The Longest Line at the DMV
Closed mid-July 1990 · On stands late July 1990
The Front
Index of the Heat
Numbers of June — subway car temperatures at rush hour, the season's air-conditioner sales, the number of parade permits issued citywide
Field Notes: The Ice Cream Truck Route
A count of how many blocks one Mister Softee route covers before the freezer runs low
The Essay
The Suburb That Would Not Say So
A furniture essay on a generation of towns built to look like something other than what they are, and what the zoning board actually calls them
The Foreign File
Bonn, a Quiet Summer
A stringer's dispatch on a government quietly rehearsing the paperwork of unification before the treaty language exists
The Feature Well
The License Renewal
A reporter spends a month inside a borough DMV office, tracking one clerk's shift from open to close
The Last Drive-In
A profile of a single-screen drive-in theater's owner, keeping the projector running against the multiplex math
The City
Three Days in June
Mandela's New York — the Brooklyn motorcade, computer printout falling where the ticker tape used to, the City Hall ceremony, the exhausted guest suite at Gracie Mansion
The Pools, Reduced
A service piece on the city's public pools, half of them running on a reduced summer schedule
The Back
Books: A review essay on the season's beach fiction · Art: A gallery note on a summer group show of unsold spring inventory · Film: Short notices on the summer's second-tier releases