The 10 Best Oyster Bars in America

From classic seafood counters to new spots serving serious martinis, here are our favorite oyster bars—from New York to Los Angeles and beyond. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( [The 10 Best Oyster Bars in America Right Now]( The 10 Best Oyster Bars in America Right Now One of life’s great pleasures is a plate of perfectly plump oysters at your favorite oyster bar. Everyone has their go-to—mine is the 121-year-old institution that is Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. I’ll happily stand in the inevitably long line for a dozen briny bivalves artfully arranged in a perfect circle, clean and pristine, expertly shucked so that there is no shell debris in sight. But the real joy starts the moment I take a seat at the crowded marble counter and place my order—a dozen per person is the proper amount. I wait in anticipation as my oysters are carefully cracked open in the back, eagerly sipping a beer (or Champagne or Chablis, depending on the mood). And then they finally arrive. I quickly marvel at nature’s beauty and slurp the first one down—it’s like an ice-cold oceanic blast. The endorphins hit quick. Before I know it, I’m on to the next—good thing I have eleven more to go. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( [I Took Mushrooms at a Death Grips Show. It Might Have Cured My ADHD.]( I Took Mushrooms at a Death Grips Show. It Might Have Cured My ADHD. I was at a Death Grips show at the Warfield in San Francisco when one of my oldest friends showed up wearing a massive cowboy hat and handed me four desiccated—but relatively large—psilocybin mushrooms. “These should do the trick,” he told me, palming them into my hand in one fluid motion. A few weeks prior, we’d decided it was a good idea to do some shrooms at this show. If you’re not familiar, Death Grips is an experimental rap group out of Sacramento, consistently drawing praise and befuddlement from critics. Their music is akin to wearing a metal garbage can over your head while someone beats on it with a hammer and screams cryptic threats at you. The catalog is loud, intense, and chaotic. But also fun. The smart move would have been consuming one cap and stem, observing how it felt, and then taking more if I felt like taking more. Haha... no. I popped all four caps and stems into my mouth and buckled up. [Read the Full Story]( [If You Ask Me, Rep. Jasmine Crockett Wasn’t Rude Enough]( If You Ask Me, Rep. Jasmine Crockett Wasn’t Rude Enough There’s “when they go low, we go high” and then there’s a time for Democratic and centrist establishmentarians to pull the sticks from their proverbial asses. If “they” always go low and “we” always go high, then “we” are going to end up with busted ankles. Last week, a House Oversight Committee hearing “went low,” so to speak. First, Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene insulted Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett’s false eyelashes. Then Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York demanded Greene apologize. Greene snapped back like a Karen in a bar fight outside a Tampa Bay Applebee’s, mockingly asking if AOC’s feelings were hurt. After some (boring) procedural harumphing that resulted in a non-punishment for Greene, Crockett herself pointed out that Marjorie Taylor Greene has a bad dye job and is built like a linebacker. Monocles popped out. Bow ties spun around. Representatives were aghast! It was great TV. [Read the Full Story]( [Editor-Favorite Sales to Shop Memorial Day Weekend 2024]( My 11 Favorite Memorial Day Weekend Deals Look, I know every time there’s a sale weekend your inbox and feed gets flooded with sale content. I'm writing those stories, sorry if you're not into it. Companies use deals to make us buy, I get paid to cover said deals, and I've got a paycheck to collect. But as service to you, reader, I want to give you my actual opinion. I'm going to tell you the 11 deals I would shop myself—still waiting on that paycheck—based on everything I’ve researched for the past month. Here at Esquire, we already rounded up the best deals on Hoka, mattresses, home products, Lululemon, AirPods, hell, even REI. If any of those speak to you, great, so happy I could help. But sometimes those big lists just make you even more confused. I’m here to cut to the chase. [Read the Full Story]( [The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 (So Far)]( The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 (So Far) When you want to learn about something, chances are the first thing you do is go running to Google. But there’s another way to live and to learn—a better way, we’d argue. It’s called cracking open a book. To make sense of an ever-changing world, we recommend skipping Dr. Google and going straight to the experts. Do you want to expand your knowledge about hot-button issues like wealth inequality, algorithmic overload, and conservative culture wars? There’s a book for that. Or maybe you’re more of a memoir type, looking to glean information through other people’s lived experiences. Whether you’re interested in identity, grief, or marriage, there’s a book for that, too. [Read the Full Story]( [The Day I Finally Threw My First Punch]( The Day I Finally Threw My First Punch When I was 40, I raised my fists and did not run away from a fight for the first time since sixth grade. It happened in a gym straight out of a Rocky movie. I was spending that year working in a rented office on the second floor of a three-story walk-up in Rome, Georgia. I filled my time staring out the office window, tapping gloomily at my keyboard on a failing project. One day, I heard banging. Fire-escape stairs led to a newly cleared third floor. “A gym,” an intense, wiry man said. And sure enough: heavy bags, speed bags, weights. Along one brick wall: a ring, canvas duct-taped directly to the wood floor. Plaster hung in patches; the bags hung directly from exposed roof joists. The wiry man was Lee Fortune, onetime holder of the World Boxing Council’s Continental Americas middleweight title. Did I want to learn to box? Lee, a cop, planned to work the gym around his schedule. It would be $25 a month for limitless time and coaching, several afternoons a week. “Not kickboxing,” he said. “Real boxing. Sparring. You’ll wear headgear.” I said sure. [Read the Full Story]( [LiveIntent Logo]( [AdChoices Logo]( [How satisfied are you with the content of this newsletter?]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice]( | [CA Notice at Collection]( Esquire is a publication of Hearst Magazines. ©2024 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This email was sent by Hearst Magazines, 300 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019-3779