On a recent Tuesday evening at 4 Charles Prime Rib, in the West Village, shortly after my party of four had settled in for dinner, a man who bore the gentle air of owning the place arrived at a neighboring table. As our server delivered our cocktails, she gestured at him and said, with a wink, “This is Gary. He’s a regular. I’m so sorry you have to sit next to him. Let me know if you want me to put up a curtain to block him out.” Everyone laughed. “Gary’s full of wisdom,” the maître d’ added as he passed by. Gary—round but trim, with a shaved, shiny pate and a distinct Long Island accent—smirked and said, “Yeah, like, drink a Martini if you’re driving, and tequila if you’re not.”
Gary is more than a regular at 4 Charles; he’s one of only a few people who can get a table there at all. The restaurant is ostensibly open to the public, but if you’re not Gary—or Taylor Swift, whom Gary told me he’d been seated next to a few nights prior— you’re probably not getting in. According to more than one thread on Reddit, your chances of booking a reservation even the instant a batch of them is released on Resy, at 9 A.M. each day, are slim to none. By the restaurant’s calculations, you’d be competing with anywhere from nine hundred to fifteen hundred other hopefuls. Moreover, nearly half the tables in the very small dining room are already reserved, for “standing guests,” like Gary.
This story is from the March 25, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the March 25, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
INSIDE JOB-"Hit Man"
Years before Hannah Arendt coined, in the pages of this magazine, the phrase \"the banality of evil,\" popular films and fiction were embodying that idea in the character of the hit man. In classic crime movies such as \"This Gun for Hire\" (1942) and \"Murder by Contract\" (1958), hit men figure much as Nazis do in political movies, as symbols of abstract evil.
WHATEVER YOU SAY
Rereading Jenny Holzer, at the Guggenheim.
SUBCONSCIOUSLY YOURS
Does every generation get the Freud it deserves?
BY A WHISKER
Louis Wain and the reinvention of the cat.
Beyond Imagining
Bessie, Lotte, Ruth, Farah, and Bridget, who had been lunching together for half a century, joined in later years by Ilka, Hope, and, occasionally, Lucinella, had agreed without the need for discussion that they were not going to pass, pass away, and under no circumstances on.
STATES OF PLAY
Can advocates use state supreme courts to preserve-and perhaps expand-constitutional rights?
THE LONG RIDE
The surf legend Jock Sutherland's unlikely life.
ARE WE DOOMED?
A course at the University of Chicago thinks it through.
GOD EXPLAINS THE RULES OF HIS NEW BOARD GAME
Guys, want to play this new board game? It’s called Life. No, it’s not “one of God’s impossible-to-understand games that take three hours to learn.” It’ll be fun, I promise!
RED LINE
With the election approaching, the U.S. and Mexico wrangle over border policy.