The Best Paragraph Anyone Has Read On a Beach This Summer

More importantly: Summer Fridays Radio, Ep. 2! Plus, Bezos in the club, conversational chaos, vibe destroyers, vacation darts, and airport lounges. Your favorite summer read is back!

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.

Cala Saldata, Ibiza, last summer.

Holy fucking shit, there are so many of you here. Call it the Emily Sundberg effect, or perhaps you came via the official newsletter of Substack (?!?). 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 Liz Lenkinski 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 Molly Young, 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 James Del 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 James Del 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.

1. For my money, those are 21 perfect words in succession, but there is in fact context for them — wonderful context — right here.

2. Fun fact: TimesSelect is literally the first entry on the Wikipedia page for Paywalls under the section for “Abandoned Paywall Initiatives.” Lol. Not listed in that section: My short-lived FOSTERTALK 1.0 plan involving a “reverse paywall,” wherein I let people pay me not to write, or attempt to pay other people not to write. Tell me that monetizing buying literal or figurative silence isn’t one of the five Next Big Things, I dare you.