Sex and the Summer: Big Hole vs. Little Pole
Sex, The Hamptons, Sardinia, The Row, the real summer movie villains, status pasta, various other receptacles, vacation games, and more? Oh yes: The Second Summer Friday of 2026 starts right now.
Today is Friday, June 5th, 2026.
It’s the 3rd Summer Friday of the year, 13 to go until Labor Day.
In theaters this weekend: Masters of the Universe, an IP-resurrection extravaganza starring Jared Leto as Skeletor (HA, perfect) that somehow managed a Metacritic score of 52.
In New York City, D.J. Harvey is back stateside, playing The Ruins at Knockdown on Saturday afternoon.
In sports: Game 2 of the Knicks/Spurs NBA Finals runs on Friday night, while F1 fans are watching 83rd running of the Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday.
Finally, around the world today, the weather: New York City: 87/69, partly sunny • Malibu: 67/59, sunny • Nuoro: 80/59, cloudy • The Cotswolds: 61/50, clou—
—holy shit, will you look at that: Back for a second week in a row! This hasn’t happened in two years! And I’ve got nothing less than you, the single greatest readership in the history of newsletters, to thank. Before we go any further, let me please remind you: The tipline remains open. Tips, gossip, feedback, ideas, secrets, ennui, id, mash notes, and “hotdogs or legs” beach photos, you know where to send ‘em. Shall we?
Table of Contents:
Sex and the Summer: Little Peens, Big Vagines, and Manholes Galore
Vacation: Your New Favorite Parlor Game to Play While Away
Food + Travel: The Status Pasta of the Summer
Cinema + Villainy: Scoundrels Who Deserve To Die, And Also, Excellent Merch
1. Behold, The Summer of Size Wars: Small Peen vs. Big Vagine
Or: To Floppy Woo, thanks for everything.
All aspiring media impresarios, gather round, as I recite the talmudic wisdom: Want people to read you? Easy: Make ‘em freak out about their sexual organs.
How to groom it, dress it, use it, film it, bop it, what could make it fall off/rot like an overripe banana — there are endless permutations of ways to surface sexual anxieties in people of all ages, all going totally fucking nuts about their fucking implements! And they all get people to click.
And these stories — while every now and again born of merit (see: covid “dicksad,” monkeypox, etc) — are for the most part just the same narratives arguing Why! They’re! Relevant! Now! when, in fact, they’ve never gone away, not once in human history.1 In the immortal words of Mark Twain: The past doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes (no more at times when it make a fuss over its dick/muff/buss).2
So! Given the events of the last year, New York’s recent Big Panic Over Little Penis feature — using the “looksmaxxing” Trump-era so-and-so as a timely peg (heh) to talk about dick size anxiety — was inevitable.3 Less inevitable, however? The Big Vagina Discourse. Which is exactly what (who else) the New York Post has tried to start with “The Hamptons’ hottest new status symbol is a tighter vagina.”
Credit where it’s due: As first lines go, you could do worse than “It sure is a tight market in the Hamptons.” But that’s about as much as you’ll find there worth reading. Four things to note:
The story ran nearly a week to the day after New York mag’s dick anxiety story went up (actual lol). I regret to inform you that the Occam’s Razor explanation of the New York Post reporting out Big Vagina Anxiety within the same week as New York’s little dick story is less a matter of coincidence, and more a matter of the morally-upstanding creative masterminds at the Post letting no sleight against heteronormativity go unchallenged…
…especially when the writer is New York Post staffer Doree Lewak. Imagine what you’d get if you threw Bari Weiss is a cloning machine and slammed the button until out walked something sapped of any savvy, charm, and IQ points, a writer whose entire oeuvre can be summed up by her painting our new mayor as an ISIS sleeper agent when she’s not covering the rage over menu changes at Pura Vida. Fun.
It’s true that “designer gynecologist” Dr. Amir Marashi — who’s racked up press hits for the same vagina-anxiety narrative over the past decade — opened an office in Sag Harbor this year. But Marashi himself already said that plenty of his quotes were taken out of context for a “catchy headline” in the Post. Did the “small vaginas are a big deal in _____” story also run when he opened offices in Dubai, Houston, Miami, or Bahrain, where Marashi’s other offices are? As far as I can tell, it didn’t!
If I opened a Big Balls Emporium in the Hamptons this summer, could I get the New York Post to write a story about how elephantiasis is the new must-have testicle fashion of the summer for men in the Hamptons? Actually, probably, yeah.4
Even more: Vagina anxiety stories are nothing new! From an October 2003 issue of The New York Observer — the newspaper that birthed Sex & the City — enjoy the George Gurley classic, concerning The Floppy Woo:
“I’m sitting at the Free State Brewery and this gorgeous girl from the North Shore — perfect and petite, looks like Alyssa Milano — is walking across the room. As usual, heads turn, jaws drop. She owns the place. As she passes, the guy I’m sitting next to leans in and whispers, ‘My roommate slept with her. Floppy woo .’ He said he felt like he was like having sex with a glass of water. From then on, her spell on me was broken.”
That night, I went up to actress Chloë Sevigny at a party in Soho.
“They come in all shapes and sizes,” she said. “Unfortunately, now what’s in vogue is very small.” She said she’d heard that Greta Garbo was “always very embarrassed” about being “really big down there,” and that she’d recently asked her gynecologist about surgeries that make women smaller and tighter, “because I was curious about it.”
I asked Ms. Sevigny if she ever worried about her, uh … ?
” No ,” she said, with a big smile.
In this George Gurley “classic,” the Observer reporter:
Accosts (among others) Helen Gurley Brown, Macaulay Culkin, the co-creator of VH1’s Pop-Up Video, Dean Winters, and Naomi Watts with questions about big vaginas.
Talks to a doctor who tells him — 23 years ago! — that “petite is in.”
And includes the key tell of any “vagina size” story, right in one of the first paragraphs:
But what about the flip side, I’ve started to wonder: How come no one ever talks about a woman’s “size”? Every straight man knows-even if he doesn’t dare mention this to his wife or girlfriend-that ladies’ packages come in different sizes. And we’re not talking about external aesthetic differences: We’re talking about … the Grip.
Even 23 years ago, the dialogue over vagina size goes hand in hand with (and is invented by) those offended by the notion of (or those projecting) dick size anxiety! I’m about as likely to espouse gender studies wisdom as Andrea Dworkin is to spit 2 Live Crew bars, but ladies, I can tell you this, with all of my years of experience in New York, in media, and with heterosexuality: This is not, nor has it ever been, an actual trend. It’s fear-mongering invented by the psychologically small-dicked and gynecologists trying to rake it in.
No man I’ve ever met in all my years has ever talked about this being a problem, and it’s not like I’ve got a posse of big dicked fellas hung-ing around, either: I’m an emasculated New York City Jew who grew up much around the same. For both genders, ultimately, size only matters inasmuch as one freaks out about it, and the only people who really have anything to worry about are the tightasses who could (figuratively, and potentially literally) use some loosening.
What I’m saying is that these self-conscious straights should all just give in and do anal. It’s cheaper, still illegal in some places, and solves all the problems of the above while giving you a reason to do poppers — literally, more fun in every possible way than either gender freaking out about size. This has been another public service of FOSTERTALK Presents: Summer Fridays. World, you’re welcome.
2. The Best New Breakfast Game/Gambling Construct For You and Your Loved Ones To Play On Vacation This Summer
For all your summer trip planning.
No vacation is complete without a good running bit or two. Here’s a free one: At the beginning of every morning on vacation, get everyone with you to whip out their phones, and show you their screentime. Whoever’s got the most from the day before buys breakfast for everyone else.
That’s it. That’s the entire thing. And no exceptions! Only doctors, nurses, paramedics, and firefighters save lives, everyone else works in marketing, basically, and thus, their job is bullshit, and certainly doesn’t need doing from a phone on vacation, let alone in the presence of others. I did this in El Salvador with a friend in March, and it changed the texture of the trip for the better in every way possible. Also: We really gotta shame people for being on their phones more. Same with shooting on a phone camera: GAUCHE! Can this be the summer we start judging ourselves and definitely others for using phone cameras (unless you’re incriminating police)? Reader, I think it can. Remember, the panopticon is anathema to vibes!
READERS: Do you have any games or running bits on vacation? I want to hear about them.
3. Status Pasta!
Sussing out whether or not the “world’s rarest pasta” tastes worth the trip to get it, let alone, is actually all that rare.
Fun fact: A few days ago, Delta launched the first direct flight from NYC to Sardinia, a.k.a. Sicily’s craggy, weird, pastoral sister island that people with better taste than everyone else have been hitting in high season for years.
For the uninitiated, think of Sardinia as the Elizabeth Olsen to Sicily’s Mary-Kate and Ashley: Historically lesser-known but arguably more talented than the latter in most ways, except where it concerns being shady and ripping people off.5 Mi dispiace ma non mi dispiace, Sicily fans!
ANYWAY, among Sardinia’s treasures is what the New York Times recently identified as “the world’s rarest pasta,” su filindeu, in a story called “Pasta Worthy of a Pilgrimage” (featuring some truly lovely Sam Youkilis visuals). The pasta itself, pictured below, is a series of ultra thin latticework noodles served in a lamb brodo along with chunks of melty Pecorino Sardo.
Basically, there’s a special way to make it, and as the story goes, only a couple of small Italian ladies, and only in the hilly roads of Nuoro. And as a tradition, it’s supposedly dying. In 2016, the BBC told readers that only three people in the world know how to make it, inspiring legions of hyperbolic TikTok bait.
Except: We all know better! So does the Times, which linked to that BBC story! Vaunted foodstuff, pain in the ass to get it, mythological status cemented, you’ve heard this one before. Fact is: Not only can you get it outside of Nuoro in Sardinia, but plenty of other places in the world, too:
In Sardinia, outside of Nuoro, you can find it at Cagliari’s ChiaroScuro di Marina Ravarotto and at Sa Mandra in Alghero.
In Rome, you’ll find it at Bentu e Soi, and on the way to the airport, Pascucci al Porticciolo.
Shit, in L.A., Rob Gentile (incredible name)6 knows how to make it. If you’re in Japan and craving Italian food, go to Hyogo, get in touch with the Sardinia Cooking Studio, where Claudia Casu will make it for you there. This guy’s doing it in Singapore, and you can get in Melbourne, too.
So, no, not exactly one-town-in-Sardinia rare, and as far as pasta shapes go, certainly not as rare as Gesù Spaghetti di Meridionale Âtlantà! But it is true that making it is a pain in the ass, and not exactly the kind of thing one can figure out with a YouTube video, and it is one of the (ever-increasingly globalized) world’s few wonderful hyper-regional culinary traditions like it. And that Sardinians, per the Times story, actually do make a pilgrimage to eat it.
Finally, above all: How does this pasta taste? Well, having actually been to Nuoro’s Il Rifugio, and having actually eaten it, I can tell you, in full confidence….
…pretty goddamn good, actually! The cheesy bits are weird but the stringy bits are fun.7 But also you could put asbestos in that broth and I would’ve wolfed it down. Honestly, most pasta in good broth: Pretty goddamn good! I once had an absolutely insane agnolotti in brodo in Sydney, of all places!8 Mamma Mia, mate! And while, except for the most pasta-horny among us, su filindeu probably isn’t worth the trip to Sardinia alone — and if you run into it somewhere else in the world, give it a whirl, I’m sure it’s much the same — as an island, Sardinia’s got plenty to offer to make it a fun stop somewhere along your trip. But if you’re the kinda weirdo who’s gonna go all the way to Sardinia just to stick their beak into a single bowl of pasta, you know what? Respect, whatever, it’s summer, we’ve all got our things. Do you.
4. Summer Villainy: The Blockbuster Scalpers
If you’re a certain Kind Of Person (hi) you spent three hours yesterday screaming at your computer while trying to buy tickets to an IMAX showing of The Odyssey, only to end up with a single 10AM ticket that you’re gonna have to lie to someone at work about at some point in late July. And who’s to blame for this? Fucking scalpers, of course. I’ve long suspected people were scalping IMAX tickets, and now, I know it for a fact.
Here’s a ticket for $300. Three tickets for $600 here! And here are two tickets for $500, in Row C — yes, $500 for the third row of a 75-foot-tall screen, which is great for people with profoundly fucked up necks and, like, giraffes. Speaking of the Mamdani Caliphate, I have no doubt he’d speed to reelection if he rolled out ISIS-style execution videos of these monsters. Big Zo, *makes phone with thumb and pinky* call me.
ELSEWHERE IN MOVIES: We can all agree that those collectors popcorn buckets they’re now selling at movies are both exceedingly stupid and also brilliant marketing gimmicks that we’d never remotely consider owning, yes? But I don’t wanna be a killjoy so, like, eat popcorn out of Groggu’s ass or whatever. Except — if I didn’t live in a New York City apartment, and storage were not at a premium — I would absolutely consider the IMAX Camera Popcorn Bucket, which is easily the most insane, absurd, and for some reason, appealing popcorn bucket that will ever exist. Except that too, is also being scalped on eBay for prices as high as $450. This, honestly, is probably for the best. (That said, I did buy the hat.)
That’ll do it for this week, except to say: Yes, it’s true, SUMMER FRIDAYS RADIO will return. For those who aren’t familiar, please: Familiarize yourself. Play it loud.
Otherwise, get outside, have a great weekend, and thank you all, so much, for bothering to read any of this. Don’t get me wrong, I’d still do this shit without you, but — like all the best parts of summer — it wouldn’t be half as much fun. Really.
As ever,
-f.
“Are Straight Men Ready for the Summer of Speedo?” asked Alyssa Vingan last year, trying to strike fear into the hearts of straight American GQ-reading men who’ve never been to Europe, where — as even the most microdicked overweight hirsute Italian men will stuff his dick in a lycra envelope if it means getting a full tan — it’s always the Summer of Speedo. Much as I enjoy Alyssa’s writing and podcast, stateside, I think it’s safe to say this one didn’t pan out. It’s at least a more hopeful, and less nihilistic approach than Vogue, which regularly tortures women by making fortnightly declarations about pubic hair, bringing it back in 2018, 2021, and several times in 2025 (including, somehow, twice in the same week, though I suspect that second time was simply to run the foaming-at-the-mouth insane headline “Is A Merkin The New Birkin?” as soon as humanely possible.
*weezy voice* ….call me Dr. Screwss.
Though if I’m gonna read 3,400 words of guys freaking out about dick size in 2026, they better be by Brock Colyar. And as ever, they delivered — you can practically taste the straightenfreude, exactly as New York should be.
Admit it: You’ve heard worse ideas.
Real ones know that The Row’s such a goddamn ripoff it’s actually funny! Especially when considering that Michelle(s) Tanner is the marketing genius rivaling all others, to say nothing of their ruling over The Row with an iron fist. Seeing someone wearing The Row isn’t just a great reminder of the small economic justice that is rich people really not knowing how to spend it, it’s also a stark reminder that nobody deserved their Nobel Prize in economics more than 2017 winner Richard “Nudge” Thaler. Who wouldn’t be caught dead in The Row.
(…says Nick Goyim)
James Beard Award-winning and Best American Food Writing 2023-winning type shit right here! Can you believe you get this newsletter for free?!?!?
Also, come on, how great are these water pitchers? The water comes out of ITS BEAK! EEEEE!!!!
CORRECTIONS:
- Yes, I know, the Knicks play tonight (Friday). Not really a correction since I actually just lied on the send to make sure I can finally get a seat at Carmines, bing bong.
- Even though I indicated elsewhere, the Gurley story is from 2003, not 2023. I have no idea what George Gurley was doing in 2023, but if I had to guess, it was probably something pretty funny.
📍 Big Balls Emporium