Features

The Passion of the Christos

Next month, The Gates, one of the most audacious public art projects in history, will be unveiled in Central Park, the climax of an odyssey that consumed 26 years of the lives of its creators, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, his tireless wife. These days, it’s quite a scene inside their Soho loft. He’s furiously drawing and she’s furiously flogging his drawings, as they scrounge the last of the $20 million cost.

Plus: An original Christo collage. (Save this issue, and the artists will sign it on Tuesday, February 15, at the Central Park Boathouse, from 4 to 6:30 P.M.)

Susan Superstar

After becoming a luminary by destroying the snobbish distinction between high and low culture, Susan Sontag spent the rest of her life at war with her own celebrity.

The Capitalist Spirit

The much-heralded post-9/11 return to traditional religion fizzled quickly in New York. But the city became a boomtown for New Age healers and mystics who will cleanse you, your pets, or the apartment you’re trying to sell�for hundreds of dollars an hour.

Strategist

Best Bets

The Bar Room at MoMA, plus Vijay Singh’s driver and Marc Jacobs sunglasses

Market Research

Reviewing umbrellas

Mating

After the bar scene and the Internet, a resort to game theory.

The Look Book

A nursing student and would-be Top Mode

Real Estate

How FreshDirect feeds gentrification

Shop News

Store openings this week

Ask a Shop Clerk

Jeff Ayers of Forbidden Planet

The Best Seller

Strolling Pet Carrier, $129.95

Sales & Bargains:
This week's hottest sales & bargains

The Restaurant Review

Brooklyn’s Bouillabaisse 126 earns its name

In Season

How to make candied pomelo peel

Restaurant Openings & Buzz

Week of Jan. 17, 2005: Gari, Bond 45, Baked, Pukk, Babu, Carl's Steaks, and Chop't. Plus, City Bakery's Hot Chocolate Festival, sweet relief, and more.

Ask Gael

Do we really need yet another Italian restaurant?

Eats Village

A guide to the new St. Marks Place restaurant row

Orange Alert

Sometimes nothing will do but a comforting crock of macaroni and cheese.

Brew Masters

In the darkest depths of winter, the tea ritual is one way to warm up an afternoon.

Intelligencer

Intelligencer Gossip

A new Hamptons spa�for cars, the porn world’s Grammy nominee, and more.

It Happened Last Week

While the rest of the nation gave itself over to other preoccupations, the city insouciantly carried on with the ordinary business of life.

Psychic Family Network

Born to be a medium (like her brother and sister and . . .), she finds New Yorkers easy reading�when they aren’t giving off �a meteor shower of stresses.�

The Other West Side Story

A new stadium isn’t the only waterfront boondoggle.

Last-Chance Photo Op

You may not get to see�or take�pictures like these again.

Diplomats Who Rock

Coalition of the Willing�the rock band

Air War

A high-rise boomlet in Williamsburg

Columnists

The Imperial City

Memories of an awkward, insecure Michael Ovitz during his last days at Disney

The National Interest

Why Social Security will do for Bush what health care did for Clinton

The Culture Pages

Deadpan Alley

Topher Grace acts out the life of his father, a Manhattan ad executive, in In Good Company.

Movie Review

Laurence Fishburne and Samuel L. Jackson transcend clichéd roles

Overheard

What the audience really thought about The Life Aquatic

Influences

John Leguizamo discusses what shaped him.

Pop

Jay-Z looks to prove his rapper-as-mogul persona is more than just talk

Books

An interview with Shakespeare scholar and secret romance novelist Mary Bly

Remembering Will Eisner

Father of the graphic novel

Television Review

A star of Northern Exposure returns to the screen

Island at War Reviewed

Island at War asks us to spend seven and a half hours on one of the Channel Islands, to get a tactile reading on just what a Nazi occupation felt like.

Dirty War Reviewed

With a handheld stick-in-the-eye documentary style, it postulates the detonation of a radioactive bomb in London.

Point Pleasant Reviewed

Just because one of its executive producers used to work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer does not mean that Point Pleasant is at all funny.

Gal Friday

Q&A with Traylor Howard

How to Fix: American Idol

A three step fix.

Art Review

Refreshingly ordinary photographs of Arab life

Show and Tell

British artist Steve McQueen on speaking in tongues.

Departments

Letters to the Editor