Readers respond to Vinson Cunningham’s piece about the New York Post and Molly Fischer’s review of Keith McNally’s new memoir, “I Regret Almost Nothing.”
Vinson Cunningham, in his essay on the New York _Post_, makes the point that the city “is often called a newspaper town” (The Wayward Press, May 12th & 19th). But New York is, and will always be, a sports town, too. Local teams cross a range of divides and dominate our conversations, bringing New Yorkers together, and the _Post_ delivers news and analysis of sports—a variety of them—to the city each day.
A recent edition devoted thirty-three pages, or nearly fifty per cent of the issue, to sports alone, from the Knicks’ loss to the Indiana Pacers in Game One of the Eastern Conference Finals (eight pages) to the results of the Subway Series (four pages), not to mention a smattering of statistics, standings, and schedules (five pages).
I pick up the _Post_ every day and skim through the scantily clad women, editorials, and disasters first, in order to save the best for last. Finally, I flip to the very back and work my way forward through the wonderful world of sports.
_Martha Murray_
_Amagansett, N.Y._
I do not read the New York _Post_ because, as Cunningham writes, it “deals in overstatement and unsubtle deception.” Unfortunately, this form of news has become all too common and, even more unfortunately, widely believed. However, I do peruse the _Post’s_ headlines, which can be clever and delightfully amusing.
In March, 2008, the _Post_ published a front-page story on Eliot Spitzer, then the governor of New York, who—after cracking down on prostitution rings while serving as the state’s attorney general, from 1999 to 2006—was outed as having patronized an escort service. The headline, which appeared below a picture of Spitzer and his now ex-wife, read: “_HO NO_.”
With those two words, the _Post_ captured everything we were thinking. That page hangs prominently in my office today.
_Dan Moinester_
_Brooklyn, N.Y._
After Hours
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Molly Fischer, in her review of the restaurateur Keith McNally’s new memoir, “I Regret Almost Everything,” captures the intoxicating combination of performative loucheness and cocaine-fuelled creativity that lit up the clients and staff in his empire (Books, May 12th & 19th). During the late nineteen-eighties, I worked the door at McNally’s night club, Nell’s, in Greenwich Village. That the entry fee was, as Fischer reports, “a five-dollar cover for all” is news to me. Either she is mistaken, McNally’s memory is faulty, or, assuming that that was actually the price, no one ever told me.
If you handed me a twenty, that was the fee; if you gave me a fifty, I took it. I don’t recall ever accepting anything less than ten dollars a person, though. Indeed, I never once managed to match the amount of money I received to the number of patrons I let in, but it was a cash business, and no one complained.
I eventually moved to Los Angeles, but, just before I left, I memorialized the time I spent immersed in New York’s downtown night life by playing a club denizen in the 1988 film “Bright Lights, Big City.” Being a part of that scene felt scary, silly, self-important, and yet less subversive than I had imagined it would. The most important life lesson I took from my time at Nell’s was to never, ever be someone who would wait in line to get into an establishment of any kind.
_Annabelle Gurwitch_
_Los Angeles, Calif._
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