Last Exit Magazine
Archive
February 2010
The Iron Triangle
“How could you consider a business that’s been in place for three generations valueless? How could it be?” A short documentary on the last resident of Willets Point, Queens.
[published: February 22, 2010]
Nowhere But Here
What I’m escaping to is precisely what most women of my grandparents’ generation were escaping from.
[published: February 22, 2010]
Congratulations, Scott Brown!
In which we offer some words of advice to America’s newest member of the U.S. Senate.
[published: February 22, 2010]
J. Robert Lennon
Serialized by Harper’s magazine in 2006, J. Robert Lennon’s novel Happyland, about a doll tycoon’s overzealous attempts to make over a small town in upstate New York, was a delightful respite from the news of an Iraq War going from bad to worse. Now his latest novel, Castle, returns to that year to confront the mentality behind the worst mistakes of that conflict. The writer, professor, blogger and musician discusses his irritation with American notions of masculinity, the recent firing of Harper’s editor and the fact that he has never even Googled Pleasant Rowland, the doll tycoon whose potential litigiousness frightened away the novels’ original publisher.
[published: February 22, 2010]
Journey to Jeremie
One chance for escape from the devastation left by Haiti’s earthquake was a ship named Conformity.
[published: February 22, 2010]
November 2009
The Janitor Who Created Black Harlem
Mostly unknown today, Philip Payton’s unlikely real estate business at the turn of the 20th century broke down New York’s racial barriers.
[published: November 04, 2009]
Dietary Restrictions
Most of us aren’t even aware of the vast system of regulatory boundaries that are limiting our food choices.
[published: November 04, 2009]
Haters and the Lost Arc
Twenty years ago, Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc was removed from the Federal Plaza in Manhattan amidst a wave of right-wing political backlash against subversive art. On the anniversary of the fall of the “Berlin Wall of Foley Square,” we reflect on Serra’s latest show in New York, democracy, David Hasselhoff, and the ongoing debate over federal arts funding in America.
[published: November 04, 2009]
The Border
Between the United States and Mexico stands a 1,954-mile border, separating two complicated histories that are forever linked.
[published: November 04, 2009]
The Last Wall
Despite UN efforts at resolution and a recent easing of tensions, Cyprus’s capital, Nicosia, remain’s Europe’s last divided city.
[published: November 04, 2009]
Cracker Jack Capitalism
Forget the fall of the Berlin Wall. The most poetic symbol of the end of the Cold War came with a can of root beer.
[published: November 04, 2009]
October 2009
Thomas Toch
Thomas Toch is the executive director of the Association of Independent Schools of Greater Washington, a co-founder of the think tank Education Sector and an all-around go-to guy on national education policy issues. We talk to him about the arms race of escalating college tuition, the difference between cost and quality, and President Obama’s grade on education policy.
[published: October 02, 2009]
The Conscious Carnivore
If I was going to eat meat, it wasn’t enough to know where it came from. I was going to have to learn how to wield the knife myself.
[published: October 02, 2009]
Portrait of the Artist as a Building
The Hunter College MFA building at 41st street is a fleeting landmark of New York’s grittier past, housing a proud group of artists at the forefront of the art world’s future; but like so many other relics of weird Manhattan, it too may soon be gone.
[published: October 02, 2009]
The (Other) Crisis
The financial crisis displayed a new model of horizontal reporting, which could save the news industry from doom.
[published: October 02, 2009]
Journalism for Justice
How journalism schools can be relevant in a world on the brink
[published: October 02, 2009]
New Standards for Evaluation: A Key to Your Grade
There has always been some ambiguity in the grading of the humanities. Until now.
[published: October 02, 2009]
August 2009
Honoring Life By Acting Out Death
The pilgrimage of Santa Marta de Ribarteme in the northwest part of Spain brings together family, food and faith.
[published: August 19, 2009]
July 2009
The Desert
A photographic trek into the unmapped spaces on the edges of suburbia.
[published: July 30, 2009]
Pointing in the Same Direction
Remembering our incomprehensible dream of going to the moon.
[published: July 30, 2009]
You Are Where You Eat
Nothing reveals the character of a place like talking to its farmers, shopping at its farm stands and sifting through the recipes its people dreamed up before everything was available everywhere.
[published: July 30, 2009]
The Failed Explorer Who Founded New York
Henry Hudson’s wife couldn’t even manage to get a statue erected in his honor after he was murdered by his crew. But today, New York state is sparing no expense to mark the 400th anniversary of his most important discovery.
[published: July 30, 2009]
Mystery, Alaska
In 1989, I found my mom a job in the classifieds and we moved to Massachusetts. Sixteen years later, she left there for Alaska, where she had never been before. I have never asked her why. Now I do.
[published: July 29, 2009]
Urban Methology
This week only, the perfect date night: meth lab and a movie
[published: July 29, 2009]
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
One of the few independent photographers in Baghdad during the start of the Iraq War reflects on what it means to glimpse the battlefield on one’s own terms.
[published: July 01, 2009]
We Say Tomato
Heirloom tomatoes are just one of the ways that Americans have recently begun to declare their gastro-independence from the industrialized food state.
[published: July 01, 2009]
New York’s Forgotten Revolutionary
Why at 5 a.m. every July 4th, I visit the lost grave of Horatio Gates, the unknown general who won the most important battle in the American Revolution.
[published: July 01, 2009]
You Are Not Alone
This summer go out and watch yourself watching other people watch you watching other people watching you at a new survey of Dan Graham’s work currently on view at the Whitney.
[published: July 01, 2009]
Free Spirits
Brooklyn’s Madagascar Institute art collective celebrated their 10th anniversary by reenacting a pivotal naval battle in Prospect Park. In paddle boats.
[published: July 01, 2009]
Putting the Free into Freedom
Why Nick Rosen, the founder of the off-grid.net site, is coming to America in his search for the perfect off-grid existence.
[published: July 01, 2009]
Futile Resistance?
As President Obama orders 17,000 additional troops in Afghanistan, the anti-war movement finds itself trying to mobilize against one of its own. It won’t be easy.
[published: July 01, 2009]
May 2009
Blood Money
The Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, is a brutally violent machete-wielding gang that is murdering, robbing, raping and extorting money from the Latino communities in Houston where they live.
[published: May 20, 2009]
Thomas Paine's America
The author of Common Sense and architect of American democracy died penniless in a Greenwich Village boarding house 200 years ago next month. Historian James S. Kaplan traces his forgotten legacy.
[published: May 20, 2009]
Forgotten Foods
The only way to save some nearly lost breeds of livestock and strains of seed may be to eat them.
[published: May 20, 2009]
Mara Altman
Mara Altman was brave and uninhibited when it came to her journalism for the Village Voice, New York Times and New York magazine. But when it came to her own body, she had issues. So she went on a quest to get to the bottom of them, hilariously retold in her new book, Thanks for Coming: One Young Woman’s Quest for an Orgasm.
[published: May 20, 2009]
Train Gangs
The latest victim of the Mexican drug wars may turn out to be Union Pacific, the U.S.’s largest railroad operator, which is being sued by the Justice Department for allegedly failing to keep drugs off its freights.
[published: May 20, 2009]
Time is on my Side
In light of a new retrospective of late-life Picasso works, ruminations on sex, painting, rock n roll, and the circle of dancing naked hippies that is life.
[published: May 20, 2009]
April 2009
Zachary Mexico
China is as full of freaks and slackers, whores and hustlers as the West is, we just hear less about them. In his addictively readable debut book, China Underground, recently published by Soft Skull Press, Zachary Mexico uses his fluent Mandarin and bohemian soul to introduce them to us.
[published: April 15, 2009]
Prophet of Profit
Marx may have seen capitalism’s flaws before the rest of us did, but that doesn’t mean we’ll be handing over power to the proletariat anytime soon.
[published: April 15, 2009]
Uprising
“We do not want any clashes with police … We will go around them, we will go through them,” Christoph Kleine, a spokesman for the protest network Block NATO, told The Associated Press. “We will not attack them. But we will make our way.”
[published: April 15, 2009]
Beyond War
Thousands of demonstrators marched through Manhattan’s financial district to rage against Wall Street and demand the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[published: April 15, 2009]
Financial Fouls Day
Protesters welcomed the G20 summit in London with a peaceful demonstration that brought surrounding areas of the city to a standstill.
[published: April 15, 2009]
Meet the New Boss
Youth rises again in The Generational: Younger than Jesus at the New Museum
[published: April 15, 2009]
Fermenting Change
Homemade sauerkraut is suddenly in vogue. For some, it’s the gateway to a fundamental shift in the way we think about food.
[published: April 15, 2009]
Revolutionary PR
When the 1970 Dawson’s Field hijackers held a press conference announcing their intentions, they established the media battleground for modern terrorism.
[published: April 15, 2009]
March 2009
Baby I Like It Raw
Beyond the tales of back-alley hand-offs and whispered exchanges is rising movement of people who prefer their milk straight from the source. (Photo by Paul O’Hanlon)
[published: March 10, 2009]
- #1 Rock 'n Real Estate
- #2 Farm/Land
- #3 Showbiz
- #4 Violence & Conflict
- #5 Islands
- #6 Animals
- #7 The Subterraneans
- #8 After the Deluge
- #9 Boredom
- #10 Fear and Loathing
- #11 Medicine
- #12 Obsession
- #13 Migration
- #14 Revolution
- #15 Hidden In Plain Sight
- #16 Independence
- #17 Exploration
- #18 Education
- #19 Walls and Borders