2025-07-15 22:51:00
There is no shortage of entrepreneurial Bills in New York City. A trip around town can bring you to such businesses as the diner Bill's in Ridgewood, the bike shop Bill's Cyclery in Woodside, the jazz club Bill's Place in Harlem, or Bill's Supper Club in Midtown. (There is also a Brooklyn bar called Post No Bills—a command we are vehemently disregarding this week.) But out of all the Bills in my city, I selected Bill's Wines & Liquors in Long Island City, Queens.
I've lived in Brooklyn for the last eight years, but I've recently been spending a lot of time in Astoria, at the northwest tip of Queens, because that's where my boyfriend lives. I can't claim that there's any grander reason why I chose Bill's Wines & Liquors over the other Bills than "it was the closest." So: High marks for Bill's in convenience.
2025-07-15 22:21:49
On Monday night, Major League Baseball gathered together all the big boys with their big bats from around the league to show off for us. And they did! Cal "Big Dumper" Raleigh showed off the most, and so he won.
Every year, MLB gets all these big boys with their big bats, and they line them up on national television and ask them to hit baseballs one million miles. This is cool. I like to watch this! I am in no way a home-run derby hater, because I think it's fun when guys who play games for a living get to play games for fun.
2025-07-15 21:44:35
Kathryn Xu: This weekend, my family and I went up to Lake Placid, where I saw several loons. As is the case when I see birds of note, I informed Barry Petchesky of this fact, only to discover that I was not the only Defector staffer to recently see loons and subsequently inform Barry Petchesky of the fact. What are the odds!
Sabrina Imbler: I am no statistician, but I imagine they are quite low! I spent the past month in the Adirondacks, and had no idea Kathryn also came up to the beautiful North, and the land of loons. I too saw loons on a lake and informed Barry Petchesky, because this is simply how things are done here. Barry then told me that Kathryn had also seen loons, and this is all the context you need to understand how we arrived here, in this blog. Kathryn, was this your first loon sighting? What did you know of loons before this weekend?
2025-07-15 21:00:06
Bill Simmons has been a part of my life for about 20 years now. As with any relationship that lasts that long, my feelings about him have evolved. At various points I've been a fan, a hater, a critic, a detached observer, and a begrudging admirer, sometimes all at once.
I'm not alone in this. I have only recently discovered that I am part of a whole demographic of sports fans for whom Simmons occupies an odd, conflicted space in their media diet. They are dedicated listeners of his podcast, which they primarily consume in order to find things to make fun of him over, and they would be devastated if Simmons were to retire tomorrow. Thousands of these people congregate on a subreddit dedicated to Bill Simmons, where they crack jokes at his expense, maintain the lore of The Bill Simmons Podcast universe, and speak in a language that can only be understood by fellow sickos. Some of them even listen to a podcast about The Bill Simmons Podcast.
2025-07-15 05:15:46
The MLB All-Star Game has unfortunately been handed over to Pat McAfee, who spent Monday kicking off the week's festivities on ESPN. What better way to get baseball fans excited about the Home Run Derby than by subjecting them to a few hours of a poached ex-punter bellowing about a sport he barely follows while he embellishes his yinzer accent?
McAfee had a few lowlights today. While emceeing a press conference with Tarik Skubal, Paul Skenes, Dave Roberts, and Aaron Boone, he stammered his way through an answer to some pointed questioning by Jen Ramos Eisen. He also duffed an interview with Shohei Ohtani, at one point instructing Ohtani's interpreter to provide some "energy on the delivery" of his question. But McAfee's most embarrassing moment was probably donning a sleeveless jersey while sucking up to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred by stumping for a salary cap:
2025-07-15 04:47:27
It must be said that the 2024–25 European soccer season belonged to Paris Saint-Germain. After a shaky start, which saw them come within a whisker of failing to even make it out of the forgiving league stage of the new Champions League format, the Parisiens bought a new star, found themselves, and hit their stride. Behind a well-ordered but dizzyingly, dazzlingly fluid style of play, and supernova turns from the likes of Ousmane Dembélé and Vitinha, PSG ended the season blowing away all challengers, capped off by an iconic 5–0 demolition job against Inter in the UCL final. The sumptuous play, imposing results, and the youthfulness of the roster won the team the biggest title in the club game, will likely win Dembélé the Ballon d'Or, and marked this team as a potentially era-defining one.
And yet, at what I guess is the official close of that season, PSG is not the team standing in the spotlight today. Though the French club was the massive favorite to add the title of world champion to its extended list of accolades in Sunday's Club World Cup final, it was actually Chelsea that wound up lifting the trophy by doing what PSG had made its calling card over the last seven months: going up against a great team and beating the hell out of them.
