The Kingfish
Rubenesque cherub Christone Ingram, 26, takes the Stone Pony by storm
Impossible wizardry recalls the blues greats of old; calls the audience to gawk and pray
It sure beats listening to 40-year-old remastered Bruce Springsteen albums
One Sunday evening in September, I drove my mother’s 2012 Cypress Pearl Toyota Highlander from New York to Asbury City to see Kingfish play the blues guitar. The boardwalk was all fresh with planks of dark brown wood, courtesy of a recent $20-million makeover; there were plenty of passersby, couples on dates, closing food stalls and soft dimmed lights. With a hotdog in hand, I sat on a wooden bench and watched the nice waves lap at the nice grey sand, contemplating the likelihood of a small city in New Jersey claiming such a titanic place in the American musical universe.
It was here in 1973 that Bruce Springsteen sent his inaugural musical greetings, which opened with: “Madman drummers, bummers, and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat / In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat”; greetings which went double platinum and about which the Rolling …
The Front Porch
Over 27 million Americans watched Game 7 of this year’s World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays. Even casual viewers who only tuned in for the deciding moments were able to recognize they were in the presence of something extraordinary. It was already a Series for the ages, topped by Game 3, which was decided by a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 18th inning by Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman — who had closed out Game 1 of the 2024 World Series in similar fashion, with a walk-off grand-slam against the New York Yankees.
Freeman wasn’t even the hero of Game 3, though. That was Shohei Ohtani, the greatest baseball player since Babe Ruth, who hit two home runs, reached base nine times, and required an IV before starting Game 4 on the mound. After losing an 18-inning heartbreaker to LA in the wee hours of the morning, Toronto came back against Ohtani that …
The Shame of Our Cities
How Minneapolis-Saint Paul became the Medicaid fraud capital of the USA
Looting, pillage, theft, billions in disbursements, all on the honor system
We are all Somalis now
In the autumn glare reflecting off the harsh glass façade of the Minneapolis public library, temporary fencing encloses a once-welcoming arc of wooden planters and benches. During business hours there is an edgy assortment of dazed, hunched-over, or mumbling manifestations of Minnesota’s social wreckage fogging the sidewalk between the library and this little park. Either the fear or reality of their behavior has seemingly denied the broader public of the opportunity to use it.
The library itself, a César Pelli-designed modernist ice cube that opened with great fanfare in the faraway year of 2006, is equally a relic, a monument to the bygone days when Minnesotans could read. “Minnesota nice, Mississippi smarter” goes a billboard around the corner on Washington Avenue in the heart of the yuppified postindustrial North Loop, the work of a local education-focused nonprofit. Only half of Minnesota …
