Reckoning with the Grateful Dead at the Sphere

Nick Paumgarten reports. Plus: the optimism of Kamala Harris’s campaign; Oat Milk Élite; and when yuppies ruled the world. View in browser | Update your preferences Wednesday, July 24, 2024 In today’s edition, fear and jamming in Las Vegas, and then: • The optimism of Kamala Harris’s campaign • Who are the Oat Milk Élite? • When yuppies ruled the world Reckoning with the Dead at the Sphere A run of lost Las Vegas weekends for Deadheads prompts a longtime fan to wrestle with what the band has left behind. Photographs by Michelle Groskopf for The New Yorker Last week, after a global tech outage crippled various PC systems, a faked image of the Sphere in Las Vegas went viral. It showed the arena overtaken by the dreaded Windows Blue Screen of Death that was appearing on devices around the world. It was a good joke, as the Sphere is not merely a bringer of news—the country’s flashiest billboard—but itself a symbol of our simultaneous mastery of and dependence on technology. It is also, of course, a concert venue. Recently, Nick Paumgarten journeyed there to take in two shows by Dead & Company, the current permutation of the Grateful Dead, who are in the midst of a months-long Sphere residency. During his visit, Paumgarten navigates garish commercialism, fellow-concertgoers who talk through the performances (a.k.a. “chompers”), a heat wave, and mixed feelings about his own place within the wider Deadhead economy. The vibes aren’t always good, but moments of transcendence emerge. “It was like nothing I’d ever seen,” he writes, “a new frontier of live entertainment, and there were moments on both nights where some combination of sound and screen made me want to call everyone I knew, even those with no affection for anything Dead, and say what my editor had said to me: ‘Go!’ ” Read the story Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » From the News Desk Dispatch A Mood of Optimism at Kamala Harris’s First Campaign Stop Less than a week after the Republican National Convention took over Milwaukee, Harris spoke at a high-school rally there to a crowd of ebullient Democrats. By Emily Witt Daily Comment J. D. Vance’s Radical Religion How might the Republican V.P. nominee’s conversion to conservative Catholicism influence his political world view? By Paul Elie If you know someone who would enjoy this newsletter, please share it. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up. Kyle Chayka Making Memes for the Global “Oat Milk Élite” Illustration by Ariel Davis Cities including Amsterdam, Sydney, New York, London, and Berlin are now all home to wildly popular, hyperlocal social-media accounts dedicated to skewering, and appealing to, a class of mostly young, not especially distinctive consumers. Why have these social critiques of minor buying habits become so common? “For millennials and Gen Z-ers,” Kyle Chayka notes, “material gain is more about these small, semi-expensive life-style choices—oat milk in your latte—than about bigger ones such as buying a house or having children, which are much harder to achieve in the absence of economic stability.” Read more » The column Infinite Scroll publishes every Wednesday. Editor’s Pick Books When Yuppies Ruled Defining a social type is a way of defining an era. What can the time of the young urban professional tell us about our own? By Louis Menand Screening Room The New Yorker Documentary Black Joy and Artistry Hit the Pool in “Slice” A Memphis tradition, the diving style known as slicing requires creativity, athleticism, and a lot of swagger. Film by Zaire Love Text by Natalie Meade Fifty Days of Flash Fiction Flash Fiction “Wolves” They said we had too much white blood, we were not dark enough. By Sterling HolyWhiteMountain Read more of our series of very short stories for the summer. Fun & Games Dept. Crossword A Beginner-Friendly Puzzle Black-and-white ocean predators: five letters. By Caitlin Reid Daily Cartoon Wednesday, July 24th By Adam Douglas Thompson Name Drop: Can you guess the identity of a notable person—contemporary or historical—in six clues? Play a quiz from our archive » P.S. The term “yuppie” as social criticism may have peaked in the eighties, but even years later it retains its sting. Consider this, from Colin Stokes, in an ode to the dive bar: “ ‘At a bar like this, what could disappoint you?’ a man asked the other night, at Johnny’s, in the West Village. There might be one or two things, but it depends on your expectations: earlier in the evening, a slick of yuppies, perhaps attracted by the exposed brick, had walked into the narrow room looking confused, and walked out, noses pointing upward to the chess set that’s glued to the ceiling.” Today’s newsletter was written by Ian Crouch. What did you think of today’s newsletter? Let us know. If you like the daily newsletter, browse more New Yorker newsletters. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the daily newsletter from The New Yorker. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2024. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.