Leaving the table
It's Free for All Friday!
It’s Free for ALL Friday!
Each week I keep track of some of the off-the-path things I've found, and work extra-hard to make sure you never hit a paywall, using my own subscriptions, gift links, and other (100% legal) hocus-pocus.
(Obviously there’s a lot going on in the presidential race. I struggle with how much to include here or not to, but for today’s newsletter at all, consider it an oasis, and a reminder that there are always other things happening, as well.)
Thanks for being here as we get Understandably and Big Optimism up to their full power again!
After 12 Years of Reviewing Restaurants, I’m Leaving the Table
When I was very little my grandfather told me that there was a job called "bakery taste-tester," and I thought for a while this might be a good fit. Life had other plans, fortunately. But here's something by the soon-to-be-former restaurant critic for the New York Times, on why health issues from eating out too much convinced him to give up the job.
The first thing you learn as a restaurant critic is that nobody wants to hear you complain.
The work of going out to eat every night with hand-chosen groups of friends and family sounds suspiciously like what other people do on vacation. If you happen to work in New York or another major city, your beat is almost unimaginably rich and endlessly novel.
So we tend to save our gripes until two or three of us are gathered around the tar pits. Then we’ll talk about the things nobody will pity us for, like the unflattering mug shots of us that restaurants hang on kitchen walls and the unlikable food in unreviewable restaurants.
One thing we almost never bring up, though, is our health.
How the Rise of the Camera Launched a Fight to Protect Gilded Age Americans’ Privacy
Early photographers sold their snapshots to advertisers, who reused the individuals’ likenesses without their permission.
In 1904, a widow named Elizabeth Peck had her portrait taken at a studio in a small Iowa town. The photographer sold the negatives to Duffy’s Pure Malt Whiskey, a company that avoided liquor taxes for years by falsely advertising its product as medicinal. Duffy’s ads claimed the fantastical: that it cured everything from influenza to consumption, that it was endorsed by clergymen, that it could help you live until the age of 106.
The portrait of Peck ended up in one of these dubious ads, published in newspapers across the country alongside what appeared to be her unqualified praise: “After years of constant use of your Pure Malt Whiskey, both by myself and as given to patients in my capacity as nurse, I have no hesitation in recommending it.”
Duffy’s lies were numerous. Peck (misleadingly identified as “Mrs. A. Schuman”) was not a nurse, and she had not spent years constantly slinging back malt beverages. In fact, she fully abstained from alcohol.
Peck never consented to the ad.
American Towns Are Rebelling Against Megamansions
As house sizes are exploding, communities across the country are debating limits. ‘Really shocking.’
In a nation obsessed with supersizing, American houses keep ballooning. Now, local officials are scrambling to curb mansion bloat.
“How big is a house?” mused Jeremy Samuelson, planning director for East Hampton, N.Y., where a working group recently proposed slashing the town’s maximum-allowed house size in half, from 20,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet.
“You can’t build a big box store in this town that’s bigger than 15,000 square feet, but our house size is 5,000 feet larger than that,” Samuelson pointed out at a May public meeting.
Towns from Aspen to Martha’s Vineyard are in a big-house brouhaha. Critics say mushrooming mansions cramp scenic vistas and local charm, consume excessive energy and inflate prices.
The challenge? The horse—or rather, the thoroughbred—has already left the barn.
Paramedics Share One Tip That May Save Your Life
Every second counts, experts say.
Most of us don’t want to think about the circumstances that might bring paramedics to our door. But there is something you can do today that could be an actual lifesaver: making your medical information handy. Here’s how.
Write down your details: Name, date of birth, medical history, an emergency contact number and medications you are currently taking, as well as the dosage and any allergies, plus blood type. If you’re able to laminate both sheets to protect them, even better.
Keep the sheets somewhere that’s easy to find": Tuck a smaller sheet into your wallet, and place a larger one on the refrigerator.
Put the same information onto your phone.
Also, lock up any pets. “We’ve done jobs where people had an alligator,” said one paramedic. “Years ago, there was a guy in Harlem who had a tiger. If you have a tiger, lock it up before I get there.”
The Erie Canal: The Manmade Waterway That Transformed the U.S.
Two hundred years ago, it helped spread people, ideas and goods across the US. Now, it's become a paddler's paradise with more than 700 miles of continuous, navigable waterways.
For decades after it opened in 1825, upstate New York's 363-mile Erie Canal, which links the city of Buffalo, on Lake Erie in the west, to the state's capital, Albany, on the Hudson River in the east, was an engineering marvel unrivalled in North America. By connecting the Great Lakes in the Midwest to New York City, the manmade waterway precipitated the mass movement of goods, ideas and people across the country.
It not only transformed New York City (which is celebrating its 400th anniversary in 2024) into the US' main seaport and an industrial juggernaut, but it also opened up the interior of the young country to settlement.
Priscila, Queen of the Rideshare Mafia
She came to the US with a dream. Using platforms like Uber, Instacart, and DoorDash, she built a business empire up from nothing. There was just one problem.
In prison, the crime was regarded as rather pathetic. With all the personal information the ring had access to—enough to open bank accounts, credit cards—their only con was to … create Uber profiles?
Fonseca shrugged it off. “We are not criminals, with a criminal mind,” he told me in a jail call. “We just want to work.”
Uber disagreed. During the legal wranglings, the company accused the ring of stealing money and tallied its losses: some $250,000 spent investigating the ring, around $93,000 to onboard the fraudulent drivers, plus safety risks and damage to its reputation.
Defense attorneys shot back that no one lost money at all: The jobs were done. The food was delivered. People got their rides. The gig companies, in fact, profited off the undocumented drivers, taking their typical hefty cut—money that, once the fraud was discovered, there was no evidence they’d refunded to customers.
The 36 Best Celebrity Memoirs
Stars may or may not be like us, but there is one thing they all seem to have in common: they love writing about their lives. Hollywood autobiographies have been a thing for generations now.
But in the last few years, publishing has seen a celebrity memoir boom in which chart-topping pop stars and Brat Packers alike are more than willing to bare their souls for our amusement.
With so many celebrity memoirs to choose from, TIME has put together a list of the best. The first 5 (although not necessarily the top 5, as it's not ranked):
Open, Andre Agassi (2009)
By Myself and Then Some, Lauren Bacall (2005)
All About Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business, Mel Brooks (2021)
The Meaning of Mariah Carey, Mariah Carey (2020)
My Autobiography, Charles Chaplin (1964)
Thanks so much for leaving out anything political today in the Free For All Friday. I appreciate the break. Enjoy both newsletters a lot. Thanks for what you do.
Good one today Bill. No politics! Fantastic move. I think those of us who are paying attention are getting our fill elsewhere. Will sit back and enjoy using each link. Have a good weekend.