The Surplus Nobody Spends
Closed mid-April 1998 · On stands late April 1998
The Front
The Meridian Index: May
Days of the school year remaining, the price of a share of the newly public online bookseller, the number of Rockefeller Center ice-rink days logged this winter
The Modem's Second Act
A short note on households buying a second phone line for a home computer, and what it costs a family to be online after dinner and reachable by voice at the same time
The Essay
The Standardized Test Comes for Everyone
State testing mandates spread through public schools this spring, and the essay asks what a number is supposed to measure once every school starts teaching to it
The Foreign File
Jakarta, Before It Breaks
A stringer's dispatch on the Asian financial crisis's second wave reaching Indonesia's currency and its streets at the same time
The Feature Well
The Bicycle Messenger's Last Season
A profile of the Midtown bike-messenger trade as fax machines and email quietly finish a job messengers used to own outright
The City
Subject: A season of community-garden lot fights on the Lower East Side, read as the small version of the city's long argument over who gets to keep a vacant block
The Back
Books: A review of the spring's political nonfiction · Art: A gallery note on a downtown group show · Film: The month's serious pictures, briefly