In today’s newsletter, what the case of Mahmoud Khalil tells us about the Administration’s attitude toward free speech. But, first, inside the mystery of a stolen Elvis bust.

The Case of the Missing Elvis

The bust of Elvis—in his Vegas garb, paint cracking, adorned with old Mardi Gras beads—had been sitting at the Great Jones Café, in the East Village, since a server, known as the Rudest Waitress in New York City, brought it to work with her in the mid-eighties. The café was a neighborhood staple, where dollar Martinis were served in a shot glass and the bar was filled by beloved, punky regulars and by the likes of Bill Murray, Bruce Springsteen, Nan Goldin, and Jean-Michel Basquiat (who lived across the street).

For nearly four decades, Elvis sat in the window, becoming an icon of the scene. And then—shortly after the café came under new ownership, got a paint job, and was turned into a restaurant called Jolene—the bust was brazenly stolen. In a place where “everyone knew everyone, or knew someone who did,” Zach Helfand writes, “it came as a shock when the Elvis bandits turned out to be two of their own.” What followed was a very New York City showdown, involving a fedora, an Instagram threat, a cop with a Queens accent, “This American Life” ’s Ira Glass, the forever question of gentrification, a big dog named Easy, and a grand-larceny charge.

For a piece in this week’s issue, Helfand speaks with all parties involved, and even visits Elvis in his current resting place, amid dusty knickknacks and towering piles of junk in an office behind a mechanic’s garage. Belonging to no one exactly, of debatable worth, and kept company by a neighborhood lifer and his detritus: perhaps a fitting end for the bust that ignited a fight over the soul of downtown.

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