After October 7th, it seemed that Benjamin Netanyahu could not possibly survive as Prime Minister—but he could well be reëlected this fall, David Remnick writes. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/oRH67p
— The New Yorker (@newyorker.com) July 30, 2026 at 12:00 PM
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Tuesday, August 18, 2026
Friday, August 14, 2026
Keith McNally’s “I Regret Almost Everything,” Reviewed. @newyorker.com ✍️ Molly Fischer www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) August 14, 2026 at 12:05 PM
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Wednesday, August 12, 2026
What to Read After “Lonesome Dove.” @rachelmonroe.bsky.social @newyorker.com www.newyorker.com/books/what-w...
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 4:08 PM
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How Larry McMurtry Defined and Undermined the Idea of Texas. @rachelmonroe.bsky.social @newyorker.com www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 4:08 PM
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Sunday, August 9, 2026
Tuesday, August 4, 2026
Valeria Luiselli’s intricate novel, “Lost Children Archive,” confronts the complexities of bearing witness. Writing About Writing About the Border Crisis ✍️ James Wood @newyorker.com www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) August 4, 2026 at 11:20 AM
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Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Dave Eggers on Writing a Sprawling Novel of Art and Artists, Contrapposto. @janeciab.bsky.social @literaryhub.bsky.social lithub.com/dave-eggers-...
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) July 29, 2026 at 1:48 PM
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Friday, July 17, 2026
For the first time, the World Cup final four teams includes only the top 4 teams in FIFA world rankings (1+2+3+4). The combined ranks of the last four teams couldn't be lower (10). In the past, the four last teams have always added up to over 25. HT @chartycharts
— Simon Kuestenmacher (@simongerman600.bsky.social) July 13, 2026 at 10:27 AM
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Monday, July 13, 2026
Pedestrianization is often framed as transforming streets. In many cases, we're actually restoring them. We're reclaiming what's been lost: social connection, local commerce, civic life, and human-scale movement. Perhaps it's time to shift from street transformation to street restoration.
— Jay Pitter (@jaypitter.bsky.social) July 12, 2026 at 7:30 AM
The European promenade, the bourgeois evening paseo stroll are lovely but @jeffspeck.bsky.social wld urge caution. If your downtown street has lost diverse social and economic dynamism, the problem may not be cars. There’s wisdom still in Jane Jacob’s four generators of diversity.
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) July 14, 2026 at 3:01 PM
The cover for this week’s issue is “The Beautiful Game,” by Lorenzo Mattotti. See what’s inside: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/k_3m7n
— The New Yorker (@newyorker.com) July 13, 2026 at 5:00 PM
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Saturday, July 11, 2026
A new retrospective at Vancouver's Polygon Gallery attempts to capture the wide-ranging, time-spanning career of photographer Greg Girard www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/art-...
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) July 11, 2026 at 8:35 AM
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Once lined with fish docks, canneries and sawmills, Vancouver’s waterfront is now packed with glass towers and luxury developments. A new retrospective charts the city’s transformation through Greg Girard’s lens. https://macleans.ca/culture/greg-girard-vancouver-photography/
— Maclean’s Magazine (@macleans.bsky.social) June 27, 2026 at 10:07 AM
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Friday, July 10, 2026
Sunday, July 5, 2026
www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/book... ✍️ Charles Foran @theglobeandmail.com
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) July 5, 2026 at 10:37 AM
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Monday, June 29, 2026
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
open.spotify.com/episode/1WJL...
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) June 23, 2026 at 11:08 AM
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Monday, June 22, 2026
Self Portrait https://www.wikiart.org/en/david-hockney/self-portrait-1954-3
— David Hockney (@davidhockney.bsky.social) June 22, 2026 at 10:04 AM
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Tuesday, June 16, 2026
A happy #Bloomsday to all! Hear Joyce reading from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake in two rare recordings from the 1920s: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/james-joyce-reading-his-work-1924-1929 #Bloomsday2023
— The Public Domain Review (@publicdomainrev.bsky.social) June 16, 2026 at 4:47 AM
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Thursday, June 11, 2026
Wednesday, June 10, 2026
Crashed by Adam Tooze. "A masterful account of the financial crisis." ✍️ @oliverbullough.bsky.social @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/books/2018/s...
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) June 10, 2026 at 5:28 PM
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Tuesday, June 9, 2026
Wednesday, June 3, 2026
Wednesday, May 27, 2026
‘My favourite Western writers embraced style over melodrama, foregrounded Native American culture and explored the lives of women. Surely Larry McMurtry wasn’t for me. As it happens, this misapprehension plagued McMurtry for his whole career.’ J. Robert Lennon: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
— London Review of Books (@lrb.co.uk) May 27, 2026 at 12:30 PM
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Tuesday, May 26, 2026
Monday, May 25, 2026
The closure of a downtown bank branch is not good news.
The reason TD Canada Trust is closing the branch — as we’re told, by the local press, by downtown spokespeople, even by random passersby when I visited the branch recently — is “homeless people.”
And perhaps this is the reason or is one of the main reasons the branch is being closed.
What we know for sure is that the branch underperformed and no longer justified its existence. This is concerning, especially after recent substantial public investments in our downtown’s revitalization.
But questions arise. If we apply a little critical thinking, we might ask for instance:
● Why this branch when there is within a ten minute walk a Royal Bank branch, an RBC and a Scotiabank, and a Coastal Community Credit Union branch?
● Is the TD Canada Trust branch different from these others in any way?
● If the homeless population downtown is the reason for the closure of this branch, should we expect to soon see the closure of the others?
● And if there were no homeless people downtown, would this branch have succeeded?
● Would a different use here succeed where this one has failed?
The Port Place redevelopment about 15 years ago was controversial, the challenge was to transform a suburban style shopping centre at the heart of our downtown into a more integrated and pedestrian friendly environment. The outcome, you’d have to say, was not entirely successful.
Downtown retailers know that mutually advantageous foot traffic and “cheek by jowl” proximity are essential to the success of their businesses. Access on foot to this corner site, isolated as it is from everything around it, is poor.
The Esplanade - Terminal intersection is, I can attest, at least as hostile to pedestrians now as it was before the Provincial engineers had their way with it. Access from Port Place is across an unwelcoming expanse of asphalt.
And recent improvements to connect the site with Commercial Street’s liveliness have apparently done little to improve the commercial performance of the branch.
(An inquiry might also touch on the bank’s recent money-laundering scandals. Didn’t do the brand a lot of good.)
It’s hard not to suspect that the cause of the branch’s failure isn’t homeless people or even “disorder” (all the best downtown’s have some of that) but a failure of urban design, the failure of suburban-shopping-mall-thinking brought to the needs of the diverse, dynamic urban core.
The reason TD Canada Trust is closing the branch — as we’re told, by the local press, by downtown spokespeople, even by random passersby when I visited the branch recently — is “homeless people.”
And perhaps this is the reason or is one of the main reasons the branch is being closed.
What we know for sure is that the branch underperformed and no longer justified its existence. This is concerning, especially after recent substantial public investments in our downtown’s revitalization.
But questions arise. If we apply a little critical thinking, we might ask for instance:
● Why this branch when there is within a ten minute walk a Royal Bank branch, an RBC and a Scotiabank, and a Coastal Community Credit Union branch?
● Is the TD Canada Trust branch different from these others in any way?
● If the homeless population downtown is the reason for the closure of this branch, should we expect to soon see the closure of the others?
● And if there were no homeless people downtown, would this branch have succeeded?
● Would a different use here succeed where this one has failed?
The Port Place redevelopment about 15 years ago was controversial, the challenge was to transform a suburban style shopping centre at the heart of our downtown into a more integrated and pedestrian friendly environment. The outcome, you’d have to say, was not entirely successful.
Downtown retailers know that mutually advantageous foot traffic and “cheek by jowl” proximity are essential to the success of their businesses. Access on foot to this corner site, isolated as it is from everything around it, is poor.
The Esplanade - Terminal intersection is, I can attest, at least as hostile to pedestrians now as it was before the Provincial engineers had their way with it. Access from Port Place is across an unwelcoming expanse of asphalt.
And recent improvements to connect the site with Commercial Street’s liveliness have apparently done little to improve the commercial performance of the branch.
(An inquiry might also touch on the bank’s recent money-laundering scandals. Didn’t do the brand a lot of good.)
It’s hard not to suspect that the cause of the branch’s failure isn’t homeless people or even “disorder” (all the best downtown’s have some of that) but a failure of urban design, the failure of suburban-shopping-mall-thinking brought to the needs of the diverse, dynamic urban core.
Saturday, May 23, 2026
“When I was in hospital in Rome, having the experience of being a paralyzed man nearly dead, my only excitement was in the thought that I could write some of this shit down. That was all I had left.” —Hanif Kureishi
— The Paris Review (@parisreview.bsky.social) May 23, 2026 at 8:02 AM
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Saturday, May 16, 2026
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Saturday, May 2, 2026
‘I’ve learned first-hand how evil is tolerated’: Colm Tóibín on living in the US under Trump @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/books/2026/m...
— Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 (@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social) May 2, 2026 at 5:54 PM
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Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
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