romantic and spontaneous day of the year, when we’re all forced to do something semi-public just to try to keep the people we already have in our lives.

Below are four fill-in-the-blank poems suitable for many different relationship stages. Insert yourself and your own Merlot-flowing verse into the provided blanks and present these poems as a token of your love — as least the love you feel today, this moment. Rhyme, don’t rhyme, whatever. As our friend the Poet Laureate of MoMa would probably say, to thief is divine. (Just don’t steal a Jackson Pollock painting, that’s apparently wrong and they get so bent out of shape.) Filling in these poems is like Mad Libs except if you get the poem right you might get to 3rd base. I don’t know what 3rd base is. Dry Humping?

Valentine’s Poem #1: Sexypants

You’re so and so sweet
Your kisses are better than a retweet
I love you as much as Lena Dunham loves
You be Marco Rubio, I’ll be the Poland Spring

Your eyes are like
Your lips are two

Lay me on a bed of
And me up the
It’s Valentine’s Day which makes me feel
Maybe later we can do some dry-humping

It’s nice to be your valentine
Thanks so much for liking me
Getting to with you is so fine
I can’t wait to and then maybe

Valentine’s Poem #2: Classical

But we can also steal from one of the best. Such as, for example, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. This is her most famous poem. And we can take all the death and whatever right out and add in “Downton Abbey” references. Or whatever you might like. Put their name in the title. People like stuff more when they know it’s about them.

How Do I Love ? (Sonnet 43)
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning & you

How do I love ? Let me the ways.
I love to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can , when feeling out of sight
For the ends of and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love the, as men strive for right.
I love thee , as .
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old , and with my childhood’s .
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost . I love with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and ,
I shall but love thee better after .

Valentine’s Poem #3: Mad-Crush Woo Poem

But maybe you’re actually trying to woo someone this holiday. And why not. Like 80% of people on Valentine’s Day, either you are single and will basically fuck anyone or will soon be single because the person who should have given them a great Valentine’s Day are going to totally blow it. Woo away.

I long for you, .
And so I must woo!
You! I would like to woo and woo!
For you I’d gladly

I think you are smart and funny
I’d love to call you honey
You seem like a really good
How can I get you to notice ?

Oh what I’d do for you
and also too
You make my stomach feel woo-sy
Like I’ve eaten a

Tell me you like me, too!
And then we’ll run away to
to watch “Downton Abbey” in the rain
Have lots of kids and drink champagne

Oh you, let’s woo!
And woo and woo and woo.
Doobie doobie doo
And then maybe

Valentine’s Poem #4: Be My Ancient, Resentful Valentine

Or maybe you have been with someone a long time. If so, congrats. Because that is hard work, I hear.

Baby, we’ve been together a long time.
And I still think you’re
You’re always doing cool things to your hair
And sometimes you run around in just underwear

I’m so glad you’ve chosen me
And put up with
I know it’s not always easy
But when we’re together I feel

I promise to always let you win at
And when you feel bad to
I don’t even mind when you voted for Mitt Romney
When it’s me and you we feel like a we

I’m sorry when I too much
And sometimes I’m not enough
On Valentine’s Day I just want to say
I love you in a million totally insane ways

Feel free to work with those lines, make them your own. Make them dirtier. Don’t go all Fifty Shades of Grey or anything, unless you’re pretty sure that’s the way they’re gonna want it to go. Love is supposed to be fun. And getting candy is fun. Flowers are nice but then they die on like February 20th and that’s depressing. Diamonds are forever. Like herpes, except shiny. Happy Valentine’s Day. Write a poem! You still have time to salvage this thing.

Related: How To Write A Love Poem

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement. Photo by sister72.

Where did the whole vegan thing come from? I always figured it was a 1970s thing, or maybe it went back to Berkeley in the early 1960s. According to the Vegan Society, the non-dairy/egg-free vegetarian craze began in London back in 1944. That was not a fun year to be in London, what with the aerial bombings and rocket attacks. Here’s what they said in the very first issue of their newsletter:

That freedom has now come to us. Having followed a diet free from all animal food for periods varying from a few weeks in some cases, to many years in others, we believe our ideas and experiences are sufficiently mature to be recorded. The unquestionable cruelty associated with the production of dairy produce has made it clear that lacto-vegetarianism is but a half-way house between flesh-eating and a truly humane, civilised diet, and we think, therefore, that during our life on earth we should try to evolve sufficiently to make the “full journey.”

The “full journey” is, of course, World War II-era British slang for sodomy. Or not, we don’t know! But here it is, the original Brooklyn Vegan.

All right. This song is growing on me. It’s just so expertly done in every facet. And the video helps. It’s exactly what it should it be. (Justin Timberlake eats cereal while Jay-Z watches basketball. They’re just like us!) Which is all totally what you’d expect. Immaculate execution, carefully engineered for maximum possible popular appeal. Which points to the problem, too, of course. “But he don’t know the meaning of dope,” said GZA, complaining about a honkey A&R; executive on the Wu-Tang’s “Protect Ya Neck.” “When he’s looking for a suit-and-tie rap that’s cleaner than a bar of soap!”

But that was back in… [checks Wikipedia] Jesus, MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS ago! I am so close to death!

And that points to why Justin Timberlake and Jay-Z making such a song, calling it “Suit & Tie,” is okay. The world changes. Hip-hop has changed, what it means has changed. It’s a whole lot bigger than it used to be — it’s boundaries have expanded. There’s a lot more room in it, room enough for the dirty-and-grimy youngsters who wear the same clothes for days, like Jay used to say when he’d talk about how he’d never change.

And room enough for two world-famous multimillionaires to finish eating cereal and watching basketball (and playing chess — just like GZA and the Wu-Tang!), put on Tom Ford tuxedos and slide across the stage at the Palladium — in a video directed by David Fincher.

Only as we should have expected after hip-hop got as big as it got, when it became such a dominant pop force (with the help of pioneering groundbreakers like GZA and the Wu-Tang!). The world changes, things in the world change, and our expectations change with that.

Will anyone be surprised if Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake are running on a presidential ticket in 2033? I won’t be. (I mean, I’ll surely be dead by then, so nothing will be surprising me.) Why would that not happen?