FOSTERTALK PRESENTS: Summer Fridays.

NYC's new nightlife destination, America's hot new bowl, quitting therapy, private clubbing, gatekeeping, and oh, yeah: Your favorite newsletter is back — for some fun in the sun.

May 24, 2024

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 t~~he 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.

Printworks had to shut down for a few years due to land development, and Broadwick’s new club in London is (wait for it) on the outskirts of the city, in an old Ikea, and called Drumsheds. (I know — she gives Stefon.) I saw Sugababes there with Shygirl and a few other acts back in December as part of a queer party, False Idols (tagline: “BE GAY, DO CRIMES”) and it, too was one of the more wild nightlife experiences I've had in a minute. Highly recommend.

I’d done this in fits and spurts over the last decade, but back then, the excuses had been both actual jobs as a media columnist and “young dumb and full of come,” whereas — at that particular juncture — there was no excuse, no money involved, just the rock solid logic of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Which makes our senior editor Vic our Scottie Pippen, makes Maggie our young Steve Kerr, and I don’t need to tell anyone who knows us that Noor is our Dennis Rodman, and will eventually go on to repeatedly guest host 90s-era House of Style, and will obviously be the most entertaining talking head when our The Last Dance finally hits streamers.