Nick Recommends

“But where are all the fish???” I insist. “In the ocean, I guess.” He shrugs, nonchalant. And I feel like I am falling through a mirror or the surface of the water or a screen, disintegrating into data, because I know in my pinbones there are fewer fish in the sea than there used to be. And that no one will ever know how many were spawned by scientists like me, to prolong some disappearing dream I want to no longer need to believe.

Mallwalker, “Taker”

Sylvan Esso, “Hot Slob”

SKEPTA x WIKI, “That's Not Me (US Remix)”

“Paris Plays” by Pierpaolo Rovero

“Parade—Hoboken, New Jersey 1955” by Robert Frank

“L train station, New York, 1964” by Evelyn Hofer

My father is a can-do, glass-half-full guy, a quality that has always felt like a rebuke of my own bleak world view, which makes the poor man literally wince. But alcohol darkens him. If 6 P.M. comes around and he can’t get a drink, he is not amused. When he drinks his cynicism becomes accessible. When I drink my mood improves, and this is where we meet. I am sure ours is not the only relationship in the world improved by alcohol.

“Early Sunday Morning” by Edward Hopper

Painting by Kim Bo-Hee

“Thigh Cream, New Orleans, 1993” by William Greiner

“Chile, 1987” by David Alan Harvey

“Dusk, New Jersey, 1978” by Joel Meyerowitz

There are a lot of reasons the New York Knicks won their first title in 53 years this season. Brunson is the biggest. The shotmaking, the resolve, the poise, the handle, the audacity, the wiggle, the drive, the angles, the buckets, the buckets, the buckets. Brunson hoops with the kind of self-belief and attention to detail that can come only via mountains of work. His game is part ballistics and part balletics. The footwork is buttery, pristine, instinctual. Brunson salts his attacks with various pauses, pivots, step-throughs, Euros, bumps, improvisations. The touch is puffy. He shoots a pretty ball. Something light about it, gets a lot of air. It’s a quiet ball, too. There are stretches of games when his jumper gets so hot, it seems allergic to the rim; every make is a swish. His floater reminds me: It rains diamonds on Saturn. Gather round as he makes the Great Sphinx of Giza disappear.

David James (playlist creator), “Ambient Reading”

DJ Lag, “NOPS”

Lard, “The Last Temptation of Reid”