The Best Party I Didn't Go to This Summer

Also, huge news — Summer Fridays Radio is back. Plus: How to Know When It's Over, an Ibiza PSA, the Worst Complaint of the Summer, and Hot Temporal Determinations.

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)

Zaria Parvez

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)

Maybe that’s the name of his 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.

Pictured: Body, absent soul.

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.