On Monday, I let the world know that Ben and I now have a house in the Catskills. I showed them my cargo pants, how I clipped a red, metal carabiner with my keys onto them. I took a selfie in front of a truck filled with musty carpet from the 80’s or god knows when. What a relief to have it out of the house. What a relief to find hardwood floors underneath in all of the rooms, minus the loft.
Getting work done on the house is basically just calling people on the phone. Even contractors who do have websites rarely respond to form submissions in a timely manner. McKinsey ranks construction as the second least digitized industry on earth, behind only mining.
I’ve been struck by the human element of it, and the skills, like talking on the phone, that are involved in just getting a quote. I’ve had to begin making a new contact in my phone for every company I speak with, since I couldn’t remember which plumbing company belonged to which number, as they inevitably ignored my email and gave me a call instead.
There is something enjoyable about engaging in an industry that simply is not here to optimize. They want to talk on the phone. They have sassy answering machines telling you they are in the busy season and will get back to you when they get back to you and to text them for a faster response, probably. They want to meet face to face even though the drive is long. They will let hundreds of leads slip by that come through an online form. As a person who is constantly thinking about driving pipeline, it’s an adjustment to interact with people who are not.
I don’t remember what age I began to hate calling people on the phone. The same way I hate engaging with the shopkeeper when I walk into a shop. The internet has allowed me to carry out the research phase completely on my own terms, without speaking to anyone until I’m very sure what I want to buy, or often times not at all. I’m not alone in this aversion to a phone call. Research shows that while two thirds of boomers say they’re comfortable calling a stranger, only half of millennials and just a third of Gen Z can count that as a skill.
Now I am on the phone constantly. “Hi there, it’s Kristine from [my address] just calling to confirm that someone is coming today to look at the roof.” I have had to reactivate my Facebook to join the “Catskill Community Board,” where I found a cleaning service located nearby and some masons I reached out to.
We bought a house to get away from everything, and instead I’ve never been more connected. Not to Instagram, to a mason named John who doesn’t have a website and doesn’t need one.
Note: This newsletter is moving to bi-weekly! It’s been a great personal challenge to put out a newsletter on a weekly basis and I’ve loved it. As the newsletter’s identity has evolved and become more personal and less news driven, it makes sense to move towards a less frequent publishing schedule with a more curated Party Talk section. Thanks for sticking with me and for reading Secondary all this time!
If you missed the last dispatch, I was stuck in Monaco:
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
Culture
Cake Zine is running a free three-day reading series on food and memory. Sept. 4–6 at Little Island, hosted by Aliza Abarbanel, with writers including Leslie Jamison, Eric Kim, and Doreen St. Félix reading each night. Free, all ages, no RSVP — just show up by 5 p.m.
Chuko is closing. Vanderbilt Ave. really does seem cursed. Chuko, the Prospect Heights ramen spot that’s anchored the block since 2011, is closing after 15 years.
Didn’t have Ayo Edebiri as Snoopy on my bingo card, but not mad. Edebiri is playing Snoopy in a stage revival of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. She’ll star alongside David Hyde Pierce as Charlie Brown, Danielle Brooks as Lucy, and Jin Ha as Linus, at New York City Center’s Encores!, Feb. 3–14, 2027.
Niche, high-concept parties are having a moment. Partiful says RSVPs to “niche and high-concept events” grew more than four times over from 2024 to 2025. I’m sure we’ll see this trend begin to show itself in corporate marketing events. Imagine: A “Vendor Lock-In” costume party where guests come as whatever SaaS tool they’re most emotionally dependent on. Best costume wins a free month of therapy.
Bella Thorne is writing, directing, and starring in the Spring Breakers sequel. She announced it on Call Her Daddy, calling the whole thing “lit as f—.” Do we think this song will be in the movie?
Surveillance state
The license plate readers built to catch criminals are mostly catching ex-girlfriends. The surveillance state keeps expanding, and of course it’s being used to stalk women. A Washington Post analysis found at least 50 law enforcement officers charged with or accused of misusing license-plate-reader networks like Flock, including 26 cases where officers tracked wives, girlfriends, exes, or women they wanted to meet. One Georgia police chief searched his ex-girlfriend’s plate, and her teenage daughter’s, roughly 600 times.
The padel cartel bust. Imagine fleeing to Dubai as a wanted man and getting caught because you’re too good at padel. Ian Dixon, a Kinahan cartel lieutenant wanted for moving cartel cash across Europe, turned up on promotional materials for a Dubai padel competition. Bellingcat and the Sunday Times used facial recognition to trace him from an old padel club ad to a livestreamed tournament.
Business
Airtable’s discount sale. Airtable just sold for a $9 billion discount off its 2021 peak. Bending Spoons, the Italian roll-up behind Evernote and a fleet of other once-iconic, now-aging apps, is buying it for $1.285 billion in its first deal since going public. Airtable was valued north of $11 billion four years ago.
Clay just published a company-wide AI writing policy with four rules:
Stand behind every sentence in a document as your own thinking, not just what a model spit out.
Writing is thinking, so skipping the process leaves you with a worse grasp of the subject.
You should spend more time writing a document than you’re asking your reader to spend reading it, so if you generated it from a short prompt, just share the prompt.
And longer isn’t better: AI makes it easy to pad a doc with sentences that say nothing.
A solid policy and I’m sure we’ll see many companies copy it.
Is there enough demand for the endless stream of new members clubs opening? Apparently, yes. More private clubs have opened in the last four years than in the three decades following the Groucho Club’s 1985 debut, per stats from hospitality writer Emma Näpänkangas. The global market is projected to nearly double to $59.1 billion by 2033. It’s bleeding into real estate too: buyer interest near Soho Farmhouse in the Cotswolds more than doubled last August, and homes within a mile of a prestigious club sell 2.5 weeks faster than ones five miles out. Full piece here.
Ok bye! 🍊
Thanks for reading!
If spring breakers the song is not in spring breakers the movie I refuse to watch it!! And thank you for sharing my soho house rabbit hole <3
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