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The Shit-Kickers of Madison Avenue | The New Yorker

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In 1995, Lillian Ross observed, with an anthropologist’s eye, the rituals of private-school teens on the Upper East Side.

Save this story Save this story The tenth graders heading up Madison Avenue at 7:30 A . M . to the private high schools are freshly liberated from their dental braces, and their teeth look pearly and magnificent. They are fifteen years old. During the week, they arrive, by bus or on foot, singly or in pairs or in clusters, and they make their way up the west side of Madison—they call it the “cool” side—toward their schools: Dalton, on East Eighty-ninth; Sacred Heart and Spence, on East Ninety-first; Nightingale-Bamford, on East Ninety-second; the Lycée Français, on East Ninety-fifth. Brearley

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