51. Introducing Secondary
The newsletter isn't changing. The name finally caught up.
Hi friends.
I want to tell you about a bench.
We were upstate house hunting and decided to walk the Windham path to give our dog a little exercise after a long day in the car. As we walked, we came upon an engraved bench, the kind people put up in memory of someone they loved. This one read: “Gerry enjoyed walking but preferred sitting.” Gerry and I have a lot in common.
This is, essentially, the origin story of @cozygirlkristine, my Instagram handle and the name I gave this newsletter when I started it. In a city where your identity is so closely tied to your work, where you’re always moving and doing and optimizing, I wanted to plant a flag for the other thing. The sitting. The gardening on your fire escape. The throwing a dinner party instead of attending a networking event. Sheryl Sandberg told women to lean in, but as the great Ali Wong said: “I don’t want to lean in. I want to lie down.”
I love living in NYC. I love being challenged. I wouldn’t keep choosing startups if I didn’t. But I also chose to switch from B2C to B2B years ago specifically because it gave me the flexibility to also be a person outside of work. I was already working from home six years before COVID.
So when I named this newsletter Cozy Girls, it made sense. It was personal, it was easy, and to be honest, I started this as a creative outlet. I didn’t have a grand vision. I just knew I needed to force myself to produce and share something that was my own, not for the corporation or brand I worked for.
The problem is that the newsletter kept growing into something the name couldn’t quite hold. Across more than 50 dispatches, we’ve sat down with a CNN White House correspondent, gotten candid perspectives from progressive moms on raising kids in a world that’s falling apart, and analyzed the death of the side hustle. We’ve tracked the analog comeback before it hit every marketing deck and covered 12-course tasting menus with the same urgency as antitrust enforcement. Over the past year, this newsletter found 19,000 viewers who apparently also have strong feelings about both prestige television and the latest startup acquisition.
Which brings me to Secondary.
Secondary colors are built on primaries. They require something to already exist before they can do their best work, and then they make the whole thing better. That’s the reader I’ve always been writing for: someone who didn’t arrive blank. You arrived with taste, opinions, a group chat full of links you’d already seen, and an identity that extends well beyond your job title. Secondary meets you there.
There’s also a secondary glaze reference in there, for the pottery people. It’s the layer that requires courage to apply. The one that embraces imperfection and produces the most interesting results. Secondary is the layer that makes you sharper at work and more interesting at the table.
Here’s what isn’t changing: the voice, the format, the frequency, the drink recs. The Party Talk. The unsolicited opinions about where power is moving and where to eat on a Tuesday. The belief that culture is business and business is culture and you can’t fully understand either without paying attention to both.
What is changing: the look. Thank you to my soon to be sister-in-law Abby Wilkinson for the design!
Cozy Girls was a newsletter. Secondary is a newsletter that knows what it is and has room to become more.
If you’ve been here since the beginning, thank you. If you just found this, hi. Either way, say it with me: subscribe if you want to be the most interesting person at your next dinner party. :p
If you missed last week:
If you just got here, some greatest hits:
Party Talk. 🍸
Rumor has it that Substack is suppressing free content. If you’d like to resist the algorithm pushing paid content only, then liking, sharing, and commenting on this newsletter will help! <3
A different kind of pasta timer. This isn’t new but it is delightful. Pasta brand Barilla made Spotify playlists timed to match each pasta shape’s cooking time so you can cook without a timer. The creative campaign was created by Publicis Italy. The playlists are called things like “Boom Bap Fusilli,” “Moody Day Linguine,” “Pleasant Melancholy Penne,” “Top Hits Spaghetti” and “Simply Classics Linguine.”
This new music video for Gener8ion and Young Lean's 'Storm’ directed by Romain Gavras is making the rounds and rightfully so, it’s pretty cool. I have two thoughts 1. smoking is so back (unfortunately) and 2. I can’t believe I found out about it on LinkedIn.
The founder of Sporty & Rich, Emily Oberg, is starting over. She took full ownership back and has moved the business from Paris to LA. She wrote about it here.
Not so fast Zuck. China has decided to block Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of agentic AI startup Manus to stop U.S. firms from poaching its AI talent and IP in a countermove as Washington squeezes Chinese tech companies off advanced American chips. And the jury has been selected for the Musk vs. Altman showdown.
The largest seed-round ever secured in Europe. Ineffable Intelligence raised $1.1 billion seed funding to pursue superintelligence.
‘I do’ on a budget. This would be a very “minimalist cool girl” wedding band and it’s on sale for $110 at Lie Studio.
Oprah x Amazon. Oprah Winfrey is bringing her podcast, book club and old episodes of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to Amazon under an exclusive multiyear deal.
Another private members club is in the works. This one is for vinyl lovers. Opening soon on the Lower East Side, Stylus NYC is conceived as a listening room to end all listening rooms, designed by O'Neill Rose Architects.
Partiful wants to pay for your baby shower. The party invite platform is incentivizing you to plan your shower on Partiful for a chance to win $300 cash to go towards your event.
I’m eyeing this Baggu purse in fuchsia - a color I would normally never wear. I like to buy Baggu bags in crazy colors or prints because they’re not super expensive, so I can experiment. SHOULD I DO IT?!
The Argument is having a live debate in San Francisco. On May 13, Kelsey Piper and Jerusalem Demsas are debating if AI actually changing how science gets done a.k.a. can AI cure cancer? RSVP here.
Cassie & Nate’s wedding. Saint Street Cakes, which I still haven’t tried yet, teamed up with HBO to create mini wedding cakes to celebrate Euphoria’s least liked couple.
A book launch at an underrated bar. Quick Eternity is a Moby Dick themed bar in South Street Seaport with good cocktails, cozy surroundings, and a solid burger. It is underrated in my opinion. On May 5th, they’re hosting a book launch for Laurie Woolever’s new book Care and Feeding. Woolever will be joined in conversation with chef Gabrielle Hamilton of Prune. Tickets are $20 and come with a copy of the book and a guaranteed seat.
Ok bye! 🍊
Thanks for reading!