Table of contents for June/July 2017 in Esquire

Credentials: Author of Raven Rock; former editor of Washingtonian and Politico Magazine. Favorite bar on earth: Mule Bar in Winooski, Vermont. Which boasts: “A draft-beer list that any bigcity hipster bar would kill for.” No-regrets big purchase: A multicolored Turkish rug he bought on his honeymoon. Credentials: His work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and New York magazine. Favorite bar(s) on earth: “The sand bars in the Bahamas.” What to drink there: “Water!” Whose criticism matters to him? His wife’s. Who reminds him: “Shoot what you like, not what others want!” Favorite bar on earth: “Ferona, a two-story apartment in Buenos Aires where you can order in the kitchen and dance in the living room.” What to drink there: Fernet and coke. Whose criticism matters to her? Her…

Say Volvo and the Google Autocomplete in your brain will probably fill in wagon. Pre-SUV, if you were an upwardly mobile family in search of a quality auto but nothing too nouveau riche, some incarnation of a hatchbacked Volvo, whether the P220 Amazon Estate or the 145 de Luxe or the off-road-ready V70 Cross Country, was what you parked outside the country house. Each was luxurious yet quaint—you could imagine a Wes Anderson character being conceived in the back of one. Which brings us to the 2018 V90 Cross Country, a stately alternative to the swoopy crossovers that many feel are not too big yet tall enough to survive a Costco run in the snow. It’s a clichéd car-guy defense of an allwheel- drive wagon like this one, but I’ll…

They didn’t sell fireworks in my home state of Massachusetts— you had to go to New Hampshire—so I always associated them with the kind of people who own snowmobiles. Then I met my friend Dan, a sound engineer with a true passion for blowing things up. He’d advanced to the point where he decided to attend the annual Western Pyrotechnic Association’s Winter Blast in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. That sounded unmissable. I tagged along. It’s a good place for a fireworks festival. The desertscape even resembles one of those classy outdoor ashtrays. Plus, on this side of the Colorado River, the regulatory attitude is more relaxed than it is in California— or as Greg Dandurand, vice-president of the association, puts it, “more realistic.” In the enormous vendor tent, a man…

On a sunny spring afternoon in a Washington apartment downslope from the Capitol, Minnesota’s Democratic junior senator, Al Franken, took stock of a busy and, well, strange week during which he made a rare mention of his previous career—a writer-performer for SNL—while grilling a former reality TV star’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Having been reelected in a landslide for a second term after squeaking into the Senate through a recount for his first, Franken, 66, has written a clear-eyed and, yes, frank memoir, Al Franken, Giant of the Senate, covering everything from his days at NBC to his emergence as a leader of the loud legislative resistance. Charles P. Pierce: I did a profile of John McCain back in 1998 when I joined Esquire, and I talked to [Minnesota…

What do you call it when one of the most venerable names in luxury teams up with one of the most rebellious names in streetwear? Collaboration doesn’t cut it, not in an age when brand partnerships are as common as Facebook comments. When Louis Vuitton joined forces with Supreme this year, it was more like culture shock. Supreme fanboys called it sacrilege. Vuitton devotees sniffed at it. But hysterics aside, these pieces—the portfolios, the card cases, the jackets and the sneakers and the key chains—have exploded the last barriers between uptown elegance and downtown cool. Not since Capote’s Black and White Ball have status markers felt so in flux. And it’s been a long time coming. Supreme and Vuitton have been dancing around each other since at least 2000, when…

For decades, chinos got a bad rap as a symbol of Casual Friday mediocrity. Then designers learned how to tease some sex appeal out of them, cutting the pants skinnier, dyeing them in brighter shades, and lightening the fabric. For a while they were everywhere, and just as quickly they became passé. It was the feel of the pants— thin to the point of clinginess—that really did them in. But chinos had an earlier, and far better, heyday. Starting in 1929, North Carolina’s Cramerton Mills produced thick, beefy cotton twill: material that would make up the pants worn by millions of GIs in World War II. Immediately afterward, they arrived on college campuses (Esquire spotted the trend in 1945) and bled into civilian life. Today, brands are returning to the…

Brad Pitt. Jim Morrison. Bruce Jenner (Wheaties edition). All swaggering men of storied talent and good looks. All possessed of the same Samson-like locks— shoulder-skimming, windswept, and almost universally flattering, even if you don’t have an Olympian’s physique or a matinee idol’s jawline. Call it the shag: a longer, looser cut that’s popping up everywhere as part of the laid-back backlash to surgically precise barbershop fades. Chances are you aren’t already working with a Jesus-length mane, so if you want to try it, you’ll need to spend the summer growing your hair out. (Lucky for you, scruffier looks get a free pass when temperatures rise.) Amy Komorowski, celebrity stylist to Adam Driver and spokesstylist for Axe hair products, recommends occasional touch-ups in the interim. “You want to take out bulk…

“I just wanted to help Australian men dress better,” Patrick Johnson says. And when he opened his own custom shop in Sydney after a sevenyear apprenticeship in London, he did just that. Lucky for you, he didn’t stop there. The 35-year-old has since opened showrooms in London and New York and offers fittings around the globe. His recent ready-to-wear collection for Barneys New York makes his work more accessible than ever. And at around $2K each, the made-to-measure suits also on offer come in at about half the price of similar services. The Barneys pieces distill P. Johnson’s aesthetic: modern, minimal, and unstructured. And, being built by an Aussie, they’re made for warm weather, from beachfriendly sportswear to a modern take on the Solaro suit—a redand- beige summer standby invented…

When something exciting happens in music, odds are Jimmy Iovine has influenced it. He started his career in the early 1970s as a recording engineer for John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen. Soon he was producing albums for the likes of Patti Smith, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks, and U2. He cofounded Interscope Records, signing Tupac Shakur and later Eminem and Lady Gaga. He and Dr. Dre went on to cofound Beats headphones and help create Apple Music. In his spare time, he was a mentor on American Idol and coproduced the movie 8 Mile. Iovine and Dr. Dre made a $70 million donation to USC to start an academy with the mission to spur entrepreneurship at the intersection of arts, technology, and business. This July, their lives and work will be…

WE KNOW, WE KNOW. . . THE SEDATE BEIGES OF SUMMER CAN PUT US TO SLEEP SOMETIMES, TOO. So LIVE a LITTLE! Last December, at the Critics’ Choice Awards, Atlanta star Lakeith Stanfield had a moment: As soon as Silicon Valley was announced as Best Comedy, he rushed the stage. “I want to thank everybody for honoring us in this way,” Stanfield said, while Silicon Valley’s confused executive producer stood watching. “We worked very hard on Silicon Valley, and here we are. Thank you.” The crowd laughed as he left the stage. “So I guess I’m Kanye now,” he posted on Facebook the next day. I assumed the incident was a preplanned prank, but Stanfield says the truth was much stranger. “I think I was very bored sitting in the…

Spiders, Charles Darwin explains in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1872), “are the lowest animals which voluntarily produce any sound. . . the same note, repeated rhythmically.” Why do they do it? Darwin has no doubts: “The chief and in some cases exclusive use appears to be either to call or to charm the opposite sex.” Chasing the question up the evolutionary ladder, Darwin confirms his findings in every species. Frogs and toads, he explains, vocalize “incessantly during breeding season,” as do male alligators, who bellow and roar; birds sing; and among mammals, he says, most males use their voices only when trying to breed, tending to be “absolutely mute excepting at this season.” So when Darwin reaches the evolutionary summit and finds us Homo…

THOM BROWNE’S BARBARIAN DAYS Some runway shows are all about spectacle. We’re talking rotating stages, laser lights, and enough house music to score a Criss Angel performance. Thom Browne’s spring-summer presentation was just as over-the-top, but as always, he was in on the joke. Models changed from supersized, robelike jumpsuits into sherbet-colored blazers into tropical-print swimsuits, and for the final walk, each toted one of these custom surfboards. Now you can get one, too. Use it as an art piece, a conversation starter, a coffee table, or even a surfboard. Surfboard ($4,500) by Thom Browne; thombrowne.com.…

Open the door. Step inside. What do you smell? This is the chilly, glassed-in locker in Los Angeles in which Justin Severino hangs 2,000 pounds of the charcuterie that he makes—the fiocco and duck speck and blackstrap ham, the salami faintly perfumed with the juniper and vermouth of a Negroni cocktail. Maybe your nostrils are anticipating funk, a musty tingle of spores, but here in the cool air you detect nothing of the sort. “It’s clean, right?” Severino says. We’ll explain why in a moment. For now, let me point out that Severino makes the most delicious charcuterie I have ever tasted. He does so primarily in Pittsburgh, where he has two restaurants, Morcilla and Cure. However, his reputation has grown to such a degree that the Australian chef Curtis…

The director of 11 documentaries, including The Thin Blue Line and The Unknown Known, enumerates the proven benefits of reading self-help books with a sense of ironic futility. Morris’s latest film, The B-Side, an intimate portrait of his friend, the large-format Polaroid photographer Elsa Dorfman, is out this month. 1. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B & Back Again), by Andy Warhol Years ago, I wanted to do what I had defined as “the Ken Burns series from hell” for public broadcasting on the history of self-help. Of course I love self-help. What could be more inveterately hopeless and depressing? Nothing. The Warhol book is good because it takes the desperation with at least an element of good cheer—it’s not something to be avoided but something to…

BOOKS A Portrait of the Artist’s Parents And the prophecies of a Mad Man The novelist Richard Ford has something of a toughguy reputation—especially with critics (see page 104)— and his latest book reveals that he comes by it honestly. Ford’s first extended work of nonfiction, Between Them, consists of two moving personal essays about each of his parents. Readers who know Ford only from his Frank Bascombe novels—depictions of a materially comfortable but sometimes existentially troubled life in suburban New Jersey—will visit very different territory here. To Ford, this is part of the point: “Our parents intimately link us,” he writes, “to a thing we’re not, forging a joined separateness and a useful mystery.” —Christopher Beha When even your grandma is downloading ad blockers, Madison Avenue is in trouble—…

BEN GORHAM 39, Stockholm Origin story: My father is Canadian, my mother is from India, and I grew up in a suburb of Stockholm before moving to Toronto. I went to high school outside New York City, and back to Canada for college, then left to play professional basketball in Europe— I played until I was 27, when I realized it wasn’t going to work out. Not long after, I started exploring fragrance. Globe-trotting style: I like the American idea of denim and boots, and the European part of me is probably more refined. There’s an ethnic aspect, too, so I’ll wear a tailored suit with a pair of Moroccan slippers, for example. The turning point: Eight years ago, Byredo started taking off and I got invited to shows in…

Retail isn’t what it used to be. It’s better. In the right men’s stores, there’s vinyl on rotation. At the barbershop, they offer cold brew, or cold brews, or both. Even buying a car has become a first-rate experience now that Tesla has streamlined the process. But buy a watch— whether it’s a ten-dollar digital or a six-figure Swiss wonder—and the scenario is the same. You peer through a glass case, point at what you want, and the salesperson hands it over. It’d be more fun picking one from inside some guy’s trench coat. That’s why Rob Ronen cofounded Material Good—a SoHo loft that may be the world’s most seductive watch store. “The watch-buying experience is insanely outdated,” he says. “We want to bring back the romance.” It abounds here:…

Chop Job Our assistant on a shoot was wearing jeans with the hems chopped off. He told me, “I used to hate these, so instead of going to the tailor, I just cut them myself.” I don’t like to roll my jeans, so when I got home, I tried it out on a pair, and it snowballed from there. I’ve done it with chinos, cords, even suit pants—which made a pretty boring suit a whole lot cooler. —Matthew Marden Pick These Sticks There’s one thing Josh Peskowitz (man of style and co-owner of L.A. men’s-wear mecca Magasin) won’t leave home without: his toothpicks. “It’s been my thing for years now, since I quit smoking,” he says. His favorites are Auromère ayurvedic toothpicks with neem-bark extract. “The oil’s supposed to relieve…

IN AMERICA, 2017 28 extraordinary drink experiences in this great land . . . and beyond. It’s simple: These are our favorite bars, new and not so much, which we’ve inducted into our growing Hall of Fame. Jeff Gordinier and Kevin Sintumuang are our lead barflies, drinking at dozens of places over the past year, with a lot of help from trusted friends. Here’s where to start the next tab, in alphabetical order by city. AUSTIN HALF Step Julia Black’s Texas go-to Ten years ago, Rainey was just another sleepy residential Austin street. Today the colorful houses on this half-mile stretch play host to the city’s hippest drinkers and favorite local bands. Your best bet is this little blue bungalow, whose name pays homage to the Grateful Dead song. Prop an…

I’m not wired to care about getting the last nickel out of somebody. In my early twenties, when I was living by myself in New York, I was a salesman earning commission, and I believe I was the leading salesperson in the company for three consecutive years. But I’m not a good negotiator. It’s just not who I am. I’m much more interested in getting more quality than I am in getting a lower price. “Things” don’t really do it for me. I wear a thirtynine- dollar Timberland watch that I’ve had for about eight years. I love experiences, like traveling and staying in nice hotels and going to good restaurants. But I just don’t buy a lot of things. On the other hand, I feel good when people in…

I drove south, toward Providence, and a little while later I was following Amy’s directions, imagining her on those roads, thinking that this was wrong and delusional, and also sleazy and immoral, which made me dizzy, but who cares. As I got closer, I thought of how racy it was, that the kind of guy who did this kind of thing was usually more chiseled. Turning deeper into rolling hills, darker woods, I figured I could get caught and lose everything and end up alone in a studio apartment with rodent feces and crackers in my beard. People make you do things you don’t want to do. We met last summer at a conference, a kind of art camp for adults, on a college campus by the sea, a place…

A novel ist takes on his gitics I remember very well the first Sunday New York Times review of a book I’d written. 1976. I was thirty-two. The review was buried someplace toward the back of the magazine. Larry McMurtry, a writer I deeply admired and would’ve given much to cause to love my book, gave it instead a curt dismissal, adorned with a few unwelcome takeaways that found a path to my soft, yearning heart. My editor, a generous-spirited, widely revered woman named Frances McCullough—who’d taken a chance on my “debut” novel—felt it her duty to read the entire review aloud to me over the telephone, New York to Princeton. I can’t make myself go find the review now and quote it here. There are limits to self-wounding. Suffice…

STORE INFORMATION For the items featured in Esquire, please consult the website or call the phone number provided. The Code, pp.35, 38: Louis Vuitton portfolio, iPhone case, card case, and key chain, louisvuitton.com. P. 38: Barton Perreira sunglasses, bartonperreira.com. Calvin Klein Underwear tank top, calvinklein.com. Melissa Odabash bikini, odabash.com. Todd Snyder + Champion sweatshirt, 917-242-3482. Orlebar Brown trunks, orlebarbrown.com. Lanvin sneakers, mrporter.com. P. 42: Carrera sunglasses, solsticesunglasses.com. P. 44: Orley polo shirt, orley.us. Bill’s Khakis chinos, billskhakis.com. Converse sneakers, converse.com. Dom Vetro sunglasses, domvetro.com. Tomas Maier shirt, tomasmaier.com. Unis chinos, unisnewyork.com. Tod’s shoes, tods.com. Abercrombie & Fitch chinos, abercrombie.com. P. 53: Ermenegildo Zegna jacket, sweater, shirt, jeans, and sneakers, zegna.com. Tom Ford sunglasses, tomford.com. Hang in There, Dude!, P. 96: Haider Ackermann jacket, shirt, trousers, and belt, haiderackermann.com. P. 97:…

THE PERFECT PARED-DOWN LOAFER All loafers are not created equal. There are slick, narrow semi-slippers. There are chunky, beef-rolled bruisers. And then there’s this—subtlety in suede. The folded tongue and barely extended apron toe let the shape of the shoe shine, but the guts are just as appealing: a quilted leather insole and Goodyear welt make it one of the lightest, most comfortable shoes in John Lobb’s legendary stock. Loafers ($1,175) by John Lobb; johnlobb.com.…

Before you flip the page, let me explain what I mean when I say that an erection brought my son and me closer. Toby was ten years old at the time, and we had settled in for a home screening of Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. For those who have not communed with that masterwork of cinema since its release in 2004, allow me to defrost the ice floes of memory. About a third of the way into the movie comes a scene in which the cocksure newsman played by Will Ferrell is flirting with the fetching and ambitious interloper played by Christina Applegate. Even with the sound off, you’d be able to tell that Ron Burgundy has it bad for Veron- ica Corningstone. That’s because he has a…

How do you tempt middle-aged millionaires out of their hot tubs and back onto the hardwood? Revenue sharing. Big3, the half-court, three-on-three professional basketball league recently launched by the rapper Ice Cube and featuring eight teams of retired NBA stars, has no team owners. In Cube’s words, every player gets “a little chunk of the money” and the numberone team gets “a big chunk.” From its horror-tinged team names—Killer 3s, Ghost Ballers, Three-Headed Monsters—to its barnstorming schedule format to its trio of “four-pointer” rings way out past the standard three-point line, Cube’s brainchild intends to bend convention even as it goes easy on the knees of graying marquee players such as Allen Iverson, Kenyon Martin, Chauncey Billups, and Jermaine O’Neal. Each season will be short: two months long, with a…

Jillian Bell is well aware that “Person dies; hilarity ensues” isn’t a guaranteed formula for comedy gold. But that’s what happens in her raucously funny new film, Rough Night (out June 16), the first from two writers of Broad City, Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello. Bell, 33, plays a bachelorette-party ringleader who gets a tad overexcited and ends up tackling a male stripper, causing a fatal brain injury. She says the scene was originally written with a bit too much levity. “It felt inappropriate. So we reshot that part.” Then, in a series of escalating absurdities involving a Jet Ski, a threesome, and lots and lots of cocaine, hilarity does indeed ensue. For Bell—whose résumé includes a year in the SNL writers’ room and scene-stealing parts in 22 Jump…

Six years ago, Fleet Foxes, from Seattle, were widely considered the saviors of folk. (Granted, the competition was thin.) Yet at the height of their popularity and acclaim, the band vanished. Fans didn’t know it at the time, but Robin Pecknold, the hirsute singer and primary songwriter, was enduring a “crackup”— a term he gleaned from the title of the first of a trio of essays by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in this magazine in 1936, when the author was 39, the works tackled the difficulties of precocious fame. In 2013, Pecknold enrolled at Columbia University and tuned out an indie-music world wondering where its troubadour had gone. Now, on the other side of the mental chasm into which he’d fallen, he tells us how Fitzgerald’s essays informed Fleet Foxes’…

You hear “aviator,” you think wire frames, probably in gold. But just because that’s the standard doesn’t mean it’s your only option. The same shape in acetate (extra-lightweight, tough-to-break plastic) gives these sunglasses an injection of ’70s swagger. Suddenly you’re in a long line of badasses led by guys like Charles Bronson and Jean-Claude Killy. These shades lend another kind of cachet, too. You could be wearing them with ripped jeans and an inside-out T-shirt and people would still think you might have a Koons sculpture or two in storage.…

It’s high summer, and you’re stretched out on the lawn, in the sun, a gin and tonic balanced on your chest. We hope you get to do that often in the next few months, but if you want that moment in a bottle—earthy, green, just intoxicating enough to draw someone in closer—then you’ll want a vetiver cologne. Your dad probably had this in his medicine cabinet (Aramis, Brut, and Drakkar Noir all have vetiver notes), but it doesn’t have to feel old-school. The ingredient, extracted from grass roots in South India and Indonesia, behaves differently depending on how it’s mixed. So whether your taste runs toward citrus, wood, or smoke, one of these colognes will take you exactly where you want to be.…

You’d think we would have gotten the hang of “office casual” by now. Most guys have had years to practice. But it’s surprisingly tough to look both polished and relaxed in a season when personal climate control can outweigh personal style. So we’ll let you in on a secret: It’s not so much what you wear but what it’s made of. Take this blazer. It’s a blend of lightweight wool and cool silk. Easy, but sharp. Wearing it with a plain cotton tee would be like chasing Laphroaig with Mountain Dew. Instead, find clothes within the same family of luxe materials. Like this superthin-gauge wool knit (light enough to wear in summer) or this cottonand- cashmere long-sleeved polo (softer and smoother than cotton alone). Wear them with white denim and…

I once spent a week with an assassin for the Sinaloa cartel. I’ve studied literature, lived in five countries, and interviewed more movie stars and politicians than I care to remember. At this point, I feel fairly confident in most situations. But modern art confuses me. Why do I respond to Willem de Kooning but actively dislike Jasper Johns? Why do I love Jean-Michel Basquiat but walk right past Ai Weiwei? I always wonder if I’m missing something. And don’t get me started on those giant steel poodles. David Salle is another example. I know he’s one of the superstars of the 1980s art boom and that his paintings have been collected by all the major museums, and sometimes I get a kick out of the way he mixes nudes…

Plutarch, in the first century, posed a question known as Theseus’s paradox: If every wood plank on a ship is replaced, is it still the same ship? For our purposes, Baywatch (out now) is the ship. The new planks of its movie-version reboot are the genre shift (ham-handed drama becomes self-referential, occasionally puerile comedy) and the actors: David Hasselhoff’s Mitch has been supersized into Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; David Charvet’s Matt is now a seventy-two-packed Zac Efron; and Pamela Anderson’s C. J. is being channeled by 2015 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Rookie of the Year Kelly Rohrbach, in her movie debut. Rohrbach, twenty-seven, describes filming as “intense”: six months on a barrier island near the Spanish-moss-encased city of Savannah. Sixteen-hour shoot days. Four sessions with a personal trainer each week, and…

When I was ten or eleven, my mother put a handwritten motto on the top of my bed that read, “If not you, who else?” She spent her entire life and her whole energy on me, not just as a mother but as everything—a manager, a friend, a teacher. It couldn’t compensate for the absence of my father, who died of leukemia when I was seven, but it helped me overcome the psychological trauma. From a very early age, my life had a purpose. I could make all sorts of mistakes in my daily life, but in chess it was always: Concentrate, work, stay on top of your game. Because we all get complacent. I call it the “gravity of past success.” You win and you think, I can rest…