Arts & Entertainment

The journey from what chef Eric Greenspan calls “dystopia to diaspora” will culminate on Tuesday, June 2, when he opens new-school Jewish deli Mish in Los Angeles. “Opening Mish is a public service,” Greenspan tells Observer. “People want to build the library so that little kids can read. It’s the same thing with Mish, but […]

I love that classic old Looney Tunes bit where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck argue back and forth about whether it’s rabbit-hunting season or duck-hunting season. Their mutual goal is to avoid the wrath of Elmer Fudd’s shotgun. Any argument can and will be made to keep them alive. Strangely, that 1951 scene is eerily

During the Venice Biennale, Austrian artist Erwin Wurm unveiled his latest show, set in the richly eclectic framework of the Fortuny Museum, a Gothic-inspired palazzo transformed by the Spanish-born artist, designer, inventor, stage designer, photographer and textile innovator Mariano Fortuny into a Gesamtkunstwerk, or total work of art. As one of the city’s most atmospheric

Cultures and religions across latitudes have developed their own cosmologies, but most share some notion of worlds within worlds, mazes and labyrinths that articulate the vital entanglement between microcosm and macrocosm, between the celestial and the terrestrial. His career as a jeweler and craftsman contributed to Wallace Chan’s deep knowledge of geological time and his

A guys’ dinner is the meal that doesn’t need a reason but always has one—a brother flying in, a deal closing, a 38th birthday, a bachelor party with a flight from Atlanta and a hotel in Tribeca. New York is built for the genre, with a chophouse tradition running back to the 1880s, a Greek

At first glance, Andon Market could pass for any typical neighborhood shop in San Francisco’s trendy Cow Hollow district. Inside are artisan snacks, handmade candles and a selection of curated books, including Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. But the most unusual thing about the shop isn’t what it sells. It’s who

In 2018, California’s insurer of last resort carried roughly 127,000 policyholders. By the end of 2025, it carried more than 668,000, with residential exposure approaching $603 billion in June 2025, a 424 percent increase since 2020. The Palisades and Eaton fires in January 2025 resulted in an estimated $40 billion in insured losses and forced

When Roberto Lugo was a kid growing up in the gritty Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, summers were hot and dirty. Fortunately for Lugo, his father had a monkey wrench. The elder Lugo was that dad, the one who knew how to open a fire hydrant to cool things down and clean things up when the

For decades, unpaid medical bills have been treated primarily as an income problem. Lower-income patients struggled to pay; higher-income patients generally didn’t. These assumptions have shaped modern healthcare collections, revenue cycle systems and financial forecasting models. But they no longer fully explain real-world experiences. A growing number of financially stable Americans are struggling to pay

Some flowers bloom in darkness. As soon as La Bola Negra (or The Black Ball) begins, the screen’s rounded edges frame old postcard photos from the Spanish Civil War. A snappy montage, in stark black-and-white, features attractive young soldiers and sailors, whose uniforms have been painted over in bright pink—a tongue-in-cheek gesture somewhere between imposing