Detail of 'Morning’s Light We Can’t Forget, It Warms Us Like An Ember, Illuminating With Regret, The Nights We Can’t Remember' by Matthew Hansel
Get your copy of the 2023 fall/winter Brooklyn Magazine now
Haute hedonism! Inclusive hiking! Vintage storefronts! Gen X nightspots! Queer punk! This issue has everything
The 2023 fall/winter issue of Brooklyn Magazine is out now and it might be the most beautiful issue of any magazine ever published. Sure, you might think we’re biased. But this thing is a work of art. Multiple works of arts, actually. The least interesting thing you’ll find here is this editor’s letter (and even that is sporadically riveting).
Let’s start with the cover, a literal work of art by Brooklyn painter Matthew Hansel, who channels the precision of Norman Rockwell and the surrealistic hedonism of Hieronymus Bosch in his uncanny and breathtaking work. The cover is a new painting he made titled “How Strange and Unearthly is Love, How Bold and Nature-less in its Ecstasies.” In it, a beachside bacchanal. Lurid tan-lined bodies (pulled right out of a 1970s nudist colony) frolic, party and otherwise intermingle with goblins, snails, bouquets, eels and crashing waves. Looks like a pretty good time if you ask me.
And that’s the point. The aim of Hansel’s work is to get us a little more comfortable with our inner demons. After all, those little buggers are all that’s guaranteed to us forever. Might as well learn to enjoy their company. I encourage you to check out arts writer Vittoria Benzine’s vivid profile of Hansel and how his extraordinary vision is a product of years of toiling in obscurity — and, arguably worse, set design in Hollywood.
Here are a few other things you’ll find in the latest print issue of Brooklyn Magazine:
- A sneak peek at the forthcoming collection of photography by James and Karla Murray, who have been documenting beautiful and taken-for-granted urban storefronts for decades — check out their groovy Instagram page @jamesandkarla while you wait for their “Store Front NYC” to come out later this month.
- A charming chat with Rawia and Jumana Bishara, the mother-daughter team behind the mighty Bay Ridge Palestinian institution Tanoreen, which turns 25 this year.
- A visit to Outlandish, one of the country’s few Black-owned outdoors gear and adventure shops working to make the outdoors more accessible to everyone again.
- An exploration of the burgeoning queer punk DIY rock scene (multiple scenes, really) in the borough.
- A Gen X-friendly guide to nightlife in the borough for those of us who get both colonoscopies and hangovers.
- Four musical acts we’ll be listening to on repeat this fall.
- And more!
Find this issue in coffee shops, small retail businesses, record stores and more throughout the borough. Want it delivered to your door for a nominal fee (plus a free hat)? Click here to subscribe.
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