Farewell to Clay Felker's brand of N.Y. cool

According to everyone, Clay Felker's New York magazine was the best. "Clay Felker's New York" is a phrase that refers to a man (who died Tuesday from throat cancer at age 82, at his home in Manhattan) and the magazine he started and edited -- first in 1964 as a Sunday supplement to the New York Herald Tribune and then relaunched on its own in 1968 with Felker's last dime at the time, until Rupert Murdoch wrested it from him in a 1977 takeover.

It could also be about a place that is always in a state of vanishing, a New York City before everyone caught on, a New York in the throes of constant reinvention and trendification, a place where the idea of radical chic was born and so was the national cult of Ken Kesey and so was a case of Saturday Night Fever. Clay Felker's New York was a magazine written and designed by and for the coolest people who ever lived, and, to the degree that they're still around, they'll never let you forget it.

No discussion of the eternal heartbreak of making magazines is complete without a reverent nod to Felker and his New York. (And his Manhattan, inc., and his stints at Esquire and his go-around with the Village Voice; and his birthing of New West in vibey California; and in any magazine, past or present, that consciously reaches for a Felker-like combination of thoroughly hip and thoroughly helpful.)

Anyone who ever tried to save a magazine from going under appreciated the golden era of Felker -- including Felker, who rode several magazines into the ground after he left New York, including the Eastside Express and Manhattan, inc. Anyone who ever had to fact-check the "Best Restaurants" issue or the "Summer Weekends" issue appreciated Felker, even though service journalism can be a complete drag to make happen; it's the magazine lawn that always needs mowing, whether you're at New York magazine or Atlanta magazine or D magazine -- and they're all still doing it; never have American magazine readers been more serviced.

Anyone who ever had an 8,000-word piece cut to 1,500 words could always find wistful consolation in a moldered Tom Wolfe anthology, made up of extremely long magazine pieces, many of them edited by Felker or produced in the contagiously exciting era of New Journalism. ("It's a misnomer, and it's a term I don't like," Felker told Charlie Rose in 1995 in reference to what his friend Wolfe promoted as the "New Journalism." What's so new about telling a story right, Felker wondered, with all the details, with the great dialogue from fully fleshed-out characters, with a sense of what it all means?)