“Life in the Cuba of Tomorrow” by Bruce McCall 

“I love Cuban cigars, and this sways me more than it should,” McCall says of his own feelings toward the country. “The island’s history—Spanish exploitation, then American exploitation, then the dismal Castro era—is tragic, but Cuban musicians and artists still rule, attesting to an unquenchable creative impulse that has thrived amid all forms of chaos.”

previous covers inspired by momentous events in Cuba:

“On the Beach,” by R. Sikoryak, January 26, 1998.

“Fading,” by Ana Juan, March 3, 2008.

“Mom & Pop Mega Superstore”by Bruce McCall

“Everything that I knew in 1964 is gone,” says this week’s cover artist, Bruce McCall, who came to New York from Canada that year. “I realize there’s a natural cycle. Nothing lasts more than thirty years. No shop, no franchise, even, ever stays more than thirty years. It all just keeps flipping over all the time.

“What’s going on in New York today, and I guess in most cities—the turnover of small parcels of property to big megastores and apartment buildings with large chain stores—it leaves you feeling very nostalgic. The restaurants I went to, the dry cleaner, the bank, the greasy spoons—they’re all different now. I lived on East Seventy-first Street for my first three years in Manhattan. Now a lot of the old brownstones there have been torn down, and they’re huge apartment buildings. You can’t live in this city anymore unless you’re a millionaire.”

“I went on a whale watching trip with my wife and daughter,” Bruce McCall, the artist of this week’s cover, says. “We were half an hour out of Montauk, in the middle of the ocean, between Block Island and the North Shore, and suddenly these huge things came rolling up. It was just amazing—they’re so gigantic and so beautiful. I’m not often impressed by nature, but I remember that feeling when we saw the whales suddenly appear besides us, and it was very magical.”

via:thenewyorker

by Bruce McCall

” I’ve been trying forever to find a way to honor the food-delivery guys,” Bruce McCall, the artist who painted this week’s cover, says. “I wanted to show what heroes they are; they’re intrepid, pedaling along at any time of night to deliver food to New Yorkers. We usually rely on my wife Polly’s cooking—she’s marvelous at it—but when she comes home late after a long day of work, then we’ll take the easy way out. Well, easy for us, at least.”

via:newyorker

“The Cart Before the Horses” by:Bruce McCall via:newyorker