Mayday!
Soon enough we'll all be cloned by AI and hopefully living the #Tradwife life.
It’s been a very quick month. My qualm with planning and with Spring is that it leaves me restless. Longing for a warm, breezy high-60s kind of day, some quiet time to exist. Then the moment is over. And we’re left with hot, sticky, full-of-life (too much life if you ask me) summer days. Time to take a bike ride around Central Park before the full family of bugs come out.
On My Mind (in reverse chronological order of when it crossed my mind, given the lateness):
There is a 30% chance you have an Away suitcase. I made that statistic up. The few times I’ve been to the airport this month I’ve (very roughly) estimated 30% of travelers rolling Away suitcases. Of course, Away’s success is clear (they’ve raised $181M and CEO Jen Rubio is essentially a celebrity) but has it always been THIS mainstream? Wirecutter and Good Housekeeping listed Away of few other brands under their best luggages of 2024. Travel + Leisure published a ranking of Away’s product lines, alluding to Away’s 2024 push to double the number of product launches they did in 2023 after cutting 25% of its staff.
On another travel note, this SNL skit felt way too real? We need a solution to the land of customer service reps. Hopefully it’s AI copilots.
Remember when I briefly touched on celebrity book clubs? Reese Witherspoon’s book club, one of the more if not most well known one, has a book scout: Jon Baker (Command-F “Jon Baker” here).
Scarlett Johansson hired legal counsel to take action against Open AI after noticing an eerie resemblance between her voice and “Sky” from Open AI’s real-time voice chat feature released last week.
“Johansson said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had twice asked her to voice the system, including two days before OpenAI’s demonstration of a real-time voice chat feature last week… Altman has said publicly that the company took inspiration from “Her,” the 2013 movie Johansson voiced, in its development of an AI assistant. He also teased the new feature in a post on X the day before the Monday event, with one word: “her.””
I get it, we’re all crushing hard.
On Padel’s cousin, 🏓🎾Pickleball: Jerry Seinfeld mentioned pickleball in a commencement speech at Duke University. Dax Shepherd and Kristin Bell are addicted to pickleball. Bewitched by pickleball? Stars, they’re just like us.
Resy launched “Resy Lists” dipping into Beli territory. I guess this news is several months old but I just got an email about how it works. Wonder if people are not using it.
Mark Zuckerberg turned 40. No, that’s not the news. For Zuck’s birthday, his wife created mini replicas of “places [he] lived in the early days” including Pinocchio’s, a Harvard Square institution. I hope this brings new foot traffic for them. I hear they’ve been struggling against the new Joe’s Pizza.
Little luxuries for Mother’s Day incl. Librae and Caviar Russe’s whipped lemon labneh Osetra caviar brioche bun. How fitting.
F/u to my “Asianification of American life” thought. A new report by Spate looked at 20B Google search signals and 60M+ TikTok videos to find that American tastes are significantly evolving from “traditional foreign dishes to a broader spectrum of global flavors.” Vague but I’ll take it.
If you watch Korean dramas you probably recognize this sweet treat:
If you’ve watched Vincenzo. 
Or Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha. At first I thought it was a clever marketing scheme for Korean brands but I recently learned Kopiko is not Korean… but Indonesian! I’d like to read this scholarly Kopiko Product Placement in Korean Drama on Brand Awareness article but we’ll see if it happens.
As seen from the enduring Fifth Ave Zara returns line, are pricey returns simply pushing consumers to shop faster fashion?
Don't ask me why I went to Zara returns line 3x this month. There’s a cocoa shortage. What is cocoa-free chocolate? Try Voyage Foods, ChoViva, California Cultured and you’ll find out.
In response to Leandra’s “capris”:
Circa 2013. Small businesses dressing Olympians this 2024 summer: Cariuma for skating shoes, Left for beach volleyball, J. Lindeberg for men’s and women’s golf.
F/u to Ezra’s OpEd on digital shame closets: I’m seeing more on more screenshot-driven de-cluttering startups and I’m loving it. Excited to track. Interesting also given Pinterest’s milestone Q1 ‘24. Pinterest is known as the place to pin inspiration.
#Tradwifehas 69.1M posts on TikTok. Another article on the reading list: Tradwives, stay-at-home girlfriends and the dream of feminine leisure. More on feminine leisure soon.How does Pharrell do it all? And what, really, is his relationship to food? See Scarr Pimental of Scarr’s Pizza at Pharrell’s first ever car auction on a closed off West Village street for the evening. Pharrell has backed and works closely with Nami Nori (handroll spot) for his various events.
I hear the Spa 88 on 88 FULTON STREET is getting used for DTC brand events “after hours.” I’ve mentioned my water park-like experience at Bathhouse before, but I can imagine this totally anew in a smaller, more curated event. I may need to ask
, resident nightlife Substacker, more on that one.On Met Monday.
I was in the area that Monday (coincidentally? subconsciously intentional?) and decided to go for a stroll. I counted 6 sprinter vans in 5 minutes. Forget Met Gala red carpet looks, let’s talk about the car model of the season.
2/6 spotted sprinter vans on the 1st Monday in May. Kerry Washington attended the Met Gala on May 6th and then the Milken Institute’s global conference which began on May 5th. Impressive!
On Deals: I was headed to Chicago when Foxtrot suddenly closed but it seems they could be reopening their best performing locations in Chicago and Texas. Paramount is still looking for a buyer. No Tapestry-Capri merger. Substack’s competitor raised a $33M Series B. There’s a new ‘P’ identity for Partiful. The B2B restaurant procurement model chugs along w/ Pepper’s $30M Series B— curious how this plays out given some difficulties in the space.
It’s AAPI heritage month! Katianna Hong of Yangban in LA won OpenTable and Gold House’s “Gold Chef Prize.”
Tried something a little different this time. Took more note on daily observations and conversations... An interlude on food is also arriving shortly. How do you feel about it? Ciao from Venice (it’s 10AM here😁) and see you later…