A Caesar Salad & French Fries
Recent Reads Ed. 8
On my first venture back in NYC after spending a chunk of the summer in California, my local train decided to suddenly switch to “express” despite being one stop away from my destination.
If you have ever experienced this in the city, it often accompanies a duo of WTF-FML.
In other words, welcome to New York. This may be the city that never sleeps, but it always has a trick up it’s sleeve to insist you not get too comfortable.
Love it and hate it.
Alas, I was on my way to a catch-up mid-day meal with a friend, which happened to be amid a packed restaurant of power lunchers in Nomad at a swanky restaurant in a luxury hotel. Despite our conversation centering around the millennial-ization of classically boring industries (see: pastel-hued Instagrammy funerals) and the therapy associated with hate-watching “Emily in Paris,” the jaunt got me thinking about what those three-martini lunches represent: money, power, and our quest for attention.
For the record, we had no martinis: a cup of tea for her, zero proof beverage for me. We also didn’t take a photo to upload it and prove we were on our hustle, discussing how we’re solving infrastructure issues in the US—we just don’t care to scream “look at me.”
But we did have fries.
Power & Persuasion
I recently read a pair of profiles on “new media barons,” or frankly, content creators as we’re known these days: Bari Weiss of the Free Press and Daisy Alioto of Dirt Media. Though these women come from a journalistic background, I’d say they have leaned heavily into the influencer playbook to grow their media properties. After all, it takes money to run a publication, and plenty of the traditional ones don’t have much anymore. (Note: Conde Nast just partnered with OpenAI to produce content. Bye, Vogue.)
Cool, if you talk about what it is. But they would rather put forth that they are sharing truth, which seems to all be a sham while they seek the payoff: power and a paycheck.
If you’re in the business of selling aspiration, that reflects on the salesperson. In the case of Dirt Media, the baroness at the helm comes across as elitist in her sense of what is culture: the attempts at being counter-culture while also being funded by a handful of venture funds.
None of this is a particularly new concept, even if the medium has changed. Power has long been an aphrodisiac, the source of many a hero’s downfall in literature dating back to Greek mythology. Today, though, so much of that feeling comes from social media, tying confidence, worth and influence to an arbitrary algorithm on its own quest for yes, power and money. (See: dating apps below.)
Several outlets have picked up the dire tale of a Park Avenue-Hamptons couple that reads more like a Gillian Flynn novel than a real life tragedy. The wife, an Instagrammer who splashed her supposedly rich lifestyle all over the platform. The husband, a real estate developer whose business took a turn for the worst.
Airmail, NYT, The Post all report the wife didn’t know anything about the couples financial situation, which was leveraged to death and caught amid several lawsuits. (Among others, they weren’t paying the more than $100,000 owed for their rented furniture in their $47,000-per-month Park Avenue rented apartment. Hint: rented.) While the wife was on vacation in Europe with their children, he attempted suicide and later died.
The general commentary has been that how people present themselves is not all that it seems, whether that’s on social media or IRL, and they go to great lengths to appear to be something they may not be.
Fake it until you make it? We all distort elements of ourselves to appear more appealing to a specific audience, and that distortion, for many, is largely driven by our motivations for yes, you got it: power and money.
There is a reason everyone on Instagram is including a photo of their Birkin bag, influencer or not.
On dating: “Consumer culture— arguably the fulcrum of modern identity—is based almost axiomatically on the incessant practice of comparison and choice.”
Perception of power and true power are separate, and just because you have money doesn’t mean you have power, or vice versa. I was delighted to read the full history of Neary’s, a storied pub around the corner from me on East 57th St. It didn’t look like much if you walked by, just another aged Irish establishment with dated decor. But it carried clout. Mr. Neary was apparently a charming guy who happened to run the neighborhood haunt for some actually powerful political and business figures in the city. His personality made him a welcome respite from the day-to-day challenges of the lives of mayors and executives, and therefore gained his own form of power. But while he seemingly did well for himself financially—he smartly purchased the building where he pub was housed—he was nowhere near the levels of his regulars like Mike Bloomberg.
Neary became part of the club by proximity, which is also why parents gun at the chance to get their kids in the doors of elite private schools or social climbers vie for a membership at a past-its-prime private club. It’s not just about education or dinner; it’s about the network. That goes for college too, because as much as it’s nice to flash accolades like school names on your resume, you won’t really need that resume if you have the right connections.
Since school is about to start, I’ll hush on this one. But the thirst for money and power is unrelenting, and it will continue to be giving us great tales for The Mad Ones.
On Mexico: If you come to Tijuana and don’t visit Caesar’s, it’s as if you didn’t come to Tijuana at all.”
We won’t end there, because we still have to discuss Caesar salads.
Flying into a rage – Buzz Bissinger (aka. old guy who won a Pulitzer and wrote Friday Night Lights) is disappointed—no, pissed—that air travel sucks and penned a hilariously witty essay about it in Airmail, to which I fully approve. (The point about his age makes the curmudgeon-y observations even better.) I was just leaving Austin, where the line for the Clear Plus with TSA PreCheck is a line to a line to a line, and much longer than just walking through regular security. But I’ll never dig my liquids out of my bag ever again because you bet I take on more than one quart size bag.
Enjoy the banter.
On boarding: “It requires passengers to follow instructions, which as anyone who has flown will attest, is hopeless.”
Dating apps don’t want you to date – Duh, didn’t we know this? Who, lately, has had success on a platform? But it’s fascinating to understand the business play here. If you find a match, you are no longer a customer. Dating apps make money when you are a customer. More customers mean more venture funding. More customers mean more power. Losing customers means you have to recruit more to replace them. That’s hard. And it costs money. So why wouldn't they rig the system so you have to keep swiping?
Then there are the attributes of A.I. for dating, per Whitney from Bumble.
Luckily, people have caught on and still believe in dating IRL.
One Caesar salad, please – I unabashedly LOVE a Caesar salad. It’s my go-to room service order (along with fries and Sancerre while I queue up old eps of “Chopped”). If it’s on the menu at a restaurant, I’m going to order it. If I have a lunch meeting, I ensure the salad is a choice at my destination; if it’s not, I suggest a place where it is. I make them at home. I order them at home. You know that popular question about what you’d eat for your last meal?
You know what I’m having.
Imagine, though, if I became a Caesar historian? That’s what a few folks are doing as they attempt to unravel the complicated history of the salad’s inception, evolution, and ultimate charm in Tijuana, Mexico, an often surprising fact about the invention of the beloved dish. (It originated there, and don't worry, I’ve been. It’s a short Uber ride from San Diego). Read alongside your next Caesar. (Recipe here.)
And you thought Mexico was all about tacos.
Bon appetit 🥂