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Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gainsbourged

From the perils of aging to the joys of parenthood—and the undertow of depression—the French singer and actress is now happily looking ahead

A Mania for Egyptomania

Early next month, the “Magnificent Jewels” sale at Sotheby’s New York will include nearly a dozen superb pieces of Egyptian Revival jewelry

Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook

All Roads Lead to Paolo Di Paolo

Ahead of a new movie by Bruce Weber on the forgotten photographer and chronicler of postwar Italy, we collect some of his most memorable pictures

Murder, They Wrote

As the holiday season approaches, gifts for mystery book–lovers of every type

Leave the Gun, Take the Cocktail

In an excerpt from his upcoming memoir, a maître d’hôtel for Brooklyn’s River Café recalls getting on the wrong side of a mobster from the Gotti crime family—and how he lived to tell the tale

Man of Letters

Yabba Dabba Doo!

With two sellout world tours and 430 million downloads, Britain’s most successful comedy podcast, My Dad Wrote a Porno, has finally reached its climax

Otello in Athens

Robert Wilson tackles Verdi in the birthplace of tragedy

Songs with Atmosphere

A selection of 14 songs that defy description

A Night at the Odeon

Jay McInerney, Emma Cline, and Iké Udé gathered at the Tribeca restaurant in celebration of AIR MAIL’s Downtown Set

Take a Walk and Talk on the Wild Side

This week’s podcast celebrates what makes downtown New York great

Yoko Before John

To understand the most misunderstood woman of the last half-century, you have to go back to the beginning

Grant Shaffer’s Sketchbook

Small Talk / Owen Kline

Sunglasses After Dark

A guided tour of CBGB, the Mudd Club, Tunnel, and downtown’s other lost nightlife haunts

How Hip-Hop Was Made

After photographing London’s nascent punk scene, Janette Beckman moved to New York to chronicle hip-hop’s early days and founding artists—A Tribe Called Quest, Run-DMC, and LL Cool J among them

“Why Can’t You Write Normal?”

Kathy Acker’s journey from daughter of Sutton Place to genre- and gender-bending cult novelist

The Downtown Set

A list of the 50 young New Yorkers who are remaking Lower Manhattan in their own image

What Makes a Neighborhood?

Debbie Harry, Woody Allen, Cat Marnell, Ian Schrager, Diane von Furstenberg, and others weigh in

Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook

Street Scenes

A collection of Saul Leiter’s newly discovered color photographs offers a rare look at his pioneering, painterly vision

Bohemian Rhapsody

The artist Duncan Hannah’s unpublished 1980s diaries chronicle his run-ins with everyone from Bowie and Basquiat to Warren Beatty and a precocious call girl

Isaiah Barr

The saxophonist and co-founder of Onyx Collective, an experimental group of artists, is taking on fashion and filmmaking