RIP Clay Felker

I didn't even know who Clay Felker was when I started reading New York Magazine as a high school teenager -- and I didn't even know about New York Magazine until my fabulous (and much older) theater friend and mentor of overall fabulousness and sophistication, Sandra Garland Bull, introduced me to it, and simultaneously, to New York City itself. We couldn't go to New York (from New Hampshire) without New York, Sandy told me, even if we had to drive to two towns over to find it.

The entire time we walked the streets of Soho, the West Village and the theater district, all new to me, Sandy (who grew up in neighboring Darien, CT and knew the city well) carried with her a current copy of New York rolled up in her hand like a must-have accessory. And despite the magazine's increasingly white, monied and semi-precious tone over the years, I've had a subscription ever since -- delivered to addresses in several different states and even more zip codes.

In memorializing Felker, who died today of natural causes at the age of 82, media pundit Kurt Anderson wrote this: "Probably all outsiders (if they are, in [E.B.] White’s genius phrase, 'willing to be lucky') mentally compile a New York City field guide and playbook when they’re in their twenties and thirties, but Felker did so literally, and published it in weekly serial form." Exactly.

And it stuck. What I love most about New York is that, like PAPER, it has sustained this very clear sense of self as its own little brazen, bad-ass New York media institution. It knows what it is, what it has to offer, and that it will be and offer those things to an audience of readers who are waiting and relying on it to hit the stands or show up in their mailboxes every week. That's cool. Plus, I can hardly live without the crossword.

Nicely done, Clay Felker.