15 years ago Trump got humiliated. Really, posterized. Not just once, or twice, but three days in a row, each successive humiliation worse than the next. By, of all people, a Black man, and the one he hated more than anyone else on the planet.

And guess who was there:

It indeed me, making the same “you believe this shit?” face I made in all my bar mitzvah photos.

Yeah, true story: 30 pounds heavier and a decade-plus lighter — such as us Older Singles and Childless age — it is I, a 27-year-old idiot. Newly, a 27-year-old idiot senior editor at The New York Observer, a title/position I was comically unqualified for. And I was there reporting on a long-time dream assignment: The White House Press Correspondents Dinner. And, as many have incorrectly suggested, the most consequential one in history. It was, at the very least, the most poetic of them all, if not the funniest.

And that’s how we wrote it. Imagine Sorkin-on-crack-era West Wing meets In The Loop, with shit-talk from The New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick, NYT top dog Bill Keller, and cameos from Rachel Maddow, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, Sean Penn, Sarah Palin, and The Rock. Also, an incident involving a spilled tray of room temp butter and its victim I still giggle at, years later. To this day, the story we wrote — myself, Kat Stoeffel (now a features editor at G.Q.), and some reporting by Nate Freeman (now America’s preeminent art reporter at Vanity Fair) — stands as one of the best pieces of reportage I’ll ever have my name on.1

And next weekend, Donald Trump will attend — for the first time as President of the United States — the White House Press Correspondents Dinner. It comes on a special anniversary for the dinner, and Trump’s special history with it. But as we close in on next weekend — and as Karlie Kloss2 is rumored to be in talks for The Cut, an American treasure of a media property and perhaps our last bulwark against the robots3 — I’d like to remind everyone of two things:

1. That history’s view of that weekend — Trump’s Great Humiliation Ritual — is slightly distorted. And

2. Some perspective on why we should continue to do our best where it concerns members of the Kushner family not getting the chance to own any more media properties.

Shall we?

A month before that photo up there, I got a call from a former mentor-type, Elizabeth Spiers, the founding editor of Gawker and Dealbreaker (i.e. the original proving ground of all-stars like Bloomberg’s Matt Levine and Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin). Spiers told me I needed to take a pay cut and leave the job I’d just started at Esquire to join her at the New York Observer, where she’d just taken the editor-in-chief job.

I thought she was insane. For taking the job, sure. But especially, for asking me to take one with her — given my relationship to her new boss: Jared Kushner. “Uh, pretty sure Jared must fucking haaaaate me,” I reminded her/laughed. “Do you know what I’ve run on him, let alone Ivanka?”

A few years before that conversation, Jared bought the Observer, New York City’s legendarily adored pink weekly newspaper. He immediately proceeded to ruin it. A brief quiz:

• Know what the New York Observer is? Probably not.

• Know what Sex and the City is? Right.

• Did you know Sex and the City was an actual newspaper column, by Candace Bushnell, which then resulted in HBO’s global phenomenon? It was.

• Know where it originated? The New York Observer.

That this would qualify as a $2000 Jeopardy question instead of a $200 one — i.e. a fact lost to all but the deepest annals of media history — tells you all you gotta know about how well Jared, as its new owner, carried this torch4. After he bought it, many of the best writers and editors to ever breathe this city’s air ran from him and that paper like it was a smoking backpack in the middle of Times Square. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen plenty of people fuck up media businesses. But my god, did Jared make an art out of it.

In America, at that time, Jared Kushner was no household name, simply the lanky adult failson of a felonious father, whose parents bought his way into Harvard and then NYU, and who — in just the span of a few years — had his parents buy him a respected newspaper5 at 25 years old, and not too much later, acquired a famous wife with an equally ignominious last name (what a shidduch!).

So you could see why, in my tenure as a “media critic” at the Village Voice, Jared Kushner was a frequent soft target subject, as was the chaos at the New York Observer. As was the family to whom the Kushners had recently congealed.

Pal, don’t flatter yourself, you might think. ‘Couldn’t have been that bad. For more on why I assumed Jared might not want me in his employ, look no further than just one of my Voice columns from back then, a throwaway riff on a Financial Times profile (with one of the funniest accompanying photos I’ve ever seen) of Jared’s new wife, the freshly-converted Ivanka Trump:

Look, I know. Howard Zinn, it isn’t.6

Anyway. Spiers, that new editor-in-chief, said Jared could take a joke. I figured she was lying, or Jared didn’t read any of my shit, or he was illiterate, or forgot about it. Or all four. I also loved the Observer and be the change in the world you whatever. Spiers also told me that she had Jared under control, and that he wasn’t gonna fuck with the newsroom.

[This, in retrospect, should’ve been my first sign. Why would Jared come to heel for a 5’2” woman (with, albeit, an occasionally unsettling Alabama mudgrumble) when a guy like him already didn’t respect the significantly taller white men to come before her? It’s Jared.]

But like I said: 26-year-old idiot! I took the job. It ended two years later with Jared constantly fighting Spiers over coverage (especially over his father-in-law). It got to the point where Jared was trying to order hit pieces on his real estate rivals from the newsroom. He was so desperate for these hit pieces that he even turned to people like me — the actual last person he should be asking for help outside, of, like, Chris Christie7 — who would obviously, in turn, make an entire joke out of the entire thing (and Jared). Then, of course, write about it.8

To be fair to Spiers, she fended him off often enough to the point where plenty of really good work squeaked through in those two years, by too many great journalists to count, who are now among the best in America: [NY Mag politics writer] David Freedlander, [ex-Washington Post tech writer] Nitasha Tiku, [Vanity Fair art reporter] Nate Freeman, [Variety TV critic] Daniel D’Addario, [New Yorker staff writer] Emily Witt — the list goes on.

Those before us included Alexandra Jacobs, Max Abelson, John Koblin, Irina Aleksander, Leon Neyfakh, Jim Windolf, Peter Stevenson, Doree Shafrir, Choire Sicha, Ben Smith — and if any of these names mean anything to you, know this: Tip of the iceberg. The alumni list is absurd. One of the greatest incubators of writing and reporting talent New York City has ever seen: That’s the paper Jared ruined.

Which, if nothing else, was pretty good foreshadowing for, uh, America.

And no, Karlie Kloss isn’t Jared Kushner. And she is by any reasonable measure married to the Better One, but her own record as an owner of independent media started off much the same. And while I.D. is fine enough and has great talent in it — low bar, but she has yet to install a felon at the helm of I.D. — Jim Bankoff, I am begging you:

Do not make the same mistake Arthur Carter did, lest the same fate as the other Kushnered media properties of the world befall The Cut. It deserves a great home, one that without question is gonna preserve its independence, and among its nobles roles, the one it occupies as a counterweight to the celebrity and fashion and beauty cultures Kloss herself rose to fame on, and to this day, has plenty of incentives to protect.

Anyway! The Observer’s how I ended up in that photo, taken in the bowels of the Washington Hilton, in the hour before that year’s White House Press Correspondents Dinner. Trump was there as the “date” (basically, a ceremonial plus-one) of Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren9.

Here’s how the weekend went for Trump:

• Friday: After months of Trump baselessly crowing, Obama gets out his birth certificate and holds it up on national television, to prove that he was, in fact, born in America. Obama gets the one thing Trump covets, attention — every network broke in — and makes a joke of the entire thing, which, to be fair, it is.

• Saturday: At the dinner, then-SNL head writer Seth Meyers and Obama proceed with a litany of jokes at Trump’s expense. Trump stews, red-faced, for the entire dinner, believing he’d be above the very obvious public roasting he was about to get.

• Sunday: The networks break in, yet again — and during The Apprentice, LOL — for Obama around 9PM on Sunday night. He announces: Osama bin Laden is dead. No military action a president has taken since has come even remotely close to the favorable polling on it, upwards of 90% of Americans. It casts a halo over the Obama administration that made any GOP candidate (let alone Mitt Romney) effectively worthless in 2012, to say nothing of Trump, who in the span of three days went from the center of the national conversation to the other thing he hated the most: Something nobody gave a shit about.

When he won the election five years later, plenty of people pointed to that weekend, and said: Look, this is what we get for making fun of Trump! THAT was THE MOMENT he DECIDED TO RUN. Obama and Seth Meyers and their neoliberal yuk-yuks, look what they did!!! Most of the people running that narrative were impotent, sullen, still embittered Bernie Bros: White, male, hairy-knuckled, probably didn’t even vote for Hillary, don’t have any Black friends, secretly wish they wrote for SNL. Some were smart enough to know better, Adam Gopnik. But I get it. You can’t blame them for, like much of the rest of America in early November 2016, wanting an easier, more comfortable explanation than “this is our country.”

Couple things, here: First, Trump’s been desperate for the presidency since 1987, when at 41-years-old, he took out full-page ads in newspapers airing out his foreign policy views right before the New Hampshire primary. This, objectively, is a funny thing to do when you have a ton of money, and I’m now fantasizing about what I’d do with cash to burn and a graphic designer.10 He actually ran in 2000, and scored Reform Party primary wins in Michigan and California (but wasn’t crazy about being associated with David Duke, so he split — innocent times!).

Meanwhile, late-night hosts, newspaper and magazine publishers, comedians — many, many people have been making fun of Donald Trump for a long, long time. He didn’t try to buy Spy or Vanity Fair every time they called him a short-fingered vulgarian. And yeah, as he sundowns and gets bored, he’s gone after late-night — but letting a rabid FCC chair off the leash and quid-pro-quo’ing with the Ellisons is all in a day’s work now, and it took him two presidential administrations to do it. Same with bombing Iran and beefing with the pope. The sequel was always gonna be weirder.

But this is the most validation-hungry and attention starved person in American history we’re talking about. While it’s true that he can’t take a joke, I assure you: The jokes weren’t it. Maybe the Osama hit inspired him, who knows. But let’s be real: Trump had his eye on being the center of attention long before that weekend. Even Trump himself has shrugged at that dinner, to the Washington Post, and in a Times story proffering (then negating?!?) that whole “the jokes did it” thesis. Let us please, fifteen years later, retire that narrative. For the love of god, don’t blame the jokes.

There’s that Oscar Wilde line: Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. Trump didn’t run because he got clowned on. He ran long before the jokes, and well after the jokes, every time motivated by money, power, narcissism, and the ability to capitalize on the pee11 stains deep in the fabric of the American soul. Trump was registered as a Democrat from 2001 to 2009. I’ve always thought that if, at any point in history, Trump could’ve galaxy-brained his way into winning on a Democratic ticket, he would’ve rather done that, if only because the celebrities would’ve been more famous.

As for this year’s dinner? There won’t be a comedian, just a mind-reader. Which is funny, in and of itself, given that anybody with a working brain will be thinking the same thing: Any celebration of the press in 2026 that’s attended by Trump is, as far as they go, an absolute joke. God knows we should all enjoy at least one.

Class dismissed. This was a one-off! Press Clips will not return anytime soon, because (as longtime readers know) I get in some kind of trouble everytime I do this shit. That said, FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays will return. Anyway: Thanks, as ever, for taking any time with me at all. Long live The Cut.

More soon,

-f.

Hi, okay, so —

This finally happened:

October 2024, I’m walking around Glyfada, the seaside Athens neighborhood on the city center’s outskirts, pacing back-and-forth on my phone in front of the Aegean Sea, laughing like a goddamn maniac, because I can’t fucking believe what I’m reading, which is:

A flyer, attached to an email, promoting record label Circoloco’s massive Halloween house music party in Brooklyn. At the bottom of which is a name I haven’t thought about since, like, 1993. A buzzer-beater of an email, it hit my inbox right on time, the day before I was supposed to pitch a producer for Pablo Torre Finds Out.

And that, it turned out, was just the beginning of the story we’d put out….15 months later. Which is this:

Holy shit, holy SHIT, it finally came out, it actually exists — on YouTube up there, Apple Podcasts here, and Spotify here. This is one of my favorite things I’ve ever worked on, full stop. I’m incredibly proud of what we made, so much so, that I’m breaking my own personal five-years-running rule about exploiting the FOSTERTALK media ecosystem to shill anything I’ve created outside of it. So you’re not a sports person, you say — do you know who you’re reading? Look: This podcast episode’s about basketball like Friday Night Lights (the TV show!) is about football, which is to say: Kind of, but not really. Many, many people had reactions like those above. I think you’ll like it.

For the uninitiated: and Co. have been shooting with one of the hottest hands in media for the last year and then some. Named a unanimous Peabody Finalist, profiled in New York Magazine here; in December, named to Apple’s Top 10 Podcasts of the Year, NY Mag’s Top 10 of the Year, and so on. Just this week (!) they won podcasting’s Emmy equivalent for Best Sports Podcast and Best Podcaster. This all prompts a question I’ve gotten more than once:

What, if any, business do they have with the likes of you? (“…no offense!” None taken! This is someone whose experience producing audio is limited to a hobbyist pirate “radio show” and whose ouvre involves more writing about people ripping poppers than any semi-functioning adult’s should.)

So, fair question. But since everyone in media seems to be self-mythologizing while reflexively pulling the ladder up on everyone else these days, I figured: How about let’s not? And instead, if I’m gonna shill to you, how about we throw a little light on how something like this actually gets made — and some of the incredible, great, weird, despondent, and funny moments that turned up along the way.

This thing started, as so many in media do, with mental_floss, a once-glorious now-bygone print magazine about the culture of trivia and knowledge — whatever that was — beloved and memorialized by its diehard subscribers, its stacked alumni list, and die-hard magazine nerds.

It was too great for this world, dead in 2016, but I got a crack at being its executive editor two years before that — easily, one of the best jobs I’ve ever had, due in no small part to my boss (and the mag’s co-founder) Mangesh Hattikudur, now the co-founder of a different insanely-great podcast outfit, Kaleidoscope.

Mangesh gets hit up by his old friend Neely Lohmann, once one of the magazine’s first editors, who needed some fresh blood for stories on PTFO, where she’s now a producer. Like most of the mental_floss alum, Neely’s brilliant, and lovely, and went on to do a bunch of cool things post-floss, becoming a National Magazine Award-winning editor at places like ESPN The Magazine, where she met Pablo. Given that I didn’t make a complete fucking mess of Mangesh’s magazine (honestly, a fine standard), he throws her my name.

Neely and I meet at one of those ridiculous over-themed Maman coffee shops, May ‘24, and spend most of the conversation talking about how great mental_floss was and how great Mangesh is, a regular occurrence when two floss alum1 get together. Sports, however: Not really something I bring much expertise to the table on. I’m sure I ralphed some pretty dumb ideas at Neely, and I’m sure she politely nodded at them before telling me she’ll hit me next time they’re looking for pitches.

Here’s the thing about being asked for pitches: Rather that sorting through slush piles of inbound, they’ve got some hunch that you’ve got something better up your sleeve. It’s a great honor, and should be treated like one. But also, there’s pressure there. Don’t deliver on anything, and they stop calling. Which is why you gotta come up with something, and something good, or at least near-good enough to keep them banging your line again.

Because I’m a compulsive and insecure and insane person who believes every opportunity for creative work will be my last, and because taking on freelance is a great distraction from trying to do literally anything “on spec”2, I never, ever turn down the opportunity to pitch. This has resulted in me pitching some horrendously dumb shit, and editors never calling me again. It also, sometimes, results in paid work. Sometimes.

So, October ‘24: Neely hits me up again, we’ve got a phone call scheduled the next day. All I’ve got her for is a single pitch, about a story I heard in 2016, when I interviewed a guy named Harry Mara, the coach of American world decathlon champion Ashton Eaton. Harry Mara told me Ashton Eaton naps on the field between heats at the Olympics. And that this was key to him becoming a world champion, and (“more importantly!...”) inspired me to learn how to take 20 minute power naps.

Pablo Torre Finds Out is out here getting nominated for Peabody Awards while attempting to exonerate innocent sports fans languishing on death row, and all I’ve got is a (not just figurative, but literal) snoozer of a pitch. Cool. Great. Fuck.

Then, that aforementioned deus email machina shows up, manna from the inbox heavens: Ibiza-based record label and global house music party brand Circoloco’s press release, announcing the lineup for their Halloween 2024 show, on which is former NBA player Rony Seikaly’s name. Jackpot.

A thing about dance music: You can know enough about it to write about it for a living — know enough to write an entire cover story and accompanying side feature on it for the New York Times — and still have no idea about so many sounds and artists out there who don’t just have an audience, but a substantial one.3 And who had any idea that former NBA player Rony Seikaly — a guy I last thought about playing NBA Jam in 1993 — was a DJ? And let alone, as I’d later find out, not a novelty act DJ a la Shaq, or Paris Hilton, but one good enough to be on a lineup with the likes of some of the more popular draws in house music right now?!

Now I had something. I run back to my hotel room, open an email, and drop in some of the facts on him I dig up over the next few hours. This includes a one-off line from his Wikipedia page (backed up by an account from a site that looks like it was hand-coded three generations of HTML ago) about how Seikaly apparently once challenged Magic Johnson to a game of one-on-one, to show other NBA players that you couldn’t contract HIV by playing basketball with him. He also had a successful commercial real estate career. This guy!

I punch in the rest of the pitch, and shoot it off to Neely before our call. The story: Rony Seikaly, Miami Heat ‘90s big man, destroyer of NBA Jam cabinets, is an absolutely legit house music DJ enjoying an incredible second act of a career. We go over my email by phone. Halfway through pitching it, I already feel guilty for forcing Neely to respond diplomatically to the napping thing, which somehow doesn’t put her to sleep in situ. Finally, we get to Rony Seikaly, House Music DJ. We’re going through the notes, and Neely’s not blown over, but compelled.

Given where I was a day ago, I’ll take it. I keep going, when suddenly, audibly screeching brakes in Neely’s brain bring the call skidding to a halt: Wait, what?! Say that again. How well known is this Magic Johnson thing? What else did you find? Honestly: Not a ton out there. A clip of Magic talking about it for twenty seconds in a speech a long time ago. The aforementioned blog post. That was kind of it. Neely: “DJ Rony Seikaly is good. But that is great. That’s the pitch.”

I brought Neely an idea, and she found the story — a great editor at work. She goes back to Pablo and the rest of their team, and sure enough: Green light. Game on.

I immediately start firing off emails to Rony Seikaly’s manager. Nothing. I wasn’t sure how else to get ahold of him, so: Fine — I’ve got a few contacts in dance music, I’m getting to that Circoloco Halloween party, I’m getting backstage, and I’m chasing Rony Seikaly down myself.

Two weeks later, back in NY, I’m en route with a friend to Brooklyn Storehouse, the 5000-plus capacity Navy Yard warehouse venue/that night’s theatre of combat. This is a friend who I’ve dragged — depending on the night, begrudgingly to semi-willingly — to many loud electronic music parties like this. They’re a great co-conspirator for this kind of thing, but usually, they don’t involve anything remotely resembling work, and neither one of us have to appear anything remotely resembling professional.

This night was different. A contact got us passes that indeed landed us right onto the stage, as close to the DJ booth as you can be without actually being in it. Like plenty people there that night, it wasn’t long before said friend was well on their way to — how to put this delicately? — sous vide cooking their own brain for the evening. I leave my friend to try to position my way at the booth’s opening. Rony finishes his set, packs up his USB sticks, and sets off, out of the booth. I rush him.

Rony Seikaly is (very) 6’11”. I’m (charitably) 5’8”. I’m staring up — literally, craning my neck up at him — and yelling at him, because if anyone is more than eight inches from your face, you likely won’t hear them speaking at a normal volume inside Brooklyn Storehouse. And so:

“HI RONY HI YEAH ME HI UH MY NAME IS FOSTER LIKE JODIE FOSTER JO-DIE FOS-TER SURE I THINK YOU GOT IT ANYWAY I’M A REPORTER YEAH A JOURNALIST BUT I WRITE ABOUT DANCE MUSIC! DANCE MUSIC! SOMETIMES! (AMONG OTHER THINGS!) AND I WELL THIS IS ADMITTEDLY STRANGE BUT — “ADMITTEDLY STRANGE!” — WEIRD! I SHOULD’VE JUST SAID WEIRD! BUT UH I HAVE SOMETHING TO ASK ABOUT I EMAILED CLAUDIA YOUR MANAG—YEAH CLAUDIA RIGHT AND UH I KNOW HOW THIS SOUNDS BUT WELL UHH COULD YOU JUST READ THIS EMAIL?”

All 6’11” of Rony Seikaly is looking down at me as you might expect: Like I’m fucking insane. Because he’s Rony Seikaly, and his vocal cords are the size of my skull, he doesn’t need to yell.

You want me to read an email? Now?

UH YES THIS ONE TO CLAUDIA, YOUR MANA—COULD WE DO THIS OFF THE STAGE, JUST BACK HERE WHERE NOBODY IS?

I lead him to the gangway leading off the stage. If you’ve never had a man who could literally eat you for a leisurely lunch look at you like you’re possibly somehow a threat to him and/or that you may be forcing him to do some kind of clerical work in a dark corner of a warehouse nightclub, reader, you haven’t lived. Rony Seikaly — then 58-years-old — takes out his CVS-checkout-style reading glasses, puts them on, and puts my phone to his face.

He scrolls through it. He reads it. I’m literally holding my breath. He puts it down.

I haven’t talked to anyone about this. He pauses. I hadn’t thought about this in a really long time, but I ran into Magic Johnson in an elevator a few years ago. He thanked me again. He told me if I ever needed anything from him, he’d do it. He pauses again. I really didn’t do it to talk about it, you know? I nod.

He scrolls my email again, one more time, the entire thing. I genuinely have no idea how he’s going to respond, right until: Okay. I’ll do your interview. Take my number, here.

The relief that washed through my body, you’ve got no idea. I thanked him profusely, promised him that we’d make it worth his time, etc. After he puts his number in my phone and gives it back to me, I ask him the one thing I’ve wanted to know since I started this thing: How did he know, in 1991, unlike everyone else in the NBA, that he wouldn’t get HIV from playing basketball with Magic Johnson?

He told me. I didn’t start tearing up right there and then, but I came close, and definitely did when I told someone close the next day. I started with a fine pitch. We found a good story. That moment…was when I knew we had a great one. I made my way back to my friend, whose brain had moonwalked several astral planes away by then. Still, they clocked the look on my face and asked me if I was okay — did he shut me down? No, he said yes. Then, they asked, what’s wrong? He told me something wild. That’s all. I got the interview. I GOT THE INTERVIEW!!! Let’s have a night.

Later that night, said friend forced me to take a picture with a guy whose Halloween costume he loved — the guy was dressed as the chef from Ratatouille, with a stuffed rat under his chef’s toque. I had, in all fairness, a few drinks at this point, and played along. A girl later came up to us and asked us if we could introduce her to “the guy from the Chainsmokers.” We had no idea what the fuck she was talking about. Turns out it was this guy.

ANYWAY: Things started picking up steam. The guy who wrote that blog post that looked like it was from three generations of internet ago? A hobbyist, who made the blog and accompany podcast with his kid during the pandemic lockdown. He was at the game in question. I didn’t own any podcasting equipment, so I did the interview from ’s apartment. He was an incredible interview.

I flew down to Miami a month later to interview Rony, just a two-night trip, slept in my friend Danielle’s guest room. Rony was sick, almost didn’t come into the Meadowlark studio down there, did so anyway, and gave us two hours of his time. He was a phenomenally giving and charitable interview. Everything was coming together. We were barely two months in, and basically had this thing in the bag. We just needed one more piece — which, I figured, was gonna be the easiest part.

In a word: Jokes.

Sometime in the days after the story was greenlit, Neely and I were gaming out the interviews we needed. Magic Johnson, the biggest name involved, would be the last person we reach out to, once the other pieces were in play.

Neely: Yeah, so, about that…you may run into a little…resistance, maybe, getting Magic. What? But really, shouldn’t be a problem. We just had some trouble getting to him for a previous episode. Oh? A funny little thing. About his Twitter. Again, shouldn’t be a big deal.

A fun wrinkle! There are two major characters in this story. We get them, we really don’t need anything or anyone else. We don’t get either of them, I’m probably cooked. And at the outset, it felt like Rony would be a far tougher nut to crack than Magic.

After all, how could Magic refuse? A story about a cause he’s championed for the last three decades and then some — about a global health crisis for whom he is the alpha and omega, for an entire generation of people, all around the world? ‘Seems, pardon the expression, like an absolute layup.

At this point, I hadn’t listened to the other episode in question. A few days after we wrapped the Rony interview, I did.

It was funny. It was charming. It was fun. It was in good humor, and innocent enough! It was also, I could imagine, for a certain kind of person — and specifically, not Magic Johnson himself, but rather, a certain kind of person who is also the one person we’d need to go through to get to Magic Johnson — casus belli, to burn with the fire of a thousand suns, anybody working for Pablo Torre Finds Out for the rest of time.

That episode fucked around, and my episode was (wait for it) finding out.

What was it about? Magic Johnson’s Twitter. It sounds like it’s written by something like a chatbot impersonating Magic Johnson. It’s declarative and clunky and unintentionally funny-weird. The episode was simply: Who writes this? Magic’s then-head of comms declined to comment on their social media policy, so Pablo interviewed (hilariously, of all people) actor Rob Lowe about it, because Rob Lowe partied with Magic Johnson in the 80s.

At the end of the episode (spoiler alert!) Pablo gets a source to tell him Magic’s tweets are dictated to and written by the same head of comms who declined to comment at the top of the episode. Again, beginning of episode, person declines to comment; end of episode, person who declined to comment is outed as mystery Tweeter in question. Tee hee, etc.

By the time we went to tape the final bits with Pablo and I, this person didn’t just still work for Magic Johnson, but had been promoted…to the president of Magic Johnson Enterprises.

And Magic Johnson Enterprises turned our story down — our lovely little story about altruism and compassion and kindness — not once, not twice, but several times. They even refused to comment.

In the time since we first asked, Magic Johnson has done the A16Z podcast, the Jennifer Hudson show (6.6K views) to talk about the anniversary of his HIV announcement, and an interview with local TV news stations in Lansing, Michigan about a car show (247 views). Magic Johnson has done a shitton of press, but he didn’t do Pablo Torre Finds Out. Maybe it’s true that Magic Johnson only wants to talk about the thing he’s prided himself on speaking about more than any other cause but once a year, and with Jennifer Hudson. Weird, but okay!

We have no way of proving it, but I have a different theory, which is:

Like many extremely wealthy and successful people, Magic spends absolutely zero time online, which people do for him. One of them, his personal internet bottleneck, is infernally pissed and personally aggrieved over a relatively innocent, funny podcast that took a wee bit of air out of an otherwise seamless comms veneer, and will find a way to stand between us and Magic for the rest of motherfucking time.

Not that we didn’t try to find a way around that, too. At one point, I almost drove up to Springfield, Mass. to try to rush Magic at the NBA Hall of Fame (he ended up not being there). Pablo made his own admirable, hilarious attempt at Magic in a very public forum — and got close! — which you can hear about in the episode.

But still, we had at least two great interviews — and a funny reason we didn’t have a third. We still had a great story, and had to find a way to make it happen.

Again, Neely’s ingenious: It was she who thought Jackie McMullen — who briefly documented the 1-on-1 game in question in her book on Magic and Larry Bird — would be a great voice to have on the show. Listeners/viewers were thrilled to see Jackie, a sports journalism legend and veritable expert on Magic, who helped deliver one of the pivotal moments of the episode. And it was Jackie who suggested we talk to Lon Rosen, Magic’s longtime agent, who was also, we learned, actually there that day.

Finally: Time to tape. Before, we had a bunch of good pieces. Pablo comes in, and using the outline that Neely worked up, does his thing — the man is a heat-seeking missile for story, he’s practically editing the episode on the fly, giving the entire thing the definition, depth, cohesion, and color it needs to come to life. He shows up, and he cooks.

I’m not gonna glaze Pablo here too much, but I’ll say this: Game-osmosis-game — by virtue of being across a table from him, and perhaps only that, I managed to come off as an articulate, knowledgeable person worthy of appearing on the show (and not, like, me). This goes without mentioning the work of the episode’s editors and engineers behind the scenes, who all make it look and sound as great as it does. That they do this once a week is flatly impressive. That they do it three times a week is, frankly, fucking wild.

Finally, the episode drops last week. I’ve been talking about this thing for so long — this story that involves first and second-generation immigrants and dance music and the HIV crisis and two incredible sports talents and second acts in American life and unconditional acts of compassion and integrity — that honestly, I kind of forgot what we had. I was worried that, without Magic, we didn’t have much.

Neely and Pablo certainly didn’t — they didn’t lose faith in this story once, which speaks less to its intrinsic qualities and more to the confidence in their team’s abilities to get to the root of something. For my own part, I’m now in the comedown phase of not getting to do this, with these guys, every single week. The reaction stuns me. For the most part, for them, it’s business as usual. A week to the day later they collect two massive awards, and then three days later, publish a blockbuster investigative finding about the NBA betting scandal that in 24 hours has nearly three times the amount of views as my episode. All in a week’s work.

But all in, there you have it, how a single episode of your best-in-class podcast is made. Nothing as complicated nor magical as a group effort, made by a team of great people, each one as diligent, smart, and wonderful as the next.

That’s it for now. FOSTERTALK will return with radio and shit talk regularly, at some point. LISTEN TO THE EPISODE YOU WILL LIKE IT. And thanks, as ever, for taking the time here.

More soon,

-f.

YES, HI, I’m back, but only for a brief second, because I need exactly 43 seconds of your time to read this.

And yes, I know, sending an email past 5PM on New Year’s Eve, not a great way to get whatever it is you need to get read in front of anyone’s eyes. Except! Except: THIS IS URGENT. KIND OF.

This isn’t a Trying To Get Read thing as much as it is a very, very gracious and shambolic thank you to everyone who’s listened and read this year, in two forms.

1. A new episode of FOSTERTALK Radio, what I’m listening to before I go out tonight, on New Year’s Eve. Making radio, fucking hard, but we eked this one out. Disco, soul, house, funk, pop, dance-pop, bangers, all around. Right here:

It’s also available to stream on Soundcloud here.

I really, really hope you enjoy it. And

2. FOSTERTALK will be returning in earnest in 2026 — on a weekly basis — to reclaim it’s throne as the only thing anybody has or will ever actually need on Substack. I will try not to burn my career down (unlike, uh, last time), among other projects.

That’s the important/time-sensitive stuff.

Otherwise? Two more things.

1. I absolutely hate the “end of year” treacly memorializing, except when I do it, and even then (especially then).

That said, I’ve got two great ones for you to read at some point tomorrow: ’s omnibus year-in-review, and ’s “2025’s Finale Got Me Good” (subhed: Fuck this bitch-ass year.). Liz’s writing is funny cathartic soul-manna that gets me through, like, whatever week I’ve read it in. Jeremy Gordon can write about the back of a soup can and find a way to make me laugh and then, also, want to read said soup can. Also, with absolutely zero apologies to anyone else, Jeremy wrote the most true and real book about media this year, and it was a novel. It’s also, like Jeremy, “mad funny,” and surprisingly sweet. Of note: Jeremy also has the singular and poetic ability of deploying the word “damn” in no less than 43 different ways.

2. On The Matter Of Out/In Lists: This is the most confirmation bias-laden bullshit on the planet. Ignore them! Or, if you must, when digesting them, remember

Fostertalk’s Bilaterial Unified Theory of The Internet:

A. Everyone’s projecting, always, and
B. Look for the incentives.

For example, if a magazine tells you “Substack is out,” it’s probably safe to say that magazine isn’t crazy about the rise of Substack in 2025, and therefore, would like it to be out, and thus, will declare it as such. Duh. Also, if any kind of Supposed Tastemaking Online Presence (blech) is telling you something’s gonna be “in” next year, it’s safe to say they have an incentive, now, to do everything they can to ensure that said Thing That’s Not A Thing Now becomes one.

The truth about next year, what’ll be great, what won’t be great: It’s all up in the air. Nobody knows — NOBODY KNOWS. And just because someone else is trying to manifest some sense of cultural authority doesn’t mean you have to be or play any part of their trendsetting voodoo rites. In fact, I encourage you to look at the Out Lists, and shop for things you would like to put “IN,” and subsequently look for In Lists, and shop for things you’re going to tell everyone else is “so two years ago” as a means of quietly disassembling the tyranny of the tastemaking industrial complex. HOW TO BLOW UP A TRENDLINE, etc.

Beyond the prima facie beef anyone should have with anyone else trying to tell you what time it is, most people in the world, downtrodden as it so often is, deserve to feel a sense of determination. And the last thing they need is more media, trying to distract them from the basic functions of individuality and humanism, fatalistically telling them what they should and shouldn’t enjoy in the year to come, and mostly, as a way to establish and enshrine a publication or an outlet or a Content Making Person as some kind of authority in this world, at which, we should all heave a collective nah. In 2026, let these other people be rendered as powerless over your choices as they always deserved to be. ‘Cake been baked.

You know the drill: Next year, full send, right up against the goddamn wall. Love you all. Thanks for your support, always.

As ever, -f.

Table of Contents.

0. Summer Fridays Radio, Ep. 3.

1. How Not to Determine When It Ends.

2. The Best Party I Didn’t Go to This Summer, with Footage.

3. An Important Public Service Announcement Regarding Ibiza and Catamarans

4. The Second Worst Complaint of the Summer.

5. How to Determine When It Begins.

0. Summer Fridays Radio, Ep. 3: Malibu to Montauk, Cala Comte to Catskills.

Holy shit! You’re still here! Or you’re here for the first time! Apologies for the wait, but by popular demand (somehow: seriously) it’s finally happened: The third episode of Summer Fridays Radio is here, built live in Montauk, The Catskills, and Ibiza. Time to have some fun:

Find it on Soundcloud here. From Balearic flips on Laurel Canyon folk rock heart-wringers, to glittering Manhattan disco, an elite early-aughts alt-rock top-down banger, a warped 90s house classic, and everything in between.

If this is your first go around, I suggest you start with the first two episodes — not because you need to, but because they’re great. Reminder: This is not a podcast, or a read of this newsletter: It’s a radio show, featuring the sweet sounds of beaches from Ditch Plains to Cala Comte, and some wonderful music, to get you offline, and out into the world — into what glory, mischief, fun, sex, and memories remain to be mined from your summer. And I’m pretty sure you’re gonna like it.

Don’t take it from me, though: Ask the official Substack of Substack, ask Emily Sundberg, ask any of these people, ask Chris Danton who called it “delightful,” or ask award-winning (and extremely high) publication Gossamer’s co-founder Verena von Pfetten, who recently noted in an issue of their High Praise newsletter that Summer Fridays Radio “isn’t just a respite from newsletter overload, it’s genuinely transportive. Let’s all pivot to radio.”

Truly: Let’s. Can you imagine? And if not radio, then at least something that you’re as wildly unqualified to do as I am to host a radio show, thus taking for granted one of the most elite audiences in the whole of media, just for the hell of it (or, if you’re nasty: a purely aesthetic pursuit). Let’s all pivot to something that’s obstinately the opposite of something someone can monetize, or would ever want to. Something that’s, above all, for fun. Remember when people on the internet did that? I know, I know — this makes me old.

Meanwhile, again, let me reiterate: WHAT. There are so many more of you here now than have ever been here before. Thank you (world-renowned social media mastermind behind Duolingo) for sending so many unsuspecting readers this way. To those new readers, I’m sorry, but you have no idea what you’re in for, and neither do I. All I can promise you is that this newsletter is — to a certain kind of person hellbent on optimizing their life — going to be utterly useless. If you’re of that persuasion, please, let me do you the favor, and beg you to unsubscribe. For those in search of something more rapturous: I got you.

Ready? Me neither:

1. How Not to Determine When It Ends (or: How to Name Your Boat)

For those unfamiliar with Joe Wiesenthal, Finance Media Person On The Internet, know that he came to prominence for an editorial oeuvré distinguished above all by an output one could charitably describe as “diarrhetic,” and which at one point involved such memorable bangers as ”Most books should just be articles. Most articles should just be blog posts. And most blog posts should just be tweets.” [Bars?] Joe’s since achieved his final form as the thing people reflexively prone to diarrhetic output were destined for: Becoming a wildly successful podcaster. Jah bless. But every now and then — as is the case above — Joe hops back on Twitter to relive the good ol’ days, when he would yeet some words into the ether just to see if they catch.

A few reasonable questions for me here might be:

• 1. Who cares?

• 2. Why, dear god, were you on Twitter?

• 3. And why, as old as wizened as you supposedly are, did you let troll do troll to you?

To which I’d respond: 1. I do, 2. Because my brain has been melonballed into reflexively looking at it every now and again, and 3. I wasn’t trolled by this, but rather, delighted. ‘Perfect time to invoke Foster’s Unified Theory of the Internet, Verse 1, Line 1: Everyone’s projecting, always.

If Joe Weisenthal says “Summer’s over” in his Joe Weisenthal Brain, then surely, it is — to him. But as a curious and compassionate study of the human psyche and the ways it paths to one’s soul, gotta ask: Why, exactly, does this man want to declare summer over? That sentiment has all the charm and charisma of a process server disguised as your least-favorite urologist, and for that, I feel for Joe, and anyone else who thinks they need to declare summer done.

Meanwhile: I say this as someone who — true story — gets the Summertime Blues every now and again. But really: What’s summer represent if not that time of the year where it’s a pain in the ass to get ahold of anyone, to get supposedly important business done? When the wheels of capitalism and commerce and industry downshift, as people spend more time outside, away from their phones, away from media, and away from media about those wheels, which is incidentally what Joe has made his name in yeeting thoughts into the universe about. The same people trying to force you back into an office, and extract 40+ hours of work from you every week (despite the world’s bullshit jobs often requiring far less than that) — corporations, the management class, the commercial real estate game, the work-surveillance industrial complex, assholes and losers and (perhaps!) podcasters who want you to spend more time on your work commute and reactivate the narratives of capitalism — are the same people who want to tell you that summer’s over. For no better or complicated reason than the fact that they’re just, like, very incentivized to do so?

A good rule in life is to not let anyone tell you, figuratively, what motherfucking time it is. A substrata of which is, of course: Don’t let anybody tell you when the summer’s over. Summer, like every season, lives in your heart. As a skipper named Roland who bucketed seawater onto my entirely clothed back as I tried not to puke through the net I was face down on at the bow of his catamaran recently said, apropos virtually nothing: Endless Summer! That’s the name of my boat! It made sense at the time.

2. The Best Party I Didn’t Go To This Summer, With Footage

Loyal listeners of Summer Fridays Radio may be familiar with this story, so they can skip ahead. For the uninitiated? Last summer, we were clambering through the streets of Artemonas — a tiny town with tiny little streets and bakeries at the top of Sifnos, that beautiful, endlessly charming Greek island — when we stumbled across a sign: Radioactive Sifnos.

The sign was attached to a shabby room about the size of a shack, attached to one of the old Greek island manses. We looked through the window. Sure enough, inside was a bunch of radio recording equipment. That there’d be a radio station operated off a stone paved lane barely wider than a dining room table seems improbable — that it’s a real station, on the FM band, that broadcasts all the way to Mykonos and Santorini is even wilder. Craziest of all is that the music selection is on par with the best independent radio stations I’ve ever heard: NTS, WFUV.

We tore around the mountain lanes of Sifnos with the top down in our sputtering little Fiat convertible, blasting the genuinely incredible sounds of Radioactive Sifnos for three days. I eventually met the guy who ran it. It’s a passion project. All the music played on it is owned, and when there’s not a live DJ on there, an algorithm he made runs it for him. It runs year-round, with no commercials, and it’s funded by donations. This makes Radioactive Sifnos, in my estimation, among the coolest goddamn things in the world.

Well: Every year, Radioactive Sifnos has a party where they fill these tiny streets of Artemonas with people, and play music until what I can only assume is running out of music, power, or the sobriety to keep a party like that going. I wanted to go this year, but I couldn’t swing it. That said, the videos from every year look wild, and this year appeared no different. It looks profoundly fun, silly, unhinged, hot, and like the kind of experience you can only catch the faintest vapors when viewing images of it. And yet: Those vapors, they’re something. I suggest you scroll around, take a look, and meet me there next August. Also, listen to Radioactive Sifnos, one of the best radio stations in the world.

3. An Important Public Service Announcement Regarding Ibiza and Catamarans.

The best parties in Ibiza are on Sundays or Mondays. By then, the weekend warriors are gone, and the best talent — for those discerning enough to be in Ibiza for more than just a/the weekend — really come out to play. Solomun. Carl Cox. Et al. Circoloco and Mercury Rising parties are both famously on Mondays.

More to the point: Most clubs don’t even open until midnight. They close at 7AM. Which would leave you, the day after the club, if you were to do the best thing one can do in the Balearic — taking a sail — if you’re lucky, maybe, four hours of sleep, before getting on a boat.

Ideally, you’ll have eaten so much MDMA the night before — and the world’s cleanest on offer, to be clear — that you had no need to consume any booze that evening, and mostly, just did the responsible thing, and hydrated with €20 water. But if, for medical reasons, you were forced to elect not to consume MDMA the night before and instead (for medical reasons) opted for enough Clase Azul Reposado to light your blood on fire, then maybe got four hours of sleep, then got on the boat? I can tell you how that ends: With Captain Roland reverse waterboarding your fully-clothed and toweled body with buckets of cobalt blue sea water as you try not to puke face down into his net.

The lesson, here: For the love of god, never, ever, ever book the boat on a Monday. EVER.

4. The Second-Worst Complaint of the Summer

While it’s no “airport lounges are too crowded,” I keep seeing people whining on Instagram about the price of the $23 Honey Deuce, the melon-garnished trademark cocktail at the U.S. Open. A few points on the matter of the $23 Honey Deuce:

• It debuted in 2007 for $12. Adjusting for inflation/the Consumer Price Index, the Honey Deuce in 2025 would land at about $18.70, give or take — which means the Honey Deuce is (hilariously) tracking 23% higher than the rate of inflation.

• One of my first apartments in NYC was in Astoria, with a Greek landlord, whose perfect combination of dour and punchy and give-no-fucks disposition in and of itself felt like the classic melting pot immigrant success story, a man who will happily milk the American way for all he could. In retrospect, this person is one of my favorite New York Characters I’ve ever encountered, if only for the basic economic tenet he impressed upon an unseasoned 23-year-old me, when — after walking me through the apartment — he told me the apartment’s price, and I told him that it was “above the market rate,” to which he laughed and told me: “Market rate is what I say [it] is.”

• The reason they can charge $23 for an absurd cocktail has as much to do with the entry price for the U.S. Open going up — due maybe to the fact that it was undervalued as a sporting event until recently — as it does to the continued growth of “phone eats first” culture, one of the worst new norms to come of age of the last two decades! And what’s the Honey Deuce if not the most recognizably Instagrammable (and thus, status-conferring) cocktail in the world? The rising price of the Honey Deuce feels like the shameless extracting of capital from the pointedly wack people who deserve it the least.

• Finally, do you think they have this complaint at Wimbledon? Or even, somehow, the Australian Open? Of course not: The rest of the world can handle their booze (let alone not photographing it). Can you imagine making it to the biggest stage in tennis only to be forced to tolerate the screams of BABAAAABOOOOEY!!! between points? The U.S. Open has increasingly proven to be the tournament that makes tennis players insane, and do insane things, because even the most well-mannered of New Yorkers somehow embrace their inner B&T in the face of a collective opportunity for civility. You know what the U.S. Open needs less of? Drunk New Yorkers. Let alone the kind who Instagram their drinks. Save it for the trip back to Syosset, pal.

5. How to Determine When It Begins

For me, it’s on Monday. It’s increasingly both the most fun time of the year in New York City — probably anywhere, really — and also, the best time to take a vacation. But in the city, everyone’s back in town, the telltale figurative and literal tans from where they’ve been still showing, the start of cuffing season has all the singles (and, let’s be real, coupleds!) horny for love, New York Fashion Week kicks into gear, and school starts again, as does the resumption of normal non-summer-level business pacing. Also, the weather’s great, maybe the best it’s been all year. And this combination of factors makes everyone go absolutely insane in the absolute best possible way. Anyone who’s experienced this knows viscerally what I’m talking about — anyone who hasn’t, I highly suggest you find a way to.

Meanwhile, abroad, prices are going down, as the amateurs and tourists and gapers and beginners have left the best spots, where the weather drops overnight from Punishingly Hot to Actually Perfect. And you, a discerning person, are left with Difficult Choices To Make.

But whatever choice you make, however you feel it, Second Summer — that season between the end of “Core Summer” and “Actual Fall” — is a very real thing. And don’t let anyone tell you anything different: Second Summer’s the best goddamn season on the calendar, and where it starts, and where it ends? Entirely up to you. But I hope you make the most of it. I know I will: FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays will continue through September this year.

Until the next one: Get out there. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: There’s still plenty more of the season — whichever one it is to you — left for the taking.

Thanks again for reading. It means the world.
-f.

Table of Contents.

0. Summer Fridays Radio, Ep. 2

1. The Best Paragraph I’ve Read On a Beach This Summer
   (or: The Most Hilariously Chaotic Conversation Starter I’ve Seen In a Minute)

2. On The Painful Matter of Bezos In The Club
   (or: Can a Single Person Destroy a Vibe?)

3. Vacation Darts.

4. Airport Lounges
   (or: The Best Advice on Air Travel You’ll Ever Bear Witness To)

0. Summer Fridays Radio, Ep. 2: Day to Night.

Holy fucking shit, there are so many of you here. Call it the effect, or perhaps you came via the official newsletter of (?!?). Anyway, look, here, I made a radio show, again:

It’s also over here, on SoundCloud, if you don’t feel like dealing with the Substack app. I’d suggest familiarizing yourself with the first episode here (or on Soundcloud here). It’s probably better than this one! I’m still learning what I’m doing here. Anyway: It’s mostly great music, a little bit of atmosphere, and a bit of chitchat from yours truly. Why a radio show? Why not? Independent FM radio was the first media format I fell in love with. It was my first experience with a distinct voice, talking to a distinct place, at a distinct moment in time. It felt, above all, human.

Also, this — the Summer of Stress, as it has been and shall henceforth be known — is (incidentally!) the summer people are apparently rediscovering the virtues of things made for the love of it, things with seams showing, and at a time when everyone is trying to crystalize and monetize everything they do, there’s a real appeal to doing something utterly anachronistic and pointless, that you’re wildly unqualified to do. Trust me, it’s fun.

Or as put it:

That’s why, even though the grifters stay grifting, I’m not so worried about some dumb bitch on Substack stealing my copy.

And together we say: Amen1. Anyway! These are the songs I blasted driving around an island or two last summer, from the beach in the morning through the sunset sessions, getting ready to make an early 9:30 Balearic dinner reservation, and then, whatever trouble comes after that. Here’s hoping you catch some of that, wherever you are, whatever Summer Friday night you’re off to. And now, some obligatory newsletter noise:

1. The Best Paragraph I’ve Read On a Beach This Summer (or: The Most Hilariously Chaotic Conversation Starter I’ve Seen In a Minute)

Do with this what you will:

I’ve never met or read about a man who was envious of a woman’s ability to carry a child. This is insane. Who wouldn’t want the power of generating life? It’s like if I stumbled upon a population of humans who were able to fly and instead of being deranged by covetousness I was relieved that I couldn’t fly or at best mildly curious for 10 seconds and then forgot about it forever. Unimaginable.

Literature and law and scripture brim with testimony to the terrors and revulsions of men re: lifemaking, but there’s no mention of envy. Is it because birth is a dangerous event? No, because men happily enroll in dangerous events, like cave diving or MMA.

From her recently published zine “Privacy,” the great , as ever. Just fantastic. I suggest you lob it like a grenade into otherwise polite conversation then stand back and see which couples make it out alive.

2. On The Painful Matter of Bezos In The Club (or: Can a Single Person Destroy a Vibe?)

Yes, it’s true: Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez were seen in the DJ booth at Ibiza’s famed club DC-10, behind Seth Troxler — a relatively well-respected DJ! — making a side-note out of Travis Scott and Anyma (an incredibly popular electronic music artist, and purveyor of nightmare fuel visuals). This might lead you into a series of questions, like:

• Can a single person ruin the vibe?

• Is Ibiza absolutely cooked?

• Tell me more about Anyma’s nightmare fuel visuals?

The answers are: No, definitely not, and fine but don’t blame me you asked for it. Celebrities have been making cameos at DJ sets in Ibiza forever (also see: Katy Perry looking lost behind the booth at HI Ibiza last summer, an almost Christopher Guest-like moment of high comedy), and the vibe at DC-10 (a once-great now-oversold Ibiza club) is mildly horrid on a good day. Here’s a photo of wanting to murder me for dragging him there on our first night in Ibiza two years ago:

Yep, definitely got Covid on that trip. For the first time, too! It was Covid: Resort Collection. Super easy, made it out fine. Anyway: DC-10 was a goddamn motherfucking hellhole! In fact, most clubs on Ibiza are! But a tiny few of them are transcendently fun. Also, the beaches are incredible, the food’s great, and it’s not America in 2025, which makes it more or less a perfect place to be in many ways. Ibiza is far from cooked. But where it concerns one person ruining the vibe? The vibe at DC-10 was what it was before Bezos showed up! It exists on a vibe continuum — time being a flat circle and all — in that Bezos would not show up to the kind of club that Bezos would not show up to, in the same way that Elon Musk could not ruin the vibe at a club he couldn’t get into, which is exactly what happened when Elon Musk got rejected from Berghain.

That’s not to say that assholes can’t get into fun places — of course they can! — but assholes and the places they supposedly infiltrate are usually self-selecting, or yeet themselves or these people out in due course. So, no: A single person can’t ruin a vibe alone, as that single person is and was part of the vibe and that — like most of the people in the above photo, and in the footage of Bezos at DC-10, who are likely zooted to the gills on the world’s finest pressed MDMA — you’re best minding your own vibe, lest it actually be smothered by another. Or (as is absolutely the case here) finding a better place to be. I’d suggest Pikes.

But I really just wrote all this to run that photo of James. My god, the things we do to our friends. Twice.

3. Vacation Darts.

Last week, we discussed the matter of the best cigarette in Europe, which I believe to be the yellow box of George Karelias, from Greece, ripped on a rock in the middle of the night off Hydronetta. Gauloises fans are up my ass and their own about this, as most Francophiles and Parisians typically are about everything.

The best cigarette in Europe is obviously the one you’re having at any given moment — but especially after dinner. But of course, no sooner did I think this than did an Instagram account dedicated to this very notion pop into my feed: Vacation Darts. Yes, someone made an Instagram account dedicated to the memes they make about smoking on vacation, and then launched a merch brand after it.

This is the kind of hobbyist monetization I’ve take absolutely zero issue with. It’s also maybe part of a larger macro-trend? I read something recently that I can’t be bothered to find right now to that linked (A) people being less socialized than ever to (B) those people beginning to smoke, in order to (C) find themselves socializing, with the other smokers. As far as social science goes, sounds somehow both suss and totally realistic all at once. Anyway, is it just me, or is the “it doesn’t count in Europe” crowd growing? Signed, a former smoker (who still rips a few in Europe).

Finally:

4. Airport Lounges.

Both the New York Times editorial board and the entire Opinion section should be abolished. I say this as a contributor to the paper, a sane person who values journalism, and as someone who fondly remembers TimesSelect2, the New York Times’s first attempt at a paywall, which resulted in the world being spared from mid-era Frank Rich and Sorkin-era Maureen Dowd. Anyway, complaining about airport lounges being overcrowded is, for my money, the dumbest thing published by the NYT’s Opinion Section since they let Tom Cotton whistle Dixie about killing anyone with an ounce more melanin than him. It’s not that the author is wrong that lounges are overcrowded — they are — but (A) it’s utterly pointless, and (B) what the New York Times needs, of course, is the same group of “I’m cancelling my subscription” ninnies who firmly believe that one person represents the entire paper now also believing the paper is staffed exclusively by the kind of people who kvetch about airport lounges.

But also (C) — and here, I will do some justice — the wisest thing anyone’s ever said to me about the matter of spending time in transit, was, in fact, when James told me: If you’ve never missed a flight, you’ve spent too much time at airports.

Spend less time waiting at airports. Literally, but also, figuratively, too.

- - -

Anyway, it’s Friday night, and I wanna get the hell out of here. Can you tell? But seriously: Thank you, as ever, for listening, and reading. It means the world.

Have a lovely weekend in the sun. Also: Turn it up. -f.

Deep breath.

Okay.

Here we go again:

Table of Contents:

0. Summer Fridays Radio.

1. When to Stay.

2. An Unfortunate Habit of the Terribly Online.

3. Editor’s Letter (or: More Wind).

4. When to Go (or: The Most Important Vacation Advice In The World).

0. Summer Fridays Radio.

Don’t call it a podcast. This newsletter, this entire thing, it was originally conceived as a radio show. Mostly music — great music — with fuzzy dispatches from someone, somewhere, coming out of a car’s radio, windows down, or a speaker at the beach, or in your headphones at the pool. So: I made a radio show. Please meet Summer Fridays Radio. Featuring the sounds of Sardinia, Ibiza, and the soundtrack to your summer.

All the best stuff is in here:

Stream it on SoundCloud here, before it gets taken down. Ideally, as loud as you can, ideally, near a body of water. Pardon any technical shortcomings. If you’ve got any notes, dear god, get in touch.

1. When to Stay.
(or: The Best Cigarette In Europe)

Hydra, GR. Hydronetta.
37.351677, 23.462279.
3:53 a.m. (GMT+3)

With all due respect, he asked — of course, meaning anything but — why the fuck would you go back tomorrow? It’s just hot there. That’s it. For a guy I’d only met five hours ago who was now five feet from me, stark naked, the artist made a good point. Not that someone you met even five minutes ago can’t make a good point.

We’re bobbing up and down in the waters off of Hydronetta sometime around 3 a.m., half-empties of Alfa scattered on the rocks near our clothes along with those of the bartender, and the two friends from Montreal she’d introduced me to, all now naked in the water with us. The artist made fast friends with the bartender earlier that summer: both Americans, both there for the season, she, early 30s, escaping the horror show that is LA these days (and a shit relationship), he, early 40s, spending yet another summer on an island that’s produced its fair share of them, and their work about it — including his, which I realized I was familiar with (a fun moment to be a couple rounds deep for).

The Montrealers were their late 20s, having traveled around Europe for a decent spell, now, they were (like the other two) gorgeous and sun-kissed, eyes sparkling, but also, carrying the lightness of people who aren’t carrying American passports this summer. There we all were, bobbing up and down in the (somehow, even at night) crystal blue waters of Hydra, and the pile-on was starting, four on one. Seriously, why leave now, man, come on, comeeee onnnn do ittt, etc.

I was gonna catch the ferry back to Athens in a few hours, and work remotely for a few days before getting back to New York. It’s just hot there. That’s it. We’re taking a boat to the best beach on this island tomorrow morning. Everyone else I’d shown up with was gone, and I’ve got a habit of never overstaying my welcome, anywhere, let alone with strangers. And yet: Whenever I’ve stretched a stint on an island — even for a day or two — it’s been worth it.

I climb out of the water onto the rocks, fold open the beautiful small yellow box sitting next to the beers, lift the delicate tissue paper in it, nick a stray Karelias, find a lighter, and after the third drag, announce that I’ll eat the ferry ticket, book a new one, check into another hotel, and stay two more nights. They yelled from the water, the noise of four becoming-less-strangers and the brisk, azure Aegean waters hitting rocks still warm from that day’s Saronic sun, cheering me into the unknown. I blushed. I felt dumb. I grinned. Hard not to, at one of the best stripes of small thrill there is: The start of something new — while dick naked and gently buzzed in the Mediterranean night, no less.

I’d tell you what happened over the next two nights with these beautiful people, the artist, the bartender, and the sirens of Montreal, but despite what many a contemporary memoirist and autofiction writer and mediocre Substack diarist and travel “creator” and all of their aspirants will have you believe, the richest pleasures in life (and especially the summer) sit in the elliptical, the unarticulated, the imagined, which you won’t find for the most part anywhere here, on Substack, online, not even close. This isn’t at all a matter of discretion, or cultivating mystique. It’s simply: Why reduce the ineffable? Besides, you already know, whatever it was: Something happened. Something worth staying for.

George Karelias and Sons, €3.90, 20 Ct. Available at most Greek tobacco retailers.

2. An Unfortunate Habit of the Terribly Online (or: Three of Europe’s Best Thirst-Quenchers)

There’s that thing when someone gets online and writes or says something in their phone camera like “Hey guys, I’m so sorry I’ve been gone, please, let me explain where I’ve been,” as though anybody actually notices when the strangers they let into their brain are on or off the internet for a prolonged period of time. I know you know what I’m talking about — I know you’ve seen this. And the wild thing is, we’ve learned: You basically have to be the literal heir to the throne of the British Empire for anybody to give a shit about the fact that you haven’t been seen online for a month or two, and even then, shrug.

The kind of person who thinks anybody noticed that they were gone, even to paying subscribers, betrays a certain kind of garden-variety narcissism that we’ve started to take for granted as a new status quo. The truth is — and I’m speaking to anybody who makes anything in the modern era of media — I promise:

If you’ve got a compulsion to explain your absence online, that’s less about anyone else’s curiosity about where you were than it is the very human and understandable desire to be missed, to be relevant, to be valued, to have curiosity in the world about you. But it’s also a kind of parasocial sickness that we should vote into the next edition of the DSM. Outside of your close relations, nobody gives a shit where you’ve been. Is that not freedom?

Unrelated: Not even a beer drinker, but christ, with apologies to all the sober friends1, Greek beers on a hot summer day? One of the great pleasures of being, I don’t know, an adult? And: That blue label Alfa with the sea salt in it? My god. And despite (or maybe because of?) the salt, it’s got this weird, subtle sweetness to it I really can’t pin down. A salty drink on a hot day: Who knew? Also, I’m making a pitcher of that Lemaire tomato water next. Sounds great.

3. Editor’s Letter
(or: More Wind.)

Hey Guys —

Sorry I’ve been gone. Lemme explain where I’ve been. Also, if you’re new here, and have no idea what the fuck is happening right now, that makes several thousands of us. Either way, I’ll do my best: Basically, I had the hottest shit newsletter on Substack a while back, pulled a Bartleby when hockey stick growth reached critical mass for legitimate great reasons, and left in its wake wide berth for reframing conventional wisdom about current events and media and life in New York (restaurants, business, whatever) as unique and rarefied insight, or genuine news, something I spent/wasted parts of the last 17 years doing (and in kind, imitating a more robust version that preceded me by, let’s say, six years). But at least it was good? And didn’t always get things wrong? Anyway, lucky for the people into that kind of thing, plenty have since taken up the mantle, some of them are backed, some of them are plucky bootstrappers I genuinely admire and read. I’m glad they’re making money. That part’s legitimately better. But been there, done that, and for a variety of legitimately great reasons, I decided, for quite some time: Couldn’t be me.

SMASH CUT TO: Last summer, when I resurrect this newsletter under the guise of being a Supposedly Useful Guide to Everything Important Over the Course of a Summer to a Cosmopolitan Person in the World. It was an extended bit about that archetype, hidden inside of a fun, escapist (and on occasion, accidentally useful) read: Summer Fridays. We had a fun, sexy, great time, and we turned out to be right about everything.2

It ended like this:

Making a thing, and trying to make it original, and trying to make it for the love of the thing, and trying to do it with the enormous pressures we put on ourselves, to say nothing of all the reasons not to put your whole ass out there for everyone to see? By the numbers, there are more reasons to avoid doing it than not. […] I’m not good enough of a writer to actually convey what it means to have people encourage your weird, creative pursuits, except to say that we should all spend more time encouraging people’s weird, creative pursuits. That’s all I’ve got. Remember: It’s always summer somewhere. Be that place.

That was nice. So, why the delay, here?

In a word: Vibes. Which, this summer, have largely been goddamn abysmal. I’ve started referring to it as the Summer of Stress. Last summer was a wholly appropriate time to talk about things like rationality paradigms and noncompetes between notes on poppers and your balls on steroids. This summer is…not? People are getting divorced, they’re losing jobs, the dollar’s down, Brian Wilson’s dead, the worst companies in the world are merging, the masked unidentified police are stealing helpless people off the streets and situationships are stealing lovers from love.

It’s not all bad: Some people had babies, cute ones, even. ‘Heat’s not killing everyone, everywhere — in some places, it actually feels good. And, in the straw that may have tickled this camel’s back, the residents of the greatest city on Earth decided they’d elect to high candidacy someone the rest of America warned them not to, and these voters did so, maybe, at times, for no better a reason than fuck you.3

Whatever it was, thus spoke a vibe shift. Like maybe I could maybe have some fun with this again. And so here we are. But the remit I’ve committed myself to is: Getting people outside. Or sending you dispatches from something beyond the world of New York and salads and bowls and Zoomers and all the ways they aren’t fucking and the DTC brands they’re blowing money on and the “creators” whose voices aren’t just rewiring their brains but melting the wires. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad, I still read that stuff, and I’ll still go on about it, too. I’m not immune to it. But I want more on the adults who are, in fact, fucking. Figuratively, too. Maybe moreso. More on the parties nobody needs to be at, in places you’ve never heard about, that you’ll otherwise never know about, and the small moments that give them their glory. I want the best place to make friends and find some gum in the garden after four hours on the floor of Pacha with a sore jaw and saucer eyes but feet still very ready to move. David Lynch used to give a direction to actors: More wind. There were those who didn’t get it, and those who did. As much as I can, my promise, here, to you, this summer: More wind.

4. When to Go (or: The Most Important Vacation Advice In The World)

Hydra, GR. Paralia Agios Nikolaos.
37.300660, 23.395178
4:02 p.m. (GMT+3)

The next day: Floating on our backs off St. Nicholas Beach, the artist and I shooting the shit again, the other three on beach chairs trading books, “Beautiful Losers” (of course) and a new translation of “Steppenwolf“ and a Henry Miller I can’t remember the name of. I toss out an idea: Maybe I stay another week, for the Deste opening? Can’t imagine what kind of shitshow this place turns into when the entire art world and a handful of celebrities descend on it. He was even getting feted that weekend. For my money: Sounded fun.

He shook me off, a pitcher who didn’t like the sign. It’s a different vibe, definitely not this one. If you take no other advice from me, just…Don’t rinse it.

I was hurt for a sec, maybe two, but not much more, because it didn’t take much longer for me to hear what he was saying. I knew he’d seen people overextend, who try to clench a fist around fine sand, who get greedy with the magic, try to train it, smother it, stay too long, and then everyone has to suffer the constituent disappointment they experience when things invariably shift. There’s a reason lingering air’s referred to as “stale.” It’s supposed to move — especially across a shoreline.

He was right: Few things could fuck up the core of this moment quite like the expectation that it’d continue on a straight line, let alone an entire industry descending on the island for a weekend of see-and-be-seen. Kind of the antithesis to what made the last 24 hours (and what’d make the 24 to come) so great. If you need to make an appearance somewhere during your summer to make your summer great, it probably needs some work. And if you don’t know when to leave, or can’t bring yourself to, does it actually count as fun?

On that note: Thanks, as ever, for reading. And listening. ‘Means the world.

There have been seven Summer Fridays. There are seven Summer Fridays to go.

More wind,

-f.

Today is Friday, August 30th, 2024.

• It’s the fifteenth and final Summer Friday of the year, zero to go until Labor Day.

• The official FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays playlist is on the radio.

• New in theaters this weekend is Dennis Quaid as Ronald Reagan in Reagan, Casey Affleck and Laurence Fishburne in the space thriller Slingshot.

• In sports this weekend, the 2024 Paralympics begins in Paris! On Saturday, in Premiere League action, the unbeaten Arsenal face the unbeaten Brighton & Hove Albion. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Formula 1 returns to Monza for the 94th running of the Italian Grand Prix.

• Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York City: 72/67, cloudy • Malibu: 87/66, partly cloudy • Ibiza: 82/75, light showers • Capri: 86/80, partly cloudy • Bloomville: 66/58, clou—

—oh, fuck, no, please don’t do that, hey, hey, I know what that look means — I mean, christ, we haven’t even gotten past the weather-interrupting bit yet! Yes, it’s the Final Issue of FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays.

But don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened! Here, I’ve got something special for you. As a kid I went to a summer camp for four summers outside of Atlanta, in the northern Georgia woods. Every year, during Packing Day, the counselors would console the crying campers with a song, which those campers would one day sing when they became counselors, to the tune of “Camptown Races”:

You’re never gonna see your friends again, doo-dah, doo-dah
You’re never gonna see your friends again, oh, doo-doo-dah-day
Never gonna see your FRIEEEENDS, never gonna see your FRIEEEENDS
Never gonna see your friends again, oh, doo-doo-dah-day
Delta’s gonna crash and burn, doo-dah, doo-dah
Delta’s gonna crash and burn, oh, doo-doo-dah-day
Delta’s gonna CRAAAASH, Delta’s gonna BUUUURN, Delta’s gonna crash and burn
oh, doo-doo-dah-day

And so on. Actually, come to think of it, they’re probably not allowed to sing that anymore. Also, this as a “formative memory” probably explains a lot. ANYWAY, PEOPLE: 

Look where we’ve gone, how far we’ve come, how many places have had their weather forecasts rhetorically interrupted!

Yeah, I know: A rhetorical voice interrupting a view-from-nowhere voice delivering weather nobody actually needs written by a single person is a, uh, interesting bit to commit to. Especially as all of those forecasts were actually the real forecasts, every issue, in each of those cities, which means I was looking up every forecast in each of those cities, every Friday. Why?

“Why” is not an unreasonable question to ask of…all of this. And today, you might get some answers. But before then, we’ve got The Final Issue to knock out. We’re also gonna check in on the progress of some of our big summer stories, and run a few we’ve had sitting in the hopper for a minute. Either way, let’s get this show on the road.

The final lap of FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays starts….right now:

Interview: How to Visit the Greatest Island On Planet Earth, and What To Do Once You’re There, With The One Person Who Knows Best

A little over a year and change after the worst day of my life, some friends and I and some friends fulfilled a lifelong dream of mine, and went to Ibiza for a week. The Ibiza you’ve heard about — a hedonistic spring break-adjacent clubby hellhole filled with “the lads” and “hen parties” — is probably different from the Balearic paradise I know (and always dreamed of visiting).

Ibiza is rooted in a past as an artistic enclave and hippie-strewn bohemia, long before it was a tourist destination (conceptual artist legend Robert Irwin lived there when it was “very much not a hotspot”). The historic core of Ibiza Town is an incredible UNESCO site — one of four on the island — a beautiful fortification fought over for centuries by various kingdoms, built into the side of a mountain that people still live within, today. It’s becoming a destination for art and its restaurant scene, and its beaches among some of the most beautiful I’ve ever been on.

And yeah, there are clubs, which follow the law of averages. But try spending a Sunday night with Solomun at the closest thing the world has left to a living Studio 54, Pacha, then tell me you don’t want to write 6,000 words about it for the New Yorker and tell every living soul you know about it, either. All in, Ibiza’s one of the more special places on this planet you can spend a week in. And the best person to tell you about how to do it?..

…is also the person to tell you: Maybe you shouldn’t.1

Whether it’s Ibiza’s essential workers being forced to live in tent cities or a teacher who has to fly 40 times a month to get to her job there, or Diplo stomping over protected lands in an ad hoc DJ set, Ibiza has now been stretched well its limit. Tourist spending in 2023 in Ibiza was €4.5B, a 20.8% increase from 2022. 2024 is looking, again, to outpace 2023. The economic growth is insane, and it’s leaving everyone who built lives there behind. So, my questions: What’s happening, what’s going to happen, and is it possible to even ethically visit Ibiza? And rather than ask one of the many writers offering their own scoldy ethical guides to becoming a “better” traveler, I thought I’d just ask Rafael Giménez, 37 years-old, a spokesperson for the protest movement Prou Eivissa (“Enough Ibiza”).

Did you grow up on Ibiza? Yeah — I was born and raised in Ibiza, there almost all my life, in the south — the town of Ibiza.

And these days, you work as a police officer there? I was working as a police officer there until last year, when I moved to the mainland. Now I’m living in Teruel, a small town on Spain’s mainland.

Tell me about Prou Eivissa — how did it start? It’s been around since 2016, it’s a group of people from Ibiza who wanted to advocate for the natural resources, culture, and citizens of Ibiza, and agitate for laws to protecting them.

And what, above all, are their aims? To stem the excesses of tourism and its breaking past critical mass, endangering the ecology of Ibiza and well-being (or survivability) of its citizens. Which, by the way, isn’t just happening there, it's happening in other parts of the world, too. 

Right. But especially in Ibiza... We’re experiencing very, very serious problems, not only in infrastructure, but social problems, too. People can’t afford houses, as mass tourism necessitates more workers. Those workers can’t afford a rental, so they’ve starting to live in caravans, or places that — I don’t know how you’d say it in English, but in Brazil, they call them “favelas.” 

Slums, you mean? Right. And once you start with slums as a standard of living, it's very, very difficult to go backwards. And this problem — the demand for workers, the lack of housing — it puts us on the edge of social collapse. It's very small island, and it has its limits, and it’s already stretched beyond them.

Do you have specific political goals or policy items you're advocating for? Yeah, very basic demands: Controls for the access of vehicles on and around the island (including waters) which cause traffic, stretch our infrastructure, and collapses access to beaches on the island. And also, some measures to control the growth of hotels, part of the housing problem.

But you’re not against tourism? We are not against tourism. That we can want these measures and not be against tourism is a fake dichotomy. 

Go on… This isn’t a choice between the massification of tourism and being an isolationist republic like, I don't know, North Korea, or something. We don’t want extremes, we don’t want to stop tourism! We just something reasonable, something that’s enough for people from the island to enjoy a basic quality of life, that allows them to conduct business, make a living, have a home. And not just people from the island, but people from everywhere in the world. There just needs to be limits — it’s a small island.

Are hotels really causing that much of a problem? Well, when I’m talking about hotels — sorry, maybe I didn’t find the exact words, there — I’m talking about the tourism housing. 

You mean, hotels plus AirBnBs, VRBOs, and short-term rentals? Right. For example, we know there are 100,000 legal units for tourists to stay in Ibiza, according to the local authorities, who have also estimated that there are 120,000 illegal units for tourists to stay. 

Wait, sorry, back up: Ibiza has a population of ~159,000 people. There’s a housing crisis with 100,000 legal tourist housing units and 120,000 illegal tourist housing units?! Right! These are places rented without any authorization or short-term license or anything, on rental platforms or social networks, and people just book them. 

Okay, so, getting rid of illegal housing inventory is one goal. Do you guys have any other specific policy goals that you're trying to push forward with the government of Ibiza? We want controls on illegal coastal activities, yachts and boats that come to our coastline, drop anchor wherever they feel like it, and destroy the water’s ecosystem — our coral and seed plants that make our water as blue and clear as it is — and the tourists who then swarm our beaches from those boats, taking over everything that locals used to really enjoy.

It wasn’t always like this, right? What changed? No. In 2010, we had two million visitors a year. Now we’re close to four million.

So what kind of controls, exactly, are you agitating for? Have you and the group ever considered something like the tourist tax imposed in Venice? We already have a tourist tax — we’ve had one for the past five or six years. Apparently, it doesn't work because the tax is so low. You’ve been to Ibiza, paid it, and didn’t even know it was there!

Are you hopeful for the future of the island at all? It’s my duty to send a positive message to the world from the people of Ibiza, and there are good examples in our history of these protests working — in the 80s and 90s, protests achieved some protections of natural areas, like Ses Salinas, a beach in the south of Ibiza. Some people wanted to turn it into a resort, but protests stopped that from happening. But it's going to be hard this time. The economic incentives (for real estate developers) are strong. 

If I’m thinking about coming to Ibiza this summer, how can someone like me — as a tourist — visit while respecting (and promoting the cause of) the people of Ibiza? Is it even possible? This is a tough one, but I’ll try.

• First: Check to make sure you’re making legal bookings for your accommodations. If you find a place to stay that’s cheaper or nicer than everything else, or in a residential area, just make sure it's legal.

• Second: This is an island with a community that lives there year round. Pay some attention to that local community. Operate with basic decency and respect for it. For example: We get so much drunk driving during the summer. Comply with the laws.

• And if you’d avoid coming in July and August, that’d be nice. We have good weather now almost all year, and you’ll find a calmer island outside of the peak season. 

That’s what we’re planning on doing, some friends and I — a late September trip. Maybe even early October. You’ll see the difference. You’ll be nicely surprised. And thank you for calling. I appreciate this interest in our in our land, which I just really, really love.

Regrets Only: Theme Issues, All Travel Media Sucks Now (Except For Mine)

Oh, yeah, speaking of Ibiza and The Ibiza Issue that wasn’t, I was gonna do a whole bunch of theme issues: A music issue featuring musicians! A Summer Reading issue, featuring books, and the people who wrote them! Turns out: Not so much. Theme issues, am I fucking insane, I can barely get through writing a footnote without a half-hour Google sidequest to find the best martini north of the South Pole. Theme issues, yeah, right, lol.

But there was one theme issue I didn’t get around to doing that I actually really am sad I won’t get to pull off, if only for the phenomal art spun up by ad hoc FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays creative director Tag Hartman-Simkins — who also happens to be Futurism’s creative director, and made that incredible header art you’ve seen on top of every issue. Which was:

Oh my GOD come on that is SUCH A GOOD REFERENCE Tag you are a GODDAMN LEGEND. My idea for travel coverage was going to go something along the lines of: 3,000 words of about 10 different “reviews” of various ephemeral experiences that otherwise don’t speak to the “quality” of a hotel or a restaurant but more to a very human and relatable moment within it2 that brings back something from a far away place. Or something completely unrelatable but no less interesting, like this:

How to Buy Espadrilles

Anyone spending more than $100 on espadrilles should be thrown into the Balearic with (concrete) espadrilles on. There is only one brand to buy espadrilles from, and it’s Castaner. We, my Traveling Companion and I, we landed in Ibiza last summer and immediately got to work, chewing on paper at the baggage claim and cabbing it to the town center — while he took a call inside our hotel room at The Standard, I went outside into the Ibiza Town square, to buy some vodka, some gum, and some espadrilles. I had to wait ten minutes outside the store at 6:20 for the shopkeeper to return from siesta, and when he did, he found yours truly, hiding from the late day sun and sweating like fourth quarter Patrick Ewing, pupils the size of paella pans, holding a bottle of Ciroq and a box of Nicorette, asking if this is the place he can buy a pair of espadrilles, in the rare and profoundly strange tenor where enthusiasm borders on desperation, which anyone could understand as weird behavior no matter the native tongue (which given that I could barely speak my own, no beuno). I later ran through the white carpeted hallway of The Standard, old shoes aloft in my hand, burst into the room, and screamed “GOT ‘EM” at T.C. like I’d secured the Holy Grail. He slammed his laptop and screamed back at me. Two seconds of silence followed, after which he asked how they felt. Honestly, I told him, surprisingly comfortable.

Cf Castañer | Conde Rosellón, 12 IBIZA, 07800 ESPAÑA | +34 97130 14 70

You know, that kind of thing. Other travel items I didn’t get to: This GQ travel column (LOL), this glorious Geoguesser story (genuinely beautiful all-timer travel writing), A Brief List of Simple Summer Pleasures the only item I wrote for it being

1. Walking through a park, and casually, perfectly throwing or kicking a wayward ball back in play.

a series of screengrabs from celebrities looking lost behind the DJ booth while making cameos at Black Coffee’s sets at HI IBIZA (example here), a thing that started with the words “I find something deeply sweet about the foosball tables in Fumencio,” something about what we wear when we travel but just as an excuse to publish the words “anytime you see them remember Loro Piana sweats are just overpriced Juicy Couture exclusively worn by those rich white women who secretly voted for Trump” and a list of all the many wonderful places FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays readers went on vacation that I’ll just put in the footnotes instead.3

A Series of Updates, Follow-Ups, Corrections, and Regrets

REGRETS ABOUT ZEMPIES: I previously lambasted non-vital users of Zempies because they contribute to the problem of people with diabetes actually needing them! has since written about his experience on Zempies:

These days, with various compounds and versions easily available, shortages seem to be less of a concern. I have been on it for the better part of three years and am currently taking it. My life on Ozempic has been markedly better.

Yeah, he kinda changed my mind with that one. Read it.

ON THE GUY I TALKED TO WHO ONCE TOOK STEROIDS, AFTER HE READ THE ARTICLE: “I’m happy to report your balls would not fit in my mouth these days (I’m still not taking steroids).” Okay, but also, how would you know, pal?

AN UPDATE ON THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT RULES OF THE SUMMER: While you still shouldn’t take your dick out or light anything on fire, as it turns out, that guy who hit a bong inside the Sphere somehow managed to get his ban rescinded!!!

ON THE MOST IMPORTANT RATIONALITY PARADIGM OF THE SUMMER: Don’t forget to commit to the bit. Full send, baby. Also, called me later and personally explained to me the Repugnance Paradox of Utilitarianism while deploying a metaphor involving champagne and beer. I don’t have the time to reiterate here but promise it was good.

CORRECTION: ’s place of business is not, I’ve been told, a “shoppy shop,” but a “corner store.” Also, the bread she offered Captain E-O while he was ascending the Heaviside Layer in the middle of it high on that Catskills Dank was zucchini bread, not banana bread. We regret the errors.

GATEKEEPING?!?

• CitiBike: Doesn’t seem like the problem it was now that they raised the price.

• Adderall: The shortage is still very real and the back-to-school Purge-like hunt for it is ON, baby. But at least these guys are probably going to jail.

• Noncompetes: Don’t sign them.

• Where To Go In Ibiza: Reverse double footnote reference suprise, GUESS WHO’S GATEKEEPING NOW??!

A BRIEF GUIDE TO THE SUMMER FRIDAYS PLAYLIST: The first time I ever heard Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” was at Bernie’s and if there’s ever a G*wker movie it should start with that song, Jamie xx played Chris Rea’s “On The Beach” on the last night of his residency and it’s one of the vibeyest songs I’ve ever heard in my entire life, Jamie xx also closed that residency with Little River Band’s “It’s A Long Way There” and he was having so much fun dancing to it at the end of four nights of pretty labored DJing and I knew it’d be the last song that went on that playlist, I first heard that Big Ben Beat cover of Bowie’s “Heroes” at the end of a Justin Strauss set earlier this summer and as far as covers of Bowie go? Pretty wonderful. The K.W.S. cover of “Please Don’t Go” is etched in my psyche as it was the first cassette single I ever purchased. And “Ride Like The Wind,” well, if you’ve never seen The Worst Person In The World, watch it, or at least the party scene from it. It all fucks and I really was rinsing that playlist on repeat as I was writing this.

A SUPER BRIEF GUIDE TO NTS RADIO: Another feature I wanted to write but didn’t probably because I was just pissed that someone pitched the Times piece before me (it’s very good). NTS is the absolute best and if the only thing you took away from all this was a supporters’ membership to it, I’d be fine with that. Listen to shows by Flo, David Holmes, Floating Points, Melodies International, Malfalda’s Tropic of Love, and Naomi Zeichner’s New York Naomi, and Moxie.

LAST MUSIC ENDORSEMENT I SWEAR but that Fred, Again.. rooftop set is, perhaps, the closest thing I’ve seen to a perfect two hours of summer vibes on a London rooftop EXCEPT ACTUALLY WAIT ONE LAST THING is one of my favorite music writers alive and writes about it more colorfully and beautifully than most of the people on the planet, and so, this post is behind a paywall but if you feel like it he wrote one of my favorite little things I read this summer about Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy” here and also he threw down on the review of that Total Blue record, also, as far as strictly vibes-based albums go, is transcendent.

STATISTICS:

• There were 15 summer Fridays, and 13 (including this one) issues of Summer Fridays. I tried!

• 8 of those issues actually made it out on a Friday, 5 of them didn’t.

• Published Word Count: So much.

• Actual Word Count: lol, you don’t even want to know.

EXPLANATIONS:

• The absolutely brain-vaporizingly dumb hyperbolic headlines of these newsletters is a reminder that most people proclaiming things on the internet are fundamentally ridiculous and full of shit. The Best/Most Important/Coolest/Smartest whatever “Of The Summer” is whatever you decide it is, your summer is not the “Summer of _____” it’s whatever your summer is, and the contemporary state of media is so laughably bad that people are stretching hyperbole past the point of parody4 in order to assert their authority. See: ’s recent post about “Summer Of/Of the Summer” for further explanation.

• Yep, the weather updates at the top of each newsletter were inspired by John Mulaney delivering the weather in LA during his late night show from earlier this year, which I just found to be utterly charming. Initially I was going to stop doing it after the first newsletter but became weirdly attached and fond of just….looking up the weather in other places, a weird ineffable warm feeling that, honestly, I kind of recommend it.

• THAT INCREDIBLE LOGO was in fact a reference to the logo for Weekend At Bernie’s, because an 80s movie about two guys dragging a dead guy around with them in order to party in his house seemed spiritually correct as far as this newsletter goes.

And finally:

How to Make An Exit

You don’t, you just go! I mean, christ, look at this self-congratulatory idiot for pulling off a summer of Substacking — once a week — I know, except, reminder:

1. As ever, FOSTERTALK is free,

2. If you already think this is unhinged, just take the absurd wordage I’ve committed to this thing and multiply it by three, and you’ll have what I’ve actually written for it,

3. I’ve got, like, several jobs, including a day job! I’ve been asked how I keep a day job while also filing 6,000 word cover stories and filings for the Times in addition to helping out with every issue of and doing a 2,000+ word interview for uh *gestures widely* whatever this is, and the honest answer is I have no fucking idea but involves a lot of nights and weekends and telling people I “have to go home and write” far more than I’m proud to admit, I mean, do you people know how many goddamn emails I need to answer?

4. Also, I stopped writing for a while, not without good reason. The reason for that — the story behind all of this, and I promise, there is one — and why you basically just decide to throw away what could’ve been one of the most profitable newsletters three years ago only to just kind of bring it back in a form totally unlike what it once was was actually going to be the first issue of this thing. That’ll come at some point soon. Just, for now, know:

Making a thing, and trying to make it original, and trying to make it for the love of the thing, and trying to do it with the enormous pressures we put on ourselves, to say nothing of all the reasons not to put your whole ass out there for everyone to see? By the numbers, there are more reasons to avoid doing it than not. And this was never going to be good if I charged for it. Money is an incentive, and when new incentives are introduced into anything, the fundamental nature of a thing is altered. Money for creative work isn’t a bad thing by any means. But that was never gonna be this. Ultimately, the incentive here was: I wanted to have fun writing again.

And for reading this — for giving me an audience willing to dignify a weird, totally random assortment of “news” about noncompetes from a newsletter with a “focused” area of coverage ranging anywhere from poppers to noncompete agreements to, like, that Australian Bowl Place and nightlife, that is just beyond, and I can’t thank you enough. Every person every person who opened this, even the person who’s been giving me side-eye at parties for the last decade who opened every single issue probably as a hate read (BUT STILL!), thank you, thank you for taking your time to read it, to write nice things back, and tell other people about it, and give me ideas for newsletters, and feedback, and, truly:5 If this sounds self-aggrandizing, that’s because I’m not good enough of a writer to actually convey what it means to have people encourage your weird, creative pursuits, except to say that we should all spend more time encouraging people’s weird, creative pursuits.

That’s all I’ve got. Remember: It’s always summer somewhere. Be that place.

See ya6, -F.

6

…soon:

Today is Thursday, August 29th, 2024.

• Tomorrow the 15th Summer Friday of the year, zero to go until Labor Day.

• Little River Band’s “It’s A Long Way There” is on the radio.

• New in theaters this weekend is—

—wait, sorry, I know what you’re thinking: A Thursday?! No weather report? How am I dry? How are you dry? Am I having a minor neurological event? What’s with today, today? Yes, no, you’re not, I’m not, you’re not, and in the immortal words of The The, this is the day. This is real, and it’s not even the final issue of FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays, just one stop on the way there (that’ll be in your inbox tomorrow).

Meanwhile, the readers of this august August newsletter have come to learn, music is a primary concern of Summer Fridays, in spirit and in practice. As such, behold: The FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays End-of-Summer Music Spectacular! For the people who are new here, and rightfully have no idea what the actual fuck is going on: Sorry, can’t help you, neither does anyone else. Measured logic and coherence, not exactly this newsletter’s strong suit. This may also explain its cult following, and how you got here.

But what matters is that you’re here, and thus, you are a golden god. We’ve got news! And some items that have been cooking all summer, a coming-of-age tale involving rock and roll, some dance, some rock, some love, and the aural textures of nothing less than pure fun in the sun, weather be goddamned. Turn the radio up, for that sweet sound, yes?

And we’re off:

A Pressing, Non-Rhetorical Question About The Dare

Ahem:

Is it possible to write about The Dare without using the words “indie sleaze”? Recent history would suggest, no, it is apparently not possible.1 Who will be the first to do it?!?!?!?

This has haunted my Notes app for the last year and change. The answer, as it turns out?

Yours truly!!! SURPRISE! YES, MY BABIES: Let waft the white smoke, pop bottles and break bread, let bells ring out! Much to the relief of the obviously brilliant and culturally-attuned subscribers to this newsletter, the readers of one of New York City’s local daily periodicals, and anyone who lived in New York City in 2005, I’ve done the impossible, clocking 1600 words without the aforementioned cursed affectation! Marjorie Miller, you know my number!

It’s a profile that features quotes from Dylan Brady of 100 Gecs and (an absolute stamp of a line from) Charli XCX, along with a parenthetical surely conveying more than the vast majority of parenthetical in the New York Times today:

Three things, here:

1. Doing this kind of thing, I try almost exclusively to write about people playing a key part in a larger narrative about what they do, changing it in some way. And approach it through the lens of: What’s their most human form? Through what prism can other humans best understand this — and glean something — from?2 So: What’s up The Dare, sonically and otherwise? It’s a story about committing to the bit.

2. It was also not the next piece I thought I’d be doing for the Times, or ever. “Girls” is a song precision-engineered to share the qualities of caustic inhalants — a euphoric high, short as it is bold enough to leave users compelled to immediate repeat usage, despite potentially deleterious effects on the brain. And (ahem clearly) I rinsed it. But contributing to the cultural discourse around someone like The Dare — detailed in the story — ain’t really my bag. But when the idea was floated, I started finding more than my initial kneejerk reaction would’ve suggested I would. The new album is a whole thing. It’s a great Rorschach test for your idea of fun. Also, it’s just funny. I laughed out loud, several times, on the first few listens.

3. The one thing I wish we had room for in the story, but didn’t: Just how accomplished of a producer and DJ he is (as you can tell by the reaction on Charli XCX’s face here, this man can cook). One bit that didn’t make the story: The Dare told me he's considering releasing a series of instrumentals he's got in the hopper as 12" vinyl singles, and played some for me. Much as his sole instrumental "Bloodwork” is among his best pieces, they were phenomenal, the kind of thing even the Resident Advisor Industrial Complex would solemnly nod in approval at. Also, I cannot emphasize enough: He knows more about music than the vast, vast, vast majority of people (and musicians) on this planet.

4. Something I found that had no place in the story, yet is revealing and wonderful: The Dare covering The Magnetic Fields’ “Take Ecstasy With Me” on an old Soundcloud page he probably forgot was even there. It’s really, really lovely — as perfect a near-end-of-summer cover as you’ll find — and I’ve already ripped it off Soundcloud before it’s inevitably deleted once he remembers that account’s still public. :)

The Four Hardest Bars On That New Sabrina Carpenter Album

4. “Try to come off like you're soft and well-spoken / Jack off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen” - “Dumb & Poetic”

3. “A boy who's jacked and kind / Can't find his ass to save my life” - “Slim Pickens”

2. “You're so empathetic / you'd make a great wife / And I promise the mushrooms aren't changing your life” - “Dumb & Poetic”

1. “Jesus, what's a girl to do? / This boy doesn't even know / The difference between "there," "their" and "they are" / Yet he's naked in my room” - “Slim Pickens”

Father John Misty, eat your goddamn heart out.

[Bonus, non-album: “BBC said I should keep it PG / BBC I wish I had it in me / There's a double meaning if you dig deep.” - One of her many extraordinary live “Nonsense” outros from this summer. Pop music is rarely both this horny and funny.]

PREVIOUSLY, IN CURRENTLY INTENSELY FAMOUS PEOPLE: A Short Exchange I Recently Had with a Currently Intensely Famous Person, at a Rooftop Party, Regarding the Occasionally Delicate Matter of Retrieving Your Belongings and How to Leave a Party

How to Explain the Biggest Thing in Pop Music Right Now, Chappell Roan, to Someone Who Has No Idea What Those Two Words Mean, In Exactly 100 Words, Attempted In One Take:

Queer pop artist who grew up conservative Christian in a Missouri trailer park scored a YouTube hit at 17, signed to Atlantic, moved to LA, struggled attracting audiences, got dumped by her label and boyfriend, left LA, moved home, almost quit music, eventually independently released an album critics loved (audiences still didn’t show). A single this year and TikToks of her drag-influenced concert theatrics slowly caught fire. Artists love her (really!) — Sabrina Carpenter and Blink 182 are covering her — and, now at fever pitch, she draws (inspired!) historic crowds with fun horny vibey pop perfection. [That took 97.]

Related:

The One Thing I Want To Know About Chappell Roan Isn’t Actually About Chappell Roan, Which is

…the name of the person at Atlantic responsible for dropping her from the label. Can you even imagine?!

[Finally, go back and that footage of her performing to those record-breaking crowds and then, watch, from six years ago — before her label dropped her, and before she’d move home, almost give up music, and somehow persist to end up where she is — this video of her covering The Cranberries’ “Dreams,” seemingly, an entire universe of space and time and possibility away from her present situation, but as it turned out, not. Really, though: People are amazing, music is rapturous.]

MORE IN CHARLI + CHAPPELL Every single Charli XCX song “sounds like this” and every single Chappell Roan song “sounds like this.” // It’s so confusing to be a gull. // There’s one more Charli XCX remix coming and the speculation on what it could be is wild. // A perfectly absurd but accurate non-sequitur take on the New York mag photo shoot.

PREVIOUSLY: The Last Thing You’ll Ever Need To Read About “Brat Summer”

The High Art That Is Four Tet Playing Autreche’s “Sim Gishel” to End His Lollapalooza Set

is maybe the best Ari Aster movie that didn’t come out this summer, or maybe it’s more Harmony Korine. What’s happening up there: Four Tet — the critically-heralded electronic musician who also closed Coachella last year as part of an unlikely trio with Fred, Again.. and Skrillex — has seen his career go off in the last few years in a way few people familiar with his oeuvre probably expected (himself likely among them). And so, when he played Lollapalooza this summer, those recently-arrived to Four Tet’s body of work may have been, uh, surprised at his Lollapalooza set, which was, to use a word, unrelenting. Some days, you get Vanessa Carlton and Ariana Grande’s “Into You” mixed into a potentially life-changing mix of Donna Lewis’s “I Love You Always Forever.”

Other days — like at Lollapalooza this year — you get….Four Tet, closing his set with experimental electronic duo Autreche’s “Sim Gishel,” a dense, heady track that, um, probably doesn’t fit so neatly into the average Lolla-civillian’s understanding of a “song” (it was once described as sounding like “when you roll your head back and it clicks your neck and you can feel like nerves and shit sort of slithery crunching between bone,” so there’s that).

There’s no crowdpleasing here, there is no big finish, this is a dad in his mid-40s wearing a safari hat playing whatever the absolute fuck he feels like in a borderline sadistic fashion. And yet, credit to the crowd at Lollapalooza — or maybe not as much them as whatever it is they’re on — they keep bopping. The footage is hilarious, wild, weird, maybe dark, easily among the strangest concert footage I’ve ever seen, but above all, glorious. This man is a menace and he knows it.

The One Boiler Room Thing (Instead Of The Other Boiler Room Thing)

Floating Points — who, in the last four years, has produced a Best-of-Year song with Japanese pop legends, composed the swan song of jazz legend Pharaoh Sanders, composed a critically-heralded new ballet, has a new album coming out next month, and who has played, bar none, the best collection of shows I’ve seen over the past two years — has his first true Boiler Room set coming out soon, and it might be the longest they’ve ever produced, filming all five hours. I know because I was there, for all five hours of it.

And here, I was gonna annotate it, in the great tradition of previously annotated Boiler Room performances, and the on-camera madness which ensues, but unfortunately, it has yet to drop as of this writing. All I can tell you about it for now is:

How to Recreate the Most Fun Night of New York City Nightlife in Summer 2024, at Home

Find the hottest sauna you can, fill to capacity with other people on the hottest day of the year, and run in place fully-clothed in it for three hours as music plays at a volume just below the threshold at which you incur permanent hearing loss. After having willingly just spent the last five and a half minutes enduring the sound of being screamed at by a bunch of Japanese kids — who are either having a parade in your honor or on their way to send you to a miserably painful death between fourth period and recess — imaging secreting out the fumes of your last endorphins through your pores as the break hits on the new Floating Points single, the room going insane, and your memory blacking out for the next hour and fifty-five minutes, before kicking back in just as you pull a Roberto Duran, “no mas,” with only five minutes to go, and almost collapsing on the street outside in a sweat-soaked, exhausted mess.

So there’s that. Replacing what was scheduled to be the annotation? Service content!!!!

A Beginners Guide to Boiler Room!

WHAT? Videos of DJs playing music at parties, the OG brand, which that’s launched legions of video series like it, the primary innovation of which was placing the camera under and in front of the DJ, with vantages of the crowd behind them and later on, in front of and around them.

WHY? Well, hadn’t really been done before! It’s arguably one of the most recognizable live music performance video brand in the world, putting it in a league with Take Away Shows and Tiny Desk Concerts, and into a longer historical conversation that goes from MTV Unplugged and The Grind all the way back to the Ed Sullivan Show.

WHOMST? What used to be a relatively underground and independent launchpad to popularity for artists like Carl Cox and Solomun and (see below) has since become owned by $100M ticketing app company DICE.FM, and an essential stop for everyone from Thom Yorke to 100 Gecs to Charli XCX.

SO BOILER ROOM IS “OVER” THEN, YES? I’ve thought about this a lot, and yeah sure there’s some unfortunate upshot, like artists feeling the need to present “big” personalities and movements (instead of letting the people around them demonstrate how hard their music goes off). But: Nah, I don’t think so. Because at the end of the day, given that you can actually watch the DJs at work, you can see who’s actually putting in work, and who’s just twiddling knobs. Also, without Boiler Room getting to where it is, we might not have a chance to experience things like this, this, and especially, this.

WHICH ONES SHOULD I START WITH? As a gateway drug to other Boiler Rooms, there is:

• Global superstar hip-hop producer Kaytranada’s pre-fame 2011 Boiler Room, a classic of the genre, has rightfully elicited comparisons to the Divine Comedy. Key moment here.

• For pure energy, house DJ (and environmental scientist!) Jayda G’s Boiler Room will heal what ails you.

• Journeyman DJ (and 6,000 word New Yorker profile subject!) Solomun’s Boiler Room has been compared to a Shakespearean tragedy. Beyond the theatricts, it, too, is incredible.

• Fred, Again’s.. Boiler Room is basically the thing that catapulted him to the echelon of fame he occupies now. Key moment in Boiler Room history: What happens when a guy partying too hard accidentally shuts the music off.

• And yes, Charli XCX’s Boiler Room in Ibiza is, you should know, really quite good. And yes, DJing while wearing a full suit in Amnesia, arguably the hottest club in Ibiza, I asked, and yes: The Dare was, in fact, sweating balls.

And finally:

A Brief, Horny, Formative Summer Bildungsroman.

June 1999, Las Vegas, and just 14, I’ve managed to get my parents to let me go to a Fatboy Slim gig — on my own — for my eighth grade “graduation” present, something absolutely insane in retrospect, that I likely had to stretch the truth of the nature of (at one point, someone asked if I had any acid, which scared me). But thank god they did, because that man cooked through five hours of vinyl like nothing I’d ever seen, which altered how I listen to music…forever. But that, somehow, was not the most significant thing to happen that night. Here’s what was:

A runner from the office my Dad worked at came by the house to drop off some paperwork, and she offered to drop me off at the show: Andrea. She was 17, on her way to college after a summer of lifeguarding somewhere on the Strip, brilliant, funny, cool, confident, a laugh like an ice-cold can of Coke snapping open on a scorching hot day, and of course, beautiful.

On the way to the gig, we talked about what we were listening to, and she turned up her radio, with an and obviously, this. I recognized the voice, but didn’t know the song. “Whole Lotta Love,” are you kidding me?! I confessed, at that point, my knowledge of Led Zeppelin was limited to “Black Dog” and “Stairway.” She held her hand up to my face, turned the radio up, with a, Okay, just — just, wait, listen to this. Robert Plant was wailing and moaning through the song’s midsection, spacey, shambolic and weird. I raised an eyebrow. Ready? she asked? You ready? I laughed, and then: BANG, BANG, that famous guitar lick comes screaming in, and she’s pounding the top of the steering wheel to it, both hands, headbanging, grinning, laughing like a madwoman, the last strands of the June desert sun blasting through the car, shimmering through the hair covering her freckled face, when finally, she howls: YOU NEED COOLING…

I was terrified, in awe, in love, and didn’t stand a goddamn chance in front of any of it. The old gods were dead, and music had officially taken their place. No idea what came of her, but she lives in my head forever: That joy, that moment, that rapture, that release. So many people have had that experience, the first time you share a moment with someone, of seeing someone wholly enraptured in a song, not sure where the demarcation line between love for them and love for the music begins and ends. Somewhere in America, or somewhere else, someone’s had or will have this experience with someone else, with some other song — or maybe, even that one — before this summer’s over. And while, after so many summers, the thrill can diminish, and — even as the resplendence of the cannon of music grows at an exponential rate, even as, in many ways, there is no better time to be a fan of music than this very moment — you can become immune to their transformative properties.

Don’t. That’s it, that’s the whole thing. Just don’t.

Folks, that’ll do it. Thanks for entertaining me. And, as reminder, yes: For the final week of FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays, there is very much more on the way.

Stay tuned, see you tomorrow, and if you’re ever in need saving, I know a good place to start. As ever, -f.

Today is Friday, August 23rd, 2024.

• It’s the 14th Summer Friday of the year, one to go until Labor Day.

• KWS’s ”Please Don’t Go” is on the radio.

• New in theaters this weekend is the Zoe Kravitz-directed Channing Tatum thriller Blink Twice, and a remake of The Crow starring Bill Skarsgård.

• A great weekend for sports — on Saturday in the Premiere League, you’ll find Brighton & Hove Albion facing down Manchester United. On Sunday, F1 returns with the 36th running of the Dutch Grand Prix at Circuit Zandvoort. 

• Finally, around the world today, the weather: Laurel Canyon: 77/58, partly cloudy • The Cotswolds: 65/53, cloudy • Prout’s Neck: 77/57, mostly sunny • Forte dei Marmi: 85/71, mostly sunny • São Miguel: 75/68, sho—

—wait a second, did you hear? Substack went down today! And a bunch of dorks Substackers were mad about it. But you, me, we weren’t upset — we knew better: Substack wasn’t down, Substack was finally trying to vibe with a Summer Friday. All content creation is intrinsically immoral to begin with, but doing it on a Friday, in Summer?1 What greater evidence of the human propensity for wastefulness? And maybe, in Substack going down, what more compelling evidence of the sentience in the machine in the garden getting a clue, ripping out those Wayfarers, and getting to the nearest shoreline? Bless.

Meanwhile, whether you’re taking in the fine mists and music of the Azores or you’re in Maine-after-Greece like everyone else (including your esteemed publisher, this weekend), take a moment to recognize, right now, our one deeply human commonality this weekend, which is that there’s only one Summer Friday left in the season. I know: Emotional. But as we’ve said before, so shall we say again: Summer is in your heads and hearts above all, and only you and your god alone can put that figurative umbrella in your drink. So while this season must come to a close, this newsletter and our time together will always exist as a reminder of your vast intellectual, physical, sartorial, and cultural superiority to those who Just Aren’t On The Level, or as Emily Bronte — who I often turn to in these delicate, tender late Summer days, as the great season of our hearts turns — so beautifully once put it: Those people can go shit in a safety cone.

That said, around here, we don’t stand on ceremony — we lounge on it, and there’s still time left to make the most of this season, and so shall we. This week, we’ve got special correspondents filing from the DNC party scene, how to turn into an owl (on cocaine), another installment in our What Are We Gatekeeping Now? series, and some pickleball-hating tennis action, too.

A Paragraph About Pickleball And Andre Agassi From The Thing All The Hottest People Are Reading In The Lead-Up to This Year’s U.S. Open

Tennis is in New York City, have you heard? The U.S. Open is coming to the Big Apple yet again! And the most beautiful cool tennis magazine in the world, Racquet, just released a new issue with (Summer Fridays first-ballot-hall-of-fame vibes legend) Andre Agassi illustrated on its cover! The issue, guest-edited by Esquire’s former legendary editor-in-chief David Granger, is phenomenal. Especially that 6,000 word cover story on Andre Agassi, which contains this paragraph:

And finally, that awful, stupid, sound, the absolute worst of all those around you which denote time, place, and space: Bpop. Bpop. Bpop. It is to the glorious and singular aural percussion of racquet strings against a tennis ball what a paste-eating child popping his finger in and out of his mouth is to Charles Mingus slapping the bass. Again. And again. And again. It’s that sound which finally snaps you fully back to the moment, back in situ, back to your sordid reality, at One Penn Plaza, at the dead center of a valley of skyscrapers, in a neighborhood one friend once explained to me as SHAPS — “Shit around Penn Station” — a stone’s throw from one of the most storied sporting institutions in the world, Madison Square Garden, but not there, here, where I stand in an overpriced chain gym, watching a show pony with a sponsorship playing a game with its roots in retirement community leisure, with its roots in a way for the elderly to kill time before time kills them. Andre Agassi is playing pickleball, and I am spending a Saturday morning watching him do it, wondering why any of us, but especially him, are here. 

And guess who wrote it? Yours truly. What, you think I wasn’t going to use my own newsletter to shill my own shit? Again: This is free. And I’m giving you those sample bars for free.

The issue’s great, [Racquet editor-in-chief] Caitlin Thompson and Granger did an incredible job with it, and I’m pretty happy with my story. [Whether Agassi and his new machination man Justin Gimelstob will be, well, uh: We’ll see.] For now, you can buy it everywhere on Racquet’s site and at Casa Magazines and this cool magazine store in Stockholm and all the other places the best print products in the world are sold.

What Are We Gatekeeping Now?

PEOPLE?!?!? Yes: People. And exactly how, you might ask, does one ‘gatekeep’ a person? To which I’d answer: Uh, slavery, much? Oh, shit, right, you’d say, as I take a tactful pass on your solipsistic amoral ignorance2 while continuing to run down this rhetorical logic ladder, with beyond that, imprisonment, and then just beyond that, keeping a leather-fetish pain pig in the basement of your pawn shop, though when explaining this I’d take care to remind you that The Gimp isn’t actually a person, he’s The Gimp. 3

But if we’re to deploy just a touch more poetic license with the term, this summer’s most en vogue gatekeeping of people with whom this esteemed newsletter concerns — glamorous, beautiful, talented, sun-kissed cosmopolitans always on metaphysical, spiritual, or literal vacation somewhere — is the domestic economic terrorism inflicted upon the world that are noncompete agreements (NCAs).

For the uninitiated, NCAs are basically American business interests’ version of the “Saw” torture traps, and they’re what the Taliban would do with an MBA from Stern. If you’re ever offered a noncompete to sign, you should look at the person telling you to sign it, and explain this to them. NCAs are the twin sibling contract of this summer’s other hot contract, the non-disclosure agreement, they’re the Alexander Brothers of contracts, closely related to the non-solicitation agreement (their most functional and embarrassed relation, what Josh Kushner is to the Trumps, if you will), but all definitely overseen by Big Daddy Arbitration Clause.4 If you ever see any of these three contracts, odds are, you’re in the presence of a specifically ass stripe of evil.

The latest development in NCAs came this week, four months after Lina Khan’s FTC announced a rule in April that banned noncompetes. And that predictable development? A Trump-appointee to the federal bench struck the FTC’s rule down. The FTC’s now considering an appeal.

The existence of noncompetes, which prevent workers in America from seeking other work, is a running joke of a supposedly free-market economy held up by the ideal of free and fair competition. If your job sucks, you should be able to leave for another one. But while noncompetes were once mostly the province of VP-level-and-above executives and anyone exposed to distinct and specific trade secrets — fine, sure, whatever — they’ve since made their way into every crevice of American business, from healthcare workers to fast-food workers, and everything in between. They also exist in my industry, media — and I have told every single person who has ever forced me to sign an NCA any number of the following things, which I urge you to tell them as well:

1. No.

2. No really, I’m not going to sign this. You’re engendering ill will from the start of this process. The difference between a good company and an evil one is the difference between a company that makes you sign a noncompete and one that doesn’t, and this company is telegraphing which one it is.

3. Non-competes are predatory and monopolistic. They’re also pretty unenforceable in many states (like New York).

4. You’ve already gone through the trouble of vetting and hiring me. Now you’re ready to end it over a non-compete. Who runs this company, you, or your lawyers?

That last one has done the trick quite a bit. Fun media gossip: One of the first things I did after taking my job at Futurism was telling the CEO that I’d be killing our noncompete, and furthermore, that we’d allow our people to freelance for whoever they want, because monopolizing the talent of a dying industry feels, at best, wildly immoral. I’m not exactly a paragon of virtue or intelligence, but you gotta be a profoundly dumb dog (and an evil one too) to think an NCA is morally acceptable or good way to engender trust with your employees (and thus, run a company).

Even more fun media gossip: Back when I was at Complex, after the first year of Complex News, when the careers of Brandon Jenkins, Sean Evans, Emily Oberg, and Hanuman Welch were all taking off, Complex wanted to monopolize our on-camera talent and lock them into yearlong non-competes. As senior management of the company, I was definitely not supposed to send their contracts to my lawyer, who definitely didn’t promptly urge all four to tell our bosses at Complex to fuck off with a provision that definitely didn’t look like this:

But I did leave the company about a month after that, because any company that makes you sign anything that looks like that thing up there definitely isn’t a place to build a career5 as they not only don’t care about your future, but want to specifically limit potential outcomes that favor workers. Anyway: If noncompetes are a voting issue for you, vote for the candidate who’s going to keep FTC chair Lina Khan in office, and do your best not to work for companies with them, remember that Barry Diller and Reid Hoffman are evil clowns; if you ever get the chance, make sure to take the opportunity to strike them down; and if you ever hear anyone defending them, remember “rulers make bad lovers” and these fuckless people deserve to be relegated to the bottom of the ocean or at least have rumors spread about how terrible they are in bed and that they’re also bad tippers, both of which are probably true.

PREVIOUSLY, IN GATEKEEPING: Adderall?!? and CitiBikes?!??! and Secret Strategist?!?!?

The Single Most Delightful Explanation of Cocaine You Will Hear This Summer

There’s a decent chance you’ve already seen this, but that’s okay, because it bears appreciation. Up until earlier this month, the most poetically precise way one could articulate the experience of the ingesting cocaine (I’m told) was to tell someone to put on the soundtrack to Jonathan Demme’s underrated 2001 masterpiece Blow. Two weeks ago, the premiere of the third season of Industry gave that a run for its money.

But finally, this week, as part of the Republican party’s attempt to wrest attention away from the DNC, an interview between Donald Trump and former-Road-Rules-cast-member-turned-comedian-podcaster Theo Von really turned the entire “explanation of what cocaine is like” genre of poetry on its head.

Theo Von exists somewhere between Joe Rogan and Jeff Foxsworthy — he’s a podcasting Southern Fried Beavis whose politics are hard to pin down, as is precisely how stupid a character he’s playing at any given moment. But he is, on occasion, mindblowingly funny, maybe a dadaist playing dumb. Whatever the case, the premise that the Trump campaign would even agree to it is, itself, a joke, affirmed by the fact that it was obvious Zynternet citizen Barron Trump who proposed it. And nothing could possibly prepare you for the out-and-out weirdness and hilarity of this conversation to notorious teetoleter Trump, which I’ve been cackling at random intervals throughout the week whenever I’ve thought about it. To be clear, I am not the only one:

What’s delightful about Von’s characterizations about doing cocaine is that they truly don’t make any fucking sense, but you instinctively know they’re true. For example: I can’t tell you what “some of the stuff started to get a real rattle in it” means, but maybe he’s referring to coke being cut with worse mixing agents over the last decade, from caffeine to speed to bath salts. But the specific way he says it is as someone who’s done a lot of cocaine and maybe the rattle was just in his brain. I can’t even begin to fathom where “cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie — you’ll be out on your own porch, you’ll be your own street lamp” came from, but there is something undeniably wonderful about it, to say nothing of Trump’s reaction to being told that cocaine will turn you into an owl, specifically (on your own porch), then being called “homie.” Phenomenal.

The Hottest Filings From FP:SF Correspondents at the 2024 DNC

What, you didn’t think FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays didn’t have multiple correspondents filing from the floor of the DNC?

• The One Place You Don’t Want To Look Young: If you're under the age of 40, you'll get asked constantly about what parties you're going to after the programming ends. But the main thing to know about the DNC parties is they’re terrible. It's a lot of semi-drunk dudes in skinny work suits who are either kind of networking or trying to get laid. They tend to feature some decent or slightly to moderately washed acts, playing for an audience of political staffers, which with a few exceptions are some of the least culturally interesting people imaginable. Drive By Truckers played at the Our Future, Our Freedom party, which was supposedly the event to go to Wednesday night, but clearly no one knew who they were. Joan Jett was the headliner; she was introduced by the kid who plays Young Sheldon, who gave a speech about the importance of the arts and then dropped it low onstage as he was walking off. It was pretty weird. 

• The Hottest Party at the DNC Was The CNN Grill, The Berghein of the DNC: No, really. The CNN Grill has been really the only space for the media to hang out — and it's been actually really fun. It's sort of embarrassing that it's been so much fun. But there's been a huge line at 3:45PM before they open at 4PM, and people are waiting to get in all night — there's like a one-in-one-out policy. This is both objectively hilarious and objectively lame, though, to be fair, they’ve got an open bar and a ton of free food. It’s been hilarious to see all these CEOs and reporters and flacks in the DNC’s hottest club. [BTW: This tip comes at a particularly funny time as that hilarious Telegraph story about soon-to-fall galaxy-brained Discover-Warner Bros. CEO Jeff Zaslav being such a fan of great parties just dropped.]

• But Most Of The Other Parties Suck: I don’t know if that’s surprising or not, but the parties really have been pretty bad — the parties at the White House Correspondents Dinner, for example, are actually a ton of fun. Maybe that’s because the media’s not throwing them? [See above.] There was one party on top of the Sears Tower held by United Airlines, which was cool, but for the fact that it was giving ‘office holiday party,’ and weird.

• As Do The Way People Dress: Sartorially — and Max Tani did that great GQ interview about this — it’s your standard mix of poorly-dressed political people and the occasionally well-dressed telegenic media figure, and not much between. CNN anchor Katlin Collins: She dresses well!

• The Celebrity Scene Is Pathetic: A lot of celebs get asked to go to the DNC. Very few show up, the ones that do tend to be B-List or C-List. And when they get there, they don't have much to do. People kept acting really excited to see the guy from Modern Family walking around (who?). I saw Don Cheadle walking alone down an alley Wednesday night next to Three Dots and a Dash. Jack Schlossberg hid most of Tuesday night in the corner of the backyard of the CNN Grill, not watching the speeches and just looking at his phone. 

• Conway Report: Gossip? Uh: I walked past Kellyanne Conway on the street in downtown Chicago. She was basically half-naked, wearing tiny exercise shorts and a sports bra. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the weather’s been nice, but it’s not that hot, lol.

FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays correspondents: As ever, going to the DNC so you can stay on the beach.

And that’s gonna do it! Sorry for all the typos, blame Substack. For the new people here, well, all will be explained next week. Speaking of: We’ve got one more week to go, and everyone who’s supported this, opened it, read it, taken your time with it, said anything about it to me, shared it with anyone: Thank you, so, so much. It’s insane that you read this! Only slightly more insane than the fact that I write it! But above all, it’s been a labor of love and compulsion, made fun by you all as much as anything.

Until then: Don’t sign noncompetes, don’t make people sign noncompetes, don’t party at the DNC, don’t do cocaine, be kind to yourself, be kind to others, stay hydrated, wear sunscreen, and don’t become an owl on your porch, but if you do, at least have some good music. See ya, -F.

Today is Friday, August 16th, 2024.

• It’s the 13th Summer Friday of the year, two to go until Labor Day.

• Adriano Celentano’s ”Prisencolinensinainciusol” is on the radio.

• New in theaters this weekend is Alien: Romulus, which is unfortunate for literally anything else.

• In sports, some decent Premier League action all weekend, culminating in Chelsea at Manchester City on Sunday morning.

• Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York City: 86/73, clear with period clouds • Cap Ferrat: 86/75, clear • Oslo: 71/51, clear • Galapagos: 78/67, cloudy • Hvar: 89/76, partl—

—oh wait, shit, look at that: A whole bunch of new people are here! To our new friends, hi, welcome, I’m Foster, here’s the deal: Inside you, there are two Fridays. There’s the one on the calendar and then the one where it’s summer, forever. This newsletter exists, astrally (and literally) in the latter (as do its extremely offshore bank accounts). Sunning on the yacht deck that is your beautiful, smooth sailing psyche, it concerns, primarily, that which is important, luxurious, smart, beautiful, rich, and philosophically and ideologically fulfilling, and relevant to letting UV rays vaporizing your overworked brain cells. Broadly, it’s also whatever I want it to be. Which this week, is short, sweet, brilliant, and mostly, for you. Our three-item special begins…right now:

The Hottest Journalism Scandal Involving a Taylor Of Summer 2024

Much as I’ve tried to keep this newsletter exclusively a bastion of Summer Vibes and stay away from the media beat, you’re receiving this late on account of a late-week media story that’s nothing if not a spicy beach read unto itself.

Basically: Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz — the Jane Mayer of TikTok, and probably one of the few reporters for a print newspaper someone under the age of 30 could name offhand — is in trouble. This time, for a photo she took of Joe Biden and seemingly captioned with the words war criminal :(, which she posted on Instagram to her “Close Friends” (not so much!) while attending some kind of confab for influencers at the White House earlier this week. Someone leaked a screengrab of it to one of the more proudly odious reporters at the New York Post (and that’s saying something!), and now we have mess.

She’s since been called to answer for herself in front of Post brass, who are no doubt apoplectic. There’s already a Polymarket spread on her being ousted from her gig at the paper. So there’s that.

Lorenz has, per NPR, “since told associates that a close friend took her posted picture and superimposed the caption upon it, as a joke, and that she shared it with the group on the private Instagram posting.” Did you get all that? She was not actually calling Biden a war criminal, her friend was. And really, neither was her friend, because posting war criminal :( is a meme.

Whether you buy all of that or not — and there is a lot for sale, there — it’s true that it’s a meme, as war criminal :( is how Lucy Dacus once responded to a Boygenius song making Barack Obama’s summer playlist. It’s kind of been a thing ever since1.

And all that, she might’ve actually scraped by on as far as plausible excuses go! Except: When the screenshot starting making the rounds on Twitter (per NPR media reporter David Folkenflik’s piece on all this) Lorenz (seemingly) compounded the issue by deleting that “close friends” story, and posting the same photo sans-caption to her public Instagram channel, then (seemingly) attempted to get one of the Tweets about it annotated as fake news (when, by all appearances, it very clearly wasn’t). And as they say: It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.

All that said! A few things here:

1. The Washington Post is, historically, institutionally shit at handling HR issues with their reporters. From Felicia Sonmez to Dave Weigel to the Journolist scandal to Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza calling Hillary Clinton a “mad bitch” (that actually happened) and getting a slap on the wrist, the Washington Post makes the worst scandals at the New York Times look like lessons via Emily Post. And their scandals don’t just net reporters — recent hires at the very top have had to face down scrutiny (new publisher Will Lewis, accused in British courts of abiding phone hacking) or been forced to resign not even start their new job (Lewis crony Robert Winnett). I’m not exaggerating when I say that by any reasonable measure it is a shitshow over there. They’re also notoriously bad at managing any kind of talent that doesn’t fit the orthodox mold of journalism, which they don’t wholly understand (see: that time they let Ezra Klein take his idea for Vox and his entire brand elsewhere).

2. Taylor Lorenz, historically, comes with some next-level shit for her capital-I journalism Institution employers. Whether it’s parrying with her trolls on Twitter or being a part of interoffice contretemps, where Taylor Lorenz goes, some drama may, in fact, follow (and before Day 1 at the Post, very much did).

3. But where Taylor Lorenz goes, historically, so does an audience. A massive one, at that. As far as reporters of youth culture and online trends go, she’s second to none, and there’s absolutely zero disputing that when she’s diligently producing the actual reporting, she’s a best-in-class reporter who dominates her beat. It’s why the Washington Post hired her in the first place. But moreover, finally:

4. Make no mistake, joke or not, meme or not, screengrab of your friend’s screengrab of your post with your friend’s ironic joke on it or not (?!?!?), it is very fucking dumb to caption a photo with a meme calling the president a war criminal when you work at the Washington Post. And that’s to say nothing of that fact that you are the world’s preeminent Internet Culture Beat Reporter and thus you should be well acquainted with the first rule of the Internet which is that once it’s on the internet IT IS ON THE INTERNET so DON’T PUT IT ON THE INTERNET. That said? It would probably be an even dumber move to fire your reporter for doing so, as your chief executive remains employed while under investigation for (wait for it) destroying evidence related to an exponentially more deranged journalism scandal.

Right. Said Post executive, Will Lewis, has ridden out accusations far worse than anything Lorenz has done. It’s why you should expect Lorenz to survive this one relatively unscathed.

Taylor’s got half a million followers on TikTok and 31,000 subscribers on Substack. That she hasn’t already struck out on her own is…surprising? As much as the way she’s tied her fate to a journalism institution seemingly diametrically opposed to the way she comports herself in all but the most basic aspects of the journalism business. Maybe she just doesn’t want to work as much as pure play entrepreneurship entails, or maybe the credibility of these institutions still grants her access to spaces that being an independent operator doesn’t.

Why doesn’t the Post just relegate her to being an opinion columnist who reports, or some special, cordoned-off part of the business, where she can’t stir as much shit? She clearly doesn’t have much truck with the orthodoxies and manners of traditional journalism jobs. So, if you’re a journalism institution, why even allow her to be held to the same standards as everyone else? The answer to that question would also answer a sheer tonnage of questions about the fundamental problems facing the Post that they’re incapable of doing.

Maybe the better question is: Why doesn’t some enterprising media owner with a bunch of money just give her the resources and free reign to build her publication with a profit split? Open memo to Nicholas White, over at Fragment, who owns The Daily Dot — where Lorenz got her start — boy, do I have a free idea for you.

London’s Private Club Scene, As Explained by the Creators of “Industry”

comes to us from deep within their recent podcast appearance on .2 See! Some people actually do listen to podcasts:

OUT: Legendary London spot Annabel’s! Please enjoy the Siberian-Ossetra-On-A-Lays-Potato-Chip sentence of the week: “This is going to sound so cunty, but when they removed the Picasso from the front, you knew it was about to go downhill — the guy who owns it put it in his house.” Tell me you don’t feel alive inside reading that. It reminds me of something my friend, a longtime Londoner, sighed at me after I excitedly explained to her the tableside martini service at The Connaught Bar: “There are countless ways to be a cunt in London.” Amen, sister — London’s the best.

Anyway, the guys say it’s become a bad hang, a little Eastern Promises-y, and also that the price point has ascended to the extent where taste goes out the door (kleptocrats ruin everything). Also, Mickey Down went and the person he was with got charged 280 pounds after asking for “a glass of Chardonnay.”

IN: The members club above the nightclub of the same name, Koko, in Camden. “It’s still fun.” Looks like it.

Also, they note that “every guy in LA who comes to take a meeting with us wants to get breakfast at Chiltern [Firehouse]” which is a bone-chillingly accurate portrayal of agents and production execs from LA going anywhere — but especially to London — and feeling the need to go, of all places, to what is literally the (also Andre Balazs-owned) Chateau Marmont of London in all but name (but without a pool, the most fundamentally fun part of Chateau Marmont). The paucity of original ideas produced by Hollywood even extends to where development execs get their breakfast, christ. Going to breakfast at Chiltern is fine if you’re on someone else’s dime I guess but if you’re not a bicostal afreet with the desperate need to assert status but instead a human of respectable taste it is your moral duty to go to E. Pellicci or the Regency Cafe (perhaps one of the only lines in the world actually worth standing on, with easily the greatest restaurant website of all time) or, if you’re truly nasty, Hide. There, Bob’s your guncle, god save the chippy man, etc.

PREVIOUSLY: Trendlines: Private Clubs.

The New Downtown Epicenter of This Unholy Earth Ever Spinning Into The Cosmos As It Is

….is — as documented by a new GQ piece with the hilariously Stefon-pilled title of “The Hottest Club In NYC Is a Parking Lot On Canal Street” — Time Again. Or the sidewalk in front of it, hereby officially anointed as Time Square. It’s a bar which was reconceived from its past life as an omakase spot, which was its re-conception from its first life as a cafe, owned by rapper Despot and art world multi-hyphenate Nick Poe. The place has been A Whole Situation for a while, but recently reached fever pitch over these last few months. In a brilliant turn of self-awareness, GQ’s Sam(uel!) Hine writes:

The Time boom follows a New York nightlife cycle as old as McSorley’s. Most of these photogenic barflies spent last summer posted up a few blocks down Canal outside the hotspots of Dimes Square, which they now agree has become overrun with French tourists and guys wearing white sneakers. Once the spot gets blown, you sniff out the next one. […] But on this Tuesday night, everyone is having too much fun to worry about whether Time Again’s magic will last. Reinstein tells me he’s going to keep the party going through the winter with heat lamps. Nearby, a writer explains the concept of “SABS-ing”—seeing and being seen—to a friend. Right now, at least, Time Again might be the SABS epicenter of the world.

It is, of course, a wonderfully fun read that strikes me as a particularly creative way to yeet oneself into the ether to find another gathering spot now that the one you once enjoyed is beginning to become cooked (see: “well, that was fun while it lasted (a few weeks)”).

And yet: As the kind of sociological scholar who understands that what’s actually the most self-actualized way to present socially in New York City is to always be ALPELEWYS-ing (arrive last, peace early, leave ‘em wishing you stayed), I feel I’m not the best person to comment on the matter of the SABS epicenter of the world, and thus, must herein recuse myself from the matter. But you know who can?

The most important downtown reporter in the history of New York City (and, naturally, a Summer Fridays correspondent), The Guy Who Invented The Term “Dimes Square.”3

Live, from the East Broadway Witness Protection Program, papal decree:

And now you know: Time Square, possibly the next Dimes Square, which is now basically this. Related: This sign, as seen on the corner the other night. I will, and I am not even remotely joking, vote for whoever makes this the key tenet of their mayoral run platform to primary Eric Adams:

Jane Jacobs, eat your heart out.

Okay, that’s it. Sorry! Busy week, busy day, busy summer. Look at that, we’ve only got two Summer Fridays left. You think I want you wasting them on SUBSTACK? Christ, no. Anyway, takeaways from this one: Go to London, get a proper breakfast, flood Canal Street, don’t worry about where you think supposedly cool people hang out because the second anyone is even inclined to think that it’s already washed on some level and also more importantly it can’t be that cool because you’re not there. That said, if you’re a member at Koko, call me, let’s hang. As ever, -f.

Today is Friday, August 9th, 2024.

• It’s the 12th Summer Friday of the year, three to go until Labor Day.

• Argent’s “Hold Your Head Up” is on the radio.

• New in theaters this weekend is video game adaptation (and spiritual Tár sequel) Borderlands, along with the horror/thriller Cuckoo starring Hunter Schafer and Dan Stevens, and the slightly-scandal-plagued soapy Blake Lively vehicle It Ends With Us. Premiering on television Sunday night, the third season of HBO’s Industry.

• At the 2024 Olympics, the womens volleyball finals will see the United States fight Italy for the gold on Sunday, and tomorrow, both the womens basketball semifinals featuring the U.S. facing Australia, and the mens basketball finals featuring the U.S. playing France for the gold.

• Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York City: 81/73, showers • Malibu: 91/69, partly cloudy • Martha’s Vineyard: 79/74, cloudy • Reykjavik: 57/45, cloudy • Formentera: 86/79, sun—

—oh shit, look here: An issue of Summer Fridays, landing in your inbox on a Summer Friday, Shakespeare as it’s meant to be seen. In the immortal words of the Bard himself: Villain, I have done thy mother. Jokes.1 But no, the line we’re actually looking for is Summer's lease hath all too short a date,2 by which he meant: Time flies when you’re getting turnt, burnt, laid, and paid (exactly what the beautiful, sun-kissed, moneyed, oversexed readers of this august August publication — the greatest 19,376 humans to have Substack accounts — all are). He also said if music be the food of love, play on.3

To that end? Let’s kick out the jams: Another summer restaurant fight (featuring Keith McNally and Pete Wells, among others), a fight over a private club ends, learn How To Substack, more news from The Hamptons, and then some. Shall we?

And Now, A Brief Update on the Drugs of the Summer

• Ozempic: Since we last checked in on the Summer of ‘Zempies, people are reportedly taking more than twenty times the correct dose (and overdosing), projectile vomiting it in the club, buying bootleg ‘Zempies, possibly experiencing ‘Zempies-related complications in surgeries, and are more likely than not contributing to the problem of patients at economic disadvantages who need it to manage their diabetes, a datapoint you may absolutely choose to deploy for moral superiority over the people you know who are taking Ozempic and don’t have diabetes, a disease that especially cuts hard across racial and economic lines in America (but also, to paraphrase Proustian scholar Kate Moss, nothing ethics as good as skinny feels, babe).

• Poppers: On a recent Last Week Tonight segment, John Oliver — in discussing RFK Jr.’s conspiratorial bent, which includes promoting ideas about poppers causing karposi sarcoma — brought out a bottle of Rush, explaining that there’s a reason you can get one at any bodega in New York, and it’s not because they cause karposi sarcoma. Meanwhile, Louisiana just banned the sale of all nitrous inhalant-related products, including poppers.4

• ’s Eggplant Pasta Recipe: Not technically a narcotic, but someone recently cooked it for a Sunday dinner I was at, and it absolutely slaps. To wit: It was no match for the 47 shots of Mounjaro I jammed into my neck over the weekend, given that I went for seconds, and even thirds. If that’s not the sign of good cooking, nothing is, and we, as a society, are broken. Related…

• Weed: …as one of my best friends recently stopped into Roman’s store in the Catskills, after blazing and getting so high he could barely form consonants, suffering from what he characterized as the worst cottonmouth of his life. She happened to be there at that moment. Walking in, marveling at the walls of food — but especially, for some reason, the dried pasta (?) — he purchased exactly one (1) bottle of water from her, after she repeatedly asked, somewhat bewildered, if there was anything else he wanted to buy, finally just offering him some free zucchini bread. Unable to process this information, he declined, and basically ran out with his bottle of water.
  
  How comically blunted do you have to be to turn down free zucchini bread from Alison Roman in the middle of Fuckall, Catskills? Apparently: Quite5. Especially fun is the fact that they’ve met before, though, to be fair, not when said friend was traveling through the Interstellar tesseract in the middle of Alison’s shoppy shop. Lol. Further post-mortem investigation determined that this may have been because of the specifically Sith-grade weed he unknowingly smoked, but also, because he’s now smoking significantly less marijuana than he was during the pandemic’s halcyon days (and that the only solution is, of course, to get his tolerance up, by smoking more weed). The lesson here? Go when Alison Roman’s shop is closing and you might get offered some free leftover zucchini bread, but only if you’re so high you’re spirit bonding with a box of bucatini. Also, much like cardio, weed tolerance requires tending to.

• Laughing Gas: So, uh, Kanye West is allegedly addicted to it via his “personal dentist.” The most fascinating thing with this one isn’t that it’s Kanye West’s new (alleged) drug of choice, but rather, that he could just…buy some canisters, whippers, and balloons on Amazon, and just, like, go to town, no “personal dentist” required. This would probably save him a lot of money, and he could do balloons in peace, and (apologies to my dentist friends) without a nearby dentist. Also, I probably should’ve made those links up there affiliate links, but much like our friends at , the FOSTERTALK market differentiator is that I’m not “grody” and “artificial” and don’t use affiliate links but rather “elegantly & enlightenedly”6 just want you to know that you don’t need a “personal dentist” to score hippie crack. Anyway, isn’t it fascinating how the rich really don’t know how to spend money?

PREVIOUSLY, IN POPPERS: The Greatest Zoom Meeting Ever.

PREVIOUSLY, IN ‘ZEMPIES: The Ozempocolypse Is Coming.

On The Apparently Delicate Matter of Pete Wells’s Complaint

Best-to-ever-do-it retiring New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells’s watch is over, but before he begins his year-long spirit quest of a colonic, he did what any decent person should do upon leaving a job, and set a few things on fire walking out the door, in a piece headlined “I Reviewed Restaurants for 12 Years. They’ve Changed, and Not for the Better.” The issues plaguing restaurants include:

• The coldness of digital reservation culture (Resy, OpenTable, et al) and QR-code menus (“Restaurants are turning into vending machines with chairs”).

• Delivery apps and ghost kitchens

• The interchangeability of high-end tasting menu restaurants, which are compared unfavorably to both hook-up culture (in that you’re meant to go once, but never again) and the Cheesecake Factory (a restaurant that at least wants you to return to it). And

• The TikTokification of restaurants (“People who consume a steady diet of bucket lists and viral videos rush from one restaurant to another so they post about it, to prove they were there”) and the deleterious effects that has on restaurant culture writ-large.

And then some. What Wells is rightfully arguing for is a return to the human touch of restaurant, and an appreciation for it. But he opens the piece with his ire for Blackbird, the new crypto-pilled restaurant loyalty app startup from Ben Leventhal:

Customers check in on the app on arrival, pick a payment source and tip percentage, and then eat. Ben Leventhal, one of the app’s founders, explained what he called the “best part” in an Instagram video shot at the Italian cafe Lodi. “When you’re done, you just get up and go,” he said. Then he demonstrated how it’s done, high-fiving Lodi’s host on his way to the door without breaking stride.

Ben’s influence on the world of restaurants can’t be overstated, both as the co-founder of Resy (which changed reservation culture), and before that, Eater, (which changed both food media and arguably the landscape of restaurants as we know it today — one incredible example here). This is a guy who had his wedding at Balthazar long before anybody else did, which is just one of the several reasons it’s funny to see Balthazar owner Keith McNally — who referred to Pete Wells’s article as a “MASTERPIECE OF OBSERVATION” — take Ben to task:

Lol. Another reason it’s funny is that Balthazar was, for the longest time, one of the true keepers of the flame that was the phone-banked reservation system, VIP tiers and all. And now they use Resy, but we’ll get back to that.

Meanwhile, Will Guidera, the former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park and The NoMad — and now a producer on The Bear, who runs a hospitality training group — took to Instagram to air out his issues (!) with the article, which I’ve helpfully transcribed for you here:

"The underlying thesis of it, I believe in very strongly. He believes that people go to restaurants to feel a sense of connection, that when you leave without having experienced, like, extraordinary hospitality and service from the people in the dining room you're left feeling empty. I agree with all of that. But it made me think about one thing, and I wanted to share it: I've been in New York restaurants for my entire career and I've read a lot of New York Times reviews and in that time I can probably count on one hand how many times I've read anything about the service and the hospitality let alone praise for it. And so, listen, there's a lesson here: I don’t think the word is hypocrisy, but when people don’t celebrate something, when they don’t take time in a revi—"

And hoss, I’m gonna stop you right there, because we all know where this goes — restauranteur (or former restauranteur) kvetching about a restaurant critic without getting their facts straight. On just a few random reviews I clicked on, the service is remarked upon in reviews for Le Bern, Torrisi, and Hav & Meyer, which were simply the first few restaurant reviews I thought to Google. The idea that Pete Wells was unconcerned with how much service matters is a joke quickly unproven by actually reading his reviews.

Also: If Wells were to consistently assess the service of a restaurant, he’d have to constantly assess the good, the bad, and the ugly, and we all know how notoriously benevolent restaurant owners are when servers have even a single bad day on the job. Finally, the best service in the world is usually some combination of “warm” and something you don’t really have to think about. Anyway, Guidera has a hospitality training group to promote, but kudos to him for getting good at the internet and trying to leverage fake news into attention! :)

As it’s so often the case: Back to Balthazar (and their use of Resy). Last year, I wrote a feature for Interview about the gatekeepers of New York City restaurants. Kevin King, a longtime and beloved maître d' of places like Balthazar and Le Rock, had this to say:

KING: What is being lost is the art. A lot of the people in your story, we come from a time before there were screens, before there was Resy. That made us so much better at the job. It was about interacting with people, not just reading something off of a screen. 

It’s true. At Chez Georges in Paris, they’ve got this reservation book sitting on the counter when you walk in, it’s gotta be about a foot thick, at least 2 feet in length. I’m pretty sure it’s the same one they used since they opened in 1926. They knew nearly every person that walked in. 

KING: I knew a couple, working at one restaurant, they had their first date on table 24. So, guess what? Every time they came into that restaurant, I made sure that table 24 was theirs. 

There’s a magic to that. 

KING: There’s a magic to that.

And there is. Restaurants are wonderful places, third spaces, filled with people creating an incredible nightly mise en scene that, at its very best, is one of the great routine human manifestations of ineffable and ephemeral beauty. Live your life of restaurant-going with that appreciation in mind, and your life (and the world) will be all the better for it.

I have approximately 106 things to say on this morning’s hot fire polemic about the replication machine that Substack is becoming — including but not limited to (9.) Never think about Substack on a Greek island and (12.) Why are you thinking about Substack on your Greek island vacation?! and (76.) I get that there’s only so much to do on a Greek island but have you considered drinking enough masticha to go blind instead of thinking about Substack on a Greek island?

But maybe her vacation-loss is our gain, because it is excellent. But it also made me unearth an item I almost discarded this week:

In Which Kelly Oxford Teaches You How to Substack

Somehow I ended up subscribed to the Substack of Kelly Oxford, a writer who came to prominence in the salad days of Twitter. Oxford is a funny writer and accomplished person, so I didn’t unsubscribe, figured I would one day, and occasionally cracked open the emails, which come with some pretty compelling subject lines, most of which you need to pay to subscribe to see out in full. While I still won’t pay to subscribe, I now open every single email of hers, just to keep watching her master the art of the curiosity gap on Substack. For example, in a post about sending men nudes:

In a post about figuring out what her kink is:

In a post titled “Save Yourself A Bad Fuck with One Tip”

Or even, just today, as I was writing this: “A Few Easy Ways To Make Sex Better.” This is Cosmo Cover Lines 101-level excellence! There are some people teaching in business or journalism schools right now who have absolutely zero business teaching in business or journalism schools — let alone people running businesses, or journalism businesses! — and then, there’s this. To that end, finally, enjoy this, which needs absolutely zero wind-up:

Still not gonna pay for it on principle, but, come on: Masterful! Elsewhere?

How to Decide What Newsletters to Pay For

Another thing I might offer to anyone sick of all the samey-same Substacks out in the world is to unsubscribe from them! My standard for whether or not I pay for a Substack is:

1. Do I enjoy it?

2. Does it give me something I can’t get anywhere else?

3. Does it add value to my life, or am I just reading it because I have FOMO or FOMOOD7?

4. Is the thing I’m paying for better than the things I don’t pay for (like FOSTERTALK)?

Most of them don’t pass that bar. And that’s okay! Most Substacks don’t have to. But if they can’t pass all four of those questions with flying colors, thus falls The Sword of Fostercles on their subscription tier. At some point, I’m going to do what I do with my coffee mug collection and start crowdsourcing which subscriptions end up getting voted off the island (note to , make this a feature), but for now, a small rundown of those I pay for go like this: a newsletter, and ,8 the great , and of course, (though less for the links than whenever Emily goes off like she did! Original insight matters! I get my links from ).9

A few more you maybe don’t know on here, worth subscribing to:

1. , by Leonora Epstein, whose recent post on The Emotional Architecture of Bluey is deeply, insanely good. She also wrote this post about what couches smart design people like, which — if you’re like me, and have illness-grade decision paralysis over what couch to buy — is very useful. I just realized I don’t pay for it. I’m about to start!

2. is the Only Podcast That Matters, and is also responsible for legions of its imitators, to a degree that the Hague might find worth taking issue with. Anyway, they’re now on Substack, and co-host wrote this recent post about what it’s like to shop at the IRL Ssense store, and it’s fantastic.
   [PREVIOUSLY, IN OLD-SCHOOL FOSTERTALK AND SSENSE: The “soi disant marxist personal essay literati.”]

3. , the only Substack About Therapy You Need, which this week features the definitive take on THERAPY SPEAK. Also, you know you want to know what the chaser is to the sentence “MAGA twitter has taken a liking to ‘gaslighting.’ I’m obsessed with this.”

The Hamptons!

PRIVATE CLUBBED // Remember when we documented Zero Bond imperator Scott Sartiano’s attempt to bring Leonardo DiCaprio and Eric Adams’s (!) Private Club Of Choice to…the Hamptons?!

ZERO BOND, ZERO CHANCE. The One Place Private Clubs Won’t Happen is apparently the East Hampton Town Square. […] The University of Miami: North is slowly watching the fates of East Hampton yeet the club back on the train to Manhattan…

Well, guess how that turned out? Per the New York Post:

Zero Bond owner Scott Sartiano has thrown in the towel in his fight to bring the exclusive Soho members-only club to the Hamptons this summer — choosing instead to open a branch of his celebrity-magnet restaurant Sartiano’s, Side Dish has learned.

And guess how that’s gone, via the Post, late July:

Sartiano’s, the swishy Soho restaurant, has been operating an outpost in East Hampton for less than a month — yet it has been raided by health inspectors or targeted by the town’s notorious noise police nearly every day it has been open, The Post has learned. Last Saturday, three police cars were sent and cops entered the restaurant at the historic Hedges Inn “like a SWAT team,” an eyewitness said.

Loathe as I am to give a certain set of Hamptonites credit for anything, you gotta admire a comic, extremist adherence in committing to the bit. And speaking of cops!

FROM THE GREATEST POLICE BLOTTER IN AMERICA // Shall we check in again with America’s greatest rap sheet, the East Hampton Star’s police blotter? We shall! It’s crime time, baby!

5.3: Madison Street was the site of an apparent car theft on the afternoon of July 30 when a man reported his Toyota Camry missing. He’d left it for about 90 minutes, he told police, who drove him around until they found it on Main Street, where he had forgotten he’d parked.

7.4: Dive Bar Pizza was the site of a fight early on the morning of July 28. Police found two men, one of whom was “on a bench in front of the bar bleeding from his mouth.” Security had asked them to leave for being “difficult” and “arguing” with staff, they told police, and a brawl followed, in which both of them were knocked to the ground. The remainder of the report was redacted.

8.6: A man who was reported to be lying in the grass last Thursday evening near the Beacon restaurant at the yacht club told police he’d only had a few drinks and was “taking a breather in the grass” before continuing his walk home. The officer let him rest.

And finally:

SWAN REPORT, REDUX! Last week, there was this:

7.6: For the second week in a row, village police were called out on July 24 to conduct a swan hunt, after a woman reported an aggressive swan, which she believed to be injured, on Long Island Avenue. Officers determined that the bird was fine, and was acting like a "normal swan."

Several complaints about this item came in over the FOSTERTALK Batline, literally all of which taking issue with what was perceived as too low of a score. We regret the error. That said, this week, SWANWATCH 2024 returns:

A swan, possibly the same one that was reported injured near Georgica Pond the week before last but was found by police to be okay, was called in for a wellness check on Saturday morning, this time near Stephen Hand’s Path. A wildlife rescuer was in the area and helped the “injured” swan.

I don’t know what to make of those scare-quotes, either.

That’ll do it for this week. Meanwhile, everyone who’s emailed, suggested stories, said hi, left a comment, smashed that like button, truly: Thank you. Your encouragement and your kindness and even giving any of this the time of day, it means the world. Your attention and time is the most valuable commodity there is. That you’d spend any of it on my bullshit is humbling, flattering, and leaves me beside myself.

On that, we’ll finish where we started, in the immortal words of The Bard: All’s well that ends well, as another Summer Fridays is in the books. Next time this week, the FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays Summer Music Spectacular. Until then, unsubscribe your those Substacks, fire your personal dentist, fire up some eggplant pasta, unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs, get that tolerance up, get those poppers stocked, and of course: Hold your head up. There’s more summer fun left yet. There always is somewhere.

See ya, - f.

Yesterday was Friday, August 2nd, 2024.

• It was the 11th Summer Friday of the year, four to go until Labor Day.

• Chris Rea’s “On the Beach” is on the radio.

• New in theaters this weekend is M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, Trap (featuring Josh Hartnett playing a serial killer lured into a sting); Kneecap, an Irish indie Sundance darling about Gaelic rappers starring Michael Fassbender; and The Instigators, a Matt Damon/Casey Affleck crime caper.

• At the 2024 Olympics, the mens singles tennis finals will be fought between Alcaraz and Djokovic, and Sha'Carri Richardson will run in the womens 100m.

• Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York City: 89/74, scattered thunderstorms • Los Angeles: 90/65, sunny • East Hampton: 83/74, cloudy • Paris: 77/58, cloudy • Ibiza: 85/72, sun—

—hey, sorry, shit, hi, I know: It’s Saturday! How can I sit here and publish a newsletter concerning Summer Fridays on (two!) Summer Saturdays? Well: How could I not? It’s summer, and the first rule of summer is that there are no rules because you’re actually living in The Purge no ha ha just kidding that’s only how waking up in an American Summer in the second decade of the 21st Century feels. There are sometimes rules! But we’re not here to stand on ceremony, unless we’re standing on a podium for gold, and goddamn are we ever: This weekend, restaurant/media gossip, the last thing you’ll ever need to read involving the words “brat summer,” some adventures in psychotherapy, even some politics regarding the Hamptons vote. Tally-ho, let’s go:

A Context-Free Review of Some Very Recent ‘Brat Summer’ Headlines Upon Which You May Project Some Broader Conclusions

How to Have a Brat Summer [Kelly Oxford, July 22nd]

Is Brat a Good Album? [One Thing, July 25th]

Brat Summer Is Dead, Long Live Brat Summer [Pitchfork, July 25th]

Well, it’s over: How the lamest people on earth ruined our Brat summer [The Tab, July 31st]

KC Pet Project pushes $3.65 animal adoptions for ‘brat summer’ [The Pitch, August 1st]

Steven Guilbeault jumps on the 'brat' trend on social media [National Post, August 1st]

Donald Trump is Brat [The New Statesmen, August 1st]

Has brat summer already become mainstream? [NSS Magazine, August 1st]

How ‘Brat’ Green Killed ‘Barbie’ Pink [NYT, August 1st]

Brat Summer’s sun might be setting, have marketers noticed? [Digiday, August 2nd]

I Tried This Viral Brat Summer Lip Stain x Chipotle Collab – and It’s Truly Burrito-Proof [E! News, August 2nd]

Oh, you thought Brat Girl Summer was 'over'? These women are proof it's not [Metro UK, August 2nd]

Here’s how you can have a ‘Brat Summer' in winter [Sunday Times, August 2nd]

Commentary: The Bible’s Eve is the original ‘brat’ [Salt Lake Tribune, August 3rd]

Most people don’t know what ‘Brat Summer’ is, YouGov poll reveals [PinkNews, July 30th]

That One Restaurant Story About to Drop

I’ve heard from a few friends in the service industry that a certain local periodical is teeing up a big story on one of New York’s most acclaimed chef-restauranteurs, and — let’s just say — not the fun kind. What I’ve heard so far isn’t as bad as the last time I heard something, or as a source put it…

…but it is still, decidedly, not great. Word on the piece is that it’s gonna be anything from “the usual bad toxic workplace toxic [person]” (and paying people to keep quiet about it) to things far, far more unsavory. Given that the most horrific rumors around the Horses thing didn’t (thankfully) turn out to be true, the more extreme bits around this one are (hopefully) worth hedging by a few degrees, which makes it all still pretty bad.

Nobody’s surprised, which: Never a great sign. Also, this person escaped unscathed from a previous scandal some people thought theoretically could’ve (and maybe should’ve) ensnared them. Other people love this person (though isn’t that always the case?). But this one-half of an NYC power service industry couple is likely about to face some very real heat. Whether or not their career or the restaurants will be able to withstand it: Depends on what’s alleged, but ‘wouldn’t be surprised either way. They’re phenomenal places, deservingly beloved — two of them are in the Times 100 Best — but don’t have quite the shine they used to. A two-top for Friday night at one could be booked for 7:15, the other only had a 6pm. On the other hand, consider all the restaurants that have survived stories like this, and continue to thrive. People have short memories.

A New Frontrunner for the Owning of Another Human of The Summer

“oh so you work for him too then!”

- Macy Gilliam, senior video producer at Morning Brew, choosing cheery violence against the founder of Friend, that new Her-like wearable AI absolutely nobody wants, mostly notable for how universally loathed it is against the fact that it’s being sold at the URL friend dot com. While I’m not much one for online contretemps lately — it is the summer, and we all have better things to do — please click through, it is exquisite.

Adventures in Therapy

HOW TO NOT CHOOSE A THERAPIST // Therapy is often like so many things in this life: You get out of it what you put into it. And so, what do you get when you pay $700 a session to Phil Stutz, Hollywood’s favorite therapist, who counts among his clients Joaquin Phoenix, John Stamos, John Cusack, Hank Azaria, and Jonah Hill (who made a documentary about this therapist, before being famously lambasted for his abuse of therapy speak)?

Well: Lila Shapiro over at Vulture dared to find out, and profiled Phil Stutz. The headline, “Therapy Daddy,” is somehow the least phenomenal thing about it. I don’t want to give too much away — you should read it — but the reaction to the Jonah Hill backlash from Jonah Hill’s therapist? Absolutely worth the price of admission:

Stutz was not particularly concerned by any of it. […] He said he didn’t pay attention to the press. “If he had shot somebody, I wouldn’t be too upset,” he said. In other words, even if the patient did something bad, he would try to be as supportive as possible; his concern was their well-being. “I don’t want to judge myself by these outer results,” he added.

Which, if you were dealing with any other therapist, sure, fine, whatever. But this is a therapist who does the one thing therapists should by and large not be doing: Giving their patients advice.

A patient given advice that goes wrong could hold their therapist to account for that advice’s poor results; a patient given advice that works out well, once, could put that therapist up on a pedestal (or put the therapist in an unfortunate position of power). Can you imagine your therapist talking to you like this and it ending well?

As he puts it in the film, he tells patients, “Do what the fuck I tell you. Do exactly what I tell you. I guarantee you’ll feel better.”

For $700 an hour, you’re probably gonna find a way to make those words work out well for you, or convince yourself that they did. Personally? I can count the number of people I’d feel theoretically comfortable paying to hear those words from on one hand, and at least two of them sell military-grade MDMA, and are holding it as they say that to me1. Oh, and also, in case you couldn’t already guess: There’s a bunch of quasi-spiritual noise up in this guy’s practice, and people go to him when they’re done with Landmark. Enjoy all that.

HOW TO ACTUALLY CHOOSE A THERAPIST // As taken from America’s Most Important Substack About Therapy, the newly-launched Reality Testing:

Here’s a tip taken from the toolbox of The Profession called reframing: Your therapist is a professional service provider. The relationship between client and therapist is both a real, human relationship and a transactional one, with terms to which both parties need to agree. 

Here’s what this can look like. You are allowed – entitled, even – to ask for what you want from your therapist. If they have skill and ethical integrity, they will tell you honestly whether they can meet that need. If they cannot, they might discuss with you why not, or they might refer you to someone else.

…if they sound like that, they’re probably at least halfway decent!

PREVIOUSLY: The Wrong People Are Quitting Therapy.

The Hamptons!

FROM THE GREATEST POLICE BLOTTER IN AMERICA // Ah, yes, been a minute since we checked in with America’s greatest rap sheet, the East Hampton Star’s police blotter. It’s crime time, baby:

4.5: At the Surf Lodge early Saturday evening, a woman had a verbal confrontation with several bouncers. Police were called and she retreated; no further action was taken.

6.8: A harbormaster found a fisherman on Gerard Drive Sunday morning in possession of one porgy and two weakfish, both undersize. The porgy measured an inch too short, he reported, and both weakfish were five inches undersize. The fisherman was ticketed. That evening another fisherman, this time at Maidstone Park, was seen shoving his catches between some bulkhead rocks as a harbormaster approached. He too was cited, for three undersize porgies "dropped between the rocks."

7.6: For the second week in a row, village police were called out on July 24 to conduct a swan hunt, after a woman reported an aggressive swan, which she believed to be injured, on Long Island Avenue. Officers determined that the bird was fine, and was acting like a "normal swan."

9.3: A Beach Lane resident reported his Paris Bistro tables and chairs, together valued at $1,200, missing after he used them to set up a lemonade stand for his daughter on the morning of July 14.

Who uses a $1,200 Paris Bistro table and chairs set for a kid’s lemonade stand? It’s Hamptonstown, Jake.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION POLL OF THE SUMMER // You know what they say: As go the cups, so goes the nation. And you know what I say: Nate Silver is no Nate Freeman. Reporting for Vanity Fair, Freeman — America’s great chronicler of real-life-Christopher-Nolan-villains’ art collections2 — published a dispatch today from The Hamptons, better known around here as Far Long Island.

The Monogram Shop in East Hampton sells plastic cups with presidential candidates’ names on them, and the difference in sales of these cups has been a reliable predictor of presidential election winners since 2004 (outside of 2016, when the cups didn’t know about the electoral college). Like so:

And so, you want polling data? Nate has your polling data:

When Biden dropped out July 21 and the party coalesced around Harris, [the Monogram Shop’s owner] knew she needed to order some new merchandise. She thought 800 cups would be enough for a while. They arrived on Thursday, July 25, and when I arrived on Saturday, two days later, they had sold out. […] She said that, in the hours before the cups sold out, Harris had outsold Trump by 126 to two. On Friday, Harris took the lead again: 419-88.

There you have it: Harris is going to win the election, or at the very least, help facilitate the beached shitfacing by “Summer In A Bottle” more than the other guy. Politics! We report them.

Fine, One More Comment on the Whole ‘Brat Summer’ Phenomenon:

That’ll do it! What do you want? It’s the weekend, and we’ve only got a few more Summer Fridays to go. Get out there! See a movie, get a better therapist, go celebrate Evan Gershkovich’s freedom, go have a Brat Summer, get tossed on Wölffer in a Kamala cup, make some non-computer friends, tip well, keep it tucked in, and be kind. With all that: Good luck, babe. We’ll be here next week with some new surprises.

As ever,

-f.

It’s Friday, July 19th, 2024.

• It’s the ninth Summer Friday of the year, six to go until Labor Day.

• “Heroes” (the Big Ben Beat cover) is on the radio.

• In theaters this weekend, attempting to quell Despicable Me 4’s box office dominance is Twisters, a Glen Powell movie somehow not about the board game (but also, somehow, not original IP either). Also, the very well-regarded Irish horror film Oddity, and an indie drama, Widow Cliquot, about the family behind Veuve Clicquot.

• It’s another great weekend for sports! In Formula 1, the 39th running of the Hungarian Grand Prix will be raced in Mogyoród, Hungary on Sunday (at the definitively named Hungaroring). In Major League Baseball, the New York Yankees will host their rival Tampa Bay Rays all three days this weekend. Finally, in basketball, the WNBA’s All-Star Weekend braves the heat in Phoenix, Arizona.

• Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York: 85/70, sunny • Santa Barbara: 74/61, partly cloudy • Lake Como: 90/67, partly cloudy • Marbella: 97/72, sunny • Copenhagen: 75/58, sun—

—ha, shit, sorry, I know: Where have you been? To which I’d ask: Where’s anyone, man? And you — in this meta-enabled theoretical tête-à-tête — knowing and wise, would answer: FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays was on its own all-star break, touring the world, talking to its sunniest-dispositioned denizens, trying to figure out the inner-workings of their souls, asking the tough questions like: Who made those sunglasses? What’s your sunscreen? and of course, Il conto, per favore?

But really: Wedding in Greece, then fucked off to Italy. Got sunburned, ate too much, drank too much, spent too much, posted too much, scraped up a rented Skoda Kodiaq, had a blast. What insanely dumb fortune, to be able to write that! Please don’t take seriously anyone who doesn’t signal some kind of awareness around the absurdity of talking about taking vacation around the world (let alone simply doing it). While we’re here, please also take not seriously the serial vacation apologist, they who couch and caveat the supposedly guilt-laden thrills they know we covet, whinging with self-recrimination about privilege. In the words of my wise and noble godmother Shigata Ichikuchi1, “There is no meaning of life, there is simply the rapture of being alive.”2 Basically: Don’t apologize, don’t be a dick about it, and mostly, don’t take it for granted. Them be the rules.3

Anyway! Like I said: We’re back. In this issue, adventure, excitement, impassioned fights of romance, dance music, and so, so much hot, hot stuff — basically, the usual. Shall we?

The Most Important New Rationality Paradigm of the Summer

“One reoccurring decision I’ve struggled with for 3+ years is how to live,” is a line from the first paragraph of a recent post on the all-too-rarely-published newsletter of one Mary Childs, co-host of NPR’s Planet Money, and broadly regarded by the most intelligent and talented people in media as one of the most intelligent, talented people in media. Also, much like GWAR, she’s lovely and from Richmond, Virginia.4

But what if she weren’t lovely? Being lovely is a choice. But is it the right choice? Is the expenditure of energy of being lovely worth it for Mary, or for you? Maybe. Or maybe not? Mary published an interview about new paradigms in decision-making and rationality, as it pertains to everything from romantic choices to hair styles to parenting. She did this after she set out to create a mathematical model for decision-making5, a search which was promptly thrown into chaos as soon as she sat down with Ruth Chang, a chair and professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford, and Chang promptly told her that her brain was broken.

There’s no possible way I can accurately sum up all the interview encompasses here, but my own (broken-brained) attempt goes something like: In the dominant paradigm of decision-making, like which romantic partner to pick, we try to measure one thing as better than the other, which is why we agonize over that decision. What Chang snaps off on Mary is that the right decision — inasmuch as there is one — is the one we can commit to the best, i.e. the most, so we have to be actively involved in our decision-making and decision-owning. Per Chang, editor’s notes via Mary (lol):

Think about haircuts. You and I, no offense, don’t seem to commit to our haircuts. [ed note: ….damn.] I just go in and say, make it easy to take care of. I just drift into a hairstyle. I can treat the options as if they were equally good. But a fashion model has to decide which haircut to go for, and he has to commit to one style as opposed to another, because that says something about who he is. Hard choices are not just about careers or places to live or whether to have families, but also about those small things that define us. They are the things that build us up, build our characters. That's who we are. You and I don't care how our hair looks [ed note: air-drying is not working out for me as well as i’d thought, helpful feedback!!], but we care about other things. And the good thing is: Caring is something we can — and have to — practice.

So there you go, folks. This summer: Commit to the bit.

There’s so much more, including how Mary almost married a guy named Bob. Can’t recommend enough.

The Hottest Media Story of the Summer

I know, a goddamn media item. Consider it penance for missing some issues.

Let’s talk Hot Ones! The show where (to quote John Oliver) Sean Evans gives himself CTE of the stomach while interviewing celebrities made to suffer at his hands via the Wings of Death, as Sean peppers them with intensely well-researched questions. Celebrities subjecting themselves to something just shy of Bush Doctrine-era torture in exchange for an iconic press appearance may feel obvious, but I dare you: Find a more artful, downright brilliant meta-commentary on the inanities of celebrity. Sofia Coppola could never.

It’s also funny, and wildly entertaining. And (nine years and a billion views later) it’s now allowed to compete for an Emmy alongside network late night talk shows, which some pronounced an existential death knell for late night television. A little much, much? But when Hot Ones didn’t get nominated this week in that category, people started calling it a snub. In its first year of eligibility! I have no doubt that Hot Ones will get its flowers eventually. Hell, just a few weeks ago, Sean and Hot Ones creator Chris Schoenberger did an event at the Paley Center, hosted by Seth Meyers, where I learned that Maya Rudolph has been on a fake version of Hot Ones three times (once on her show Loot, twice on SNL), but refuses to grace the actual show with her presence, telling Sean, basically, fuck no. Queen.

Meanwhile: A Bloomberg story ran a few weeks ago reporting that BuzzFeed was trying to offload First We Feast — the site that Hot Ones emerged from — and thus, also sell Hot Ones, to the tune of $70M, in order to finance their debt. Also, that they were having trouble doing it. This week, Alex Sujong Laughlin — a former BuzzFeed employee — writes for Defector: BuzzFeed Is The Reason It Can’t Sell Hot Ones. Her take:

[BuzzFeed is] trying to pay down its debt by [trying] to offload what is arguably its most valuable asset, Hot Ones, at a price that only makes sense if you expect exponential growth from it, too. BuzzFeed is the media company that cried wolf one too many times, and people aren’t buying it anymore—literally. 

Look, I’m here for a blame Jonah Peretti take as much as anyone. And this take is by no means wrong, but it’s very, very distilled. The reality’s likely a liiiittle more complicated than “BuzzFeed’s out of figurative (and literal) credit.” What would I know? Fun facts: My two distinct connections to these guys.

1. First We Feast and Chris, the site’s founder, who was one of my key co-conspirators in the Complex office along with his brother, Nick (who I shared my office with). The three of our names were on the application for a James Beard Award in the site’s first year of eligibility, submitting such galaxy-brained brilliance as “all wine mostly tastes the same,” for which we then went on to win a James Beard Award (no, really). Chris would also occasionally show up at my desk, and say things like: So….800 words on how much you hate Friendsgiving? To which, I’d reply: “Uh, sure — also, what’s Friendsgiving?” Then this would happen. The best was: So, uh…Dry January?6

Connection No. 2: Complex News, the video operation at Complex. I was the founding executive producer on that team.7 My second full-time anchor hire was a Complex Sports writer we called in to help out with All-Star Game coverage in New Orleans that year, his first time on camera: Sean Evans. After a few weeks’ working with this Chicago guy, I was convinced he’d be on SportsCenter one day, and told him so. Apparently, I was thinking too small. It was only a matter of time before Chris and Sean, geniuses that they are, eventually linked up, which they did not long after I left, and Hot Ones was born.

Anyway: This is all to say that I’ve worked with both of them, and can speak with firsthand experience: Chris and Sean are singular talents. As are the rest of the team at First We Feast, like Justin Bolois, who produces a number of shows over there. Given how much they’re actually responsible for, in terms of sheer revenue upshot? If BuzzFeed can’t sell First We Feast, it’s not because the number is too high — it’s because they’ve mismanaged the relationship between the talent and the property.

To be clear: Nobody else could host Hot Ones. Nobody else could run Hot Ones or First We Feast. They need Sean and Chris. The only good partner for that property would be one willing to share ownership of it with them. I know nothing about the negotiations, and I don’t talk about that stuff with those guys, but I can tell you: They’re both smarter and work harder than the vast majority of the people in media, and therein does their success lie. They now hold that leverage in this deal. While the archives might net someone something, it’d be middling. The property is worth nothing in terms of growth potential without them. They obviously know it. BuzzFeed likely understands it. And potential buyers probably know it, too.

My great hope is that that they’re holding this process up, in search of the best deal. If the thing can’t sell, it’s not because BuzzFeed can’t cut one, but because they need to find the right partner, to give them the right growth opportunity, and the correct skin in the game. If it doesn’t sell, and BuzzFeed falls to people like Vivek, that might be because of corporate arrogance, and it would not be the first time Jonah Peretti bungled a massive media deal.

But corporate media — everyone from Conde to the Times and all the other private equity-held media companies in between — are all beginning to learn the hard way: The era of institutions holding leverage over singular media talents is beginning to ebb writ large. YouTube, Substack, TikTok, IG, Twitch, you name it. If they don’t find a way to make sweet their talent’s deals, they’ll be left with second- and third-rate ranks trying to keep up with the individual entities no longer needing corporate middlemen to make money from the same platforms they’re on (while the leftovers also aspire to nothing more than the ability to also break away). In other words: Ante up.

Party Etiquette

A few weeks ago, NYT Styles dropped a feature on party etiquette. People got mad about it! For the intelligent, thinking person, there’s only one good response to any of that, and I’m sharing it here, with you, right now, to dramatically improve the quality of your life, and it is:

Chief among your life’s regrets as you lay dying on your deathbed, I promise, will be any energy you spent getting giving a shit about a Styles story, no matter how right your take was. And I say this as someone who’s written a few.

A Short Exchange I Recently Had with a Currently Intensely Famous Person, at a Rooftop Party, Regarding the Occasionally Delicate Matter of Retrieving Your Belongings

“Excuse me, sorry, I’m just grabbing my bag here under your chair, yeah, that one right there.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“What?”

“Why are you apologizing for—“

“For grabbing my bag?“

“Right, you don’t need to apologize, it’s your bag.”

“I mean: I don’t know, I’m reaching under you, I’m apologizing because it feels like the right thing to do.”

“But it’s your bag.”

“Right, sure. But: You’re seated, and you’re facing the opposite direction, having a conversation, so you can’t see me next to you, about to reach under your chair.”

“Ah.”

“So: If I don’t say something, that could go terribly wrong.”

“Fair.”

“Right?”

“Still, ’excuse me,’ I get, the apology, not so much.” 

“Well, I was interrupting a conversation.”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, for future reference—“

“No, absolutely: Next time I reach under you, I won’t apologize.”

“When you put it like that…”

“Yeah, uh, rephrase: Next time I grab my bag, and need to—“

“Right—“

“—‘excuse me,’ but absolutely no apology.”

“Perfect.”

“Great. And now, I’m leaving. Bye guys, by–”

“Where are you going? What’s cooler than this?”

“Nothing cool, I’ve gotta go home and do some work. That’s what’s in the bag.”

“Hate it when that happens.”

“Same. Also, I’m Foster.” 

“Sabrina.”

“Of course. Nice meeting you.”

“Same. Good luck with the bag.” 

“Appreciate it.”

ENDSCENE.

Restaurants

Ricocheting around a certain avenue of Downtown New York City Internet this week? Footage of two women engaging in fisticuffs at Lucien! Which — for the blessedly uninitiated — is one of those New York City restaurants where people will repeatedly tell you the food is “besides the point.” I will tell you that the food ranges from “fine” to “a misdemeanor crime in France, probably,” that it’s basically a cafeteria for the people who incorrectly believe they invented Dimes Square, and that it’s best characterized by the minor media event of Julia Fox celebrating a birthday with Kanye West there, which was subsequently treated like the moon landing for people who owe two months’ back rent on an empty gallery space (likely being spent, incidentally, on a bill at Lucien).

But: As I was writing this, the footage of the fight was pulled off Instagram. SAD! That was likely because by the fourth time I saw it, it was in Emily Sundberg’s newsletter, where she noted: “Convinced this fight at Lucien was performance art. Summer in the city rocks.” She’s certainly right about the second part! As for the first: If only.

In the footage, the young woman in center frame having her hair pulled — perhaps, by a friend? — was attempting to assail someone else to the right of the frame. The entire clip is just, like, fifteen seconds of that. I asked a Lucien regular to explain what was happening in it for me. The answer:

“That was over [redacted], an artist who always hangs out at Lucien. Apparently, that was his girlfriend, getting mad at some other girl who used to sleep with him. It was not staged, it was very real, but it was also two women fighting over a skater bro artist dude.”

Say what you will, and not that I’d encourage fisticuffs anywhere, but: New York’s dinner theater scene has, in fact, been lacking lately. As for the artist: He’s had a gallery show and shot some magazine features. ‘Know that narrows it down to about half a million New Yorkers, but that’s all you’ll get, as I was warned that by simply repeating said artist’s name, I’d be inadvertently contributing to the sexufinancial plague on New York City’s straight women known as The inflationary dickonomics of the skater bro artist dude8, which — much like the actual economy — is an ongoing problem currently compounded by high interest rates (see: SUMMER, BRAT). Related: You all need more Jesus in your lives.

Another Short Exchange I Recently Had with a Currently Intensely Famous Person, at a Rooftop Party, Regarding the Occasionally Delicate Matter of How to Leave a Party

“Hey!”

“I swear to god, I—”

“You said you were leaving, like, an HOUR AGO.”

“I was!”

“So what’re you—”

“I wasn’t lying, I—”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Well, I wasn’t.”

[A pause.] “Hmm.”

“Okay, so: You know that thing, when you’re leaving a party, and you keep trying to leave—”

“And you get caught in a conversation every time you say goodbye to someone?”

“Well, yeah, that—”

“Hate it when that happens.”

“Right! Which is why I’ve stopped saying goodbye at parties when I actually need to leave, and I just kind of, you know—” [Motions with upper-body towards exit]

“Yeah, sure. That’s how to—

“—actually leave a party.”

“—actually leave a party, right.”

“Right! Not what happened, though. I wasn’t saying goodbye, I was actually leaving.”

“But?”

“I was on my way out the door, and ran into my friend Liz, who just showed up literally right as I was leaving. Haven’t seen her in forever! We live a thirty minute walk from one another, haven’t seen each other in a year, classic New York thing. Didn’t expect to see her here, she’s the best. So I ended up hanging out with her for the last, I don’t know…”

“…hour?”

“Right. But.”

“But?”

“It was one of those great run-ins that make it worth staying at a party you’re trying to leave, even if it did make me look like someone who lied to you about having to leave a party to go home and do work. Which I didn’t.”

“Totally get it. Also, again, I believe you.”

“Thank god.”

“Right?”

“Right. Now: I’m actually leaving this time.”

“Actually? I’m kiddi—”

“Actually, no, I know. Pleasure meeting you.”

“Foster, I’m glad we cleared that up.”

“Truly.”

ENDSCENE.

Ha, okay, we hit the PINK BAR OF DEATH/”POST TOO LONG FOR EMAIL” warning, like, halfway through this, so unfortunately you’re going to have to wait until next week to learn about THE HOTTEST PARTY IN NEW YORK, which I survived, and THE HOTTEST CLUB IN NEW YORK (which is the Jamie xx residency — if you’re going to any night, holler, I might be there). If you can’t tell, this was very much a back-in-the-saddle issue, as I unload my vacation brain. As ever, you’re too kind for reading any of this, and if you have any ideas, well: You know what to do.

Anyway: Commit to the bit, and get outside — it’s beautiful out there, much like you.

As ever, -f.

It’s Friday, June 28th, 2024.

• It’s the sixth Summer Friday of the year, nine to go until Labor Day.

• “Getting Away With It” is on the radio.

• In theaters this weekend, attempting to quell Inside Out 2’s box office dominance is A Quiet Place: Day One. Plus, the first installment of Kevin Costner’s post-Yellowstone four-part cowboy epic Horizon. Finally, a movie in which *pushes glasses down bridge of nose, looks over them* Sean Penn drives a cab from JFK to Manhattan, with *squints* Dakota Johnson in the back of it in traffic, for 100 minutes, titled Daddio.

• It’s another great weekend for sports! The round of 16 in the Euro 2024 cup begins Saturday, and the 2024 Copa América group stage continues over the weekend. Finally, in Formula 1, the 43rd running of the Austrian Grand Prix will be raced in Spielberg, Austria.

• Finally, around the world today, the weather: Montauk: 72/64, mostly sunny • Marseille, 82/69, clear • Malibu: 83/60, sunny • Cala Mariolou: 92/72, sunny • Chios: 87/74, cle—

—wait, ha, shit, sorry, I know, I KNOW. We didn’t see each other last week, as noticed by a surprisingly large number of you! 1. Flattering. 2. Really? 3. There was a very, very good reason for that: It’s summer, of course. And as infuriating as it is to deal with any kind of person or business keeping impetuous hours — something that, if you’ve been anywhere interesting in the world (or Spain), you’ve definitely encountered — there is, you gotta admit, a certain charm to it, too. Someone’s out there in the world, keeping the hours most of us wish we could, not subscribing to the same temporal orthodoxies we do. It’s a good reminder: We all deserve more vacation. We all deserve more. We all deserve to wear white.

But no, actually, truth is I was at a wedding in South Beach — yeah, in June. And haven’t you heard? Heat makes you insane, and a dumbass. And I’d have to be both of those things to miss out on sending this blast of summer joy to all of you, The Best Readership In The Goddamn World™. Penance issue obviously forthcoming.

In the meantime, beauty, love, joy, romance, travel, resplendence, all the fun in the sun you can handle and then some. Shall we?

Drugs.

The Greatest Zoom Meeting, Ever. // Congrats to the good folks at Boy Smells, who (A) apparently have the best work culture ever, as (B) they’re launching a poppers-scented candle just in time for Pride Week, and (pictured above) did poppers together on a Zoom call (which you must watch) for research.

For the uninitiated, poppers are teensy bottles of a liquid (amyl nitrates), that you open, sniff, and get high on — lightheaded and loose — for all of about thirty seconds. As the liquid hits the air, it evaporates. So long as you keep the cap on the bottle diligently, one person could (I’m told!) probably use a single bottle of poppers for quite a while. It’s ostensibly sold as VCR tape cleaner, obviously, a thing people in 2024 need. They’re famous in the gay community for their (to use a word) dialating capabilities. They’re illegal, kind of, but that doesn’t stop them from being found pretty much everywhere — you can buy them in a bodega.

This is a $147M — yes, $147M — market. That number might feel small (I know, so does everything…on poppers) but it’s absolutely eye…opening, given that bottles retail for $10-$15 each. Either a lot of people are doing poppers, or a smaller amount of people are doing a metric fuckton of poppers.

This brings me to, over the last two months, two recent encounters with poppers: 1. A friend’s birthday party, at a nightclub, watching her erstwhile roommate, an enormous club gay, take the kind of huff out of a bottle of Rush that would literally kill me, or at least turn my asshole into something resembling the Mariana Trench — repeatedly. 2. A friend’s high six-figure wedding upstate, at the after-party, watching a fellow straight — a successful and ocassionally hard-partying hotelier who I thought had seen/done it all, mid-40s — try them for the first time. When I saw him at the brunch the next morning, and asked him how he was feeling, he joked that he sat at a barstool, and found himself on the floor.

Which is all to say: That the existence of poppers is being acknowledged by a millennial-coded candle brand in the form of a product emulating a smell that even recalling feels like it’ll bore a hole in your brain feels like evidence of a trendline to come.

FOSTERTALK MARKET INTELLIGENCE TAKEAWAY: If a report projecting the doubling in size for the market of poppers by 2030 is to be believed, that means that the market for poppers will be taking a giant, six year rip off a bottle of rush, probably assisted by the straights, if we don’t ruin it first. More likely are teenagers getting ahold of them, and poppers getting regulated out of existence (thus propping up an inevitable black market for VCR cleaner). Rated: Buy!

Beach Bodies.

On the cover of this month’s GQ, the question: WHY IS EVERYONE SUDDENLY ON STEROIDS? It’s a borderline Dan-Peres-era-Details banger of a magazine sales pitch that’s designed to trigger small neurological events, made all the funnier and pointed by the star gracing the same cover: Kevin Costner, a 69-year-old man (nice) with a 14-year-old daughter (…nice?) who probably finds it funny to point out to her friends that her father is in his “yeehaw era.” There’s a large swath of American Man who will walk by that magazine in an airport and (after a series of synapses fire off in his brain commanding him to do so) purchase it — much as he’s supposed to. Such is the dark art of magazine-making and why big media is Shaytan.

Anyway, like all trend stories it deserves to be turned upside down and investigated for sport like it’s Watergate, so: I called a friend who’s been taking steroids on and off starting in his mid-30s. Super successful, lovely guy — perhaps, among the nicest I know — and also, built like a brick shithouse. Ergo:

Is Everyone (Actually) on Steroids, And Also, Should I (and You) Be Taking Them? A Q&A With a Friend Who Took Steroids

Is everyone suddenly on steroids? Suddenly, no. Everyone? Well, in the sense that you know way, way more people than you think are doing them, yeah [laughs], for sure.

Wait, really? It's especially true of the New York/LA professional set, where you're dealing with an ambitious crowd with a little bit of extra income, and boom: High likelihood if you think they’re doing it — if they’re not just losing weight (Ozempic) but getting in great shape — they’re doing it. Or doing something like it. Maybe it’s not TRT, maybe it’s Clomid. But it’s something.

Is this one of these things where — like SSRIs or ADD drugs or Zempies — there’s a stigma attached, but the moment you start talking, everyone… Admits to being on them, too, yeah, exactly. You have a few conversations, start going down the rabbit hole, and it’s: Holy shit, how many people are doing this?

What originally prompted you to go on them? Honestly: Depression. I tried therapy, antidepressants, I’d always had low energy. And I’d heard good things.

I mean, my guy, you’re very, very in shape sans-roids. And a good looking sweetheart of a man. With a great career. I should note, for our readers, that you’re the only person I know to have not one, but multiple strippers try to wife you. As in, give you their number because they want to date you. You’re the opposite of the T-Pain song, you’re the Yakov Smirnoff joke of strip clubs: YOU don’t love stripper, stripper love YOU. Okay, well, that was be—

You’re like the guy who goes into a casino every once in a blue moon and wins a million dollars — you inspire all the other gamblers. That’s not really wh—

Lemme ask you: What’s it like to have a woman see you, your career, your good family, your values, your picture-perfect health, and think not I can fix him but rather I wonder how I can break him? What.

Steroids! What’d you take and how illegal are they? The thing is: You don't get anything illegally, if you work with the right doctor. You can get anything prescribed. Off-label use is just one routine workaround. As for what I took, it was 80/20 testosterone and human growth hormone. And then you start stacking things on top of it, to balance all the drugs out.

Sounds onerous. But on a scale of pretty fun to extremely fun, how much fun are steroids? The first six months were amazing. I felt energized, radiated positivity, all the time, I was happy — I felt the way I thought I should feel, I felt emotional textures more distinctly, I felt things so much more strongly. And my sex drive was through the roof. Then what happened was… you get side effects.

Famously so! What’re we talking? Depression. ‘Became very, very emotional.

Roid rage? It wasn't so much rage as it was…

You wanted to jump off a building? I mean, yes.

Hm. Not great. Gotta ask: Your balls, they get small? …Yes.

How small? Small.

Sure, but— Really small.

On a scale of M&Ms to Jawbreakers? I mean, they probably…[considers this deeply]

Could I fit both of them in my mouth? Oh [laughs], easily.

Jesus christ that’s so small! It got, like, uncomfortable. It felt weird.

I’ll say. They were probably a third of the size.

And that’s not even why you were going crazy! Those were just small balls! Right.

So, the big takeaway, here, is that all these guys writing for men’s magazines and going on podcasts and talking about their kettleball routines have teeny tiny testes? If they’re on steroids, probably.

Now there’s an image. What else you got? For the record, the “man boobs” phenomenon is also real, but I didn’t experience that — though I was carrying some extra water weight. You take these drugs to inhibit/counteract your estrogen, and suppress it. One of them was legitimately a cancer treatment drug.

What. Yeah. It was a minor form — a pill, chemo in pill form. And it just wrecked my body. It got to the point where my joints were sore all the time. I felt horrific.

Well, that’s fucked. You eventually got off them and deflated like a balloon. Thanks.

What happened? The 2020 covid lockdown. I couldn't lift weights because I was stuck in the apartment, all I could do was run. So I went from eating 4000 calories a day and lifting heavy weights five days a week to: At home. Eating. So I cut my calories in half.

And do you still take anything now? I'm taking this stuff called HCG, which is sort of like a testosterone precursor. And I think it just helps, because it's not straight-up TRT, it doesn't throw everything else out of whack. In hindsight, I kind of wish I just started off being on that, rather than start in the deep end, but it was a learning experience, and it's really cool to sort of see what you can turn your body into.

Now, to the important part: Steroids, would I enjoy them? [Laughs] You would definitely enjoy them.

So should I do them? If you want to do them, I’d probably start with something small. First, Clomid or HCG, or Testrol, something a little bit more mild would be probably my suggestion.

So…not pure testosterone. Not unless you really need it.

I still enjoy the occasional Broadway musical, so. The honest truth is that it’s fun, but I wish my doctor started me on something less. That’s what I’d tell people: Start slow.

Like, not with Sondheim. What? Steroids! The Musical? What.

Islands.

In Which Diplo Throws The World’s Dumbest Party. // Ibiza is a gravitational pole of the known universe of summer culture, in the sense that it’s effectively a microcosm of narratives about tourism, music, culture, economics, and politics playing out much the same around the world. Ibiza, not particularly known for its fashion or art, is even quickly becoming a place for fashion and art. And as “peak season” gets longer every year as an effect of climate change, Ibiza grows more popular, the situation on the island gets increasingly volatile. Which is unfortunate, because as many people who have been there can tell you, Ibiza is also fantastic.

Which is how we find ourselves interested in Diplo, this week. Who decided to throw an ad hoc party in Ibiza near Es Vedra, an uninhabitable rocky island/outcropping off the White Isle’s coast long purported to have mythical qualities, and a source of metaphysical energy. Most people just sail over, and hang out.

So! None of this might seem all that interesting at face value. But what matters here is that Diplo decided to throw his party on a mountain ledge nearby overlooking Es Vedra, and drop a pin to all of his Instagram followers. The ledge, of course, is protected land, and now Diplo is under threat of prosecution by the authorities in Ibiza.

Can’t be the first time he’s done it. You know how this goes: Diplo already disappeared the stories from his IG — though ample evidence still persists — and normally, he’d pay the €300,000 fine he appears to be facing, and make the entire thing go away. But it’s far from a normal summer in Ibiza.

The citizens of Ibiza have spent this year furiously amassing in the streets, in the largest, angriest protests in the island’s history. Firefighters and police are sleeping in cars; one teacher flew back and forth forty times in a month from the mainland because she couldn’t afford to live on the island. And really, you couldn’t Mad Libs your way to a more comically politically combustible situation on Ibiza right now than “Diplo DJs pop-up illegal rave on protected lands overlooking Es Vedra” if you tried. This is a monumental fuckup with monumentally bad timing. And it is tipping residents over the edge. How bad? Well, a photo of a sign that went viral is being celebrated by residents of Ibiza for jokingly (?) threatening to garrote anyone who leaves any trash, or generally, is an asshole.

Unfortunately for the residents of Ibiza, despite this being as great a hook to bring international audiences’ attention to their plight, it won’t make the news. And you can lay the blame for that at the feet of nobody less than Diplo. Who managed to pull off the fascinating feat of overshadowing one story about being an asshole with another, in which he’s been charged with revenge porn yet again.

The Hamptons.

MEDIA FIGHT! Previously in FOSTERTALK, I’ve made my love of The Greatest Police Blotter in the world, The East Hampton Star, well known. Obviously they hit the jackpot recently, in the form of Justin Timberlake’s DUI bust. But they didn’t quite have the ingenuity of the New York Post, who managed to find a bunch of Hamptons residents to complain about the rookie who busted Timberlake:

In just three months on the force, Arkinson has earned a reputation among Sag Harbor’s wealthy residents, earning nicknames like “the Sag Harbor Nazi” and “little redheaded dips–t” for his strict enforcement of traffic laws.

Emphasis mine! Where this gets wonderful is when we turn to The East Hampton Star’s editorial page, at the ready, to deliver a screed (!) against the New York Post’s weighing in on the matter:

Equal enforcement of the law is a beautiful thing, and we applaud it, especially when it comes to dangerous driving, drunken driving, and what we might call driving while V.I.P. (being reckless but expecting to get away with it because you’re a privileged white person in a Lambo or G-Wagon). Officer Arkinson, when The Post starts calling you names, it’s usually a sign you’re on the right track.

Hot damn! Our beloved little East Hampton Star brought the motherfuckin’ sauce out! There probably aren’t many small town newspapers in America left keeping ‘em honest quite like the Star does. At the very least, if not that — as we turn to the latest Star crime blotter yet again — they’re not as funny:

Prior to paying a $112 tab, a woman at The Lobster Roll asked for directions to the restroom. The restroom was assuredly not in her gray Kia sedan, which she was seen in moments later. Officers searched for the car but were unable to locate it.

And:

A concerned woman, who told police she was a grandmother, called on the afternoon of June 17 to say that three teenagers were stranded out on the water while paddleboarding in Gardiner’s Bay. Officers determined that the teenagers were “in two feet of water.”

See, that’s just good writing.

Summer Fashion Digest.

Boxer Shorts: The new no-pants?

Pedal Pushers: A high-value reader writes in!

Espadrilles: Fantastic.

Wedges: Still gross.

That’ll do it! I don’t wanna hit the PINK BAR OF DEATH/TOO LONG FOR EMAIL warning, so we’ll leave it here: More to come next week, where I’ll be reporting live from Athens, Chios, and filing from the Eternal City. As ever: Thanks for reading, truly. I’m flattered you’re giving me the time of day, especially when the weather’s this great. I’m still figuring out whatever this is.

In the mean time, remember: Buy all the poppers, do all the steroids, don’t do pedal pushers, be kind to the sacred natural lands of the world, and slap on some espadrilles. Also: Don’t forget to tell your friends about FOSTERTALK, and if you’ve ever got any ideas, you know where to put ‘em. As you well know by now, in the words of one of the ancient, great gods of summer vibes: I’m qualified to satisfy you, any way that you want me to. Can’t wait to do it again.

As ever, -f.

It’s Saturday, June 15th, 2024.

• It’s the fourth [issue of] Summer Friday of the year, 11 to go until Labor Day.

• Donna Summer’s “Heaven Knows” is on the radio.

• The 77th Annual Tony Awards are on Sunday night. Sufjan Stevens will battle Alicia Keys for Best New Musical, and Stereophonic — a play about a Fleetwood Mac-esque band' as they make a new record — is the most nominated new play in Tony history.1

• A great weekend for sports: In baseball, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox start their first 2024 series in Boston. In soccer, there’s the Euro 2024 (the UEFA European Championship). And in the WNBA, Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese face off again when the Indiana Fever play the Chicago Sky on Sunday.

• Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York City: 83/66, partly cloudy • Cannes: 75/61, partly cloudy • Positano: 74/67, mostly clear • The Hague: 64/53, cloudy • Cavtat: 74/64, clea—

—hang on, wait, I know what you’re thinking: Summer Fridays, on a Saturday? Quelle horreur! It’s true, and it’s okay: We’re not trying to abdicate the laws of quantum physics as much as remind you that the Summer Friday is, above all, a state of mind. Forget what you’ve heard, the death of the Summer Friday has been greatly exaggerated. As a real Boy of Summer once put it: Blessed are the vibeless, for they shall inherit a literalist interpretation of the seven day week. Let’s go, we’ll keep this one short.

What Are We Gatekeeping Now?

PLACES TO SCORE ADDERALL. This summer, look around — anyone seem, say, a few cards short of a deck, lately? Anyone with a little less je ne sais quoi, and a little more je ne sais HANH? Such is The 2024 Adderall Shortage.

It’s far from the first. They’ve been happening on and off every year since 2011 — when I reported on the very first adderall shortage.2 The reason you hear about them more regularly is because — like Ozempic — so, so many people you know are secretly on it. But the shortage on its own doesn’t constitute gatekeeping. What does? Knowing where to score, and selling the spots.

Before we get there, some table stakes: The drug’s more popular than ever and not enough of it’s made, but for a sense of the supply/demand dynamic at scale, here, the market for ADHD drugs is projected to be worth $45 billion by 2027. Plenty of blame gets passed around as to who’s actually at fault for the shortage, but the better question is how Adderall keeps exploding in popularity, for which there’s a pretty clear, obvious answer: Humans were meant to be on amphetamines in the first place, like I was meant to keep writing this sentence, because there’s a bigger point here, and actually why am I writing this when I’ve got a 2,000-word semi-satire about the thing about Tavi and Taylor that’s actually about our quasiparasocial no, just kidding. It’s the Telehealth Dealers. They’re the problem.

Believe it or not, kids, there was once a time when you actually had to truck it to the Upper East Side to drop in on Dr. Goldschmuck (as he was in my phone) and caterwaul enough to annoy him into handing you a piece of paper with which to score Adderall, usually only after you were first forced to dignify prescriptions for Vyvanse, Ritalin, and Concerta3. Given the situation all these years later, this feels like explaining Internet Cafes to a bonobo (on meth): Anyone can sign up for a telehealth service, many of which are set up to function as patient mills, playing a numbers game, churning through patients, pumping out scrips.

What you end up with is a legal amphetamine dealing operation at scale. But really. One of those aforementioned telehealth pushers, Done, is soon to realize its potential as an all-timer aptonym: Their CEO was just arrested by the Justice Department on charges relating to a “a $100 million scheme…to provide easy access to Adderall and other stimulants for no legitimate medical purpose.”

Remember, you gotta really fuck up to be arrested as a chief executive around these parts. If you’re looking for an obvious this-is-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things reason for the shortage, there it is. It got so bad last year, I know people Brooklynites who hit drugstores in Yonkers to get their fix. Meanwhile, blessed are those who actually need adderall, may they soon to return to Aunt Dexie’s warm, speedy embrace. 

Back to 2011: Using company time to report on that first shortage, I attempted to create a real-time map of NYC drugstores at which you could score. Despite my editors and I disagreeing on just how altruistic (and “undeniably legal…I think”) a stripe of service journalism this was, I somehow still get emails from randos asking me where they can get Adderall.

So, where’s the gatekeeping in all of this? Thirteen years later, in the form of a service that did a capitalism on my pure and beautiful attempt at charity, which gets people to fork over $50 for a bunch of underpaid Filipino workers who call around to pharmacies for Adderall until they find some for you to buy. It’s called Insito Health.

It’s not foolproof: For one thing, there’s still a shortage. For another, plenty of pharmacies won’t tell callers what they do or don’t have in stock, and others simply won’t fill for you if you’re not a longtime customer (always patronize your local, independent pharmacy, folks). But the reviews, per 404 Media, are pretty good. The lesson here is that friends….tell friends…where to buy their legal speed…for free? But mostly, probably, just that there’s always good money to be made in the shortcut business.

PREVIOUSLY, IN GATEKEEPING: CitiBikes, Secret Strategist.

A Perfect Piece of Summer Wisdom

“Time isn’t real and neither is a self-imposed deadline.”

- Liz Lenkinski, unhingement specialist, giving me permission to send this on a Saturday afternoon, who also coined the term “unwellness culture” after trying the Ehrewon Sunscreen Smoothie and living to tell the tale. Now there’s something you should read.

Sex

Is this the Summer of Threesomes? A horny New York Post wants to know. (Via Carly.)

Related: Everyone can rest easy. The New York Post — America’s horniest newspaper — is reporting, to our great relief, that the Olympians will, in fact, be able to bang on the anti-banging beds.

Conversation Pits (or: That One Thing, Explained)

WHAT IS IT? That one essay on GQ.com published last week by a quasi-famous very online person, who wants to be friends with a semi-famous person, that People On The Internet are talking about.

WHAT IS IT? A lengthy tale of aspirant fame and friendship…that reads like something between Portnoy’s Complaint meets the Unibomber’s Manifesto, as typed into a Notes app by someone who actually has (and has eaten) all the Adderall. While standing in the checkout line at Glossier. And also, yelling at their therapist.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING? “reads like a bottom tier alt lit bitch’s rejected submission to thought catalog.” “welcome back blog-based performance art.” “such a specific in-joke that to the uninformed reader, it's just a manic wash of words.” “an obvious troll…the problem with your editor thinking you’re cool.” And: “this genre of essay is one of the few forms of affirmative action left open to white people.”

WAIT: WHO? Well, Annie Hamilton, its author, is a part-time actor playing a full-time downtown character, or vice-versa. Nobody’s really sure. [Much like the plot of Tenet, if you dwell on this point too much, you’ll turn into an anthropomorphized bong rip.] She clearly knows a good opportunity for a pratfall when she sees one. Meanwhile: Tavi Gevinson is the former teen publishing wunderkind (who has acted, on Broadway), and most recently published a zine about Taylor Swift, which The Cut called “genius.”

WHY DOES ANYONE CARE? Because the essay, taken at face value is — while occasionally funny! — patently unhinged, and reads either as intentionally poorly written, or as something ostensibly poorly written (but actually). And because GQ decided to publish it. As such, the essay is serving as a kind of cultural Rorschach Test, in which people either get the joke — that it’s a “meta prank” — or they don’t; in which they either Get Mad At Things On The Internet, or they’re in on things.

SO….WHAT’S THE JOKE? The part you should care about the least: It might be about Tavi and her zine; or it might be about a certain kind of aspirant person' thirsting for proximity to fame; or it might be about online publishing, or about you, the reader. If you want to like it, you could argue that GQ publishing something as attention-grabbing as this is a brilliant move. If you want to hate it, you could say that GQ’s doing their best impression of The Cut, as satire, or not — i.e. publishing something engineered for provocation — and failing.

OKAY, BUT WHAT DO YOU THINK? Who cares? That’s the point, this is the editorial equivalent of the monster from Nope: If you look at it in the eyes, it eats you. I’ve got an idea who the culprit behind all this might be over at GQ, I can see the strings here, and the touch of a professional, and the floating of a Can we be The Cut and do Cut-like things? question.

As an editor, you wanna publish things that meet two standards: Those which are good, and those which are read. Ideally, both. They wouldn’t run something they actively believed was bad. That said: You know that Vonnegut line from “Mother Night,” about being careful about what we pretend to be? Right. While I genuinely have no idea who they think this is for, or if this is a sincere attempt at “expanding” the audience, and the execution does nothing for me, I admire the moxie behind trying. It’s fine, so long as everyone involved is demonstrably compos mentis. Big if. But ultimately, they’re doing, as James likes to say, a Whole Thing.

SO: DO I NEED TO READ IT? This puts the “I” in "optional,” as in, “I nor Christ can help you if you do, though if you do, you probably need more of at least one of us in your life.” Read about the Sudanese refugee crisis, or, like, the thing about the CitiBikes. Again: This newsletter is free. Please don’t let my sacrifice live in vain.

Travel

American Airlines flight attendants are about to strike, because at a base of ~$27K, they can’t afford food or shelter. Reddit found the letter they give to new flight attendants in big cities in lieu of a proof of income statement, effectively saying as much. One commenter put it into perspective: Your average McDonald’s worker in a large city makes more than they do. 

Public Service Announcement: If you have a Chase card, today (Saturday) is the last day you can transfer Chase to Virgin points with a 20% bonus. I once flew Virgin First Class from Delhi to London for, like, 50K points. It was great, got off the plane half-drunk perfumed by champagne and teeming with Jaipur’s finest rabies vaccine, hopped the Elizabeth straight to Kettner’s, checked in, wobbled right over to J. Sheeky, and pounded my first great martini in eleven days and a monkey bite. Honestly, a perfect day of travel. 

Adventures in the changing definition of “Peak Season” continue apace: Imagine traveling to Greece, and waiting your entire life to see the Acropolis, only to have them close it because of record heat, which is what happened this week (twice).

And that’s it for this week! A short one, I know, but given that most of you are on a beautiful beach right now, somewhere, working on that second base layer tan: I’d rather you not look at your phone too long. Get that sun, and stay hydrated, you know the drill: The night is on the way. Next week, a guide to taking steroids, the Summer Fridays travel survey results, and so, so much more. Finally, congratulations to a very special branch of the SUMMER FRIDAYS family — if you see any of them, you know what to do: buy them a drink with an umbrella in it, and be etched into the Book of Vibes forever.

As ever,

-f.

It’s Friday, June 7th, 2024.

• It’s the third Summer Friday of the year, 12 to go until Labor Day.

• “Eminence Front” is on the radio.

• The French Open women’s singles final will be played on Saturday, men’s singles final is on Sunday. Game 2 of the Boston/Dallas NBA Finals will be played on Sunday. 

• Around the world today, the weather: New York City: 82/63, sunny • Marseille: 81/64, sunny • Lisbon: 73/62, rain • Roland Garros: 71/51, sunny • Formentera: 76/69, mostly s—

Wait, holy shit, can you believe it?

We’re three weeks in, and you’re all still here. Holy shit. Some of you are just showing up, a lot of you. That’s incredible, too. To everyone who’s written in and said hi, thrown me some kind words, or a tip, or helped validate the existence of all this: Thank you.

Also, seriously, what? Thank you. Thanks to Alison Roman and Ben Dietz, and legendary music writer Philip Sherburne for jumping in the comments last week, and Krista + Zoe the other week. Also, so many others? Carlye Wisel, Tony Tran, Alex Cannon, Doree Shafrir, Kyle Chayka, everyone, and especially the few deranged people who have actually tried to pay me money for this. You’re wild, that’s wild behavior.

For the time being, keep your money, but I’ll take your feedback — anything in the way of tips and ideas, what you’re enjoying, and what you’re skipping past: Put it my way. And also, of course, tell your friends:

Another issue of FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays, right about…..now:

The Ozempocolypse Is Coming.

By now you might’ve heard that “wellness” startup (read: rubber-stamping telehealth pharmacy mill) Hims recently announced they’ll be offering compounded semaglutide, and if a startup teaching people how to inject themselves with ‘Zempies sounds like a great idea to you, I’ve got an (off-label) bridge to sell you.

The key word there is “compounded,” as in, created in a compounding pharmacy, where various separate elements get compounded into a prescribed drug. If this sounds familiar, it’s because Last Week Tonight did an entire episode on compounding pharmacies four years ago.

The big takeaways:

• Compounding pharmacies are an unregulated mess.

• The normal failure rate for pharmacy drugs is 2%, but a 2013 FDA study reported a 33% failure rate for compounded pharmacy drugs. John Oliver: “To put that in perspective, compounded drugs have about the same failure rate as the Jonas Brothers.”

• A 2012 outbreak of meningitis emerged from contaminated medicine sold by the New England Compounding Center, and it lead to 100 deaths.

Emily Sundberg interviewed a friend from famed NYC apothecary/pharmacy C.O. Bigelow, who mentioned the same incident — and also, put into context why compounding pharmacies are allowed to make these drugs, and the incentives to make them quickly therein:

Pharmacies are only legally allowed to produce compounded versions of these drugs because they are in an official shortage, and the compounded versions are not FDA approved or tested for safety. Once the FDA determines that the drugs are no longer in shortage, it will be illegal for compounding pharmacies to produce them. So inherently these compounding pharmacies are incentivized to make as much money as fast as possible while they still can, since eventually Novo/Eli Lilly will fix the supply. Mass producing injectable medications at warp speed is a recipe for disaster.

Of course: HIMS shares are up 73% over the last month. Someone’s gonna take a short position on them and make a fucking boatload when this all goes terribly wrong.

The Big Takeaway, clearly: Don’t do Fauxzempic. Also, possibly, short the shit out of $HIMS.

RELATED: At a dinner party a few weeks ago, we’re talking about that absolutely insane story re the girl who went to rehab for a cheese addiction (as one does) which she later blamed on Israel/Palestine (lol, why not). She lost a bunch of weight after, and the person I was with explained “of course she did, [the story] said she was on Ozempic.” There was some brief verbal shuffling (“huh,” “of course,” “figures”) and then the conversation quickly — and maybe, to an outsider, oddly — moved on.

When we left in a cab, I explained: “So, that person sitting across from you has lost, like, 20lbs on Ozempic, and maybe half the table knew, I think?” Which made me realize: We’re still learning how to talk about Ozempic.

Hence, a question:

• Is it that Ozempic is now so ubiquitous and normalized that discussing its merits and drawbacks is a null proposition? OR

• Was it that everyone wanted to talk about it, but we couldn’t, because there was an implicit agreement about not discussing Ozempic based on the implicit knowledge that one person at the table was on it?

• Moreover: Have YOU had any kind of conversational awkwardness around TALKING ZEMPIES? Tell me.

The Two Most Important Rules of Summer 2024

A hearty mazel tov to The First Person To Rip A Bong Inside The Sphere, who has now received a letter (or in his words: “a plaque”) with a lifetime ban from the Sphere, and all MSG venues. And they say music journalism is dying: As I wrote this, the Miles Klee-penned Rolling Stone exclusive with the guy went live, and I learned that this person is squarely within the demographic you’d imagine him to be. 

Far worse things than bongs being ripped happen inside MSG venues (see: JD & the Straight Shot, Knicks postseasons), and who hasn’t seen some weird, wild shit go down all over the Garden, in both steerage and (especially) those VIP suites? People blast cigs in the Garden during Phish shows there — I’m sure they hit (or have hit) bongs, although please bear in mind the absolute lunacy of bringing a bong to a public place in the era of discreet weed-smoking, where vaping and edibles are resplendent?

Rare is the instance in which I’m inclined to agree with any kind of James Dolan-aligned adjudication. In this case, I’ll make an exception: The guy deserved his ban, though not specifically for ripping the bong.

Here’s the thing: A friend who worked her way up from mere bottle girl to Girl Friday for one of the city’s major nightlife impresarios once told me there are only actually two rules that’ll ever get you thrown out of one of his nightclubs: 

1. Don’t set anything on fire, and

2. Don’t pull your dick out. 

That’s it.

Beyond being good rules for most venues, they’re also, more broadly, good rules for Summer Fridays, and, uh, life. But could you get away with fighting? I asked, and sure, she said, if you don’t send anyone to the hospital and you’re running up a big enough bill and you’re not too much of a pain and the other guy started it, and obviously if you have a gun in the club we’ll ask you to take it back outside and leave it in your car, but again, enough money— and so on. There are plenty of exceptions. But if said nightlife impresario’s venues developed a reputation for being places you could set things on fire or pull your dick out, well, that’s not good for business. 

Anyway, you can take these two rules at face value, or explore their poetic value, which is where I choose to abide them: By allowing himself to be taped and earning infamy for hitting a bong within the Sphere, alas, this man pulled his (metaphorical) dick out. I say this as (perhaps) the world’s foremost authority where figurative phalli and James Dolan are concerned. I’m not gonna say we’d have world peace if everyone followed these two rules, but they are — as far as these things go — truly excellent guardrails for all situations.

Do you have any other rules (or sets of rules) worth noting? Please advise.

The Best Week of Music in the Entire History of Summer 2024.

News you can use: There’s so, so, so much good new music out this week.

• There’s that new Jamie xx which — much like his last single or three — sounds like running through a brick wall high on military-grade MDMA (to collect a three million dollar check in your name). It is extraordinary.

• There’s also the second new Zach Bryan song this year, a sweet little duet.

• A new star-studded Kaytranada album (feat. Tinashe, Anderson .Paak, Thundercat, PinkPantheress, Channel Tres, et al).

• A new Orville Peck song (with Kylie Minogue...and Diplo??).

• And somehow, new music from Caribou, Floating Points, and of course, Peggy Gou’s debut album, one summer after she basically owned international radio last year with “(It Goes Like) Nanana.”

That’s all in the same week. Are you kidding? That’s insane. That is insane. Meanwhile, in pop, there’s a surprisingly great new Gracie Abrams single, and an unsurprisingly great new Sabrina Carpenter single, but the pop release everyone will be talking about this week is the new Charli XCX album that dropped today, Brat.

The reviews are — non-shocker — extremely positive. Fun fact: Last year, a writer who once slammed Charli XCX for Pitchfork wrote a piece about regretting the slam, admitting how wrong she was and how ahead of her time Charli was (which some of us saw a decade ago, hi). Of course, it earned almost the precise anti-critic retort it was practically begging for. It’ll be interesting to see how Charli responds (if at all) to this round of praise, or the weird sensation of reading today’s genuflecting Pitchfork review of her new album.

Meanwhile, the leadup to the album involved a savvy press campaign featuring a (now de rigueur) series of edgelordy quotes and nods to some imagined Downtown New York It Girl Dimes Square Whatever Scene (which — as everyone in New York knows — doesn’t actually exist), which also turned up on the album.

She also managed to score a Boiler Room set, and drop by a set at The Lot Radio (which predictably turned into a mob scene). Those are two places an artist can go to demonstrate a certain kind of aptitude and garner a certain kind of respect and make their presence known to a set of people that aren’t all that invested in pop music (let alone pop culture).

Anyway, ‘lotta words to explain that Brat is as much a cultural bellwether as it is an album, and that — in just a single week’s worth of releases — you’ve got a decent swath of what’s happening in music right now covered relatively well, and that music is in a very, very healthy place. Also, listen to that new Jamie xx, seriously, my god. 

Did I miss anything? What’re you listening to this weekend? That Charli album, what’d you think? Comments, leave them, music, send it.  

Summer Fashion Digest.

• I saw a girl on the L wearing a top hat, like Slash — you know the one. Incredible look. 

• In the news that shook the fashion world this week — though, classic fashion media nonsense, everyone writing about it supposedly “saw it coming” — the brand’s creative director Virginie Viard is out at Chanel. The successor to Karl Lagerfeld and his former right hand, Viard lasted five years on the job, the last of which Chanel did $19.7B in revenue ($6.4B profit). Let the Hunger Games begin: Of all the rumored replacements that are even remotely plausible, Jeremy Scott, Hedi Slimane, and John Galliano seem to be the ones people keep talking about. 

• Wedges: Gross, don’t do it. 

Summer Travel.

Blackbird Spyplane wants to help you find an alternative to Rimowas, like vintage Rimowas, among other ideas. This instinct is good and correct. Full-priced Rimowas — especially in coach — aren’t much more than an ostentatious display of shitty taste and a poor understanding of value propositions. It’s about as much a signal of meaningful wealth, taste, and a seasoned traveler as that Supreme brick is one of someone trained in masonry. [BBSP]

There’s a report going around about the economics of airport lounges that’s fascinating, the best piece of which involves the correlation between how crowded they are, and why people keep coming back to them in droves, despite how much shittier they’re getting, and why. Direct quote(s):

• “More wealth among the wealthy,”

• “Social media makes us vain and envious,”

• “Influencers influence booking behavior,” and

• “Airlines are better at retailing, but poorer with service.” Woof!

If you’re getting a credit card to get lounge access in 2024, sorry, you’ve joined the ranks of suckers. This reminds me of something James once told me: If you’ve never missed a flight, you’re spending too much time at airports. Deranged — but somehow, sage! — wisdom. If you’re not on a layover and you’ve got time to wait for a lounge, I’m sorry to tell you: You’re spending too much time at airports. Your mind, body, soul, and net worth would all be far better served just walking around and listening to Music for Airports, anyway.

Studies In Himboism

The Cut continues to enjoy terrorizing the hearts of the 28-40 demo. Last week it was the Millennial Midlife Crisis, this week it’s Is Dating A Total Nightmare Right Now? An informal poll of most of the single women I know would suggest: Yes. Apparently there’s been some kind of backlash to this? [The Cut]

Speaking of the Himbocracy, goddamn, someone is out here living a, um, best life: “So, my friend’s revolutionary system: He dates different girls, and each fulfills a different need.” You know you want to read the rest of this tweet. [Dean Kissick]

Related: “that girl is in DANGER” [Noor]

Finally, there’s a new “highly contagious” sexually transmitted ringworm on the rise, and the first case in America was detected right here in New York (Fuckin’) City. Go with god, all of you. [NY Post]

Summer Blockbusters

In theaters this weekend is Bad Boys: Ride or Die. Apparently, Will Smith gets slapped a bunch in it by his co-star, Martin Lawrence. Here are two different versions of what we refer to as “taking the bait”:

• Variety: The scene acts as a kind of pop exorcism. It’s “punishing” Smith, making cruel fun of his transgression, and just maybe, in the process, allowing him to crawl out from under the image of it.

• New York Post: The best part of “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” arrives when Martin Lawrence slaps Will Smith in the face and yells “bad boy!” What a shame that it’s fake.

Most reviewers smartly avoided doing this. It’s important to remember what distinguishes Smith v. Rock as different from every other celebrity mess before it, which wasn’t an issue of violence, or race, or toxic masculinity, or misogyny, or public humiliation. It’s that — in situ — the entire thing felt like we experienced a collective minor neurological event. 

Do you remember how you felt the first time you watched that? Probably — if you’re at all like the rest of the world — like you had momentarily slipped, and lost your footing in reality. It was weird it was fucking WEIRD, remember? And, now, Smith gets slapped in his own movie as a way to make us all feel okay about it, and that, also, is pretty fucking weird. Imagine if you’re watching Mission Impossible 3 and there’s a scene where Tom Cruise has to repeatedly jump on a couch to advance the plot. That’d be strange. 

Anyway, there’s a $100M budget-sized bet and two womp womp outcomes on the line: Either Bad Boys: Ride or Die makes money when Furiosa — which was fantastic — did not (depressing), or Bad Boys: Ride or Die also fails, and Hollywood — which is institutionally slow and dumb — will make even worse movies in their attempts to figure out how to stem the bleeding. Good luck to everyone, and again, go see Furiosa, it (figuratively) slaps.

And that’s it! I know, a “short” one. BUT ALSO: You’ll note, maybe, that there’s no media in this week’s edition. That’s because SUMMER WEDNESDAYS might be the new SUMMER FRIDAYS. More on that soon. Either way, the good news is that after this week, FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays should be out of beta. It only needs your feedback to get there.

Until then, get outside, wear sunscreen, be kind, go dancing, don’t take compounded semaglutide, avoid the clap, shop your local farmer’s market — the produce is getting good out there — and remember: You are the mountain top, you are the shining sea, you are the black gold of the sun.

As ever,

-f.

It’s Friday, May 31st, 2024.

• It’s the second Summer Friday of the year, 13 Summer Fridays to go until Labor Day.

• Christopher Cross’s “Ride Like the Wind” is on the radio.

• The third round of the French Open begins today, the NHL Eastern Conference Finals continue apace, and the first match of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup — that’s cricket — starts tomorrow, with America playing in the first game. 

• Around the world today, the weather: New York City: 78/60, mostly sunny • Malibu: 75/59, mostly sunny • Mykonos: 74/65, sunny • Roland Garros: 62/54, chance of showers • Taormina: 77/6—

—wait, hang on, ‘any of you people actually reading that, up there? Gonna go ahead and guess: No, most of you probably do not, in fact, care what the weather is today in Taormina, and that’s the whole weather report thing is just one of those Indulgent Editorial Bits1 that I should probably just toss, yeah? 

But I actually do, in fact, want to know about the weather in Taormina today. Here’s the thing: Every weekday, I “get” out of bed and on the way to my meth lab-level coffee setup, semi-consciously mumble at a smart speaker the only four or five words I’m capable of at that point, and tell it to tune in to a public radio station somewhere around the country, usually Aspen Public Radio, or Honolulu’s HPR, or Marfa Public Radio2.

Every now and then, I’ll just say a place: Public Radio Tulsa or Alaska Public Media. This started as a practical exercise: If I woke up too late for it in New York, this was how I could get Morning Edition from the top of the show (or on Hawaii time, the BBC World News Report and then Morning Edition). But between all that, when I do this, I get one of the most valuable and true and increasingly rare quantities in this world: 

Local color. Nothing less than the music of the voices of people who live somewhere you’re not, telling you what it’s like to live there right now. In the form of local news segments, sure, but also, in much smaller, more incremental updates, like the snowfall report in Aspen or the wind conditions off the coast of Hawaii or the live music calendar of WWOZ3 or the legendary surf reports of KBPS San Diego.

Does any of it matter? Of course not. At least not in any immediate sense. Except for the way it gives you a sense of place that you’re not, especially if it’s a place you want to go (or go back to), or just take your mind to, even if for a moment. Sometimes, lately, it feels like one of the most valuable and luxurious things you can give yourself every now and then is a distinct sense of place. And, in this one small way, it’s there for the taking. 

But yeah, you all probably skip over the weather thing, so I’ll probably cut it. 

Or not! Again, FOSTERTALK: SUMMER FRIDAYS is still in beta, or to put it another way, I’ve really got no idea what I’m doing here! We are freestyling right now as this is still the second issue, so I honor zero expectations but for where it concerns passing the FOSTERTALK BAR™ — that my aimlessly having fun is a public service, to demonstrate the market value (or lack thereof) of many the newsletters people actually pay for.

Elsewhere, we’ve got the restaurant everyone will go to this summer that’s not the Australian Bowl Place, we’ve got Gatekeeping, we’ve got new music, we’ve got media goss buried all the way at the bottom so you’ll have to click through, we’ve got it all. Summer Friday culture might be dead elsewhere, but remember, it’s alive and well the only place it actually matters: Right here.

Let’s go:

Travel.

• The anti-tourist story deluge continues. Even more stories on over-tourism — including this tsk-tsk-y list of ways to not be an asshole tourist which most of you will violate — keep coming. But somehow, none of these stories actually feature the ideas for tourists from the people protesting them?

• Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc Rate Check: €6200/Night. Remember, the Hamptons are for poor rich people.

• Pantelleria, right next to Sicily, featured in that one Guadigino movie you haven’t seen, is about to blow up.

• The 2024 World’s Best Airlines list is out, and the top three: Qatar, Korean Air, and Cathay Pacific. Said it before, I’ll say it again: Human rights violations galore, but goddamn do the Qataris know how to run an airline. Meanwhile, an American carrier doesn’t show up until the 17th spot, which went to Hawaiian Airlines.

Restaurants.

• A FOSTERTALK SCOOP! Legendary East Village diner Veselka4 has been teeing up a Williamsburg location for a while and it opens tonight. I’ve just walked by to confirm this. They were doing friends and family the last two days, sounds like, and they said they’d be open at 5PM this evening. Footage from an F&F dinner inside above-left — looks great, no? — and god, that neon sign is already iconic.

• As promised, I got in on the soft opening and delivered a verdict on Strange Delight — the new New Orleans-style seafood spot in Fort Greene — for FOUND: It’s utterly fantastic, likely Brooklyn’s hot restaurant of the summer.

• Meanwhile, even Hell Gate agrees with me, that — much like Bluey — That Australian Bowl Place is the next big thing, and will rightfully take over NYC (and probably America). They gave it a rave review.

Music.

• There a remix of Charli XCX’s “360” out today featuring two names I would only expect together next to hers: Robyn and Yung Lean. It’s barely two minutes, and totally perfect. Not quite a Song of the Summer contender, but formidable no less. Related: That one time Charli and Nate Freeman drunk-dialed me after a day of her yelling at me about her period as we went to Diner and a Yung Lean concert, and her DJing a set promptly after attempting to submerge my phone into her beer. But really: That kicker. She knew.

• There’s a new Fred, Again.. song out today with Anderson .Paak, that’s pretty wild. Fred’s got a song in the hopper with a Selena Gomez vocal track that’s going to be pretty exciting when it actually comes out — until then, please enjoy a song he made with Four Tet that involves an incredible J.Lo flip that’ll almost certainly never come out, and a Four Tet remix of Selena Gomez (or two).

• Finally, Angelinos, I’m throwing you one, here, you’ve got someone special in town: Solomun is DJing Exposition Park tomorrow. For the uninitiated, Solomun was the subject of a 6,000 word New Yorker profile titled “The DJ Who Keeps Ibiza Dancing.” An incredible piece, but also, some friends and I saw him there last summer and: Probably a top-five night of music of my life. If you live in Los Angeles, go. Go straight from your tea ceremony, grab Rhododendron and Tonsil from their gin rummy club, leave them with the babysitter, and stuff all the good chaga into the peace vape — or whatever you’re all smoking out there these days — and go have fun. You won’t regret it.

What Are We Gatekeeping Now? 

CitiBikes?!?! Yeah: CitiBikes. But actually.

Recently, my friend Megan5 posted to her story about someone using a Sharpie to black out the QR code on a CitiBike, specifically, one of the new “white lightning” electric bikes to prevent someone (or someone else) from using it. See here:

This isn’t new, and it’s something that’s been happening for a while, but more and more people I know are seeing it, commenting on it, annoyed by it. And if it’s happening here, it’s probably happening in every other city there’s a bike share (so if you live in one, pay attention). 

Anyway, Megan was pissed, rightfully so! It’s profoundly annoying to roll up to a dock and see the one eBike there made (nearly) impossible to hop on. Why, exactly, would someone do this? 

Theory No. 1: People hate eBikes. Dodai Stewart over at the Times recently documented the rising tide of anti-eBike sentiment in New York City. People have been killed, people have been injured, and eBikers aren’t being held accountable, hence, vigilante justice. Least likely, because vigilante justice is unhinged, and there are less insane people than there are people who are dicks, which brings me to 

Theory No. 2: People are fucking assholes. Basically, because the white eBikes exist in limited quantities (and because they cost more to ride the longer you have them out), these Sharpie-armed assholes are keeping the bikes to themselves, docking the bike at a dock near them, crossing out the QR code, and then using it as their own personal eBike bike. How? They know something most non-regular CitiBike users don’t: The QR codes on bikes that are used to check them out represent that bike’s ID number, which you can find above the QR code on the bike’s LCD display screen, and also, the sides of the bike and the handlebars. Or they’re just using a CitiBike key. 

Theory No. 3: You’re being scammed. If you roll up to a CitiBike and see the ID numbers written in Sharpie (after being crossed out), chances are, that’s not the ID to the bike you’re looking at, but rather, the ID of another bike someone’s waiting to get unlocked, so they can steal it. This is a sly variation of the “fake QR code” CitiBike scam, and I saw it the other day in Greenpoint.

As for how to fight back against this bullshit: Get yourself a CitiBike Key — true story, they’re now free. Don’t type in a fake code. Make sure you’re not scanning a fake QR code on a regular CitiBike. And any time you see a QR code scratched out, immediately disable the bike from being checked out by hitting the little “Needs Maintenance” button on the dock. That way, someone else won’t get scammed, and you’ll get the pleasure of pissing off one of these little shits when they come back to get “their” bike only to be locked out. Reverse vigilantism, an impeccable summer vibe.

PREVIOUSLY, IN GATEKEEPING: Secret Strategist?!?!?

Do you know something that’s being “gatekept” or gatekept? Tell me, come on, Pookie, let’s burn it down.

Fashion.

• Sam Hine at GQ: Merch is dead. Also, at GQ: Gen Z loves merch.

• Also, don’t dry clean your clothes.

The Hamptons.

Emily Sundberg continues to give the people what they want in the form of now-regular Hamptons coverage. Most recently, she debunked the rumor that Slodge gets their sushi from Costco, great news for people who go there (barf emoji) and order sushi (death eyes emoji). She also interviewed these 8th graders about their new Hamptons newspaper, which I loved.

Meanwhile, this week, in The Greatest Crime Blotter In America, the one in The East Hampton Star, we have an absolutely phenomenal tale of stolen (Rolex) valor, emphasis mine:

A Rolex watch was the subject of a dispute late Saturday night between a man and a woman, both intoxicated, on Main Street in front of The Point Bar and Grill. Each of them claimed to own the watch, so an officer took it to the Montauk precinct until documentation could be provided. The watch turned out to belong to neither of them. The man’s father showed up in the morning with a copy of an insurance policy showing the Rolex was in fact his.

But that’s not all. Look at this legendary level of shade, again, emphasis mine:

A bachelorette party at a house on Hog Creek Road got out of hand Saturday night, with one partygoer reporting to police that “one of the other girls is attacking everyone.” One woman was arrested, charged with second-degree harassment, and at least one other was taken to a hospital. All the women involved gave UpIsland home addresses.

Oh ho ho, let’s GO baby, the season is ON. For those of you unversed in that vernacular, that last line translates to “of course these feisty poorly-behaved clap-trapping jezebels are from Long Island.”

Mind you, the Hamptons are technically on Long Island, but obviously consider themselves to be rarefied land, and not of Long Island, culturally. The distinguishment between “The Hamptons” and “UpIsland” is much like the distinguishment between “doorman building” and “mole person under the Jay Street Station who pledges fealty to the rat king.” That said, and if you ever want to really wanna upset someone who tells you that they’re off to The Hamptons this weekend, just respond “Long Island! Fun.” They love it when you do that. 

Do you have any good Hamptons gossip, or tips? Do you even care about The Hamptons? Does anyone? Should I just get rid of this feature entirely? Most importantly, do you have a place out there I can borrow, and does it have a pool? You know what to do about it.

Technology.

• Fun: An insane ChatGPT jailbreak workaround was released and I immediately got it to tell me how to hotwire a car and manufacture LSD.

• Speaking of absurd uses for ChatGPT, Vox and The Atlantic separately announced partnerships with OpenAI to license their work. Vox’s union predictably lost their shit, while Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson (who’s been bullish all along) posted a big Gen-X Energy video on LinkedIn to talk about it. Meanwhile, The Atlantic’s technology editor, the phenomenal Damon Beres, published a piece yesterday accurately portraying their deal as a “bargain with the devil.” Thompson is a smart cookie; so is Damon. The deal doesn’t sound particularly invasive as far as mortgaging the soul of The Atlantic is concerned, but, slippery slope, and so on. Ultimately, ChatGPT is a platform, like Facebook, Google, and Twitter, and we’ve seen what happens when publishers leverage their fates to platforms they can’t control, again, and again, and again (see below re BuzzFeed). Spoiler: It never goes well. But is the alternative to not play along at all? No — at the New York Times knows, it’s to lawyer up and go for the jugular.

• All that said: The most important story we published at Futurism this week is that most people don’t actually care about AI or using it right now.

Media.

Sigh, fine:

• Third-Wave Substack Exodus. I’ve heard of at least two massive names who are sick of Hamish’s bullshit and ready to bounce. This will likely be a trend, as Substack caters less to the newsletter writers who made it what it is, and further into the business of attracting more lowercase-c creators6, who will probably use AI to publish their trash and flood Substack with garbágé. Fun summer, coming up.

• Pitchfork is starting to vet candidates for a leadership role. I know at least one name they went to, and it’s a very good name, someone who’d be on my first ballot, someone Pitchfork would be lucky to have — whether they’d take the job is another question. But also, now we’re a ways away from the blast radius, can we just say? Yes, it sucks that Pitchfork got culled — sucks doesn’t even begin — and it’s absolutely beyond logic that Conde couldn’t find a way to monetize that level of direct traffic and devotion to a browser bar brand like Pitchfork. That said, if there’s a single person at Conde Nast capable of salvaging Pitchfork as a brand and positioning it for a sustainable future (within Conde, a task of its own), it’s Will Welch, at GQ. This is someone who got his start at early-era Fader (fun fact, he wrote Kanye West’s first cover story, published there). He cares about music and knows what makes for a good magazine and GQ continues to pump out fantastic music stories (three examples off the top of my head: Zach Baron’s flute-era Andre 3K profile and quasi-documentary, and his recent Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross profile tied to the Challengers score, or Naomi Zeichner’s Sebastián Yatra profile, among others). I doubt there’s anyone at Conde in a position of authority who cares about music journalism writ large more than Will Welch. Anyway: I’ve still got some faith this could get better. Also, Pitchfork has continued pumping out pretty solid music writing in the last few months.

• God, I’ve got so many media items saved up from the last time I did this that I don’t even know where to start, here. We might have to make it through the summer before I start writing about media all that much again, but just, like, can I tell you: One of the tips I got involved a Prestige Magazine Writer who’s been “faking” their accent for over a decade. People are wild. You all are WILD. Also, honestly, while yes this person clearly adopted some kind of weird vocal thing over the years, (A) it’s more of a mid-Atlantic affect, and (B) this person has a Polk Award, and I do not, so if affecting a mid-Atlantic vocal style a la Frasier and Niles Crane is what one does when they win a Polk Award, so be it, and (C) Madonna did this in this mid 90s and Ray of Light and Music both absolutely slap.

• Remainders: Brock Colyer is re-animating the best nightlife newsletter in the city, you already know my thoughts; new AI-driven summaries of Washington Post stories apparently suck, definitely read the newsletter collaboration joint of the year, Alison Roman x Blackbird Spyplane, both the interview (which I’ll write about more later) and the recipe (!).

• Finally: VivekFeed. Hang on to your hats.
  
  So it turns out that Ben Smith, Semafor editor-in-chief, doesn’t know what a reference to “the first pancake” means. I learned this in the literal cold open to Semafor’s new media podcast. Also, at some point, I’ll write about Ben’s book, which I didn’t wanna talk about while everyone was reading it, because my god, how much can we belabor a very obvious point? Apparently, as a society? Not enough, because now, Vivek Ramaswamy — a man who ran possibly the most comically odious and unanimously disliked presidential campaign in modern history — has become an “activist” (he’s writing letters and whining on podcasts) “investor” (he’s put together 8.3% of the company in stock) in “BuzzFeed” (i.e. BuzzFeed in 2024). The point being belabored by Ramaswamy is that BuzzFeed ultimately turned out to be a marketing play for venture capital more than it ever was a sustainable business, that it was run by hubris before reality (see: turning down Disney’s $650M offer), that a site constructed (at least initially) of content stolen from Reddit and repackaged as original work that was then grown by hiring people (who would’ve otherwise worked in marketing or advertising or I don’t know accounting) who should’ve never worked in media in the first place maybe wasn’t the best plan.

[And also, while we’re here, that Jonah Peretti’s race to the bottom to popularize a style of crass reductive brain-thinning inhalant “content” (ugh) was always going to spiral beyond his control no matter how much loss-leading journalism he tried to dress it up with.]

And so, yes, an obvious point that’s been slowly asserting itself for a long time has reached an almost poetic nadir now that a guy who probably has a Pepe The Frog tat somewhere near his perineum gets to throw his weight around Jonah with his “big ideas” on how to fix BuzzFeed.

And what, pray tell, are Vivek’s ideas? Well, this:

Mr. Ramaswamy has some ideas for ways BuzzFeed can jump-start its business. In his letter, the former Republican presidential candidate suggested hiring high-profile “creators” like [Tucker] Carlson, [Charles] Barkley and Aaron Rodgers, the National Football League quarterback. 

Say it with me: Lol. But also, can’t agree more: Let’s get Tucker Carlson on Hot Ones post-haste. Ben Mullin over at the Times thinks that — unfortunately for the gods of poetry (but fortunately for the staff of BuzzFeed) — Jonah holds stock in a class that gives him “effective” veto power, and this likely won’t go anywhere besides this one idiot’s public bluster and the media press hopefully not taking it any more seriously beyond that.

BUT: Cut to Vivek, on that first episode of Semafor’s New Media Podcast, arguing that Peretti actually doesn’t hold the cards, here, because BuzzFeed’s debt comes of age in December, at which point, its fate likely belongs to its creditors. Ben didn’t really press him on how he plans on leveraging that fact to take control of BuzzFeed, instead giving Vivek airtime to bemoan the many journalism failures of the business reporting about this! Irony. But — credit to Ben — getting Vivek as a guest on the first episode makes for great podcasting as much as it does a finger in Peretti’s eye.7

That said, anyone dumb enough to believe that they’re value investing in a media company like BuzzFeed is probably dumb enough to do it more. BuzzFeed staffers, truly, consider yourself warned, though maybe they already know: Running at the top of the site today isn’t a story about Trump, but rather, “21 Excruciatingly Entitled People Whose Outright Selfishness Will Make You Feel Sick To Your Stomach.”

Do you have any media tips? I’d rather talk about, like, the ineffable joys of small, ephemeral moments of domestic bliss, like the uncomplicated beauty of a freshly painted wall, or that feeling when you grab clean laundry out of a dryer on a cold day. But yeah, sure, send me what you got.

And that’ll do it — mostly. A quick note about Taormina, Sicily, one of the places in which you learned the weather earlier:

Long before it was lousy with murderous gays, I went there on a summer trip with my then-girlfriend and her family; it was my first time in Europe, I was 22 (I know). We’d just been around the rest of Sicily meeting her dad’s long-lost Sicilian family, in towns like Naro, and Noto. Patience among the group was wearing thin, and the resort town — built into a seaside cliff — was an incredibly well-timed respite. It’s beautiful. There are some fantastic sights there. One day, when the White Lotus bump fades off, it’ll be worth going to, again. Anyway, on that trip, it was me, her, her parents, and her Aunt. When we got to Taormina, I finally broke off from the group and did the one thing I’d also wanted to do in Italy: Ride a Vespa (I know).

Did I know how to ride a Vespa? Not at all. Was that gonna stop me? Also, hell no, not in the slightest. Needless to say, on the five minute drive from the rental to the hotel, I almost drove the thing straight off a cliff, right into the Mediterranean, and it’s a miracle I didn’t.

I pull up to our hotel and god, the “what the fuck did you do” faces of my girlfriend and her father, truly: Priceless. They were bewildered that I did it, let alone, that I could get it back to the hotel without dying (which, again: fair). As I’m learning how to drive it (in circles, in a parking lot) her father grunts at me, something like, “I can’t believe you, lemme see this goddamn thing,” and jumps on it, drives it in a few circles around the parking lot, gets off it, grunts somewhat approvingly, and goes back in the hotel. My girlfriend is still appalled. Meanwhile, her aunt and I rode around on that thing every chance we could, Rainey’s scarf waving in the breeze like Sofia Loren. Given that we’d put up with their insanity and arguing for the last week — the two odd people out, in some ways — we felt like we deserved that kind of freedom, absolutely loved it. It drove the rest of them insane.

Or so I thought. Because not a few months after we all got back from the trip, my then-girlfriend’s father, a commercial real estate lawyer living in Palm Beach in his late 50s/early 60s, you know what he does? Buys a Vespa. And — I shit you not — proceeds to commute to work with it most days.

Anyway, Mike Noto was a mensch, a brilliant, wonderful guy who passed away earlier this month. And I’m thinking about him this week, and that great vacation that was slightly torturous in situ, but also, all the great ways people can go somewhere for the summer, and come back, and come back changed, returning with not just a tan, and some lower blood pressure, but maybe something more, something that they can bring with them, figuratively and literally, throughout their days, that can changes their lives. Yeah — I’m trying to remember that.

As I was saying: The weather today in Taormina is 77/63, mostly sunny.

Sail on, sailor,

-f.

It’s Friday, May 24th, 2024.

• It’s the first Summer Friday of the year, 14 to go until Labor Day.

• Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry” is on the radio.

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is in theaters this weekend, and the 81st running of the Monaco Grand Prix is on Sunday.

• Around the world today, the weather: New York City: 84/65, cloudy • Los Angeles: 67/57, cloudy • East Hampton: 74/56, cloudy • Ibiza: 72/60, cloudy • Monoco: 65/54, su—

Ha, wait, sorry, shit — should probably back up, here. Maybe you’ve noticed? After a three year hiatus, the greatest and rarest newsletter in the history of Substack is back — with a twist. Welcome to the first installment of FOSTERTALK: Summer Fridays.

Herein: A beachy read, an early out, a misty morning, a cool convertible breeze, a Jitney ride, some salt spray in your hair, some trends, some travel, some food, some music, some friends, some nightlife, some summer romance, and of course, some good old-fashioned mischief under the hot, hot sun. And of course, some media. I only kind of know what I’m doing here, which will be evident as soon as you start reading this.

I had a very good reason for stopping what was once the most Ascendent Newsletter In The History Of Substack — and I’ll tell you about that at some point — and I have no real good reason for being back, beyond the fact that I’ve yet to find that Weekend Newsletter Beach Read that I wanted for myself. So! I’m writing it. And for another, despite the insane deluge of newsletters coming your way — new ones every goddamn day — most of them are poorly written, boring, and mediocre, and being pushed on you by this platform for all the wrong reasons, and I can do better than that on my laziest day. You see an opening, and you take it: This one, let’s just say, is wide. The gears are a bit rusted, here, so it’ll take me a minute, but we’re about to put on a clinic. But more importantly, I’d happily give you for free something better than what everyone else makes you pay for, just to do the public the service of showing them what their money should actually buy them. Spoiler Alert: It’s more vacation.

[Speaking of: Advertisers, get in touch. My audience is worth more than everyone else’s because they’re smarter, better, and they all read to the end, where I hide the good stuff.]

Anyway, thanks for sticking with me, and hope you enjoy the hell out of all this. Oh, and for those of you here for the media stuff of it all — my former and kinda perpetual bailiwick — scroll all the way to the bottom, and you'll get a previously-untold salacious story involving that time That One Substack Writer once tried to get me fired. Spoiler alert: Didn't work! I assure you, the only idiot who's ever gonna write me out of a job is finishing this sentence. We’ll see how much sunscreen we get in our eyes this summer, and hopefully, we’ll keep the car on the road, and the good times will roll to September.

Welp. Let’s do whatever this is. FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays starts here. This first one is gonna be LONG. We’ll see what people respond to, and go from there. Throw those comments, suggestions, and critiques here.

[Shit, sorry, one more thing before we get going: That beautiful art up there is by FOSTERTALK ad hoc de facto art director Tag Hartman-Simkins, who also happens to be Futurism’s art director, and is responsible for the site’s incredible look. He crushed the assignment on this one. Points if you got the reference.]

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Dining.

The Hottest Bowl in New York: This Bowl. // It pains me to say this, but I swear to god: This city’s hottest restaurant and potentially America’s hot new restaurant might be — and, truly, I shit you not — a fast-casual bowl restaurant on Bleecker and Lafayette. From Australia. I know. Trust, had a friend who runs a pretty popular spot in town not told me about it  — “This Bowl bout to change everything” is the DM I’ll never unremember — I wouldn’t have gone, let alone believed it, but...He’s right. A week ago, a Wednesday afternoon visit, peak lunch (1pm): 25 minute wait. For a bowl. But I was later reliably informed that I got lucky — peak dinner times run an hour, sometimes more. The first week was apparently pure chaos. 

A gaggle of NYU Law just-grads were in line behind me. You get to the front, and the comically good looking Australian guy the women in front of and behind you have been audibly drooling over takes your order (“naur scallions, yeah”), vaguely house-ish music is blasting, and there’s a flag that has “MY LIFE IS WABI SABI” (?) painted in big blue letters. It is — and I don’t say this lightly — a whole situation. The only thing that actually matters here, of course: Is it good?

The food is good. Very. As much as a restaurant like this could get food right, they do. At face value, it’s all de rigueur bowl stuff: Pick a base, protein, dressing, some toppings from two or three different tiers, and “Bob’s your dingo,” or whatever. But as is increasingly the case with these kinds of places, the difference is in the details, and This Bowl nails them in with an almost disturbingly excellent consistency. Menu’s here, so you know what you’re dealing with. I’ve had two This Bowls now, both with salmon, and found both to be almost uncannily, perfectly cooked. They compose them well, the toppings are excellent, the house sodas are genuinely think-about-them-often great. The only problem is a lack of seating, but whatever: A few blocks away is Washington Square Park or any number of NYU plazas with ample seating. You’ll be fine. And you won’t have to be seen there, or deal with the music.

Especially of note: This is This Bowl’s (lol) first location in New York, and these guys have already opened 45 locations in Australia...since 2016. Fast casual restaurants are crushing in markets, one estimate has the entire space ballooning to $382B (due in large part to delivery apps). You can go now and tough out the wait — I went for my second visit for a late lunch at 3pm on a Wednesday, only waited ten minutes to order — or you can just wait until their second/tenth city location arrives. Don’t expect it’ll be too long. First bet’s somewhere near Bedford, second is Astor Place/Union Square.

ALSO IN NYC: Soft openings this weekend for Strange Delight in Fort Greene — a restaurant that’s already gotten a ton of press without ringing up a single check, by Momofuku empire Anoop Pillarisetti and company, that I’ll maaaaybe file on for FOUND NY — as well as the incredible-looking dine-in outpost of Rice Thief, which brings a once pop-up takeout operation specializing in ganjang gejang (raw, soy-marinated crab, which you eat like this) to LIC. I learned that I know at least three investors in Strange Delight (who are all very fun people), have feeling both spots will be big, big hits. FINALLY: Restaurant tips, asks for coverage, you know where to put them.

Nightlife: The Brooklyn Storehouse

How To Talk About Brooklyn Storehouse, The Next Big Thing In New York City Nightlife. Literally. A new nightlife venue is coming to the Navy Yard in June, but also, calling it “a new nightlife venue coming to the Navy Yard in June” is like calling Fleet Week, I don’t know, “Big Boat Week,” or something that doesn’t denote its sheer, weird, horny, uniformed energy, nor the massive ships that park on one of our rivers.

To that end: Storehouse is going to be much more than just another massive structure parked near one of our rivers, and it will soon be filled with weird, horny energy (and also, loud music, and plenty of uniforms, too). Like, say, a big step towards putting New York City’s nightlife in an international conversation with nightlife scenes on a global scale. Having spent some time over the years I was gone reporting on a dance music act or two — and seeing a lot more — promise, I’d know.

But how do I know about this one, even though details about Storehouse are scant? Well, for one thing: It’s a 104,000 square foot space with a 5,000 person capacity. On its own, that’s enormous and massive, and on an absurd scale.

But even more important than those numbers is the operator behind them: Broadwick Live. It's their first American venue — they're the UK-based group responsible for London’s now-shuttered Printworks, maybe the most famous club in the world if you go by the number of times it showed up on FYP. It was housed in what was once the largest printing factory in Europe. The big feature was a long rectangular room with visuals appearing on a giant, vertical screen at the front. Some of that shit was insane nightmare fuel. Some of it is kind of incredible.

I went exactly once, to see Jamie xx do an afternoon set, the weekend I was in Brighton and then London reporting out the Romy story, over Printworks’s penultimate weekend. It was absolutely insane, like being on a goddamn James Cameron-designed spaceship. And yeah: The place is engineered as front-cam bait, the entire thing. But it was also extraordinary. The Sphere is a vibeless TV ball for boomers. Printworks was a rectangle on its side that fucked.1 And if Broadwick is involved, there’s a good chance Brooklyn Storehouse could be that, too. 

So, their New York space: I walked through it last Saturday before seeing a show in the adjacent lot, and got a brief preview. Given the layout, it could being primed to be Printworks 2.0, or (per some early social footage from shows before Broadwick’s participation was announced) it could just be a not-quite-Printworks-but-still-pretty-mindblowing experience, and only Broadwick’s first incursion into the states. They’ll likely be putting their finishing touches on it in the coming weeks and refining it after the first season of shows — I expect it’ll change from when it opens.

As for the here and now of it, not surprised. NYC nightlife is slowly starting to get recognized in a global context now that we’ve got venues at a certain scale, like Knockdown Center (a great venue most people like) and Brooklyn Mirage (a horrid venue everyone hates). Charli XCX’s Boiler Room performance + Fred, Again..’s secret show with Overmono and Lil Yachty both took Knockdown a long way towards putting it in people’s faces, given the viral nature of both performances (to say nothing of The Lot Radio, and its continuing, absurd growth as a cultural force). A Broadwick venue will further throw NYC into conversation with London, Ibiza, Berlin, and (ugh, but) Vegas where it concerns massive dance music destinations. These kinds of experiences are becoming a domineering force in music — whether the music itself bleeds into pop remains to be seen.

That said: If it’s a pure dancing experience or a club you’re looking for, these vert-video traps aren’t it. They’re less club, more venue. But they’re an experience, and one people are gonna want to come here to have. (For my money: Nowadays might annoy people with its anti-phone policy, but it’s also where I’ve had some of the best nights in New York, and boasts Theo Parrish and Avalon Emerson and Anthony Naples as residents, and if those names mean nothing to you, know that objectively, it is incredible.) I’ll report back from a show there soon — the upcoming Justice show there could be a pretty good test run — but if you know anything more about it, you know where to put it.

ALSO: THE ROW OVER TAO? None other than the Tao Group wants to open a venue on Franklin, in Greenpoint, and residents are pissed (rightfully). Also, the small club that’s been in the works for two years nearby is now getting lumped in with Tao, who got castigated out of a community board meeting for being unprepared. Tao is now papering the neighborhood with flyers to try to sweeten up the neighbors. Won’t work, but won’t matter, because community board votes are only advisory, and the SLA has probably already been tended to well by Tao. TWO QUESTIONS FOR YOU: 1. What’re you seeing/where’re you going out for music this summer? 2. Have you seen a show at Brooklyn Paramount yet? Curious to hear what people think. Hit me.

Abroad.

God save The East Hampton Star, one of the best remaining broadsheet newspapers in the world, I’m pretty sure — mostly, for their crime blotter. The best of this week’s takes place in Sag Harbor: 

At least four people got stuck in the Dime Bank A.T.M. vestibule on Long Island Avenue over the weekend, and called the police after they were unable to get out. “The bank was notified that this was an ongoing issue,” a police spokeswoman said this week.

Also, in Amagansett:

Natalie Bowden of Dune Crest Way returned home from a trip on May 15 to find that a window on her BMW, parked in her driveway, had cracked. She opened and closed a different door, causing the cracked window to shatter entirely. “The window did not appear to be intentionally damaged,” police reported.

Wonderful, quiet pre-season work, there for the summer blotter chaos to come. 

LIGHTS OUT IN MONACO: As previously mentioned, the 81st Monaco Grand Prix is this weekend. Two fun talking points:

1. Did you know the people of Monaco are not Monacans, but rather, Monegasque? Easily, greatest-named citizenry in the world.

2. The coolest thing that ever happened at the Monaco GP: Kimi Raikkonen’s car breaking down after he’s in second place, and instead of making his way back to his team’s garage, he walked right off the race course….onto his yacht. Extraordinary behavior, first-ballot Vibes Hall of Fame type stuff.

TRAVEL LINKS: There’s no actual “safest” place to sit on a plane. Sorry! Never click on stories that tease otherwise. [CNTraveler.] // You people leave $1M in change in those airport security bins every year! [PBS] // Rimowa and Aime Leon Dore have teamed up on a piece of luggage that will further help heterosexual women identify the therapyspeak-abusing straight men of the world who lack table manners [HB] // Anti-tourism protests continue across Europe. [BBC] // Making matters worse: It’s gonna be a hot summer in Europe’s hottest tourist destinations. [NYT] // Which is why the new “hot” summer destinations are (literally) cool, i.e. in Scandinavia. [WSJ]

MORE FROM THE HAMPS-ISH: A popular influencer bought a house in “The Hamptons” and all of her followers freaked out. What they don’t know is that it’s in Hampton Bays (LOL), which… is barely the Hamptons, at least the ones they’re thinking of. // ZERO BOND, ZERO CHANCE. The One Place Private Clubs Won’t Happen is apparently the East Hampton Town Square. Speaking of the Star, their rundown of how the University of Miami: North Zero Bond is slowly watching the fates of East Hampton yeet the club back on the train to Manhattan is pretty wonderful local color! And speaking of Zero Bond...

Trendlines: Private Clubs.

People Are Private Clubbing. // Two weeks after Nate Freeman's Vanity Fair profile of Zero Bond imperator Scott Sartiano, emerging media queenpin Emily Sundberg's joyride through NYC's private club scene (Clubby Clubs?) dropped last week for GQ. Both are ur-Conde throwbacks, in that they're (and this part’s important, unapologetically) obsessed with moneyed desire objects. They're also both great stories. That said, to be clear, private clubs are nothing new, and the fascination with them will never end. 

Back in March, in the New York Times, there was a more Times-y, academic version of the Private Club Bang-Bang. Wanna go further back, guess who was blogging about Soho House trying to ban suits in 2010? That was seven years after you-won’t-guess-who’s membership was used to infiltrate the grounds. That was after people wrote about Soho House getting rid of flat surfaces people could do drugs off of. 21 years later, we’re wondering who Casa Cipriani is purging. Time, flat circle, and I need a drink after writing that. One in public.

The new private club wave is less about New York City's culture changing and more of a series of socioeconomic indicators of who's got what kind of disposable income, and which terrible acronym they subscribe to, and how discrete (or not) they are with it. But belonging to a 2024 New York City "private club" is like seeing your name in 2024 Page Six: Still trades on the old reputation, but don’t quite mean what it used to. One in every 24 people in this city are millionaires. You really think these places are that exclusive, let alone interesting? Come on.

Moreover, private clubs run along two lines: 1. The kind that get written about, and 2. The kind that don't. The former consists almost entirely of the ones you, a mere civilian, can get into — if you've got the money. The latter? Money isn't the issue. See: The Metropolitan Club, The Union League Club, or any of the vast number of New York City private clubs you haven't heard of (a smattering of which are here), that actually host the masters of the universe. Remember: You can pay for school but you can't buy classssss.

It’s also why writing about fauxclusive clubs (as opposed to actually-exclusive clubs) makes for such a delicious treat, editorially — it's quasi-secretive, it's aspirational, and most importantly, you stand a chance of one day being in on the secret. But trust: Whatever shit's going down inside The Union League Club is vastly more interesting (or at least consequential) than anywhere your garden-variety influencer can thirst their way into. Also, if you think Zero Bond patrons Elon Musk and Eric Adams make for an "exclusive" crowd, need I remind you that one of them is Berghain's most famous reject, and the other is a cop from New Jersey who allegedly favor trades with a capital-T Turkey — literally. 

I've never belonged to a private club, but I’m a fan of some of the Soho House hotels — those showers, holy shit — and don’t get me wrong, I absolutely get the appeal of a third space in New York. But I've yet to find one worth the money for the facilities that’s also a place I wouldn't be kinda embarrassed to be seen at. If I knew how to play tennis, it’d absolutely be the Forest Hills Tennis Club. I did once have a meeting at The Union League Club, however, during my brief spell as a finance reporter, to meet with a bunch of guys who traded defaulted Cuban and North Korean debt. Yes, you read that correctly: They trade North Korean debt. Insane shit!

So it goes: The real masters of the universe aren't sexy, fun, young — they do not, for the most part — in any truly compelling sense — fuck. Which brings me to someone in Sundberg's comments mentioning that New York's private club scene pales in comparison to London's — and that is genuinely The Take. By all accounts, Annabel's and Oswald's (or if you're really nasty, the Garrick) make Zero Bond, Zizi’s Club, and their ilk look about as exclusive and sexy as the Port Authority. If you wanna see what goes down in Oswald's, look no further than the IG of one of the (single-digit) number of people who could get away with it, and probably the only one I'd ever be happy for: David Beckham, at his wife's raging birthday party, posting this.

Finally, leave to the hometown heroes at the New York Post to be all over the private club beat. Here’s the New York Post burning Soho House (“over”), Aman (“unimpressed”), Casa Cipriani (“public offender no. 1”), and Zero Bond (“Eric Adams’s favorite club,” which while not an opinion, is damning as a fact, especially when they put it in the headline). And of course, they got the high-res of the one with the gun range in the basement.

Trendlines: Quitting Therapy.

People Are Quitting Therapy. // In the wake of Jonah Hill's therapy-speak texts leaking, I wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post last year about firing previous therapists. It exploded, and prompted at least half of the 900-someodd Washington Post commenters on the story to suggest that I fire my current therapist. Nine months later, The Cut ran a package on "falling out of love with therapy." Depressingly missing from it is the requisite Cut-style scorching hot "I Banged My Therapist, So Should You, It Was Great" tell-all. SAD! 

The time feels right for this kind of thing to migrate from the science/op-ed pages to The Cut, which is pretty consistent lately in terms of making their mark when wider patterns begin to crest. For what it’s worth, a few months prior to my story, also in the Washington Post: TikTok Therapists Are A Problem. A year before that, in the NYT: Therapy Speak Sucks. Time, two years ago: Why Online Therapy Is Broken. And the Atlantic, in February: Plenty of People Could Quit Therapy Right Now, though The Cut’s package was probably somewhat underway by the time that ran.

Over/under is 16 months before someone hits publish on an "All The Wrong People Quit Therapy" trender. But really, you know what’s scarier than a bunch of TikTok therapists? A bunch of TikTok anti-psychiatry agitprop taking root — and give it time, it will. Feeling like you’re in on a secret truth is catnip for crazy, and there’s plenty of that in the world where psychiatry is concerned. Semi-related, but the first two seasons of In Treatment are profoundly underrated, especially if you have ever wanted to bang your therapist (or your patients!).

What Are We Gatekeeping Now?

Affiliate Newsletters?!!?! You know how many people have sent me this “Secret Strategist” nonsense lately, telling me not to tell anyone? Look, I could buy into it as a secret people genuinely wanted kept secret…if it were a newsletter of things to buy without affiliate links, or an invite-only type deal. Literally, you can Google your way to the words “Secret Strategist” and find it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some great stuff in there, but it works best as conceptual art/Gatekeeping satire.

Media.

Sigh. Okay, fine.

HERE’S A FUN BIT OF GOSSIP.

A few years back, a (not-such-a) fan of FOSTERTALK took umbrage with an upcoming media item I had in the hopper. They were PISSED. Also, it was about them.

This was early 2021, dead-of-winter, post-election, pre-vax. Truly, the salad days of the pandemic. For me, it was the point at which soaking my career prospects with Aqua Net and flicking lit matches at it felt like a genuinely great, not-at-all-problematic way to pass the time2. Clearly, I didn’t deal well with social isolation, besides which, progress had slowed to a crawl on my epic King Lear 2: Zaddy Slayy Days.

Since starting the newsletter, I’d been angrily twot @ a few times. Hazard of the “job,” and also, whatever, so has Malala, and Boeing, and everyone else on the internet smart enough to tweet in the first place. But this umbrage was not that umbrage. No, in their best attempt to land me in a world of shit, this person decided to Karen/Karehim/Karex the manager.

Yes, much in the style of Bret ‘The Bedbug’ Stephens, this (Substack) famous personality tried to hose me by emailing the then-overlords of my day job at Futurism, a site whose fate I’ve somehow been charged with since 2018, after I was brought in by its founder and also its publisher (James!) to help sell it. And we did! By March 2019, we had an owner. Who, let’s just say, weren’t so seasoned with media ownership.

At that moment, the most vital function of the leadership role I shared (with James, lol) involved keeping said new overlords from messing with our team, and moreover, the site. As plenty of people know, this is sometimes, uh, an all-consuming job.

But this is also why a Frothy Substack Nutbag™ stirring up trouble with our overlords over my unpaid extracurricular pyromania was — no matter how hilarious and damning the email I’d seen was, no matter how little of a stick to stand on this person had, no matter how vividly it painted this supposedly moral person as a cruel and petty egomaniac, and no matter how little consequence their complaint about me would’ve probably, actually had — not worth the risk of escalating things.

Which is why, when this person didn’t reach our overlords, but instead, James (again: lol), I quickly dictated “his” response, convincingly portraying myself as properly castigated, put the item on ice, and swore to James (lol?) that I’d keep Futurism about as far from my newsletter as literally, figuratively, and metaphysically possible.

But: James was sent to a farm upstate (literally) and/or works somewhere else now and we have new owners who love us, SO! Here comes the part where you learn who the writer of said newsletter was, and what the email was, and…

…it absolutely would be that if only it were a few years ago, or if you subscribed to the “BLACK TAR” tier of FOSTERTALK. Which — like the revitalized version of this newsletter — is still in beta. Or had I not gone through the kind of cataclysmic personal event over the last few years that caused me to audit the precise level of care I have for anything in this world. Again, another story, for another time.

But I will use this opportunity to talk a little more about Futurism, which, again, I never talk about here, because of my blood oath to James, who is now being sucked dry of said blood by Catskills ticks. Moreover, this other story’s just better.

So, it’s worth reminding everyone:

• The recent story about Netflix using AI in their documentaries? Futurism. That was Vic.

• The one about the AI priest defrocked by the Catholic Church? Futurism. Noor, of course.

• And that big story about Sports Illustrated using AI-born “writers”? Futurism. That was Maggie, who’s now a Mirror Awards finalist for her work on it.

I’m deeply proud of what Futurism’s been publishing on all fronts, but especially over the last two years, as we’ve been cooking with gas where it concerns AI, and its strange, weird, and insidious incursions into our daily lives, and especially, the world of media. And recently, we published what’s arguably our most important (and inarguably, our most deeply-reported) story on it yet:

Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting The Media Industry.

Written by Maggie Harrison, and edited by Jon Christian (who also contributed writing and research for it, the Michael Jordan of Futurism’s bloggy triangle offense3), this story started last year, as we were publishing a steady stream of stories on the proliferation of AI-assisted (or generated) content in media, seeing it everywhere.

After filing on the various iterations of AI at outlets and companies like CNET, Red Ventures, BuzzFeed, et al, we eventually landed at the big Sports Illustrated revelation: That some of their “writers” were just AI-generated headshots. And that took our interest to a company called AdVon. They specialized in outsourced review content, most of which was weird, uncanny, seemingly inchoate, obviously undercooked, and at times, deeply incoherent. In other words: Likely a product of AI.

And then, we found their work…everywhere. From US Weekly to the LA Times and back. We even found out that our own holding company, Recurrent Ventures, had a contract with them.

Right. Imagine how that conversation went.

Well, you don’t have to: It’s in the story. I could spoil more of the story for you — about the double-dipping, the part that involves microwaving aluminum foil, or the part with a CEO throwing his wife and mother under an (AI-generated) content bus, that same CEO trying to intimidate our team out of reporting it (by intoning that our own CEO would do so), or the offshore contracting and labor exploitation, or what a birthday party invite and a Boy Scout badge and the world speed typing record have to do with all of this — but I’d rather you just read it. It’s an important story about the future of media, and the internet; Maggie’s been on All Things Considered and the BBC’s Media Show and done a few other spots, all of which were great. But again: Just read the story. It’s that good.

PHEW. Okay, that’s the first one. We’re finished. Next week, the first Summer Fridays Questionnaire. Music! Romance! Mischief! I want to know:

• Where you’re going this summer?

• What’s your current Song Of The Summer?

• What you think of all this noise?

• Literally, whatever you’ve got, gimme.
  

That’s it, I’m done, I’m finished for now. This was JUST A TEST ISSUE I KNOW IT WAS LONG. Much shorter, snappier items next week. We’ll figure it out.

Stevie, take ‘em home:

And no, really: For everyone who said something, thanks for your encouragement the first time around, and all the kind words since, and making me want to come back to all this noise. Catch you next week, for

See ya. -f.

Hey -

I know, I’m surprised to see me here, too. ‘Been a minute.

So here’s the deal:

In late 2022, something extraordinary happened. And I’ve been thinking about it over a year later, almost every goddamn day since.

It happened, I should warn you here, in sports. In fact, in NASCAR. Yeah: Loud, Days of Thunder, let’s-go-Brandon-ass NASCAR — if you even consider large adult sons in large loud machines making long left turns for hours a sport. It’s one I didn’t care about before any of this, and still don’t now. That’s all to say that if this already sounds like something you couldn’t care less about, well:

(A) Same, trust me, I get it, and
(B) Stay with me, here.

Because it’s not just the greatest thing you probably haven’t heard of that happened in sports (or “sports”) last year (or maybe the last five years). It’s also one of the more fascinating, psychotic, downright inspiring things a human has done on this planet lately.

And I’m sitting here, writing to you about it, just a few hours before the 2024 hits, because it’s crucial, to me, for what’s about to happen next year. And maybe — just maybe — for you.

So: There’s this driver, Ross Chastain. Seems like a goofy, nice guy. Besides being relatively successful in NASCAR, he’s also (among other things) an eighth-generation watermelon farmer. That’s relevant not because it’s an oddball fact about an oddball guy who did the most oddball thing — even though it is, he clearly is, and he definitely did — but because the thing he did would come to be known as the Hail Melon. And that thing is this:

It’s October 30th, 2022 at Martinsville Speedway in Ridgeway, Virginia, and Ross Chastain is headed into the final lap of the Xfinity 500 in tenth place, driving somewhere around the average speed that day, 113 MPH. ‘Problem is: he doesn’t need the average speed — he needs to go a hell of a lot faster. Because

1. He needs to make up two places. Otherwise, Denny Hamlin, up there in fifth place, will beat Ross Chastain by two points in the standings, and Ross Chastain will get knocked out of the championship series, and is done for the year.

2. There is a shitshow of traffic in front of him. Especially on the middle to lower end of the track, where the fastest racing lines are.

And into the final turn he goes. In interviews after the race, Chastain was repeatedly asked where he got the idea from, if he ever practiced it before, if he talked about it with his team. He would tell them: No, never practiced it, never talked about it with the team. As for where he got the idea: the Nintendo GameCube edition of Nascar 2005 he used to play with his brother when they were kids. Yeah, a video game.

To everyone there, it started out looking like just another car, making its final yawning left turn around a big oval, just like all the other left turns it made. Until they realize:

Wait a second. Ross Chastain’s car — is there something wrong with it? — it’s hugging the wall. And not just hugging it, but smashed against it, getting literally shredded by it on the right side. And it is also screaming down the final straight, as he’s ripping past not one, not two, but five other cars to the right. It all happens in a flash.

Yes, they soon realize: Ross Chastain floored the gas, held the engine open, rode the wall, destroyed his car, and made up five places between the final turn and the finish line, passing poor Denny Hamlin (who didn’t know what just happened, along with four other totally bewildered drivers), thus securing his place in the next championship race. He also set a new record for the fastest lap ever recorded at the track, going 50MPH faster than the rest of the race. Have you ever seen a car drive by you going 50MPH faster than you? Right. You barely would. It looks like something out of a video game, like the car just fired a rocket behind it.

The broadcast footage of it hilarious and worth a watch, but the true treasure here is this video of the other drivers watching from their cars, in utter disbelief, bewilderment, and glee:

• Holy shit, did you see that? [Laughing]

• I guess it does work!

• That’s literally the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life!

• ‘The shit was the 1 doing?’ ‘He was trying to play hold-it-wide-open-and-go.’ ‘He actually passed people doing that? Holy shit.’

• What in the hell?!

And so on, until you get to see it and hear it from Chastain’s view, himself. And you realize: Even he can’t believe it worked. There’s a reason the fans, pit crews, announcers, and drivers that day couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

In the aftermath, the world of NASCAR was shocked, jubilant, and occasionally in an uproar. How was that even legal?

Well: Nobody had ever tried it. Probably because, at worst, even the smallest protrusion could’ve sent him spinning into traffic, causing a potentially horrific accident. But also because nobody was that desperate. Or found that creativity in a moment of desperation. Though Chastain was simply demonstrating a law of physics known as centripetal force, he sure as hell didn’t know that at the time, and he had absolutely zero proof it’d work.

But it did. Chastain would later admit that the wall impact plus the gravitational force of his speed pinned his arm to his body, made him lose control of the wheel halfway through. He just had to remember, as sparks and metal and concrete are flying all around him: Just keep your foot down.

So much great art is about process more than the result. Which in this case was a smashed car, fifth place, and another shot at the championship the next week. And Ross Chastain did not, in fact, go on to win the NASCAR championship that year.

But, honestly? Whatever. Not every great glory involves winning. This guy did something so artful and unchecked that it bent the parameters of an entire sport, the dimensions of a track, the damage-sustaining capabilities of thousands of pounds of machine, and — sure — a law of physics to his will. Something to the point where NASCAR had to write a rule subsequently banning what he did forever, which will forever be known (colloquially, of course) as The Ross Chastain Rule.

Moreover: He made me remember that so often what we believe to be impossible is usually just something nobody’s given a shot yet. For whatever reason. All the universe, sure, but especially all great art, all great romances, all great moments of invention, they all start ex nihilo. And in an imaginative feat of desperation and pure moxie, Ross Chastain asked that great, audacious, simple, epic question — Why the hell not? — and demonstrated the virtue of what happens when you decide to just absolutely fucking send it.

All of that is to say: In 2024, may we all have the grace to ask the same of ourselves.

To that end, Fostertalk is coming back in 2024. Thanks for your patience and support. See you soon.

As ever,

-f.

‘You happen to catch that last New York magazine cover of 2020, the story of Montclair, New Jersey’s ‘Permit Karen,’ and the family she menaced? I haven’t stopped thinking about it since it ran. You read it, right? You should. Everyone else did. ‘Know why?

It’s excellent in all the great ways a magazine feature should be, but also — crucially — hits different. Quite. Look: You’ve no doubt read one of the many, many great pieces of journalism published over the course of the last few years about racism and being Black in America. Many of these stories exist within stark, simple, oft-repeated contexts: Police violence. Opportunities unfairly denied. Obviously rigged systems. The exploitation of Black bodies and Black voices. And then some.

But take a big step back, and you might get the feeling after reading enough of these that they tell the tales of the racism beat as much as they provide comfort in the form of a binary (racism and especially racist white people, bad; anti-racism, good) that services everyone but the people these stories actually concern (Black Americans). How discomfiting — rather than evoking solemn nods of reaffirmation — can so many of these stories truly be?

[Unpacked: Look at who’s still running the large majority of media — who’s assigning and editing stories on racism. Shocker: They’re still mostly white. One thing I’ve heard repeatedly over twelve years in media are the ways Black writers at publications are continuously weighted with the burden of writing about racism, by white editors, after they were assured it wouldn’t fall on them, yet again, to do The Explaining.]

Hence, this piece: What happens when woke white people — and especially the kind who feel like they’ve created a progressive, anti-racist enclave in the shadow of a major metropolitan city, like the kind who work in New York media — what happens when these people are viscerally confronted with the fact that no matter what they do and no matter how they try to rectify inequity that they’ll ultimately always stand on the high tilt of an uneven board? But even more: What of the Black family that does everything they can to enmesh themselves in these well-heeled, supposedly safe, welcoming, equitable places, only to learn (yet again) that this just won’t be the case? And they’ll have to live with that reminder next door forever? What then?

That’s the premise of the Montclair Permit Karen story. Not hyperbole: I can think of few pieces of magazine writing I read in the last twelve months as important (or as elite in execution) as this. Like anything I love, I needed to know more. So I hit up its author, Allison P. Davis — longtime staffer of The Cut/New York, and the author of the forthcoming great, horny tome of our time (Horny) — with some questions:

How’d this start? Were you assigned it, or did you see the Permit Karen video back in June, and was it just, instantly: I gotta do this story?  

I have a Montclair news alert set because I feel like every New York writer gets one Montclair story! For some reason, that suburb yields a million good ideas. (Reeves Wiedeman wrote a great Montclair story about the summer Justin Bieber was living there that read like a demented Bye Bye Birdie. We actually ended up using some of the same sources.) I’d had a totally different Montclair story in my hopper, I’d been pulling string on it for a while, but it was never really coming into focus.

This one sort of fell in my lap.

How so?

I saw the video, and wasn’t quite sure what it was, to be honest. At the same time, a colleague of mine who lives in Montclair sent it to my editor — Genevieve Smith — with a “might be something here.” Genevieve forwarded me that email. I hopped on the phone with [the colleague] to get the Montclair Insider version of events, and a deeper understanding of the town. He hit all of the keywords that make you salivate, you know: “well-meaning liberal enclave,” “thrown into turmoil,” “neighborhood drama,” “well-off white people going nuts.”

Jackpot. How’d you pitch it? Just like that? 

It wasn’t so much a pitch as a proof of concept. After that call, Genevieve and I had a conversation to see if the story had any legs, because it was the end of July, the event happened in June, and sometimes it’s really hard to remember that stories are worth living in even after viral-ness has waned, you know? We both agreed that the most interesting part of this was the what happens after the video goes viral, and that would require a really intimate portrait of the family at the heart of it. The first step as reaching out to Fareed Hayat, and seeing if (A) he’d cooperate and (B) what kind of talker he was, since he’d be the center of the story.  

Lucky for me, he was game, and was an incredibly thoughtful and captivating interview. And that was enough to run with. 

I know you've been working with Genevive Smith for a while. But is there any kind of change to the typical writer-editor dynamic given the race at play here? Specifically: You're a Black writer, she's a white editor, and the story's trifecta is

- A community of well-meaning white people,
- An angry white woman, and
- A Black family.

Was there ever any kind of interplay during the editing process where you had to point out a blind spot of hers, or say, ‘hey, just so you know, this is actually that?’

For the most part, Genevieve never hesitates to say what she doesn’t know or admit her blindspots as a white editor. When she doesn’t know, it’s: “Well, you tell me!” It’s helpful, on one hand, because it forces me to really elucidate things which could’ve been misunderstood by a reader — and then, led to an open invitation to the social media mob, blah blah blah — but it occasionally left me feeling like I didn’t have a safety net. 

I’ll be too honest here, but writing about race at a publication with mostly white editors is daunting. It’s part of the reason I don’t often write explicitly about race (like: it’s clearly a theme I tango with in indirect ways, but never overtly). I was second guessing myself a lot during the process of writing this, and wasn’t always sure what I was trying to articulate, or if the thing I was articulating was fair, or right, or just based on my own weird experience. It was hard to be met with an “I don’t know either” off my “please someone just tell me how to think. I’m uncomfortable asserting any expertise here!!” But ultimately, it was good, because I’ve gotta learn to trust my own instincts, or [some helpful lesson here]. 

Leading question: Before you started, how personally acquainted were you with Montclair as That Incredibly Progressive, Well-Heeled, Ostensibly Woke Liberal Jersey 'Burb? I knew it as the place a tonnage of media people migrated towards from NYC over the last decade. That fact made this story, for me, emblematic/illustrative of a lot of white media people's relationship with their Black colleagues: Well-intended, but…

I knew a fair amount about Montclair itself. I mean, so many NYC media people live there, I hear all about it! But I understood Montclair on, like, a spiritual level, even though I’d never been before this story.

I grew up in a wealthy Baltimore suburb that’s a version of Montclair (well-heeled, doesn’t hide racism as well, conservatively progressive), so, ‘really understand the “only black family on the block.” But it’s like you said: my social universe is made up of Montclair simulations. Everything about it felt familiar enough for me to be able to really probe and question in a more advanced way. 

The story is one of the most perfectly-paced things I've read in a minute. You construct the entire frame — set, setting, prelude, incident, prologue — and then the story starts. It’s one of the many ways this thing transcended more than a few feature writing cliches. How’d you decide on the structure?

You know those really great sexual encounters, where you just intuitively know how your body should move with another person’s body, and what rhythm works, and when, and it hardly takes any words, and you’re not stuck in your head, and nobody elbows anyone in the face? That’s what writing this story was for me.  

I’d let it simmer in my brain for so. long. that by the time I’d made an outline, I knew exactly how I wanted the story to feel to the reader, and used that as my map (I won’t say “structure,” because I actually suck at that). I knew I needed the reader to feel seduced by the town — by the same feelings of safety the Hayat family felt when they chose to move to Montclair. I knew they needed to know the family, so they’d be sure nothing could happen to them. Then, I needed to quickly disorient that.

But mostly I just knew the piece had to make readers feel uneasy from the jump: Initially, in ways readers didn’t realize, and then, in ways they recognized, and then, in ways they probably didn’t want to deal with. BUT! My brain is pretty scrambly. I find myself bending a chronology or telling a story in a non-linear way because it makes sense to me emotionally, but doesn’t map onto how thinking actually functions.

Any particularly difficult parts in writing/finishing the story?

The one thing I really struggled with was the ending! In a dream world, maybe, something monumental would have happened. In November, when I was struggling through a first draft, I was talking to my Dad about the story, and how “the aftermath” didn’t really feel like anything at all, because how could I possibly make “well everyone lived in their homes but felt a little bit weirder than they had before,” narratively exciting? He’s a big ol’ science nerd, and started explaining tectonic plates to me, as a metaphor, and how things explode briefly and intensely, and then settle back down and seem calm — but really, the pressure is still building, out of sight.

Normally his lectures make me snoozey, but like: Damn. He helped me out big time with that one. He helped me realize the story needed to end on that sort of note. I think he’s mad I didn’t reference tectonic plates overtly, though. 

So after alllll that, I turned in a “vibe,” and then Genevieve imposed a structure. As long as the meaning is there, and thinking is there, and the reporting is there, she’s incredibly good at taking a 10K+ word, half-shaped hunk of clay, and helping me finish the sculpture while preserving the “me”-ness of the story. She trimmed away a lot of the excess so that the beats landed, and I didn’t step on my own points, or joke the joke, etc. I owe her a lot.  

The most gobstopping, crucial moment in this story for me was this:

…I cringed in ways I didn't know I could.

Ahh, the “dear white friends,” paragraph. I was incredibly hesitant to write that. I get why it was an effective moment, but I don’t like “I”-ing so much in pieces, and love to find a work around. I tried the third person, a second person approach, a royal We — all that shit. But the ‘I’ was the most impactful. 

Look, it’s not like I’m Jane Elliott over here, but that section felt so painfully true of the way so many supposedly smart, woke white people offloaded their guilt or indulged themselves this summer (I'm reminded of the "white signs at Black protests" piece) instead of taking a backseat and operating with grace/a deft touch. I think we both know some of the same people in New York, who work in media. At the very least, I imagine plenty of your friends are smart, self-aware people. Off that, a two-parter:

(A) On a scale of "singular" to "deeply emblematic," where do you rate that experience with all of your years working in media, or even just living in a city as supposedly cosmopolitan as New York?

(B) Have any of the people who reached out over the summer during the protests read that passage, and reached out to you again with a reaction? 

I run the risk of losing some friends, etc, here, so I won’t go into too much detail, but I think that beat [in the story] is deeply emblematic of my time in media/life. Like: Spinal Tap it goes to 11, emblematic. It’s just taken different forms over the years: 2020’s Venmo reparations were something different in 2011, but the core is the same. 

To answer your second question: I once had a dear white dude friend ask me a question about growing up in a predominantly white neighborhood, and I was drunk enough to get really real with him. At some point, he got so uncomfortable, I’m pretty sure he dumped a glass of red wine on his pants to escape to the bathroom, and end the convo. I know there are a few people close to me, or not so close to me, who see themselves in that paragraph, but nobody has said anything, really.  

Is there anything you left on the cutting room floor — any darlings you had to kill — that you'd wanna run here?

I met so many good characters in the Montclair universe that didn’t make it into the story, or couldn’t be fully developed into standalone characters in the story. There was this one woman, a real estate agent, who told me she knew "where all the bodies were buried” in Montclair I was obsessed with. She was an amazing gossip, was able to get me a lot of information I needed from people who probably wouldn’t have spoken to me without her. She kept calling herself “a mouthy white woman!” And let it be known: She only spoke to me because I wrote a post for The Cut about Jason Derulo’s dick, and she loves Jason Derulo. Like, that was her vetting process. If I could have, I would have written 2,000 words just about her. 

Let’s talk about The Cut for a sec. Stella Bugbee’s out as EIC, Lindsay Peoples Wagner is in. Stella built that thing, really — I remember being at the little media rollout for it, and I don't think anyone could've imagined the impact it had on the overall New York brand, or that its impact on so many things — womens' media, women-run media — can be overstated. Am I being hyperbolic here? What do you think the magazine/site is losing with Stella out, or rather, what do you think her most profound influence on it was? 

Stella’s still at the mag! She’s editor-at-large. She’ll be shaping ideas and packages and projects and writing a lot, and hopefully still feeding me good ideas when she doesn’t have time to write them. But: It’s a different vibe working alongside her, versus working under her. I’m really excited for the next iteration of The Cut, because it’s fun to watch things evolve — but you’re not being hyperbolic when you talk about her impact.

I’m mourning the end of this Cut era. It’s gonna sound kind of asskissy, but I’m the thinker I am — and honestly, the writer I am — because Bugbee told me to stop jazz-handing my way through every blog post. She pushed a lot of us to be better thinkers and writers, to not to be afraid of critical thought, not to be afraid of the counterintuitive take, to question why everyone’s fawning over the same person or thing—and if you decided to fawn over it, to really get at the heart of the obsession.

She also taught me never to forsake context, empathy, and fucking good taste. She shaped a lot of us who are just currently starting to hit our career stride. The media world is a bit better because she imparted the wisdom, and we’re out there trying to put it into action. 

Last Questions: Are you off book leave now, and back in the saddle at New York? How's Horny coming (heh, sorry) along? Finally, what's next for you, and what're your big plans for 2021, AKA, the Summer of Love?

I’m fully back in the saddle! Working on Horny and another TBD project in my off hours (thank god we have nothing to do). But I’m eyeing a Summer 2022 release for Horny, so I can make the most of reporting in the Bacchanal to come. 

[This interview was lightly edited for clarity but emphasis on “lightly” because Allison’s just that fuckin’ good.]

ALSO:

• Here’s that Jason Derulo post Allison referenced.

• Go visit the site for Allison’s upcoming book, Horny, The Horny Census. Do your part and fill out the horny census. Let each hornball be counted.

• Follow Allison on The Twitter.

• Oh, and here’s that Reeves Wiedeman story on Bieber in Montclair that Allison described as a demented ‘Bye Bye Birdie.’ It’s funny as shit.

Guys, please give it up for Allison P. Davis. I got nothing else today, except to say: PRESS CLIPS will be returning shortly. Maybe something about a downtown party? Or maybe something about that Gawker/Apple TV show? Or maybe something actually revealing on Substack! We’ll see! Who knows! That last one was a bit of a hot mess, yeah? Well, friends, you ain’t seen shit yet. Stay tuned. In the mean time, FOSTERTALK is free, and you know where to put those tips.

[Oh, and did you read that whole bit about the Adrienne Lenker record? You should.]

‘Meantime, never forget: You can’t be nobody’s lover (‘til you’re somebody’s friend).

Do with it what you will, that’ll be all for today, class dismissed. Thank you for your continued support of FOSTERTALK, more soon. As ever, -f.