48. The only newsletter I'll ever write about sports
Go blue!
Today's letter includes: The word that’s trending on dating apps, a new restaurant with 3 bars all dedicated to a different alcohol, the chairs you used to eat burritos on are now collectors items, and the best waffle in the world, apparently.
Hi friends. It’s been an eventful first half of the week.
First of all, Go Blue, because Michigan defeated UConn for the NCAA men’s basketball title. I don’t really dabble in sports, but when my alma mater is doing well some of my more sports-inclined friends make it hard to ignore. And I enjoy learning fun facts about the players.
For example, Aday Mara is 7' 3" and hails from Spain. His major at the University of Michigan? Spanish.
Or Elliot Cadeau, who is half Haitian and half Swedish and was born in Brooklyn. He seems to have an abundance of brand deals, but I can’t say he’s the most expressive member of the team. I particularly enjoyed his partnership with Wendy's, where he eats a chicken nugget with pain in his eyes and looks generally miserable. Based on nothing but this video, I think Elliot Cadeau hates Wendy’s.
I decided I had to share it. After the initial shock from the group that I shared a sports related video, a friend who is a Creative Director at a big ad house told our group chat, “It’s the type of content that I try to warn clients about. He’s wearing a hat he clearly was just given. Also, he’s not known for ‘dunking’ and yet that is the theme of the video.”
“Hahaha ‘but we can’t afford Yaxel,’” our VP of experiential friend jokes back.
For the marketers in the room, a good reminder to try to not be Wendy’s, or you’ll get turned into a little sticker we share in the group chat.
Rumor has it that Substack is suppressing free content. If you’d like to resist the algorithm pushing paid content only, then liking, sharing, quoting and restacking this newsletter will help! <3
Art! Last night, I went to the opening of the new MoMA exhibit on Marcel Duchamp with Christina Daniels. Member previews start April 9th and it opens to the public April 12–August 22. It was interesting to see his early paintings and his rotoreliefs. Don’t worry, the urinal is there too.
I’ll be at the IFPDA print fair VIP Preview this Thursday. Public hours are this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
Simon Kim tested 50 types of water for his martinis. The man who gave us caviar-topped chicken nuggets and a steakhouse with a two-hour wait (Cote), is back, and he’s calling this one his Sistine Chapel. Bar Chimera just opened at 550 Madison as a three-bar, 60-foot-ceilinged monument to wine, whiskey, and the martini. The house martinis are pre-batched, frozen, and made with a proprietary water blend after the team tested 50+ formulations for the perfect pH and mineral content.
Speaking opportunity: Outdoor media is seeking media, brand, creator, and CEO speakers for Outdoor Media Summit 2026. You can apply here.
Nordstrom is hiring a Senior Specialist focused on Business PR in Seattle for $87,500 to $145,500. Dr. Squatch is in the market for a Associate Director of Brand Marketing, hybrid in NYC at $150,000 to $170,000. If you want to run growth marketing for Duolingo Chess you can bring in $330,000—$550,000 USD.
Whimsy is trending. Hinge reports a 143 percent increase in profiles mentioning the word over the last six months. Google searches for “whimsy” are up 72 per cent in the last 12 months, while the social media sites Instagram, X and TikTok have seen interest rise 117 per cent. Moe Ari Brown, a dating expert for Hinge told the Times: “This desire for whimsical dating reflects a broader cultural shift away from over-seriousness, over-curation and sameness.”
Shock exit. Paramount President Jeff Shell is leaving the entertainment giant, the company confirmed. His exit comes amid a lawsuit alleging disclosure of confidential company information to a man who claims he was Shell's consultant.
Hello, I’d like to make a deal. What do I need to do to have enough money to buy this former 19th-century carriage house and stable in Crown Heights?
A stray dog in Greece accidentally out-evolved us all. Researchers discovered a wild hybrid in the mountains that is 55% dog and 45% wolf — the result of a stray breeding with a wild wolf. While we’re out here debating whether to get off the couch, this dog said “actually, I’d like to rejoin the food chain.”
Flip phones by Apple. Apple is ‘on track’ to deliver its first foldable iPhone in September.
The Chipotle chair has become a collectible. The generation raised on burrito bowls is now buying, flipping, and hoarding the chairs from Chipotle. When Chipotle arrived in 1993 with its industrial minimalism, it was a lightning bolt to the cluttered, cartoony fast food landscape. Now those wobbly metal chairs are apparently nostalgia objects.
Everyone who’s been crying about cancel culture for the last decade can officially stand down. Louis C.K. is headlining Netflix’s comedy festival. He was cancelled in 2017 for sexual misconduct but has completed his rehabilitation arc and landed at one of the most coveted comedy stages around. Kathy Griffin would like you to know she is still playing much smaller theaters and promises, for the record, not to do what Louis did. Meanwhile Kanye is fully back, selling out stadiums and dropping albums. Cancel culture, it turns out, has a sliding scale.
Kelly Wearstler x H&M collab. Wearstler’s furniture collaboration with H&M Home and the Swedish brand’s first furniture collab, full stop, just unveiled at Milan Design Week 2026 inside a Baroque palazzo. It launches September 3rd.
Would you wait 8 hours for a waffle? The longest wait for a table in Los Angeles, possibly in the city’s history, is for a waffle. Max & Helen’s, the new diner from Everybody Loves Raymond creator Phil Rosenthal and culinary legend Nancy Silverton, has clocked eight-hour waits on weekend mornings. Silverton also just won the James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award, which she will receive in June, capping four decades that include La Brea Bakery, Osteria Mozza, and apparently, the most important waffle in California.
Watch your crypto! Crypto scams cost over $11 billion last year, according to a recent FBI report, making them the nation’s largest source of online financial fraud. Americans were defrauded out of more than $20 billion online, and crypto scams accounted for more than half of those losses.
Sometimes success comes late. Min Jin Lee is back with a new novel. American Hagwon, the third book in what will be a quartet about the Korean diaspora, drops September 29, nearly a decade after Pachinko came out.
I didn’t realize that Pachinko didn’t do well its first year. It was actually a flop initially. Lee told NY Mag: “When a reader actually gets to a book and likes it, and they pass it along to other people or share it with their book clubs, that’s far more meaningful than for it to be an out-of-the-box success, which I’ve never had anyway.”
Thanks for reading!
Yes! Let's figure out a way to get the carriage house - ha ha