In 1999, James Poniewozik in Salon lectured Remnick's new New Yorker for being a little too safe, too obviously trying to "sell a certain mid-to-highbrow New York to honorary Upper West Siders throughout Saul Steinberg flyover country." The '99 Remnick, "who is young and good-looking and well-spoken and well-liked and who, hell, can probably catch bullets between his teeth," was—writes Poniewozik—also in danger of being, like the covers, "militantly cautious":

Remnick may not mean to promise Tilleyphiles a soothing snifter of brandy after Brown's fizzy cocktail, but that's the message he's sending.... And this picture leaves out the New York that people who live here see. You'd think a New York issue might acknowledge, for example, that the four outer boroughs are where [Nancy] Franklin's "people (who) come to New York because they're looking for something" tend to land nowadays. But Manhattan's satellites, in the "New York" issue, are simply where one finds exotics (Philip Gourevitch's excellent profile of a young Indian-American woman resisting an arranged marriage) and Serious Urban Problems (Hilton Als' affecting Brooklyn "Dope Show"), where Joseph Mitchell (profiled by Mark Singer) went prospecting for characters.

The magazine of 2005 isn't nearly as provincial-Manhattan, I'm happy to say. So why is this week's cover? Marcellus Hall's "Unaffordable Eden" is well done and funny, but for a moment I thought the Pilates-buffed A&E were leaving Brooklyn, forced into Manhattan (or "the City" to those who haven't figured out yet that the subways cross the river—the taxis, too!) for their daily wages. That's how it often feels to me, at least. I can see the Chrysler Building from here, and the pizza down the street was voted best in New York City. That's right, I said City. Drop in—we won't bite! We also have lattes. Iced, skim, mocha, soy, chai, raw, done.

An earlier version of the famous 1976 Steinberg cover, "A View of the World From 9th Avenue," was titled "New York vs. the World." The finished drawing, with its emphasis on subjectivity, makes more sense. It's folly, especially these days, to insist there's anything second-rate about living outside those Disneyland animatronic suggestions that are Manhattan's plum neighborhoods. Even Olmstead said his park here was better.

It was in that same Salon story, by the way, that (Park Slope resident) Poniewozik wrote the snappy line "Likewise, even if you don't edit the New Yorker, if you read it, you fancy yourself its editor." Well, sure.

Under the Covers: Steady Hand on the Tilley [Salon]
A New Yorker's View of the World [Barry Popik]
A Funny Map Is Again the Best Defense [NYT, via Cartome]
Going Verical [Columbia]