Decoding America

$1.50 combo / $4.99 chicken / $1.50 ice cream, vs a Manhattan lunch The stores everyone tells you to visit When people come to New York, they ask me about two places. Zabar's (ZAY-barz), the Jewish grocery on the Upper West Side that's been there since 1934 — smoked salmon, bagels, coffee, cheese. And Citarella (sit-ah-RELL-ah), the fish-and-meat market whose counter looks like an art installation. I love them. Thirty-plus years here and those counters still make me happy. That's the fantasy of shopping in New York. Then you get to the register The fantasy ends at checkout. A little smoked salmon, some cheese, bread — one bag hits $60, $70 without trying. It feels less like groceries than like buying a gift. The quieter problem is the corner bodega. A single banana, a dollar. You grab it because you're in a hurry, because it's right there. I call this the convenience tax — and I don't mean the bodega is cheating anyone. It sells rent, smal...

The Grammys Deleted BTS When BTS turned down the Grammys, the Academy's first move was to quietly scrub BTS from its own website. Weeks later, that same Academy is reconsidering an entire award category. Call it whatever you want. This was never the Grammys' decision to make — it was BTS's, from the first day. The award in question In June, the Recording Academy invented a new category: Best Asian Pop Music Performance . To qualify, a record has to make “meaningful use” of an Asian language. On paper it read like generosity — a spotlight for Asian music that the main categories had ignored for years. I didn't buy it for a second. Building a separate room isn't inclusion. It's exclusion with better manners. It draws a line: you go in there, the real show is out here. We have seen this movie. MTV launched in 1981 and, deeming Black music a poor fit for its rock format, barely aired Black artists. It initially refused Michael Jackson's “Bill...

There's a version of the American nuclear-revival story that gets told a lot right now — small modular reactors, Bill Gates, sodium cooling, the grid of the future. Here's the part that version usually leaves out: some of the most safety-critical hardware for that future is going to be built in Korea. On August 14, 2026, Doosan Enerbility won a contract to supply core components for TerraPower's Natrium reactor — the one under construction in Kemmerer, Wyoming. TerraPower is the nuclear company Bill Gates founded. This is Doosan's first order for core equipment from them, which is the kind of "first" that tends to lead to a second and a third. What Doosan is actually making isn't the glamorous part. It's the guard vessel — the outer shell that contains the reactor if anything ever leaks — plus the structures that hold the reactor up and hold it together. Nobody puts that on a magazine cover. But it's the hardware everything else is sta...

Ulchi Freedom Shield, the annual U.S.–South Korea exercise held every August since 2022. ( https://www.army.mil) It was Sunday night. The drills were set to begin the next morning. With less than half a day on the clock, Trump posted to his social media account that he’d ordered his defense secretary to “substantially reduce” the joint military exercises with South Korea. The exercise — Ulchi Freedom Shield — has run every August since 2022. It started Monday anyway. But the message had already gone out. Read his reasons back to yourself He gave three. His relationship with Kim Jong Un is very good. The drills are expensive, and the United States pays for most of them. And they send a signal that is “totally inappropriate and hostile.” Notice who all three sentences are about. North Korea. The exercise he wants shrunk is the one Korea runs with the United States — and the reason he gives is how it makes Pyongyang feel. The ally doing the drill doesn’t appear in the ...

Good news if you're heading into the city this week: it's about as easy as August gets. Mostly sunny, highs in the low-to-mid 80s, and — the part that matters most in New York — not muggy. This is a walking week. The week at a glance (Aug 17–22) Mon 8/17 — PM showers/t-storms possible · 82 / 73 Tue 8/18 — Sunny · 83 / 71 Wed 8/19 — Sunny · 86 / 72 Thu 8/20 — Showers likely (40%), partly sunny · 83 / 68 Fri 8/21 — Mostly sunny · 81 / 67 Sat 8/22 — Mostly sunny · 80 What to wear, what to pack Short sleeves are plenty in the daytime. Highs sit at 81–86°F, but with low humidity the shade actually feels good — a real change from the last few weeks. Mornings and evenings dip into the high 60s, so a light layer earns its place if you're out early or late. It's a sunny stretch, which means UV is doing work all week: sunscreen is the one thing I wouldn't skip, plus a hat on the long-walking days. Keep a small folding umbrella in the bag for Monday aftern...

You'd be forgiven for thinking the Jongshin New York series was over. Five episodes, museum after museum, and a farewell in our garden. The end. It wasn't the end. It was the middle. This week's video goes back to the beginning — the spring of 2020, when a global lockdown quietly stranded one of Korea's most famous songwriters in the town next to ours, for the better part of three months. Without those three months, none of the New York series you've been watching would exist. Here's how it happened. Jongshin was in the middle of crossing America — his Nomad Project, a long-planned drive from Los Angeles to New York, making music at his own pace. The plan was a leisurely two-week trip. Then came the rumors that COVID might shut down travel between states, and a leisurely trip turned into a sprint. He booked the first place he could find on short notice. That place happened to be one town over from Jinguk and me. We've known him since we were chil...