if you want to spoil a girls trip, bring up the biological clock
plus, the only cool thing in Nuremberg
Quick Hits
Hawaii will limit vacation rentals in response to tight housing market
Issa Rae is starting a new company to connect brands to diverse creators
TikTok sues U.S. government, saying potential ban violates First Amendment
Canada’s Competition Bureau opens greenwashing investigation of Lululemon
Clubbers are raving about Germany’s cross-country Techno Train. And guess where it is?! NUREMBERG! And guess where I live?! NUREMBERG!! I might never have cause to include anything about this city in this newsletter again, so pay attention. Launched in 2019 by Huas33, the Train runs twice a year for 7 hours non stop. It has 12 carriages, three of which become dance rooms with DJ decks, speakers, bars, and likely all sorts of other things. If you know me, you know I would know nothing of such activities, so I hit up the group chat. “I want to go on it, but I just know the toilets will be disgusting.” “Very Berlin vibes. Lots of leather and fishnets.” “It’s very heavy techno, I can't think of anything worse.”
Could Lucali Pizza be the real winner of the Kendrick-Drake feud? “My visa, passport tatted, I show up in Ibiza / Lucali’s dwellings in Brooklyn just to book me some pizza.” Since the release of “6:16 in LA,” Kendrick fans have flooded Lucali Pizza with dozens of five-star Google reviews. Pizzeria owner, Mark Iacono, didn't know about the feud and remains unfazed. “We’re 17 years in. The lines are as long as ever.”
Prepare for those Graza prices to pop off, people! Olive trees are incredibly vulnerable to climate change, and Spain, the world’s biggest exporter of olive oil, has halved its production due to drought and extreme heat. As a result, prices have increased 112% since 2022! Criminal gangs in Spain have even started stealing olive oil for resale on the black market, making it the most stolen item across much of Spain. Which is wild. If you buy Graza, I hope you feel like the 1 percent. Also, are we getting olive oil SODA?! Is this a joke?
Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila is poised for triple-digit growth this year, according to COO Mike Novy. By June of last year, the company reduced the prices of all of its products by about $10- and for Blanco, one of their best-selling products, this led to a 94% year-over-year sales increase. They must have had some crazy margins to start with. Forbes reported that they sold more than 123,000 cases of 818 in 2022, and I know their partnership with Chamberlain coffee is doing great. Apparently, Kylie Jenner's RTD vodka soda brand Sprinter shipped 140,000 cases in its first month of business. Not a fair comparison, but damn.
Look at this (almost) 500 ft long baguette baked in France. It was a matter of French pride to retrieve the title of “longest Baguette in the world” from Italy, where it has been since 2019. Five years and they’d had enough.
Let your girls grow up to be ranchers! Is it even an ‘as seen on’ newsletter if I don’t talk about horses? (Which I’m deathly scared of, by the way). The average age of American farmers is 57, and 95% of them are white. Beth Robinette, a fourth-generation rancher in Eastern Washington, started New Cowgirl Camp to help change that. The five-day experience teaches women and girls skills ranging from holistic land management to checking pregnant cows. I’d recommend this to my friend Erin, who does an annual WWOOFing trip to Greece—but she insists she isn’t that type of horse girl. ‘It’s not like Yellowstone, Ochuko!’ she keeps saying. And I keep telling her that’s a shame.
One out of every 24 New Yorkers is now a millionaire, but what’s wild is that I don’t know any of them.
The biggest flex on TikTok right now is having a finance bro for a boyfriend. Extra points if he has a trust fund, is 6'5, and has blue eyes. Thank you, Girl On Couch, for blessing us with this sound; it’s the best thing that’s happened to the blonde girls of New York all year.
Want green eyes? That'll be $12,000. Keratopigmentation, a procedure that only takes 20 minutes and will permanently change your eye color, is gaining popularity in the United States. This is despite the procedure not being FDA approved and the AAO issuing a warning about it. Still, Alexander Movshovich, the first doctor to bring keratopigmentation to America, says 97% of his patients leave happy, and besides, “in America, everything is FDA questioned.” He also said that although his patient breakdown is evenly split across genders, around 80% also have veneers. I thought that was interesting. There’s some deeper societal commentary to be made here, but you won’t get it from me today.
On this episode of rich people want to live forever, Equinox introduced a new membership program that costs $36,000 a year. The ‘Optimize by Equinox’ package includes more than 100 tests aimed at enhancing health and extending people's longevity. What it does not include is a required regular gym membership, which goes for $6,000 a year. So really, this thing is going to cost you $42,000. We laugh, but those New York millionaires will absolutely pay for this. Right after booking a keratopigmentation appointment to get blue eyes so their girlfriends can make those TikToks about them, no less. Nothing to be done if they’re not 6’5. Yet.
Refinery29 is taking over Beautycon. Oop! Now, this is what I call a development. And I think it's a good one too—both brands are past their prime but still hold some cultural pull, both desperately need to stage a comeback, and most importantly, both were recently purchased by Essence Ventures under less than ideal conditions. See here and here. The event, which will be branded "R29 Beautycon," returns this November in LA, and will blend Beautycon's existing business with Refinery29's beauty vertical. Do you guys remember the golden age of girlboss experiential? Brit + Co’s Re:Make conferences, Refinery29’s 29Rooms, all those The Wing events, and of course the Girlboss Rally- which I still mourn once in a while. They had Rupi Kaur and Amanda Gorman! I couldn't tell you guys how this would all go down, but Refinery29 did say that R29 Beautycon will be “driven by innovation, inclusivity, and authenticity”, which I suppose would already be a change.
Teens are making friends with AI Chatbots, and using them as therapists too. Unsurprisingly, these are usually teens who struggle socializing in real life or struggle with mental health issues. I think chatbots are really cool in low-stakes situations. The issue is, many of these teens quickly become addicted to them, with some even having difficulty distinguishing them from real people. I’m always wary of wading into the waters of ‘today's kids are doomed’ hysteria, but this really sucks. Kids should be able to get the help they need from real people. People will say, oh, this stuff will become normalized soon enough, and I totally agree, which is what sucks!
Meanwhile, children in the UK will be made to show IDs to use social media, effectively kicking those under 13 off platforms. In the plan proposed by Ofcom, the UK’s communication regulator, social media companies will be required to introduce robust checks, including the use of photo ID such as passports, to identify children using their sites. Those that fail to comply will face fines worth up to 10% of their global turnover – around £11 billion for a company like Meta. Obsessed with how bullish Europe is on curbing Big Tech’s greatness. Safe to say I don’t see AI regulations for teens being too far behind, at least in Europe.
If Crown Affair doesn't do more than this to celebrate The Towel’s Met Gala debut, I will cease to respect them! They can also just reach out to me; I have thoughts.
H&M dressed more people than Gucci for the Met Gala, and Tommy Hilfiger had more social media mentions than Chanel during the red carpet. So what’s up with Adwoa Aboah announcing her pregnancy in custom H&M? And Tommy Hilfiger dressing K-Pop band Stray Kids for their first appearance on the Met steps? I couldn’t possibly explain it better than Rachel Tashjian did in this amazing piece for WaPo I got for you guys for FREE. So go read it. Hint: it has something to do with TikTok.
People are not happy about Substack’s pivot to video. And neither am I. Yesterday, they introduced the Substack Creator Studio, ‘a fellowship for the next phase of video stars to turn their TikTok channels into Substack shows and communities.’ They say this is not in response to the TikTok bill, but we all know it is. For anyone who’s been paying attention, this should come as no surprise. In 2021, Substack raised a $65 million Series B round at a $650 million valuation, by positioning itself as a social network. So now it has to be one. They’ve ramped up focus on audio and community features in the last few months, and at the end of 2023, announced video integration upgrades. Emily Sundberg interviewed Substack co-founder, Hamish McKenzie, for her newsletter, Feed Me, on his plans for video on the platform. The sentiment in the comments was the same as on the announcement post—people come to Substack for writing, not videos.
Business Insider analyzed spending for young adults in 1989 (boomers) compared to young adults in 2022 (millennials). Some key takeaways that you and I could have guessed but I’ll share anyway:
Millennials were spending over 200% more on healthcare. After adjusting for inflation, the average young adult spent $755 in 1989, but $2,325 in 2022
Young adults in 2022 were also spending roughly 60% more on rent and rent-related costs, and 39% less on mortgage interests.
The average young adult in 2022 spent 71% more on fresh fruits than their counterparts in 1989.
They also spent 40% less on beef and 55% less on fresh milk and cream.
CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHAT TO CALL THIS MINI ESSAY, SO READ ON FOR A SURPRISE
I can often only be persuaded to leave home on the promise of scintillating conversation- or money. And it was the former my friends promised me when I agreed to spend our day off traipsing the low hills of small town Wurzburg last Wednesday. When you start writing, you start noticing. You listen better too. A great substack post is only ever one good conversation away, afterall.
Our first stop was this tiny, artisanal coffee shop. The first topic was love, and I brought it up. I had spent the last month at home in Lagos, and once my mom met my boyfriend via FaceTime, the words settling down came up an awful lot. Naturally, I needed to share this panic with my friends- all in our 20s, all unmarried, some in relationships, but none of us even close to reproducing anything more complex than 50 page PowerPoints.
So how do you guys feel about marriage, kids, that whole thing?
Immediate vibe shift.
The talking points were ones I’d heard before. For some reason, and despite the fact that we all agreed that we did want these things, some sooner rather than later, none of us felt they were feasible- at least not right now. Weddings are expensive, kids even more so. We want to be the most present moms, but what about our careers? We want to be surrounded by family, but they live in cities we wouldn't consider moving to. It could all be lovely, but what if it’s awful? Would we figure it out in time?
These concerns are hardly novel- they’re echoed in every think piece on why millennial and Gen Z women are starting families later. On why many are choosing to be DINKs. What’s novel is having as much information about these concerns and other people’s experiences with them as we do. If ignorance is bliss, can too much knowledge can be paralysing?
At 25, I’m the youngest in my group, and I’d say we’re all doing pretty well.
It’s nice being here, one of us said over lunch . I can have dinner whenever I like without looking at my bank account. I can travel and do nice stuff. It wasn’t like that in London.
She was right- we all had well paid corporate jobs, and by living in Germany, have as generous a maternity leave policy as it gets.
And yet.
Maybe it’s this unspoken thing that we all feel. Like the only reason we’re doing great is because it’s just us. All the chaos, all the hopes and dreams and the disappointments are so thankfully contained. Did you see Taylor Frankie Paul break down on TikTok? Did you see Nara Smith make her kids’ cereal from scratch? Did you see how Ballerina Farm snapped back?! I know our fears are real- the world is so weird right now. But honestly, I also wish I knew less. I never knew I’d get to 25 and feel so uncertain still. I never knew I’d have done all I have, have come this far, and still feel so unprepared.
My mom was 29 when she had me. She’d already had my older brother two years earlier. From what I know, my parents probably had less stability than my partner and I have right now, and they made it work just fine. More than just fine. I asked her what made her take that step. How did she know she was ready? It was time, she said, so I did.
So there we were, sipping on our Aperol Spritz, planning a trip to Portugal to see Taylor Swift, exchanging work gossip, bemoaning a date gone wrong, comparing stats on Apple Watches, recommending nail techs. Anyone looking at us would probably think that all was well. And they’d be right.
And yet.
Love the mini essay here. My mum often tells me about how much less she had at my age than I do in an effort to make me feel fine and know that I'm doing alright. And yet.
Your writing at the bottom made me emotional 🥲 so eloquently written. You are rocking it!!