At first nobody noticed when Elijah Wood and Zach Cowie began playing music. In those moments the duo had everything they wanted; anonymity, influence and unmediated feeling. Wooden Wisdom, the Wood Cowie DJ duo, was playing the Art Basel party Illuminate the Night at the unfinished Brickell City Center in Miami.

The Miami neighborhood of Wynwood smells like stale weed, paint fumes, and gentrification. It is a far cry from the extravagant, party-focused, boob job clusterfuck that is Miami Beach during Art Basel. And that is exactly why Mana Contemporary decided to hold its version of an art fair here, spanning the Mana Wynwood warehouse and the adjacent abandoned RC Cola plant, which self-storage kingpin Moishe Mana bought in 2014.

Mantis shrimp are named for the way they kill. They are smashers and spearers; one crushes, while the other impales. If crustacean horror were a genre of film, this breed of predatory shellfish would most certainly be the villain. In 2014, Orien Mcneill, who is either 35 or 36 (he'd need to do the math), spotted a bucket full of mantis shrimp in Chinatown.

Like much of her work, Ashley Zelinskie eludes a one-dimensional definition. She is a Star Trek-obsessed nerd who studies electrical engineering, theoretical physics, and space in her spare time. The stunning 28-year-old looks like something out of an Anthropologie catalog and wears a ring blessed by the Dali Lami.

At the turn of the 20th century, Central Park was a dismal place. The predominant political power, Tammany Hall, took no interest in it, and thus it became a place of unseeded lawns, party detritus, and men so hungry that officials worried they'd slaughter the sheep that grazed there. The Central Park of 2015 is much improved, a crown jewel filled with budding romances, green gardens and summer picnickers.

For Sumer Sommerfeld, modeling means sacrificing a "normal life." For her family, it means navigating if, when, and how to push her to the top. "She's 14!" someone yelled as Sumer Sommerfeld walked through a restaurant-turned-runway wearing alien-esque headphones—she was modeling in New York Fashion Week's first silent show (think sober silent disco, with better clothes), wearing four-inch heels and a sleeveless dress.

I vividly remember the first time I had to justify getting extra time to take a test. It was my sophomore year of high school, and the other special kids and I had been cordoned off to take our finals. My crush walked by and I said hello, hopefully. "What are you getting extra time or something?"

Every party has a life cycle. It begins with innocence. Children dance, the early birds eat free cheese crisps. Alcohol is poured; everyone begins his or her ascent. The beautiful people arrive. The children rub their eyes. The music gets louder, the lights more colorful and chaotic. The children are wheeled home.

When Crystal was hired as an assistant at an illustrious Upper East Side salon in New York City, it was, at the time, her dream job. But on her first day, the manager pulled her aside—he suggested she start going by a different name. Then, he asked her to change her hairstyle to something more "appropriate" for the salon.

On the first day of Mia Berg's first real job out of college, she found herself asking a woman to take her clothes off so she could take her picture. The woman stood with one foot on either side of a pentagram-esque diagram taped to the floor. Her legs had to be precisely 11.8 inches apart, so the fat clinging to her inner thighs would hang just so.

Imagine having your work in a museum but never being able to see it. For several women in the high-security York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Connecticut, this is the reality. Their work comprises the Women of York: Shared Dining exhibit, which opened August 7 at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art in the Brooklyn Museum and is the first at the museum to feature work produced entirely by incarcerated individuals.

The Children’s Place on 125th Street has a ladder. A few months ago they asked Picasso to use it and paint their gate — the Picasso of Harlem, that is. The two men share a propensity for berets, beautiful women, and multiple names, but unlike the original Picasso, this one is over six feet tall, black, and an early riser.

Goldyne Pizer sat in a parked car in Sun Valley, the sort of copycat California suburb Malvina Reynolds sang about in "Little Boxes." It was Halloween, 1957. Next to Pizer was Joan Rabel, a photographer, ex–hair salon employee, and lesbian from Philadelphia, or at least that's the birthplace she listed on a 1948 passenger manifest for a ship traveling from Honolulu to Los Angeles.

In an age where our attention often frays and never lingers, it is rare to find something that holds it unwaveringly for 60 minutes. Andrew Schneider’s performance of YOUARENOWHERE leaves little time for the mind to wander. Frenetic strobe lights, crackling sound, and a fast-talking man sponged in white paint toy with every possible meaning of the show’s title.

It was a Sunday in 1996 when a man told me I reminded him of Scout in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. I'd been chasing water bugs and was covered in mud. My overalls hung off of me and my short hair stuck to my neck. A curious child, I implored my mother to buy me the Book on Tape. I liked Scout.

I learned about dieting when I was 14-years-old. I went away to summer camp and came home 12 pounds heavier. It was the first time I'd gained weight. I didn't like it so I consulted my mother. She explained that certain foods are unhealthy, i.e. everything I loved, and that most skinny women eat them in moderation.