The Single Greatest Vacation Help Hotline Answer In The Recent History Of Online Media
Also: The beach read magazine of the summer, the one food media outlet that doesn't suck, the 2026 Summer Camp Report, that one pop-star who went to that one club, and SUMMER FRIDAYS RADIO!!!!
Table of Contents:
The return of Summer Fridays Radio.
The Beach-Read Magazine Of The Summer (and A Perfect Infographic).
The Pop Star Who Violated Zeus/Dave’s Law, And Now The World Is Broken
The Summer Fridays Vacation Help Hotline: A Sicilian Problem
The Summer Camp Report, 2026
1. Summer Fridays Radio: Sultry Summer Nights
As ever, don’t call it a podcast: Summer Fridays Radio is finally back. And this time, with an episode meant for the first of those sweltering, sultry, hot nights signposting the near-end of the Dog Days of Summer. Included herein, the sweets sounds of Hydra, Sicily, Ibiza, and oh yes:
An uber-rare early-80s “How is that not coke-folk-era Fleetwood Mac?!” masterpiece (that’s most certainly not Fleetwood Mac)
Two of the greatest, most unlikely, and fundamentally ripping soul covers you’ve never heard
A little-heard late night city pop groove from a cult classic album (and contemporary of Ryuichi Sakamoto, who plays on the record)
And revisiting what, by any reasonable measure, is a Song of the Summer Hall of Fame first-ballot contender
Take it from another satisfied customer:
You’re gonna enjoy it. I promise. Click on the embed above to listen to it, or find it on Soundcloud right here.
RELATED, IN MATTERS OF MUSIC: The Blackbird Spyplane summer mix. Very good, very fun, very BBSP, very Steve Reich.
ALSO RELATED, IN MATTERS OF PLAYLISTS: Obama put both “Where Is My Husband?” and the new Strokes song on the same chaotic playlist. This is like the opposite of finding out George W. Bush published a book of paintings of immigrants (seriously). Seriously! Look at that goddamn playlist! And then tell me we’re not being sent an SOS, or that this man is not trying to bring about Disclosure Day?! Sheer chaos. Speaking of George W. Bush, to quote the man’s greatest contribution to American history: That is some weird shit.
2. The Beach-Read Magazine Of The Summer
Gatekeeping: Increasingly not-amoral, given the ways your average person with a small following will take a small wonderful thing and then forcefully filch anything special about it for personal gain under the guise of having discovered it, regardless of the impact on that thing. Go on Instagram, watch any content about traveling to Japan, and you’ll immediately understand what I’m talking about. Note that I can talk shit because this newsletter (clearly) isn’t monetized! Anyway, all that said, I’d feel terrible keeping a secret of and taking money out of the mouths of the good people at The Fence, who are (and no matter the audience, will likely remain) flush with good things in their heads.
Much like food magazine Vittles is handily the best food publication going these days (see their most recent, The Influencer Issue), The Fence (on Substack at The Fence Magazine) is also a bunch of Brits, putting on an absolute goddamn clinic when it comes to interesting, novel, funny magazine-making, especially when compared to the dearth of interesting ideas in American media, who are, collectively, singularly and chronically obsessed with brand-building above almost entirely all else. It’d be unfair to The Fence to accurately sum up its contents or its style of humor, except to say that I did take a scan of the following infographic that they ran in their most recent issue, and have laughed several times this week, randomly thinking about it.
Please enjoy, subscribe to The Fence, thank me later. (Also, if you live in New York, they sell it at the New Museum’s store and Printed Matter, a.k.a. the best bookstore in the city.) Also, really: Read that new Vittles issue, which starts with the words “Food writing is dead.” and then proceeds to pluck and skin the whole of food media in a way that really should embarrass anyone making media about food who isn’t writing for Vittles.
3. The Pop Star Who Violated Zeus/Dave’s Law, And Now The World Is Broken
“Zeus’ law is a version of archaic Greek xenia: the idealised relationships between strangers, hosts and guests, who must treat one another with mutual respect, thereby forming multi-generational bonds between unrelated families.” - Emily Wilson
“Of all the cliche photos to take at Nightmoves, the sign? Really? Did you just get off the transplant train from ‘West Village’ on your way to the exotic wilds of Grand Street? Dua Lipa? More like Dua Better!” - Foster Kamer
4. The Summer Fridays Vacation Help Hotline: The Sicilian Problem(s)
Dear Summer Fridays -
Sicily. Help?
-Jon
Jon -
First, if you’ve been taken in a vendetta (Italian word!) and you’re seeking material assistance, I assure you: More than guns, more than drugs, more than black market organs, the Sicilian mafia traffics almost exclusively on good vibes! Just four words will get you out of any sticky situation down there: Il conto, per favore.
I should also remind you that this is, in fact, about as much help as you’ll get in Sicily these days, as the American embassy situation down there right now is, let’s just say, completamente fottuto. Fun fact: The American ambassador to Italy is one Tillman Fertitta,1 whose ancestry invented the Fertitta, a Sicilian midlands specialty. This delicious regional cousin of the frittata stands vertically, on its end, like a beautiful, eggy monolith — you’ve just got to try it!
Nah, I’m just fucking with you, that’s a sponge, and Fertitta is the esteemed billionaire author of Shut Up and Listen (no, really) who owns the Golden Nugget, the Houston Rockets, Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., and as of a few years ago, Keens Steakhouse, because the old gods are all dead. This is all to say, Jon, that if the remnants of La Cosa Nostra have booster cables biting your balls right now, Amb. Frittata sounds like exactly the kind of guy to do nothing about it (unless you have a 24K Players Club card, in which case, while following the car carrying your balls out of the parking garage, you might get your parking validated — might). Say ‘ciao’ to the days when you could Amanda Knox your way through the old country and fly home first class.
Now, if you’re looking for travel advice to Sicilia? Well, let’s start here:
Do Sardinia instead. Jokes, again, but only so much. Here’s the thing Jon: Pound-for-pound, Sardinia is a simpler proposition with a higher batting average. There’s less to choose from, it’s more rustic, and it’s more of a pain in the ass to get to, which means tourism there is still relatively new — the first NYC > Sardinia direct just showed up this year. Sicily, on the other hand?
Less than the mainland, but more than Sardinia, it’s touristy. I almost drove a Vespa off a cliff in Taormina in 2007 — 15 years before the gays would try to murder Jennifer Coolidge off the coast there, thus, truly blowing up the spot — and it was touristy even then. The last time I was in Sicily was as a +1 to an incredible summer 2019 wedding on Ortigia, in Siracusa. The night of the nuptials, I ended up in flagrante ten hours later following the after-after party with a fellow +1 on a sea wall overlooking the Mediterranean — this one, actually — just as the sun started to come up. If this sounds romantic, and incredible, I assure you:
Nope. Mostly involved fumbling, scrapes from concrete, and eventually, mutual regret. Eight hours later, at the brunch, someone tried to hold my hand, and I briefly thought it was a case of mistaken identity, until I realized: Oh. Hi? You know, someone should really do a study, like in Another Round, except instead of finding the perfect amount of booze in one’s system for peak intellectual performance, they need to measure the precise B.A.C. at which two adults consent to make a mutual mistake. How have we, as a society, not invented some kind of CAPTCHA test for people about to fuck after a wedding?
Anyway: Sicily! It’s an island. If I had to plan a vacation to Sicily today — mostly on mainland Sicily, not any of its surrounding smaller islands, like the one with the hotel from A Bigger Splash — right now, it’d go like this:
Land in Palermo, where you’ll stay for two to four days. Immediately go to the market, eat anything fried, but especially the panelle. If you’re desperate to head to the beach, don’t linger, head straight to Trapani. If not, hang out in Palermo for two nights, explore it. Maybe go to some of the surrounding towns like Cefalù or Monreale for the views and the UNESCO World Heritage duomo.
Then, you’re driving an hour and change west to Trapani. This is gonna be your base for two or three nights. Explore the town for the night, and get a good night’s sleep.
The next morning: Get an umbrella, towels, water, and snacks, and get in the car — we’re going to Spiaggia Zingaro, a nature preserve with the best beaches in Sicily (per the people who rank these things, who are often right about these things) and some cool, Lawrence Weiner-esque posted signage I would steal and put on my wall. Here’s a map.
Some beaches there require a bit more of a schlep by land than others, so if I were you, I’d just hire a goddamn boat. In fact, the guy who posted that map — bald, Italian, skin like a toasted walnut shell — he looks about right for the job. Use Claudio or ChatGPTutti to translate and get to work, tell him FOSTERTALK sent you. He’ll have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about but if he smiles and nods along, that’s your man. Otherwise, sack up and hike it, or get a different boat. Find some granita when you’re done, or get it for breakfast, but if you don’t get granita in the summer in Italy, you’ve fucked up — bad. Do not pass go, head straight to the Vatican and give money to the child sex abuse cult with the great art collection. Send me a postcard from the World’s Greatest Post Office while you’re there.Assuming you got the granita and you’re not in a Vatican dungeon repenting on the good advice of this extremely secular overcircumsized Jew, the second of your beach days will be on the biggest of the Egadi Islands off the coast near Palermo — from Trapani, take a ferry to Favignana for the day, or stay there for two nights. It’s a small island you’ll get to via ferry. Not big, not a lot of cars, you can rent a bike or a scooter. Don’t have the balls for a scooter? Yes, actually, you do. Scoot your way to Cala Rossa. Or, again, hire a boat, have ‘em schlep you around. A boat is always the move, except on a Monday in Ibiza.
If you haven’t spent the night on Favagana, wake up in Trapani, and head out to Levanzo. It’s even smaller than Favignana. Enjoy being somewhere nobody else is for a moment. No, really: Outside of the villagers, you’re gonna be, like, the only people there except for maybe Miuccia Prada, who owns, from what I understand, either the villa there or the only two villas there. Take a moment to bask in the furthest reaches of your trip, the most fucked off you’ll be for a minute. Consider: If a stroke or some crumbling limestone took you out right now, that wouldn’t be such a bad way to go. Let the aural textures of the place wash over you, and remind you that New York is just a place, media is an industry built on making things that distract people from one another, and just because people can’t read anymore doesn’t mean they can actually watch or listen to any of the things anyone makes, either, they’re just waiting for someone to say something that they can say something about, then, someone to listen, someone to hear them, because who, really, is heard anymore? Hear this: Water, hitting rocks. Murmured Italian about the two American or Canadian weirdos that landed on their craggy doorstep, a backwater of a backwater of a backwater, the light bewilderment and possible (though unlikely) admiration. The sound of a flint lighting as you get ready to blast another v-dart, the sound of the spoon shattering the already microscopic icicles of your granita into further pieces of joy served cold and sweet, the sound of you living a little, finally, for fuck’s sake. Spend two hours rescheduling your flights and extending your rental car so you can stay another day or two, then find a hotel nearby, and spend the night with none of your toiletries, and hear the sound of the Mediterranean breeze that’s already blown past Marettimo, to the inside of your window, overlooking a bay of crystalline water, and do the thing you never do enough, and just look at it. You have one job, and that’s it.
Also, anytime you need food recs in Italy: Trust Katie Parla, and Katie Parla only. Always great, when someone really knows their shit.
5. The Summer Camp Report, 2026
To paraphrase a great monologuist, the beauty of younger generations — what they’re truly useful for — is how they often shine a light backwards into the darkness, to show the rest of us the way forward, into the future.
Other times, they’re good for reflecting upon just how much better you had it than those unfortunate little TikTok-addicted Labubu-brained shits. Suckers! As a former summer camp attendee and later, a counselor, I indulge an especially-evil-yet-also-gratitude-oriented interest in knowing just how much better my generation had it than they do. For example:
Here’s a Bloomberg filing from earlier this summer, “Summer Camp Isn’t Free From Teen Career Anxiety,” about how summer camp has become a networking exercise for counselors.
In The Cut’s “Scary Stories From The Summer Camp Infirmary,” campers on GLP-1s, ticks, allergies, asthma, heat stroke: All things summer campers now deal with.
Also in The Cut: “I Swear, They’re Flying In Nobu Sushi for Their Kids,” about influencer culture invading summer camp.
In Page Six, there’s “$18K-a-summer Maine camp sues private jet firm over problem flights.”
And who can forget, from earlier this summer, the way Camp Blue Star fell apart because of an Israeli bond default scandal.
And we’ll otherwise avoid discussion of adult summer camps, which sound like their own special brand of hell.
What even is any of this? In a word: Unrecognizable. Yung Foster’s summer camp years were marked above all else by mischief, deviance, some form of near-hourly risk to life and limb, and of course, sexual escapades — things that would blanch even the most stoic of summer camp insurers. The deal was: Your parents pay a reasonable amount to get rid of you for four-to-eight-weeks, and in exchange, a handful of laughably underpaid hormonal weedsmokers would do their best to keep them alive, the most unfortunate byproduct of which would be an affinity for Phish, Guster, and/or Dispatch. Whatever kind of summer this is for you, I assure you: It’s nothing if not on a more innocent baseline than whatever is to follow. Get out there and make the most of it. Next year, there will always be more ticks.
LOL, weird fuckin’ note to end on, right? Yeah, I had no idea where I was going with that, either. My excuse: It’s Friday night, we’re almost through the Dog Days, and we’ve still got plenty of summertime left. I’m getting out there. I suggest you do the same. Thank you, as ever, for reading and listening and dignifying any of this noise. It means the world.
This is the 11th Summer Friday. Five more to go.
As ever,
-f.
Being from Las Vegas, I can tell you: This is a third-rate casino owner. Steve Wynn might’ve been an inveterate serial sexual predator, but hey, could the guy build a casino, or what? Meanwhile, Tillman Fertitta is just a former MLM guy who eats up all the assets of guys like Steve Wynn after he built them and made them great — he’s the largest individual shareholder of Wynn Resorts, he also owns the Golden Nugget, etc — and somehow graduated to bribing the president for an diplomatic posting. Cool, good work America, etc.
Indeed, hire a goddamn boat.
The hotline could be its very own Substack. PS. Katie Parla never misses.