HELLO and welcome to the 209th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about dining at Epcot Center! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.
Is Shop Jeen’s Viral Success Story All Window Dressing?, by Joanna Rothkopf for Jezebel, September 2015
Welp, this is a bad CEO! I love that when she can’t afford to pay her suppliers or send merchandise she’s like, “what am I supposed to do? The money doesn’t exist how can I give them money that doesn’t exist.” GIRL THAT IS NOT HOW BUSINESS WORKS.
The Death of Flair: As Friday’s Goes Minimalist, What Happens to the Antiques? by Lisa Hix for Collector’s Weekly, August 2016
TGI Fridays is remaking its restaurants to look like basically office building lobbies for some reason, and this is about the history of the restaurant (which you may recall from a New Yorker article on that topic shared in an earlier TIRTL) and also about the concept of single’s bars in general, and antique and kitsch in chain restaurants and you know, I guess, really, it’s all of my favorite things.
Affluent, Black and Still Trapped by Segregation, by John Eliogn and Robert Geleoff for The New York Times
In many of America’s largest metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, black families making $100,000 or more are more likely to live in poorer neighborhoods than even white households making less than $25,000. This is particularly true in areas with a long history of residential segregation, like metropolitan Milwaukee.
Little People, Big Woes in Hollywood, by Seth Abramovitch for The Hollywood Reporter, August 2016
Interviews and pictures and stories from some of Hollywood’s most visible little people, the actors and also the entertainers at a club many find exploitative.
America is Not For Black People, by Greg Howard for Deadspin, August 2014
If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they’re working battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy. And because of correlations, rooted in historical injustice, between crime and income and income and race, the enemy population will consist largely of people of color, and especially of black men. Throughout the country, police officers are capturing, imprisoning, and killing black males at a ridiculous clip, waging a very literal war on people like Michael Brown.
A Family Matter, by Jessica Weisberg for The Atavist, August 2016
This is awful! On the one hand, there are children who are abused and even killed by their parents who nobody did anything to save, and then on the other hand, according to this story, there are also very many children who are not abused by their parents but who are removed based on inaccurate information. CPS workers have really difficult jobs, and the system itself is fucked,
Joanne the Scammer Lives For Drama, Branden Miller is Just Trying To Live, by Patrick D. McDermott for FADER Magazine, August 2016
I heard of Joanne the Scammer for the first time on Friday, and then I saw this on Saturday! Life is full of mystery, wonder, and hilarious people like this guy.
Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered, by Michelle Dean for Buzzfeed, August 2016
Real talk you’ve probably already read this, but if you have not, GET ON IT ALREADY.
The Best Restaurant in the World is Disney’s Epcot Center, by Rich Juzwiak and Caity Weaver, April 2015
Last time I read a thing Rich wrote about Disneyworld, which led to me (OBVIOUSLY) having to read the entirety of The Best Restaurant in The World is Epcot Center. It took a long time, like reading Jane Eyre, but was definitively worth it. And unlike Jane Eyre, I laughed out loud repeatedly. Seriously, I cannot think of a better way for you to procrastinate world’s most daunting to-do list than to read this entire series. How are they so funny, over and over and over and over again? I marvel in their greatness. Just when you’re almost done with the journey they spring Drinking Around the World on you, which is like a non-stop joke-festival. A comedy show, if you will. I’M JUST IN AWE. I mean the never-ending mozzarella sticks changed my life forever, but now my life changed again. BYE GAWKER I WILL MISS YOU. They’re not gonna like erase it from the internet are they, because if so I have a lot of PDFs to download.
I’d like to leave you with this:
I love the idea of putting a miniature America in an amusement park dedicated to highlighting some of the world’s most fabulous countries. It’s like me giving a PowerPoint about the most important women of the last hundred years, and on the last slide is a picture of me, for putting together this great PowerPoint.
Oh my God I read that Dee Dee and Gypsy Rose story the other day! I have a friend from Lafourche and have wanted to pick his brain about whether it was all up in the news there or not…
Re: A Family Matter – Kids being removed from their parents for stupid reasons is totally a thing that happens, and the harms of removal are compounded by the fact that kids can be abused or neglected in foster homes. The child welfare system is big and complicated and there is always more to say than any one article can cover (for example, entire books could be written about the relative harms and benefits of private foster care agencies). BUT. This article and many like it routinely overlook the fact that *the kids in the story had lawyers, too*. I don’t know who their lawyers were, but it is likely that they came from the Children’s Law Center of California, which represents almost 30,000 kids in the LA child welfare system and happens to be one of the foremost organizations of its kind in the country. There’s no indication that the author of the article tried to reach out to them or even knew they existed, but I would bet the sun that if the kids wanted to go home and their lawyers came from the CLC, those lawyers advocated heavily for that outcome. If an article is going to profile specific cases in which children’s rights to be with their families are implicated just as much as parents’ rights to raise their kids, the author should at least make an effort to reach out to all the players.
That said, it’s otherwise a great article and everyone should read it. Then go watch The Fosters and read The Lost Children of Wilder.
I, too, spent quite a bit of time this week reading “The Beat Restaurant in the World is: Epcot Center.” It is one of the most entertaining things I have ever read on Gawker.
Riese, Thank you so much for posting the article about TGIF’s history/evolution and their whole category of restaurants’ longstanding and vaccillating relationship to antiques. I always have and always will make my living in the antiques business, and this article was both interesting and useful to me. I would never expect my daily LGBT blogroll to offer me insight into such things, but what a treat it is for it to have done so! Thanks for posting and keep up the good work.
that’s so wonderful to hear, Susan! I will have you know I patronized an antiques store this very day! my grandma is an antiques dealer and i love it
Antiques dealers, unite! I’m running a booth out of my friend’s candle and used book shop right now. Tomorrow morning, like every Saturday, it’s off to the estate sales.