The Hunt for a $7 Million Stolen Car

Joe Ford, car detective, searches the world for stolen rare automobiles on the black market. The case he’s on now could set him up for life—if he’s not outsmarted by a skilled network of criminals and cheats. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( Inside the Twisted, Worldwide Hunt for a $7 Million Stolen Car Joe Ford is sitting at the Pelican Landing, an outdoor restaurant in a fancy marina on the Intracoastal Waterway. Across the way is a 180-foot yacht, the name Abbracci painted across the stern. Joe’s cell phone rings. Wah-wah-waaahhh. The theme music from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Joe’s ringtone. “Hold on,” he says. “It’s the FBI.” It’s midday, and Joe has just finished his first Corona. He’s self-­employed. The Pelican Landing is off the main channel in Fort Lauderdale, part of the Pier Sixty-Six Hotel & Marina, a twenty-two-acre, four-star resort where deckhands refuel yachts before they sail out to sea. When you’re sitting at the bar, the boats look like shimmering skyscrapers. Crew members scrub down decks; owners sip cocktails and shout into smartphones. It’s a place Joe goes. He hangs up his call. “The FBI says this is the most fun case they’ve ever worked—and I’m going to help them solve it,” he says. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( The Best Movies of 2022 (So Far) Summer movie season is officially here—for better or worse. But we here at Esquire are big believers that that size doesn’t always matter. Sure, there’s nothing like a great popcorn-and-pyrotechnics-fueled blockbuster, but there are also plenty of movies worth your attention that have been boxed out of the multiplex for yet another screening of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (so very meh). In our continuing effort to hip you to the best movies of the year as they roll out, we’ve added five new worthy titles in this month’s installment of the Best Movies of 2022 (So Far) and ranked them along with the previous contenders. So read on, and we’ll see you at the movies. [Read the Full Story]( I Was George Floyd Decades before I became a full-time hustler, George Floyd was born in Fayetteville, N.C., eventually settling in Houston, TX. In many ways, our lives ran parallel. The education he received at Jack Yates High School failed him. Jack Yates, a school known for its stellar football program and where Floyd was star athlete, suffered from decaying facilities, out-of-date textbooks and vestiges of segregation. According to Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa’s His Name is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and Struggle for Racial Justice, one Yates teacher even told Floyd that he’d receive a passing grade if he sat in the back of the classroom and didn’t talk. Floyd is dead. I often wonder why I am alive today. Our stories diverged once I encountered a love of reading. Ironically, it took me dropping out of school to fall in love with books and words. Today, I am the Senior Culture Editor for this magazine, and a Justice-In-Education Scholar at Columbia University. No, my education and job title does not make me immune from racial violence, but they do place me in a position to show that I am George Floyd, and also show that all of the George Floyds of the world are actually human beings, with dreams of creating a new life for themselves. For me, change came through taking in the intellectuality of Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, Jay Electronica, among others. These wordsmiths opened a flood of self-didacticism in me that I didn’t know existed. [Read the Full Story]( The Euphoria of Elliot Page What have I learned from transitioning? I can’t overstate the biggest joy, which is really seeing yourself. I know I look different to others, but to me I’m just starting to look like myself. It’s indescribable, because I’m just like, there I am. And thank God. Here I am. So the greatest joy is just being able to feel present, literally, just to be present. To go out in a group of new people and be able to engage in a way where I didn’t feel this constant sensation to flee from my body, this never-ending sensation of anxiety and nervousness and wanting out. When I say I couldn’t have ever imagined feeling that way, I mean that with every sense of me. [Read the Full Story]( Why the Sex Pistols Still Matter The Sex Pistols didn't invent punk rock. That honor goes to American upstarts at CBGB. But the Pistols deserve—and accept—the blame for bringing it to the ’burbs. When a teen turns up with spiky hair, a dog collar, and a leather jacket, the response is “What are you, the Sex Pistols?” It’s a generic term now, like Xerox or Kleenex. The band blazed that trail. With flamethrowers. [Read the Full Story]( Two Fathers On an arrow-straight stretch of prairie highway, a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team traveled northbound toward the town of Nipawin, Saskatchewan, home of the rival Hawks. It was a gorgeous late afternoon, bright and clear. The Broncos were the pride of Humboldt, a farm town of about fifty-nine hundred in central Saskatchewan, where players from out of town live with local families and hockey is like a religion. The team was heading to an elimination playoff game, but the mood on the bus was upbeat: Players, some as young as sixteen, joked around, listened to music, and believed, against the odds, that they could still win the series. They had dyed their hair mustard yellow in playoff solidarity, and somebody had sneaked a half bottle of rum onto the bus in case of celebration. [Read the Full Story]( Follow Us [Unsubscribe]( | [Privacy Notice/Notice at Collection]( esquire.com ©2022 Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 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