What’s Happening: Over the weekend, drag legend Linda Simpson recounted the little-known queer history of New York City’s waterfront to a packed South Street Seaport crowd.

The Download: The oceanic interracial, same-sex commitment ceremonies and mutual sperm oil massages of Herman Meville’s Moby-Dick; the port town bloodlust of Jean Genet’s Querelle of Brest; the horny archeology of Alvin Baltrop’s cruisy pier photography; Arthur Russell proofing mixes of his ecstatic disco anthems while staring at waves from the Staten Island Ferry. The waterfront has been queer territory for centuries. On a warm Friday night on Manhattan’s South Street Seaport, drag royalty Linda Simpson made the case that queens and other drag performers have also made themselves at home on the shores.

“Queer History: Drag and the Waterfront” set sail with a series of slideshows narrated by Simpson showing photographs, which she took with a cheap camera on color film mostly in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, that document with warmth and shade the drag legends and transgender icons that defined their time in downtown New York City. Lady Bunny, Hapi Phace, RuPaul, and more pose in the basement dressing room of East Village hotspot the Pyramid Club or on the streets of the Meatpacking District. Today, she said, those areas are “pretty developed. But then, it was fairly crude. And exciting.”

It might make intuitive sense that—a quick distance from more policed neighborhoods—those waterfront areas stuffed with warehouses, shipping yards, and bustling workers coming in and out of the city became cruising grounds. More surprising is their transformation into catwalks and theater sets for queer performers. But the ballroom kids promenaded on the piers and, among many others, David Wojnarowicz and Peter Hujar and Paul Thek made art there. As RuPaul fanned the flames of the ‘90s drag boom, the beloved drag festival Wigstock moved from grungy Tompkins Square Park to the big time (and big spaces) of the West Side’s piers.

“Back then, I swear to god, I didn’t even know the South Street Seaport existed,” Simpson says. Ironically, at the turn of the 21st century, a new kind of cruising brought drag to the piers below Wall Street thanks to parties on private boats sponsored by brands looking for downtown credibility. Simpson showed a few fabulous photographs from a 2001 cruise sponsored by the syrupy booze Alizé; in them, drag queens and figures like avant-cabaret chanteuse Justin Vivian Bond fill the frames with a breeze, sweet feeling of freedom.

And that freedom spread. “Back then, a cruise ship wouldn’t have touched drag,” Simpson said. “It was too freaky. Anyone in drag was considered perverted by the mainstream.” Or on the mainland. “Now it’s a whole different story. I’ve done cruises through the Caribbean. I’ve done Europe. A lot of queens do cruises and they get paid quite a bit of money, too.”

But for how long? Today, in a moment when gun violence menaces queer spaces and state legislatures seek to ban both drag performances and the very existence of trans people; when the New York Times cynically defends those who call trans women predators and New York magazine deceives readers about the legal threats on the horizon, it feels like massive waves of backlash are crashing over us. That night, though, a queer community found itself on the waterfront again, having a glass of wine and, yes, cruising the piers.

In Their Own Words: “People are attracted to cities on the waterfront like New York and San Francisco because, you know, it’s an escape from their humdrum lives in the Midwest,” Simpson said with a laugh shared by the packed crowd. “Guilty as charged.”

Surface Says: As the backlash crests, nights like these have never been more important. If we don’t share these queer histories, they’ll just get washed away.

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It’s been a big year for Magazzino Italian Art. This past January, the museum and research center announced its expansion in the Hudson Valley with a new campus designed by Spanish architects Miguel Quismondo and Alberto Campo Baeza. Then, in December, co-founders Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu fêted the progress on the organization’s forthcoming pavilion along with Amici di Magazzino—a new membership program for patrons of art and culture. Now the museum has revealed its full slate of 2023 programming, which culminates in the September opening of the highly anticipated Robert Olnick Pavilion.

The organization has entered the new year with an eye to highlighting the diversity of Italian art and culture with a series of exhibitions, lectures from visiting scholars, and special projects curated by Ilaria Conti. The first, “Present Memories: On the Politics of Image-Making” continues Conti’s series of programs focusing on the nexus of social justice, intersectionality, and the arts. On Feb. 25, scholar Teresa Fiore will join artist Dawit L. Petros for an afternoon of talks about the Italian colonial experience in the Horn of Africa and its portrayal in the arts.

Furniture designer Jialun Xiong brings her roots in Chongqing, China, to Los Angeles for the interiors of her first culinary destination, the City of Industry’s 19 Town. A quintet of zones explore Xiong’s take on minimalism, which is less restraint for restraint’s sake and more tasteful rigor in form and material. A slice of brushed stainless rests within the Formica reception desk while banquettes of the same metal, mixed with green leather and vinyl, offer perches for guests to explore chef Yang Liu’s offerings. They include a mapo tofu intertwined with cheese and spinach balls with black sesame, which similarly pushes Chinese tradition into thoughtful new iterations of simplicity and spice.

Custom plywood casework and feature walls of Venetian plaster lend subtle texture to the five zones, which include central and private dining areas bookended by a lounge furnished with Xiong’s sofas and tables. There’s also a bar serviced with high-top tables and fueled by the fresh-squeezed Foggy Plum Grove or Weird-O cocktail, the latter a mix of baiju and elderflower as forward-thinking as Xiong’s interiors.

Luxury goods aren’t historically known for ecological sensitivity, but famed French interiors firm Liaigre hopes to change that with Upcrafted Objects. The range of four pieces transforms workshop scraps into gallery-ready objets, like the Tray, for which multicolored leather scraps are stacked into a gentle arc and held in place by brushed chrome or black patina handles.

The same material forms petals, tinted and waxed in earthy shades of rust and blue, to blossom across the rounds of the Vase. A charming slump sculpted of marble or onyx, and topped with a bronze handle made from the lost wax casting process of other projects, becomes the Doorstopper. But the Bookend is most beguiling of all, setting a chunk of textured bronze spotted cerulean within a simple piece of wood—a fine example of turning what might have been trash into treasure.

During Frieze LA, Mortlach hosted VIPs for a preview of Sebastian ErraZuriz’s augmented reality sculpture installation State of the art. A.I. 02/15/23 at Neuehouse Venice Beach. To kick off the evening, Yves Béhar joined ErraZuriz and moderator Christina Ohly Evans for a panel discussion on the future of A.I. and its impact on creative industries. Guests then partook in the spirit of the evening through a guided Mortlach tasting with global whisky ambassador Ewan Morgan, before experiencing ErraZuriz’s AR sculptures for themselves. VIP guests mingled over Mortlach cocktails for the rest of the evening as Neuehouse opened its doors to LA’s creative community for a party to celebrate the art fair.

When was it? Feb. 15

Where was it? Neuehouse Venice Beach

Who was there? Sascha Richardson, Gaslamp Killer, Jana Bobošíková, and more.

The power jewelry wields to pass on memories across generations is undisputed—a notion that motivated Ashley Alexis McFarlane to start designing contemporary heirlooms that celebrate her connection to Africa, the diaspora, and her Jamaican-Ashanti-Maroon heritage. Each of her brand Omi Woods’ pieces, ranging from pendant necklaces featuring West African shells to sculptural bangles inspired by the Mbole Peoples, are crafted with intention. They’re also handmade with high-quality, fair-trade African metals, whose greater resistance to corrosion means they’ll endure for generations.

There’s a spiritual quietude to Hayao Miyazaki’s award-winning films. In a 2002 interview, Roger Ebert commended how the Studio Ghibli founder conveys “gratuitous motion,” the way “sometimes people will just sit for a moment or sigh, or gaze at a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are.” Miyazaki quickly identified that concept as ma, the Japanese word for “emptiness.” Studio Ghibli’s most memorable characters—No Face from Spirited Away, the rattle-headed kadoma spirits from Princess Mononoke—embody ma, affording viewers moments of pause and breathing space to contemplate the intangible.

Such is the surreal experience of attending the long-awaited Ghibli Park, which opened this past November in the suburban outskirts of Nagoya. Avid filmgoers have long dreamed about stepping into Miyazaki’s fantastical universe since the project was first announced five years ago—the studio’s poetic animation style and unparalleled world-building lends itself well to the thrills of a theme park. Where Disney’s sprawling operations swallow the world around them with concrete and plastic, Ghibli Park does quite the opposite. It’s ensconced within a leafy acreage of Aichi’s Expo Park, the site of the World Expo 2005. No trees were cut down to make way for its facilities. There are no rides, and it doesn’t have a parking lot.

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Original BTC began as an Oxford-based lighting manufacturer in 1990. Quality, detail, and an interesting mix of materials are integral. From using traditional techniques to the latest technology, all lights are hand-crafted in the UK.

Surface Says: The lighting across Original BTC’s collections celebrate British craftsmanship. From nautical Ship’s Well Glass lights to the factory-inspired Titan Pendant fixtures, the brand’s products carry on a tradition of well-machined style.

Unlucky tech workers who were laid off are finding runaway TikTok success.

Midjourney renders some tricked-out cars in the style of famous architects.

This custom Airbnb is styled to resemble the Phantom of the Opera theater.

Soon your Twitter feed will start being littered with cannabis advertisements.