Almost everyone I knew had a traditional job in a regular industry. Except for one friend who used to be a freelance photographer, I didn’t personally know anyone who worked for themselves. I had never been to business school, and I had barely even watched Shark Tank.

An entrepreneur, at least in my mind, was some elusive figure who had started a billion-dollar company like Sara Blakely or Steve Jobs.

I certainly didn’t think someone like me, a girl who liked making restaurant recommendations, telling dating stories, finding things to do in NYC, and documenting her travels could become one. It was never even on my radar.

But over the past year, I’ve gone from making around $10,000 in an entire year from my content creation side hustle to generating enough income to support my life in NYC.

I’ve worked with brands I once would have considered dream clients, including American Express, Toyota, and Johnnie Walker. I’ve spoken on a panel for Toyota. I’ve signed with a management agency. And somehow, sharing the things I loved online turned into the business that now supports my actual life.

It was realizing that making the transition from corporate employee to entrepreneur required me to completely change the way I worked, thought, made decisions, handled uncertainty, and measured success.

Because becoming self-employed isn’t just about figuring out how to make money. It’s about becoming the person responsible for creating your own structure, making decisions without someone else telling you what to do, handling uncertainty without immediately assuming something has gone wrong, and learning to keep going when there’s no performance review telling you that you’re on the right track.

And honestly, I wish someone had told me that before I left.

So if you’ve ever fantasized about quitting your corporate job, wondered what being self-employed actually feels like, or found yourself asking, Could I really make my side hustle into a full-time business? this is what I wish someone had told me before I made the leap.

I’m breaking down the 10 biggest lessons I’ve learned so far, not just about building a business, but about the mental, emotional, and practical shift required to work for yourself. From unlearning corporate conditioning and learning to trust your own decisions, to handling comparison, burnout, financial uncertainty, and the pressure to constantly do more, these are the things I wish I had understood before I traded in my 9-to-5 life.

Because I naively thought I would need three to six months to “onboard” into my new life.

In reality, I’m still onboarding.

Why I left the corporate world

Working for myself wasn’t even something I had even thought about until it became a byproduct of what I actually wanted.

I wanted to support myself while continuing to share my restaurant recommendations, dating stories, things to do in NYC, and travel guides with the world.

Except I had absolutely no idea how to do that.

And, if I’m being honest, part of me didn’t even think it was possible.

My whole life, I had been taught to work hard, get a good education, get a good job, and climb the corporate ladder until I retired. And for a while, I liked being in that world.

I graduated from Johns Hopkins in 2016 with a degree in Economics, moved to NYC a few months after to start my first job in marketing at a beauty company, before eventually transitioning to my dream job in fashion. But several job transitions and one pandemic later, I realized that my work/life values had changed.

I realized I no longer enjoyed being a replaceable cog in someone else’s machine. I hated being forced to commute into an office several times a week (where they literally counted our entry swipes at a WeWork?!)

I also hated that someone else decided how many vacation days I could take, and that my annual salary was capped with whatever was allotted to me in the corporate budget.

And the alternative?

The unknown territory of working for myself seemed absolutely terrifying.

But staying started to feel worse.

At my last corporate job, I regularly had dreams about dying. Not in an inherently morbid way, but more as a manifestation of regret. I would think, Oh my god, it would be an absolute tragedy if I got into a horrible accident tomorrow because I never would have gotten to do what I was meant to do, and it’s definitely not this job.

I felt sooo trapped, stuck, and frustrated in my day-to-day life.

There’s no worse feeling than hating your job but still needing to show up every day anyway.

There were days I wanted to quit so badly. But then I would remember that I had rent to pay, bills to cover, and future trips I wanted to take.

At the time, I lived alone and my rent was more than $3,200 a month, not including anything else.

And the year before I left my corporate job? My entire side hustle had made me around $10,000.

I used to jealously watch videos of other content creators who airily talked about leaving their corporate jobs behind to become full-time content creators, and desperately wondered how they had done it. It seemed like an impossible goal for me to achieve at the time.

Why I didn’t follow the “safe” advice

I also watched so many YouTube videos from full-time creators telling people not to quit until they had made the equivalent of their corporate salary for three to six months.

But I knew that formula wasn’t realistic for me.

There was simply no way I could grow my content creation business enough to replace my corporate salary while continuing to work my day job full-time and maintain any semblance of a life outside of work.

There weren’t enough hours in the day.

And honestly, trying to do both was starting to burn me out.

I didn’t have enough time or energy to fully dedicate myself to either one. I felt like I was constantly half assing two things that both required my full attention.

So I eventually made the leap before I had everything figured out.

I did not have any sort of plan or expected income.

I had no idea how and if I was going to be able to support myself.

What I did have, and I think this was crucial to my success in the beginning, was an unrelenting belief that I could figure this out, around five months of savings, and the delusional confidence to stick to this decision even during the very stressful moments where I wondered if I would have enough money to pay rent, or wanted to give up because I had no idea what I was doing.

What I wish I knew before becoming self-employed

But the transition from corporate employee to entrepreneur wasn’t just about earning enough money to support myself.

It was about learning how to become the person responsible for everything. My income, schedule, decisions, mistakes, growth, failures, and success were all mine to fully own. Ironically for so long I had longed for the freedom to act on my own decisions, and once I finally got that flexibility, my nervous system didn’t know how to handle it.

And I had no idea how much of my old corporate conditioning I would need to unlearn along the way. If you’re curious about what it looked like to actually take that leap, from leaving an eight-year corporate career with no real plan to figuring out how to trust myself in the uncertainty, I wrote about that chapter of my life here.

But the leap itself was only the beginning. The bigger challenge has been learning how to actually operate without the structure, certainty, and external validation I had spent years relying on.

So here are 10 things I’ve learned while transitioning from corporate girl to entrepreneur, and what I wish I knew before leaving my 9-to-5. These aren’t just lessons about building a business, they’re lessons about what happens to you when you suddenly become responsible for your own income, decisions, direction, and definition of success. I wish I had understood how much of this journey would be about rewiring the way I think, learning to trust myself, and becoming comfortable with not knowing what happens next before I was in it.

1. Working for yourself is much more of a mental game than I expected

If I had to break down what has contributed to my success so far, I honestly think it would be something like:

I had no idea that becoming my own boss would mean confronting every unresolved fear and insecurity I had on a near-daily basis.

Imposter syndrome. Fear of failure. Perfectionism. Comparison spirals. Self-doubt. Scarcity mindset. Survival mode. Fear of judgment.

All of them suddenly had nowhere to hide.

When you’re an employee, there is often a structure outside of you telling you what to do next. There are deadlines, managers, performance reviews, salaries that arrive on a predictable schedule.

When you work for yourself, you have to learn how to keep moving even when no one is telling you what to do, and especially when you’re terrified of making the wrong decision or making a mistake.

I’ve also learned that regulating my nervous system is not separate from running my business. It’s part of it.

Because I make worse decisions when I’m in survival mode. I become more risk-averse. I obsess over things that haven’t happened yet. I interpret uncertainty as danger.

Learning to separate my anxiety about the future from the facts of my present has been instrumental to both my business and my sanity.

2. Being a good employee does not make you a good entrepreneur (the reverse is definitely true as well.)

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“Be careful,” said everyone who I told I was going to Rio, and had been before.

And because so many people had warned me about about safety beforehand, I actually took it seriously. (Even though I don’t have a good track record of making safe decisions abroad, like the time I spontaneously spent a weekend in Marrakech with two guys I had met less than 24 hours before, but hey I survived. And some may say I even thrived!)

But that was 22 year old me, and 30 year old Victoria was down to play it safe by staying in a hotel over an Airbnb, traveling with a fanny pack instead of a regular purse, and avoiding aimless wandering down narrow side streets (which I am prone to do on other trips).

However, there was not a single moment of my one week trip where I felt unsafe. To the point where I questioned why so many people had told me to be cautious. As long as you have common sense, stick to neighborhoods like Ipanema, Leblon, Copacabana, Botafogo, and the touristy part of Santa Teresa (and avoid going anywhere near Rio’s notorious favelas), and take an Uber everywhere, you will be more than ok.

The TLDR

I didn’t know much about Rio before I went, but it has quickly become one of my favorite cities in the world (and I don’t choose favorites easily!) It reminded me a lot of Mexico City, with its leafy streets, bustling culture, vibrant food scene, and plethora of things to do, but even better, because it’s coastal and has many beaches to explore.

And since I spend more time meticulously researching restaurants for trips than I do on going on dates (and by meticulous I mean spending hours cross referencing reviews across different platforms, intensely scrutinizing online listings to ensure I’m not dining at any overpriced, inauthentic tourist traps because even having one bad meal on vacation is a tragedy for me.) Dramatics aside, I spend hours researching my trips and vetting those places IRL so you don’t have to, so here is everything you need to know about spending a week in Rio!

This Rio guide is for the person who:

• Wants to experience a new city like a local and immerse themselves in a different culture

• Has at some point planned an entire vacation around where to eat (🙋🏻‍♀️)

• Has expensive taste on a budget and wants the best of both worlds (because why can’t you have both?!)

• Needs a vacation from your vacation afterward because you don’t know how to have a relaxing trip

So if that sounds like you, let’s get into it!

Getting there

I actually flew to Rio from Miami which was a direct, 8 hour flight. Flying back to NYC took 10 hours direct, but considering I slept most of the way, it was an easy flight. American Airlines, Delta, and GOL Linhas Aéreas all have direct, non stop flights from NYC to Rio which you can all find on Skyscanner (my go-to flight finding website!), so you have plenty of options.

The best part is, Rio is on the same exact timezone as NYC, so there’s no need to adjust to jetlag at all!

Where to eat

Galeto Sat’s

This authentic Brazilian restaurant has several locations throughout the city. While I typically don’t like going to chain restaurants, this one was recommended to me by an IG follower who is local to Brazil, and it ended up being one of my favorite meals of the trip. They have huge portions, so come hungry and definitely share with someone (unless you want lots of leftovers!)

Oro

This two Michelin star restaurant was worth the tasting menu price tag. They have two different options to choose from, the service was impeccable, the presentation of the food was grid-worthy, and all the courses we had were inventive and delicious. No notes!

..and that's just getting started. Here's what's still ahead:

• 5 more restaurants: From casual local spots to the date-night-worthy ones I’d send my best friend to alongside the best bars to grab drinks at

• the 10 best things to do: A mix of under-the-radar activities and the touristy ones actually worth your time to make the most of your trip

• My exact, ready-to-use Google Maps list: Just open it and go, no copying pins one by one

If you liked my Sydney guide, this one goes even deeper, and it’s the same format I’ll be using for my future travel guides!

Unlock the rest of my Rio guide (and every guide after it) →

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During my summer weekends with the East Hampton family I got pretty familiar with the area, and with the ins and outs of getting there from NYC. I also discovered Cooper’s Beach on one of those trips, when I arrived in Southampton a few hours early for an event, and decided to explore. It quickly became one of my favorite beaches near NYC, and I’ve made the trek back several times since.

So here’s the exact itinerary I’d recommend if you want to experience the Hamptons in a day, without spending hours planning it yourself.

Getting there

You can take the LIRR from either Penn Station, Grand Central, East New York or Jamaica depending on where you are in the city. I would not recommend taking the Jitney for a day trip, because traffic is usually terrible on the weekends since there is literally one road throughout the Hamptons that gets crazy congested. (The Jitney is also more expensive than the train!)

You will need to transfer trains at Jamaica to the train heading toward Montauk, but the transfer is very seamless, and you’ll only have to wait around 15-20 minutes between trains.

Once on board that train, the trip will take around 2 hours to Southampton (which is one of the closest areas of the Hamptons to the city. Montauk is 3 hours, and too far for a day trip.) Make sure you have the MTA TrainTime app downloaded, because it will show all the train schedules, and it’s where you can buy tickets directly. A one way ticket is only around $25! To make the most of your day, I would recommend one of the morning trains. I took the 9:54 am train from Grand Central and got to Southampton at 12:22 pm which was the perfect time to get there.

Getting around Southampton

There is actually a free Circuit shuttle that can pick you up and drop you off anywhere in the Southampton vicinity. You can either wave it down if you see it around or request one from their app. However, there aren’t that many shuttles, so requests don’t always go through, but it was convenient to wave down when we did see it around.

Uber/Lyft is a more reliable option, and will cost around $20 to go anywhere in town.

Things to do

We went there mostly for the beach, but there’s plenty of other things you can do as well!

• Arts and culture: There is a nearby Arts Center with rotating exhibitions, and the Parrish Art Museum which is a 10 minute drive from town.

• Farmer’s market: On Sundays there is a cute little farmer’s market in Agawam Park with food and crafts vendors.

• Shopping: There are a lot of cute stores in town to explore. While many brands have an outpost here like Simkhai (I adore his designs!), Zimmermann (Obsessed with all their ruffled dresses!), and Ralph Lauren (A classic, need I say more?), there are also several independent boutiques I love like the below.

  • Tenet: A curated contemporary boutique with unique clothing and accessories. They also have a location in East Hampton.

  • Grandma Did It Better: An archival vintage store with curated pieces throughout the decades. They also have a location in Soho.

  • Saujette: This boutique looks like it belongs in the south of France with it’s colorful, flowy resort wear dresses.

• Beaches: I have only gone to Cooper’s Beach, which has been ranked America’s Best Beach for several years now, but there are a few other beaches you can go to nearby that I’m sure would be beautiful also. Cooper’s has bathrooms, outdoor showers, a concessions stand with food, drinks, and snacks, lifeguards, and you can also rent beach chairs and umbrellas from them for very reasonable prices. If you drive here and are a non-resident, parking is $50 per vehicle (which is absolutely insane!!!!) so don’t drive and park here :)

Where to eat

There’s a lot to be desired for the food scene in the Hamptons in general. While there are a handful of good restaurants in each town, and a few city outposts that have cropped up like Fini Pizza in Amagansett and Sushi by Bou in Westhampton, the majority of the restaurants are overpriced and mid in my opinion. Southampton in particular has fewer options, but here are some of my picks.

• El Farm: An extension of its neighboring Mexican restaurant El Verano, El Farm is a curated gourmet grocery store with freshly prepared foods like pizzas, salads, sandwiches, and more alongside farm grown produce, artisanal snacks, baked goods, and even caviar. It reminded me a lot of Round Swamp Farms, but with better prices. This is an excellent spot to grab foods/drinks for the beach!

• LUNCH Lobster Roll: I forgot how insanely expensive the lobster rolls are in the Hamptons in general. Expect standard prices to be $42+ which is shocking to me because you can get amazing lobster rolls in NYC for cheaper. But when in the Hamptons I guess. This lobster shack has famous lobster rolls for a reason. While it’s a bit further from town, they are available for delivery on Uber Eats/Doordash etc.

• Shinnecock Lobster Factory: This seafood restaurant is also located near Southampton, but is popping up at the concessions stand at Cooper’s Beach for the summer. You can order either their hot or cold lobster rolls for $48, and it comes with a side of fries. While I did initially balk at the price, they gave me a lot of lobster, and my roll came packed with parsley and chives and was perfectly seasoned.

Getting back

My friend and I took the 6:12 pm train from Southampton back to the city, so we had around 6 hours there in total and a solid 3.5 hour beach day! The trains back to the city are pretty regular, with the last one coming back at 8:42 pm, and you don’t need to buy tickets in advance, so no need to stress about that.

And honestly, I almost prefer a day trip to the Hamptons to actually staying for a weekend. Because a weekend trip to the Hamptons means booking a house months in advance, spending hundreds of dollars on accommodation, Ubers, meals, and drinks, and I would honestly rather spend that money on a one week trip to Europe!

xx,

Victoria

P.S. Here are some other NYC guides I created you might enjoy!

• NYC’s best backyards to make the most of the last few weeks of summer!

• Where I’m going, eating, and exploring in NYC before Labor Day

• My ultimate NYC date guide featuring 65+ bars across 18 neighborhoods!

• 16 of the best things to do in NYC that don’t involve eating or drinking

• My ultimate guide to NYC’s best classes, pop-ups, events, and more

And if you have any special requests or want any other recs, just reply directly or comment below and let me know!

I went through a stretch of that a few weeks ago (pity party and all), until I reminded myself of something I already knew: I don’t need my friends’ calendars to line up with mine or have a guy involved in order to live my life fully. There’s still so much of summer left, so many things to do and places to see, and I refuse to sit around waiting for someone else to be free first.

That’s why solo trips and solo city days will always be my move. So I threw myself into planning exactly how to make the most of August and September, so you can steal the plan too!

Recent openings

Phê NYC

I have wanted to come to this Vietnamese coffee shop in the LES since they blew up on social media recently for its authentic setup, food, and coffee. The sister spot of Mam, a neighboring Vietnamese restaurant that is ranked number 25 on the NY Times Top 100 list, Phê serves a crispy pork belly bánh mì on Fridays from 11 am until they sell out and Bánh Mì Chảo, which is a Vietnamese skillet with meats, eggs, and pâté accompanied by baguettes on the side on the weekends that looks absolutely incredible!!

They have a tiny space with low plastic chairs and tables outside, which is very emblematic of how restaurants are setup in Vietnam. I heard they’ve been packed on the weekends, so go early to avoid long lines and items selling out.

Sailor & Siren

My friend’s friend Natalie opened this new lobster roll place in Greenpoint and it already has rave reviews. Each roll gets one lobster’s worth of meat inside (!!!), and there are also fun toppings options like caviar and uni, so no need to travel to Maine anymore! (Jk, Maine is great, I went there last September.) They’re only open on the weekends and prone to selling out, so get there early also.

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It took me a long time to trust in myself when it came to dating, and it’s something I’m still working on.

I used to feel like I couldn’t trust my own judgement, taste, or preferences in men because I was single, and that I needed to outsource advice externally.

Whenever I would get ghosted or rejected, a small part of me wondered if I were to blame for that, whether I should have seen the signs earlier, or prevented this from happening to me.

But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. There is not one person I know - regardless of their relationship status, who has escaped the dating scene unscathed. (The only ones who have never really dated, and that doesn’t count…)

My friend who got engaged recently went on many bad dates in the city - including one with a self-identifying wizard (!!!!) she met on Hinge, before meeting her fiancé at a wedding. My other friend who lives with her boyfriend (who she met on Hinge so you win some and you lose some), was single and dating for many years before then. During that time she met and briefly dated a guy (who she met in person), who turned into an unhinged stalker after they broke up, and she almost had to get a restraining order against him.

Part of why I started sharing about my dating experiences online (and trust me, that was never on my bingo card, but it kind of just spontaneously happened one day…) is because it made me feel less alone in my experiences, and I loved that it was helping others also.

Suddenly it wasn’t just me dealing with the frustration of endless pointless small talk on the apps without it leading to any sort of in-person meet ups, or getting ghosted after being led on by someone, or being sent unhinged texts out of the blue, and realizing that this was happening to everyone else around me also.

The myth that everyone else has it all figured out

I used to be envious of couples who had married their high school/college sweethearts, because it meant they had escaped the crazy world of modern dating. But my perspective on that has since changed.

I was in relationships throughout my senior year of high school through college, which meant that I never had any crazy college hookup stories. And in some ways I felt like I missed out there.

Which is why when I was finally single again and living in NYC as an adult, I was sad over my ex, but excited for my newfound freedom.

I just never imagined the wild, long, frustrating ride that dating would become, but I am grateful for it it in some ways also. It sounds so very cliché, but every date, experience, and guy that I’ve met along the way has truly shaped me into the person I am today, as well as my standards.

I also know that when I do meet the right person, I will never second guess him and wonder if there’s someone better out there, because I’ve already been there, done that, and never want to do that again.

And I have to keep reminding myself that, even after what feels like the 1,000th bad date/experience, and that feeling of “Why is this so hard, and why hasn’t this happened for me yet?!”

Because the truth is, dating is frustrating and difficult for a myriad of reasons. Sometimes it feels impossible to meet someone who is as into you as you are them, is in a phase of their life where they are willing and ready to meet someone, and also wants the same things in life as you!

It is also so difficult to continuously put yourself out there again and again and again, especially after being hurt or disappointed or blindsided or rejected, and still be able to trust and let in another person again. But most importantly, and the most underrated and least talked about it at all, is being able to trust yourself through the entire process. That your judgement is sound, you’re not doing anything wrong, and that you will be ok no matter what happens next.

You can't optimize your way into love

I used to think that I needed to do all the “right” things in order to end up with someone - never pursue a man, wait for him to make the next move, don’t waste time on the wrong guy etc. etc. but I am so over the tropes of modern dating advice.

Yes of course, respect yourself and have standards, but there are so many nuances that can happen between two people that often times can’t be captured in a few overused phrases that are designed more to avoid rejection rather than to find love.

Because the truth is, you cannot avoid being hurt, disappointed, blindsided, or rejected in the pursuit of finding someone. It’s like saying you want a new job but don’t want to be rejected in the process of looking for one. It’s impossible.

While it stings when someone ghosts, slow fades, lovebombs etc. no matter how long you’ve know someone for, sometimes you just end up in a situation like that unintentionally, and it has nothing to do with you or what you said or did. We can’t control or anticipate the actions of other people, we can only control our own. You can only go off of what someone is saying to you and showing you in the moment, and it’s not your fault if they appear interested in the beginning and all of a sudden disappears. That is entirely on them.

I have unfortunately gone through many experiences like that and it is extremely destabilizing and not something I want to experience again. But what made those experiences worse was beating myself up after about giving someone seemingly too many chances or ending up in a situation like that again. Because unfortunately, sometimes it just cannot be prevented, no matter how hard you may want to.

And the opposite of that - writing someone off too soon or based on a different person’s past actions is what makes you cynical and closed off to love. And last time I checked, that doesn’t lead to finding someone either.

You can do everything “right” and still get hurt

Sometimes you will spend longer than you would like on someone where the feelings weren’t reciprocal or where their actions didn’t match their words, and that is ok. Hindsight is always 20/20. And honestly, sometimes you do need to spend longer than you should with the wrong person because experiencing that in real-time is the best way to learn to raise your standards.

When I was 25, I dated a guy for five months before he made things official (and then he promptly ended things a week later because he said he wasn’t ready for a relationship…) but I will never wait that long again. It shouldn’t take more than 3 months of getting to know someone to decide whether you could see yourself in a relationship with them, and if they’re delaying any longer than that or making excuses as to why that doesn’t work, they probably have commitment issues or something else going on. But does it matter in the grand scheme of things now that I got rejected after five months rather than ending things myself after three months? Absolutely not. Those two months were a blip in the radar. And I didn’t know better at the time.

Enough with the dating advice already

I also find most modern dating advice to be extremely disempowering to women. For example, and I hate even typing this phrase because it’s so overused, but “if he wanted to, he would”. Ugh, I’m cringing so hard right now. I know what it's trying to say, but I've never liked it. It centers the man's actions as the only thing that matters and encourages women to simply wait for clarity instead of pursuing clarity themselves. But what if I want to know where something is going? What if I don't want to spend weeks wondering what someone else is thinking? I'd rather have an honest conversation, even if it leads to rejection, than outsource my decisions to someone else's timeline.

Staying true to yourself is harder than following advice

Which brings me to the point of this piece. It’s important to stay true to your self, your own experiences, and your desires because you’re the only one who knows yourself, the other person, and the situation the best. Not everyone has to understand or agree with you, and that doesn’t make your actions or decisions wrong.

One thing I have especially struggled with is letting the opinions of friends or strangers on the internet dictate my opinions in certain romantic situations, and I always regret when I value their experiences and input over my own. Because that invalidates my own narrative, and I would personally rather get hurt staying true to myself than kowtowing to the opinions, fears, and experiences of others.

But staying true to yourself and trusting your instincts after being repeatedly hurt again or not have things work out is very difficult to do.

When hope starts feeling dangerous

To be very candid with you, getting ghosted recently by the guy I met after the Knicks won and who I texted with for over a month, threw me into an emotional spiral. And it’s not because I cared about him or wanted us to be a thing but because of what he represented. We barely knew each other, and I doubt he even remembered what I looked like (I only have a blurry photo my friend took of him for reference). But that situation, combined with the month of hope I had attached to it and every disappointment that came before, compounded in my mind and created a devastating, unfair narrative that I would never meet anyone.

That combined with running into the guy I had an extremely complicated relationship with from last summer brought me to a dark place. Because the irony of those encounters is that I entered this summer with a different mindset. I was determined to have fun. We had survived the worst winter of all time, I was so tired of being burned in dating, and I let go of the need to find a long term partner. I figured it would happen whenever it was meant to happen.

And I was having fun, starting with my unexpected mini fling at the wedding in Tuscany at the end of May (except I then had to deal with the emotional fallout of our short-lived adventure afterwards for reasons I’m not going to get into right now), and then the chance encounter with the Knicks guy, and just meeting other guys out randomly.

But for that fun to come to such a sudden and unexpected halt, and somehow still leave me emotionally hurt, was incredibly discouraging. I wasn’t even trying to turn this into something serious. I was just allowing myself to enjoy the moments, stay open, and see what happened. And somehow, I still ended up carrying the weight of another disappointment. Like are you kidding me?

The story I started telling myself…

Because both those guys seemed like reminders of things not ever working out for me, and that’s all I could focus on.

I was so tired of being single. Tired of running on an endless hamster wheel of emotions. Tired of my parents telling me to get on the dating apps, or to get set up by friends, or to join a pickleball club. Tired of rejecting guys I wasn’t interested in after one to two dates. Tired of feeling like everyone’s love life around me was moving forward while mine was stuck in the same place it had always been in. Tired of wondering whether I was shooting myself in the foot by publicly posting about my dating experiences. Tired of questioning whether I was doing something wrong or going after the wrong guys or needed to work on myself before being able to be in a relationship with someone.

The need to find the missing piece

And honestly, it was the last part that was keeping me the most stuck. Thinking that this was a me problem, and that if I could only pinpoint the “reason” why things haven’t worked out yet, then I could “fix” it, and then everything would be ok.

But I had to remind myself that I am secure, open, and vulnerable enough to let someone in. That I am not naive, and would never let myself enter a one-sided, unhealthy, or unfulfilling relationship. Or ever try to convince a man to be with me. I would much rather be single than with the wrong guy. My life is so peaceful when I’m not talking to a man, and sometimes I prefer it that way.

But the reason it felt easier to assume it was something I needed to “fix” is because it gave me something to do, and to work toward. Instead of just sitting back, and letting things happen.

Trusting your timing

Because one of the hardest things about dating in your 30’s is accepting that your timeline and trajectory is unique, and it doesn’t need to, nor will it, look like everyone else’s. But that applies to everything in life. My career path doesn’t look at all like my friends or what I envisioned it to be, but I love it, it is uniquely mine, and it makes sense for me.

I don’t believe love should be forced. I don’t believe in going on a bunch of dates in the hopes of meeting someone faster. That is how I burn myself out actually. But I also feel external pressure from a lot of friends around me having babies and getting married.

To get myself out of this funk, I went to a wellness event at the Maze, an alcohol-free members’ club in Flatiron. They had a tarot card reader there, so of course I beelined straight for her, and asked her about my love life. Three cards and a few minutes later, I walked away feeling so much lighter than I had been. (Her name is Anne Benveniste if you want to check her out!)

She told me that I had a lot of pent up pain, disappointment, and other heavy emotions to release from past experiences that were weighing me down. And that the only way to let go of them was to sit in them to really feel them. She also encouraged me to have fun and go toward activities and places that lit me up, even if they made no sense. That a different way to look at the Knicks guy was to see that it was possible to meet guys out and about, even if things didn’t work out in particular with this one.

But the part that stayed with me the most was her reminder to let go of my expectations for the future. My path may not look like the people around me, and that's okay. Whether you believe in tarot or not, that idea resonated because I had already been fighting it. The hardest part wasn't believing that things would work out, it was surrendering the need to know when, how, and where they would.

That's when I realized this wasn't just about dating. It applies to everything in life. We all have ideas of how we hope our lives will unfold, but they rarely happen according to plan. Sometimes we encounter obstacles and are forced to pivot. Sometimes things become something even better. The only thing we can really control is whether we keep showing up for our own lives, even when they don't look the way we imagined. Because trusting yourself isn't believing that everything will go according to plan. It's believing that you'll be okay even when it doesn't.

xx,

Victoria

Because what happens when one day you wake up and realize you no longer enjoy doing something that used to give you joy?

Five years after I started creating content around the best restaurants, bars, and hidden gems in NYC, I realized I didn't enjoy it anymore. At least not the way I had been doing it.

Instead of sitting down to eat at a restaurant I was excited about and settling into enjoying a meal with friends, I was scouting out the best angles to film restaurant interiors without getting in the way of guests and servers, trying to discreetly use my portable light to film plates of food whenever they arrived at our table, making myself presentable to be filmed mid-bite, and thinking of how to package all these clips together into an engaging video that I would need to edit and post later.

The same thing happened when I would go out to bop around a few stores in a new neighborhood. Instead of being filled with the excitement of wandering into a cute boutique I had never heard of before, the pressure to film would override my excitement, and I found myself dutifully capturing the essence of each place I stepped into, rather than enjoying the thrill of actually perusing the wares.

And while I did think about just living in the moment and not filming anything, part of me was also afraid that I would regret it later, in case I had an idea for a video and needed clips from that specific place, and didn’t want to go back just to capture content.

Thus this push-pull within myself continued. It got to a point where I didn’t even want to go out and explore new neighborhoods anymore, even though that has always been something I loved doing in my free time.

I felt deeply conflicted. I had turned my hobby into my career, which is something I once dreamed of, but somewhere along the way, everything started feeling like work. The line between work and life disappeared, and with it, so did part of my sense of self.

I hit a wall more times than I can count during this period as burnout took over, serving as a wake up call to myself that something needed to change. At one point I questioned whether I still wanted to create content, and that also scared me, because it didn’t seem to be the right answer either. But then I didn’t know what was.

After another painful, debilitating, sleepless night, I finally gave in to what my body had been screaming at me for the past few weeks and months to do, and fully unplugged. I ignored my fears of not remaining consistent across platforms, not showing up to give people what they had followed/subscribed for, not responding to my inbox on time, and focused fully on prioritizing myself. My needs, and most importantly, my rest and sacred me time away from the camera came above everything else.

I started going to Othership, a sauna I love dearly, in the middle of the workday because I had the freedom and luxury to do things like that, and yet hadn’t been taking advantage of that.

I would lie in the sauna and just let my mind wander. When I got too hot, I would rinse off, and slip into the frigid waters of their cold plunge and relish the fact that I was so cold that I could only focus on the present moment, and nothing else.

And when I tired of this cycle, I would head into their common area, plop myself down on their couches and just brain dump anything that came to mind on the notebooks they provided, while sipping their calming teas.

Those sessions revived me and made me realize that I had been treating my then chronic insomnia incorrectly. I thought I just needed to maintain consistent bedtime and wake times, go to bed earlier, etc. etc. but I realized the issue ran deeper than that. I needed a holistic lifestyle overhaul, not a melatonin sleep aid.

I got a Brick, which has been the only social media blocker that has actually worked for me (and trust me, I’ve tried a lot!) It’s a device that locks you out of any and all websites/apps you choose until you physically tap the device to unlock them again, and it has been game changing for my mental health. Now I brick my phone after 7 pm during the week and on the weekends, and have never looked back.

I relegated myself to only taking 2-3 photos of places I went to instead of videos, unless I felt really compelled to create a dedicated Reel. I let go of feeling like I needed to post 5-7 days a week, and gave myself grace to set a more forgiving schedule for myself.

And above all, I began treating my sleep as sacred, and prioritizing getting at least 7 hours every night, above all else. And if anything disrupted it - like drinking alcohol too close to bedtime, talking to a boy who was stressing me out too much etc., I would get rid of the cause immediately.

Around this time I also found myself at a dinner where I was sitting next to Nadya Okamoto, a superstar of a woman who has founded numerous successful businesses, amassed a following of over 4 million, and is on the Forbes 30 under 30 list.

I’m sure she gets this question all the time, but at one point I turned to her and asked, “How do you do it all?” in disbelief, especially when I found out she also hosts a run club and trains for marathons on top of everything.

She turned to me and said without hesitation, “I prioritize my sleep. Like this morning I woke up at 11 am.” I was shocked. “And I also don’t have a social life,” she added.

But what she said validated how I had been feeling recently, and reignited my desire to prioritize my well-being above all other obligations.

And in this journey of finding my way back to the present moment and myself and ignoring the previous high pressure/unrealistic obligations I had placed upon myself, I rediscovered my purpose and passion for creating content. And the stories and message I wanted to leave people with. While it used to be solely recommendations on where to go, I realized that I also wanted to share the many ups and downs I had been through in my relationships, career, and life in general. Like not a sugarcoated, abbreviated version but the full messy, confusing, heartbreaking, unexpected details of it all, what it taught me, and how it all led me to the here and now.

Because I know I’m not the only one who goes through these things, and I think it’s important to share. So that you can feel less alone in your journey, wherever life happens to find you. And have more time living your best life, at your leisure.

xx,

Victoria

P.S. If you’re curious about trying Othership, I got you a discount here. It’s genuinely become one of my favorite places to reset, unplug, and spend some intentional time with myself. They also host fun socials on select dates too, and I’ve met a lot of new people there!

Also, Andy Dunn, co-founder of menswear brand Bonobos, was at the dinner I met Nadya at, to celebrate the launch of his new social meetup app Pie. He gave everyone in attendance his book Burn Rate, which I couldn’t put down. I ended up finishing it a few days later, and I highly recommend! He also writes about the importance of sleep in his entrepreneurial journey and how prioritizing sleep shaped his life, work, and mental health.

I remember walking along the cobblestone streets admiring the towering columns of the Colosseum rising above the city streets, eating the best pasta I’d ever had in my life at random trattorias my family stumbled upon, watching the World Cup finals on a giant projector in the middle of a random field (and storming the streets after - I can’t even remember if Italy won that year), and gliding across the glistening canals in Venice.

And while I’ve been back to Italy several times since, I wasn’t expecting this recent trip to become one of my favorites!

I was heading to a friend’s wedding in Tuscany over Memorial Day weekend, so I decided to turn it into a longer trip, starting in Florence.

Since there are no direct flights between NYC and Florence, by the time I arrived, I’d been traveling for more than 12 hours. One very necessary shower later, I was walking across the Arno at sunset to dinner, and suddenly none of the exhaustion mattered. It felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

I was really only passing through Florence on my way to Tuscany, but I got lucky: the best man lived in the area, ran wine tours through the region, and gave us a list of his favorite spots, which is my favorite way to plan trips.

The first recommendation we used from him was Antico Ristoro di Cambi, a local Italian trattoria by the river that we went to for dinner on our first night. All I wanted on my first night in Italy was fried artichokes and a creamy, cheesy pasta with squash blossoms, and that is exactly what I ended up with. I couldn’t be happier.

The next day we had a few hours to kill before the wedding shuttles picked us up from the train station, so we went looking for lunch. While Mercato Centrale is the most famous market in Florence, I much preferred walking more out of the way to Mercato di Sant'Ambrogio, which felt like a local farmer’s market rather than a tourist trap.

A friend and I made friends with the cheesemonger and a local Florentine woman while grabbing cheeses for lunch. And although it somehow took us 25 minutes to buy a slab of parmiggiano reggiano and some of the best truffle cheese I’ve ever tasted, it was worth the extra samples and chitchat.

Because we'd gone out of our way for the market, we ended up seeing almost the entire city on the way back, which is how we landed at Ino for a second lunch. In a city famous for its paninis, I knew I had to eat at least one before leaving. I went with a caponata with garlic aioli and happily finished the whole thing even though I wasn't that hungry.

And then came the part of the trip I wasn't expecting to love quite so much.…

Under the Tuscan sun

I hadn't planned anything in Tuscany beyond showing up for the wedding, and somehow, those three days ended up being my favorite part of the entire trip. I didn’t expect to fall in love with Tuscany as much as I did, but I now fully understand the allure. There are few places that are as stunning, well known, and yet still so untouched as this region, and I was in awe of everything there.

What surprised me most was how much there was to do beyond wineries. Like I had no idea Europe's largest polo field sits among Tuscany's rolling hills, where you can go horseback riding through the countryside. Add in wine tastings, thermal baths, golf, hot air balloon rides, and suddenly you realize you could spend weeks here without running out of things to do.

We stayed at Villa la Selva (highly, highly recommend!), a stunning wine resort in the Valdambra valley and were blessed with good weather during our stay. There was actually a heat wave while we were there, but the property has two beautiful pools along with a tennis court. Breakfast was included, every meal was simple but delicious, and the property itself was stunning. It was also where my friend got married, and I honestly can't imagine a more beautiful venue.

Isola d’Elba

As much as I didn't want to leave Tuscany, my trip wasn't over yet. Before flying home, I'd carved out a few extra days to explore Elba, an island off the Tuscan coast I'd been curious about for years.

I had actually met an Italian tour guide living in NYC years ago at an event who first told me about this island, and I was hooked when she said that the island is fairly small, not very touristy, and tends to attract mostly Italians (and Germans as I came to find out.) A little fun fact, it’s also where Napoleon was exiled to.

However, getting there without a car from Tuscany was doable but not glamorous (at all). I took the wedding shuttle back to Florence along with everyone else, then a 45 minute train to Pisa, then transferred to a regional train (that took 1.5 hours) to end up at Piombino, a small port town, where I then caught a 1 hour ferry to Elba. (There are also direct trains from Florence to Piombino, but fewer throughout the day.)

I didn't rent a car, which in hindsight I regret, and stayed in Portoferraio, the port town, mostly for convenience. There are buses, but there were transportation strikes happening the whole time I was there and the schedules kept changing. Cabs exist but they're absurdly expensive, like I paid $40 for a 25-minute ride, and they also needed to be booked ahead.

While the island was worth the trek, I almost cried on my first day there. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get to my Airbnb after an exhausting 7 hour travel day. I had just shlepped my bags off the ferry, picked up my key from a nearby cafe, and was dutifully following my Google Maps directions until it led me to the mouth of a tunnel with cars streaming out of with no sidewalk in sight.

There seemed to be a pedestrian tunnel to the lefthand side, but the endpoint of the tunnel was unclear, and since I was carrying all my bags, I didn’t really want to explore to see. When I saw an older woman carrying a bag of groceries pass me by, I quickly flagged her down and asked her for help.

Although she didn’t know a word of English and I barely knew Italian, she tried to help me as best as she could, gesticulating widely and turning my phone around and around to better see. After a few minutes of this she called over a ragazzo walking by and passed me off to him.

Who led me back down the stairs I had just struggled up with my suitcase only moments earlier and back down around a corner on a busy street. However, my Google Maps said I was still off the mark and in a fit of despair I called my Airbnb host.

Luckily he was nearby and came zooming over to rescue me on his Vespa just a few minutes later, and walked me over to the apartment. He explained that the tunnel with cars was safe for pedestrians (I was skeptical about this, but ended up trying it sans bags the next day, and turns out he was right).

I had never been more tired, hungry, and hot from a travel day, and all I wanted to do was to get myself to the nearest beach and submerge myself in the ocean.

And after dumping my stuff at my Airbnb, I did exactly that. And this was the view I came to.

Mind you, this was just a random beach in the ferry port town of this island, so I knew I was in for a treat for the rest of my trip.

I was so tired I almost skipped out on dinner (which is so unlike me), but ended up dragging myself to Osteria Pepenero, and I’m so glad I did. They had a seafood pasta that revived me, and I later fell into bed, relieved that my only plan for the next day would be to go to the beach.

While there are many beaches on the island, I had heard about the cliffside beauty of Capo Bianco and purposefully booked an Airbnb that was a 20 minute walk from there. Since it was overcast that day and still the end of May, I basically had the whole beach to myself.

So I spent the rest of the day blissfully beach hopping in the area before heading to dinner at Molo G Osteria Portuale, an amazing restaurant hidden inside a working shipyard where I had the best octopus of my life. Wow. Definitely worth the frantic 20 minutes it took me to find the entrance to this place. They’re a little too hidden, and their location is incorrect in Google Maps (I was 0-2 on Google Maps on that trip!), but it was so worth the journey.

I was the most excited for my boat excursion the next day, which was at Marina di Campo, a neighboring town. I took a cab there, excited to see a different part of the island, and spent most of the day shopping the cute boutiques in town and then relaxing on one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve been to.

Unlike the day before, the weather was absolutely perfect. What a difference it makes!

And as we set sail along the Tyrrhenian Sea, the gentle Mediterranean sea breeze whipping my hair around as we glided along shimmering blue waters, coves arising in the distance, and the sun shining down on me, I thought back on the unexpectedly magical few days I had just had. Nothing could ever replace the feeling of horseback riding through a medieval hilltop village in Tuscany or floating on my back on a secluded cliffside beach or watching a full moon glide down a boat-ridden horizon on a small island off the coast of Tuscany.

These are the moments truly worth living for.

xx,

Victoria

Then I came back from a wedding in Tuscany and walked straight into Knicks mania, World Cup anticipation, and a city wide electric energy that truly can’t be replicated anywhere else. There’s something about NYC summer, but especially this summer, that makes living here so magical.

So here are all the free, outdoor, and fun things to do these next few months, a guide to the sportiest summer of NYC, along with cool day trips, weekend trips, and recent openings to have on your radar!

Read more

But before I came to that realization, there were many spirals of self-doubt. Wondering if I was actually cut out for this. Questioning whether my content was good enough. Overthinking every piece of content I was putting out. Comparing myself to other creators and beating myself up over the fact that they seemed to be growing faster than me while I wasn’t.

There is nothing more frustrating or demoralizing than spending hours working on something, whether it’s a piece of content, a project, or even a relationship, only for it to fall flat, get little response, or feel like it’s setting you backwards.

Every time that happened, I felt like I needed to be doing more: refining, optimizing, putting in more effort, reaching out more, and trying to force a result that just wasn’t happening.

So after struggling through several weeks of this, and burning myself out in the process, I realized something needed to change. And it had nothing to do with external factors I couldn’t fully control, like new followers or brand deals magically appearing in my inbox.

This period forced me to remember why I started my account and why I ended up here in the first place. It was never about going viral, gaining thousands of followers, or making money.

Isn’t it interesting how the markers of “success” are often directly tied to external validation? A promotion, a pay raise, a relationship milestone etc.

But what happens when those benchmarks don’t happen? Does that mean you’re a failure?

When you put in the work day in and day out, and it feels like nothing is working. When things aren’t coming to fruition. When you aren’t moving forward.

When it feels like you’ve gone on 100 first dates and still don’t have a relationship to show for it. When you hit publish on something you spent hours or days working on, and it barely gets seen.

And I realized this wasn’t just about content creation, this is how most of us define success, by things we don’t fully control.

But what does success actually look like and feel like for you? If we stripped away the titles, the salary, the relationship, and the external markers of success. What would be left? What actually makes you feel happy and fulfilled?

This is something I’ve been grappling with a lot lately, because the usual indicators I used to rely on as validation that I was on the right path had suddenly become unstable and unreliable.

I am no longer in the corporate world, and don’t have a manager, performance reviews, or structured feedback to tell me how I am doing. And I find it ironic that the freedom I once craved now feels unfamiliar and, at times, unsafe.

The only real-time feedback I can turn to is the performance of my posts and the influx of brand deals in my inbox, but that quickly proved to be unreliable.

Outsourcing my mood and self-worth to things outside of my control, whether that’s an algorithm, other people’s decisions, or timing, was the worst investment I could possibly make in myself. Because in this kind of environment, one moment something works, and the next it doesn’t, and sometimes that’s outside of your control.

And so I found myself on this constant rollercoaster - one moment feeling like I had made the right decision, and the next questioning if I was even meant for the path I chose at all.

But if I couldn’t rely on those external metrics, how was I supposed to know if I was on the right path?

The answer was much deeper, and much harder to accept.

Relying on those external signals was draining, unproductive, and damaging to my creativity and mental health. But the alternative - putting blind faith and trust in myself, felt even harder.

Because what I really wanted was certainty. A guaranteed outcome. A safety net.

But I realized those desires were fundamentally incompatible with the path I chose, and just not possible in general.

No one knows what the future has in store for them. Steve Jobs didn’t realize that he was going to build a multi billion dollar global empire of tech phones and accessories and completely revolutionize our entire digital landscape. But he kept at it anyways, because he was compelled to do so.

Van Gogh never knew that he was going to become one of the most famous painters of all time and a global phenomenon. Although he sadly died before he was ever recognized, he kept on painting thankfully, and now his artworks have brought joy to millions of people around the world across generations and will continue to do so for years to come, because of the tireless and genuine work he put into his art.

And that reminded me of why I started my Instagram account in the first place. To share curated recommendations and inspire you to make the most of your life.

Sometimes, if you’re an overachiever and perfectionist like me, the solution isn’t to do more, it’s to do less. To unplug. To trust that what’s meant for you will find you.

To trust that every book you’ve read, podcast you’ve listened to, and hour you’ve spent working toward your goals was worth it, even if you don’t have tangible results to show for it yet.

Because I realized I wasn’t actually afraid of failure. I’ve managed to achieve everything I’ve set out to do, even if it took a lot longer and was much harder than I initially expected.

What I am really afraid of is that nothing would ever feel like enough. That once one goal was hit, another would immediately replace it. More money. More followers. Another milestone.

That I would never feel satisfied.

And that made me question my barometer for success.

What would actually make me feel happy and fulfilled?

And the answer was simpler than I expected: waking up and doing what I’ve been doing, but with less stress, less pressure, and more space to actually enjoy my life.

Because the truth is, the threshold I thought would make me feel stable is always moving. And if you tie your happiness, success, and self-worth to those metrics, you’ll never feel fulfilled, no matter how much you achieve.

So here's to rewriting my definition of success. One that isn't contingent on anyone else. One that includes making enough money to support myself, sleeping 7+ hours every night, and actually waking up energized, and building a life I love on my own terms.

But most importantly, inspiring others to live meaningful, experience-rich lives they wouldn’t have found otherwise

And outside of that, nothing else really matters. Not the slow months. Not the posts I thought would perform but didn’t. Not the followers gained or lost.

Because I realized I had the formula for success wrong.

I thought it was hard work, determination, and resilience.

But it’s actually a compelling vision, the confidence to pursue it, and the resilience to keep going, even when it feels like nothing is working and no one around you fully understands it.

Getting through those tough months also made me realize something else important. There are different seasons in life, just as there are different seasons throughout the year. Spring is followed by winter which comes after fall which happens after summer. There are natural cycles of growth, stagnation, hibernation, and rebirth that are constantly happening, and it doesn’t mean things are wrong when you are in a slower period.

And I’m so grateful that I’ve reached the level of success that my college self dreamt for me, as summarized in my old Wordpress blog circa 2014…

And if that’s not worth celebrating, then I don’t know what is.

xx,

Victoria

It’s going to be 85 degrees and sunny (!!!) and we’ll spend a fun afternoon together where you’ll get to meet new people who also want to make the most of NYC and stop at a few of my favorite hidden gems in the neighborhood. Coffee, wine, and food are all included, and you’ll even be able to take home a record from this cool vinyl cafe!

Grab a spot before they're gone here!

Ok, now back to the story 🙂

It was Labor Day weekend 2022, and I was convinced I had just met my soulmate.

I was in the city for the holiday weekend for once, had no plans, and was dog sitting a dog from Rover.

The weather was deliciously temperate after a long, hot summer, and I took the dog for a nice long walk that Friday evening. I was going to grab takeout for dinner, but it was so nice out I ended up sitting at a cute sidewalk table at For All Things Good, a Mexican cafe in my neighborhood.

After I had finished my mushroom tacos (that were so good!), I idled for a bit, not wanting to go back home yet. A few minutes later, a really cute guy came and sat down at the table beside me. I was immediately interested.

Except he was deeply engrossed in his phone and had barely noticed me. I silently begged the dog to go over to greet this man, but she was wholly uninterested. So I took matters into my own hands.

I leaned over and asked him if he had been to the restaurant before. He finally looked up from his phone and responded that he hadn’t, and that he had actually just moved to the neighborhood two days ago.

Thirty five minutes then breezed by as we learned about what we each did for work, where we were from, what our interests were, and it felt like we could talk for forever. Turns out, we were very similar and were both foodies, had similar upbringings, values, and personalities.

When I got up to leave to go home, he asked for my number and texted me later that night. I was elated. He was everything I wanted in a partner, and checked all my boxes. I couldn’t believe we had met in-person also, and so unexpectedly. Things always happen when you least expect it, right?

I let myself hope and believe that this could actually turn into something. We began texting constantly, easily continuing our spontaneous in-person chat over text.

Two days later, I took the dog with me to Guevera’s, a Cuban cafe in the neighborhood for a Hinge date I had scheduled a week ago. As soon as I walked up to the cafe, I saw the guy that I had met at the cafe sitting a few tables in front of the guy I was supposed to meet up with, and my stomach dropped.

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I’m also so excited to be hosting my first in-person event next weekend!! Come hang out with me in Greenpoint on Sunday May 17th from 2:30-4:30 pm. We will be meeting at For the Record, a cute vinyl cafe, and then eating and drinking at two different spots in my favorite neighborhood as well as exploring some cute local stores.

I’ve been planning this with Airbnb Experiences for awhile now, and I’ve been wanting to meet you in-person, so I thought this could be a fun way for us to get together. Let me know if you have any questions!

All food and drinks are included, and tickets can be found here. Come solo or with friends :)

Below are some other fun things happening this month!

Events and Happenings

Anna Sui x ebay Stoop Vintage Sample Sale:

16 W 10th St, Saturday 5/9 1-5 pm

So so excited that designer Anna Sui herself is hosting a one day only stoop sale in West Village in partnership with ebay! The pieces will also be available online here if you can’t make it in-person.

Part of the proceeds also goes to City Meals on Wheels. Go early because there will definitely be a line!

Anais Wine Bar Events:

Various dates

Anais Wine Bar, a cute wine bar in Boerum Hill is hosting a fun series of upcoming events.

This coming Sunday, May 10th they will be serving a strawberry rhubarb froyo with granola and compote from 2 pm until they sell out. I love strawberry rhubarb anything, especially over the summertime, and am so excited about this!!

Then on Tuesday May 12th at 7:30 pm, they are hosting a mentalist show with Jack Fox Baum. Tickets are $22, and it looks like a lot of fun!

The following day on Wednesday May 13th at 7 pm, they will be hosting a film night screening OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies and serving free martinis!!!

Land to Sea May Events:

Various dates, 402 Graham Ave Brooklyn, NY 11211

This cafe and creative venue in East Williamsburg is hosting a series of fun upcoming events in honor of May being AANHPI month! You can find them all here, but they have several mahjong nights as well as a three part food pop up series featuring three different Asian chefs.

Afternoon Light Design Fair:

WSA (161 Water Street), Sunday 5/17 - Tuesday 5/19

Running as part of NYC x Design week (which is 5/14 - 5/20), this design fair is taking place at one of my favorite cultural hubs in the city, WSA in Fidi. There will be artful exhibitions and immersive installations by renowned furniture, lighting, and design brands like USM Modular Furniture, Gantri Mode, and RAD Furniture.

I can’t wait to see all the exhibits there! Tickets are available here.

The Met’s Costume Art Exhibit:

The Met Museum, 5/10/26 - 1/10/27

The new Conde Nast Galleries at the Met Museum are filled with “fashion as art” pieces as part of the new Met Gala exhibit that I am so excited to see! Try going during the week, as they tend to get very crowded on the weekends.

demi’s Mindful Wine Tasting Series:

the kilnroom, Saturday 5/30

I went to one of demi’s wine tasting events a few weekends ago at Bouquet wine bar and loved the concept. You gather with a few strangers at a different venue, sample some wines, discuss, and have fun. It’s perfect if you want to get out of your comfort zone a bit to meet new people! This upcoming event is being hosted at a cute ceramics studio in Williamsburg. You can get tickets here.

Bumble’s IRL Events:

Various locations and dates

I’m so happy that Bumble is bringing back their IRL events! They’re having various events at many different bars and fun locations around the city (like Ray’s, Happy Medium, and the Parkgate) throughout the end of this month. Entry and drinks are free, so there’s no excuse not to go if you’re single! Just make sure you RSVP here.

Recent Openings

Bodega Nights

A new Brazilian wine bar/restaurant from the team behind BabySips, a natural wine bar on the LES, opened in Bushwick at the end of March and I’ve been dying to check it out. Alongside Brazilian wines, they serve a menu of small plates like crispy salt cod fritters, house made sausages, and even a hearth fired whole fish. Come for the European vibes, stay for the wine and food.

car part time

I’m obsessed with the concept of this new showroom/member's space revolving around collector cars, vinyl, coffee, and events. The space is super cute, and you do not have to be a member to attend their events. The next ones are on Sunday 5/24 and Sunday 6/7 for two F1 viewing parties. Tickets are $20, and you can get them here.

Zoli

This new restaurant is at the top of my list right now. I still haven’t been to Houseman in Hudson Square, but this stylish new seafood restaurant just opened by their team at Amant, an art foundation in East Williamsburg. I’m already in love with the concept of this place, and I haven’t even set food inside yet!

Kinda Nice

I just went to the soft opening of this new cocktail bar in Williamsburg last night, and didn’t realize they had taken over the old Ensenada/Black Flamingo space! They have unique cocktails and small plates like these caesar salad deviled eggs (they were so good!), a grilled cheese, and more. I’m curious to see what their downstairs will be like, but I feel like it will be a fun going out spot for the summer time!

Gigi’s

A cute new wine bar that specializes in pours and rotisserie chicken recently opened in Greenpoint, and has already been packed every night it’s been open. Come for the wine, and stay for the vibes and the chicken.

Hope you have an amazing weekend, and talk to you (and see you) soon!!

xx,

Victoria

After the winter we just had, I don’t think I’m taking a single 70 degree day for granted.

So I rounded up 20 of my favorite NYC backyards across bars, cafés, and restaurants that I’ll be rotating through for the next few months whenever I can get outside!

Greenburg Cafe

I ran here as soon as they opened early last year, and it’s been a favorite of mine since. Serving coffee, pastries, and tea this cafe is an excellent spot to work from or catch up with a friend. They also very recently started offering wine and beer for weekend nights.

Entwine

This wine bar in the West Village has one of the most spacious backyards I’ve seen in Manhattan! I would love to come back here on a date or to catch up with a friend. They also have a happy hour from Monday to Friday 4 pm - 7pm and Saturday-Sunday 2pm - 6pm so definitely take advantage of that.

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He was my best friend’s husband’s best friend, meaning you can’t get more mutual friend than that. I first met him on our mutual friends’ joint bachelorette/bachelor trip in Cabo, where we hit it off. He had a girlfriend at the time, and nothing happened between us, but there was a definite vibe that everyone on the trip had picked up on as well. (Probably the first red flag about him was that he failed to mention his girlfriend to me at all during that trip, and I only found that out later from my friend...)

Anyways, since he also lived in NYC, I would see him around casually after that trip. Like we went to Brooklyn Mirage (RIP) at one point with some of my friends, his girlfriend, and his friends, and had a very normal, fun night out.

But overall, our interactions were pretty intermittent because he was busy with med school. Until he and his girlfriend broke up that is.

A few months after that happened, we reconnected at my holiday party that I hosted at my apartment. From there, we started hanging out one-on-one for the first time. He came with me to a cocktail bar I had gotten invited to in January, and then we got brunch a few months later.

At this brunch he invited me to go with him to a wedding that September in Jersey along with a concert he was going to next weekend with another mutual friend. I was taken aback by the wedding invite and said I would get back to him on that, but that the concert sounded fun.

At that point I started questioning if our one-on-one interactions had meant more to him. Like were they dates? But both meet ups were at places I had been invited to, so I essentially had covered the bill both times (another red flag).

But I was hung up on the wedding invite. Was it weird that a guy friend, who even though we had never hooked up nor gone on dates (?? albeit that part was questionable) but we also weren’t truly platonic, had invited me to a wedding five months out in Princeton, NJ? Meaning we would need to figure out accommodations as well?

I couldn’t decide, but I figured that I would see how the concert played out and go from there.

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That statement implies that the sole reason for why things ended was because he simply didn’t like you enough to pursue a relationship with you. But I fundamentally disagree with this. A guy could be really into you, but be so scared of intimacy and commitment, that he will never be able to let you in fully. The statement “he’s just not that into you” implies that if that guy were to meet “the right girl”, he would magically be able to look past his deep seated traumas and fears from his childhood and past relationships and somehow fully commit to her without any inner work done on himself or therapy sessions attended which is simply not the case.

Or if he does happen to find someone after you, it’s a surface-level, casual relationship without any of the deep, emotional intimacy you crave that you wouldn’t want to be in anyways.

As someone who has dated and dealt with the emotional fallout of dating one too many emotionally unavailable guys, I can tell you firsthand that this is true. But it took me a long time to come to this conclusion, and for awhile I would beat myself up and think that I was the one who wasn’t good enough to be with him or there was something wrong with me. Because coming across tropes like “he just wasn’t that into you” would cause me to spiral and doubt my entire connection and relationship with that person, and question my judgement and interpretation of the situation. Which is honestly dangerous territory to be in when you feel like you can’t trust yourself or rely on your intuition.

And emotional unavailability is very confusing to discern in the beginning stages of early dating, and it also presents very differently depending on the person. There is a spectrum of emotional unavailability, and sometimes it masks itself as secure, especially when you’re first getting to know someone. Because I have dated guys on multiple ends of that spectrum.

The emotionally unavailable guys of my past

Guy A was textbook avoidant - he never went into much detail on his past relationships and hurts, was so afraid of ending up with the wrong person that it prevented him from being with the right person, and would pull away whenever we spent a lot of time together or when we were getting closer. We dated for 5 months, he introduced me as his girlfriend to all his friends (of his own accord), and promptly broke up with me a week later because he said he actually wasn’t ready for a relationship and that there was something missing with me. (But guess what, the last situationship he had been in was also 5 months long…and he did try coming back to me, as they always do…)

The next guy differed slightly in that he was a lot more proactive about making plans with me consistently. His texting was intermittent and inconsistent but I attributed that to him being “a bad texter” (there’s no such thing imo when it comes to dating…I have friends who are bad texters, but they are very responsive with their partners.) But I clocked right away that he was not very emotionally deep or vulnerable. He was slow to open up to me, but I gave him some time since we were in the early stages of dating and this guy was actually in therapy (Hallelujah! I thought. But it actually meant nothing. Being in therapy is the first step in healing, but it often takes years of actually doing the work to reap the benefits of it.)

Fast forward to two months of seeing each other. We had just spent the best weekend together meeting each others’ friends, and I was feeling really good about him. Until he broke up with me out of the blue stating that he didn’t feel a “spark” with me and that he wasn’t in love with me yet. I was too shocked to react much in the moment. How did this guy expect to be in love with me after only two months of dating, especially given the fact that he had so much trouble opening up to me?!

This guy ended up coming back to me two months later (very predictably so, they’re literally all the same!) stating that after dating around he realized that I was actually “pretty great” and that he wanted to get back together. Um, thank u, next!

The next guy was the most promising, and so emotionally self-aware, communicative, vulnerable, and in-tune with his emotions that I really thought I had finally found someone secure. We were actually able to connect on a deep, emotionally intimate level in a way that I never had been able to before with anyone else before him. I was elated, and saw such potential with him. How could someone who could articulate his feelings for me so easily and talk about his traumas from his last breakup be emotionally unavailable? He also did not try to rush physical intimacy with me like the other guys had (wow, the bar is so low…) and was willing to repair and move past misunderstandings that had come up between us early on. He had also been in extensive therapy for several years, and I was really convinced I had finally found a gem.

Until he also ended things with me out of the blue, and stated that while his desires and intentions for me were real and that our connection was “rare and special”, he lacked the capacity to sustain a long term relationship with me. And I really should have believed him when he told me that, but I was so confused.

Because I had also felt that rare and special connection between us. Like genuinely. Maybe for the first time ever. I did question if I was being lovebombed in the beginning, but he never pressured or overwhelmed me with his words/actions.

What does it even mean to be “emotionally unavailable”?

I wondered how it could be possible that someone could think that I was rare and special and still not want to be with me? It felt like I couldn’t hold those two truths together - that it was almost easier to believe that he had been lying about his feelings and didn’t care that much about me (but I really felt that wasn’t the case). And I was also very confused how someone so emotionally open, self-aware, and articulate could also be emotionally unavailable and closed off? He did have a very traumatic breakup a few years ago, but he seemed so secure. Until our connection deepened that is…

The first two guys I had dated were avoidant in different ways. Guy A was terrified of losing his independence by letting himself get close to another person and also scared of ending up with the wrong person that he constantly held me at arms length. The second guy was chasing the elusive “spark” (that doesn’t exist by the way…) and was also scared of ending up with the wrong person and opening up to someone that he also couldn’t get close to me. The last guy was capable of vulnerability, letting me in, and deep conversations, but was so afraid of getting hurt again by letting someone fully in that he couldn’t sustain being in the connection as we got closer. And because I felt more real to him than other girls he had met in the past (as he expressed to me on one of our many long phone calls, and I believe he was being genuine here), I represented the most real fear to him of being badly hurt again that he had encountered up until that point, and he ran away from that.

But there were some commonalities across these guys. They all came on very strong in the beginning - texting me all the time and initiating plans, in a way that all these connection felt very promising to me and filled with potential. But then that communication and consistency fell off after a short while. They all also used work as an excuse as to why they couldn’t talk to me or see me as often (This is a big dealbreaker for me now. I personally don’t think work or any other life situation should ever be an excuse or a barrier in early stage dating, and I’ll get to that in a second.)

And yes, of course the last guy also came back. But not to try to win me back (because he knew he couldn’t handle that). But for validation for his ego. And I’m sorry to say that I did entertain and give that to him for a bit. Because I still held on to the hope and potential of that relationship, more than any others in the past.

He was the most confusing emotionally unavailable guy I had met up until that point, and I didn’t know how to properly categorize him. And unlike other guys I had dated, I still liked and saw the good and potential in him even after things ended with us. I wondered if I were patient and hopeful long enough that he would come back and try to get back together, because in this case I would actually entertain that. But instead he breadcrumbed me and sent me the most mixed signals, and I finally realized that he would never be able to give me what I wanted.

But what about “if he wanted to he would”?

Which brings me back to phrases like “if he wanted to he would” or “he’s just not that into you.” They are too black and white and broad, and don’t apply to every situation. They should be more like “if he wanted to and was emotionally available and ready and willing to be in a long term relationship than he would” and “he’s either not into you or he’s emotionally unavailable”. And even though the outcomes are the same for situations where he wasn’t that into you and in circumstances where he was into you but avoidant, the meaning attached changes drastically.

Because instead of spiraling wondering if only you were prettier, smarter, more successful, less “needy” etc. etc. etc. and things maybe would work out with that guy or if you waited around just long enough, or casually ran into him in his neighborhood, he would come to his senses and realize that you were the “one who got away”, do you even want to be with someone like that? You would constantly need to cater to this guys’ fears and insecurities throughout your entire relationship, and often at the expense of your own needs, and definitely at the cost of your peace.

I cannot tell you how emotionally wrecked these situationships made me. Because all the excuses and leeway I gave them never came to fruition, and only took a massive toll on my own mental health. I also spent too much time wondering how in the world guys like this could ever end up in a long term relationship, but that’s not my problem (thank god!)

Moving forward

I finally had to learn to accept that I couldn’t change them (they couldn’t even change themselves!), there was nothing wrong with me, and my time and energy was better spent elsewhere. But I was also immensely frustrated. I had sworn off emotionally unavailable guys after dealing with the fallout of Guy A, and I was so annoyed and confused that I had managed to run straight back into the arms of another with the second guy.

And I was even more fed up and determined after the second guy to not repeat the same cycle and somehow found myself right back where I didn’t want to be. What gives?? I started wondering if I was the problem.

But I know where this issue stems from. I’ve known for awhile, and have spent years in therapy working on it. And I’m like, how is this still a problem for me?! It’s not that I’m scared of opening up to someone and getting rejected (it’s happened to me so many times at this point. I know it has nothing to do with me, and that I’ll get over it.) It’s that the inconsistency of these guys’ actions felt familiar and “safe” to me because I was used to receiving inconsistent, conditional love in my childhood.

And that pattern has kept happening again and again, for a few different reasons. The first due to it actually being confusing to discern emotional availability in early dating, because avoidant people can come across secure for awhile (until confronted with emotional intimacy). And also, emotional unavailability looks and presents itself differently across different guys (as you’ve seen in my real life examples!)

The second reason being that I still unconsciously felt like I needed to “prove” myself to earn love and validation from someone as I was used to doing in my childhood. And that deep seated desire/need to prove myself still outweighed my belief that someone could love me as I am, without needing to convince them to do so.

For awhile I grappled with the worry that I had accidentally overlooked secure guys in my past because maybe I thought they were boring or because they felt unfamiliar to me, but I really don’t think I have. I just haven’t met the right person yet because I’ve been stuck on these emotionally unavailable guys for too long, but I also don’t fault myself for that.

I have learned invaluable lessons from all three of those experiences, and grown into a much more confident, self-aware, expressive, and communicative person with even higher standards. None of those guys were bad guys either - they just all had deep seated trauma that caused their commitment issues, and I don’t entirely fault them for that. We are all human at the end of the day. While I wish I could take back some of the emotional trauma they inflicted on me, it’s all the in past now anyways.

thank u, next

And the silver lining in all this, is that I actually finally feel ready to fully move past these types of situations. And have gotten a lot better at filtering out low effort, uncommunicative, avoidant, unavailable, misaligned, and inconsistent guys from the very beginning, and not second guessing myself on those decisions.

Because I finally reached my breaking point with the last guy. My nervous system literally couldn’t handle it anymore. The inconsistency, the holding onto the potential. I’m so over it. I’m allergic to it now. There is so no valid reason why a guy who can’t communicate or make plans with you consistently should ever be considered as a long term partner.

My friends and I have all had men tell us, in a genuine way, that we were just what they were looking for and perfect, and yet they still could never commit because of their own limitations and hesitations.

If someone can’t commit to you after 2-3 months (max!!) of dating, then they never will. No matter what circumstances they’re currently in, and I firmly believe that now.

Because I have come to learn (the very hard way), that if someone wants to be with you and they have the capacity to, they will make it happen. It doesn’t matter what they have going on in their life - whether it’s a move, work, or even the sickness or death of a family member, if they’re not prioritizing you during this time, they will never be able to.

One of my friends met a guy in person after years of dating the wrong guys, and they hit it off right away. They started seeing each other, and things were going well, but then his dad sadly passed away shortly after. But instead of pushing her away, he let her in more, and even invited her to his dad’s funeral, and kept including her in his life, and they’re still going strong, a year later. I think they were only a few months in of dating at this point, which just goes to show that there is no excuse justifiable for why a guy can’t make you a priority in his life. Because if it’s not now, it’s not ever. And it doesn’t matter how much they say they care about you, but how they actually follow through on their words that matters the most.

Sometimes it’s hard to know what a good thing is supposed to feel like when you haven’t experienced that yet. But since you know what the bad feels like, focus on avoiding that, and trusting your instincts and judgement overall.

You will eventually meet the right person for you, and you’re on your own unique path to do so ❤️

Wow, this was a long one. I didn’t realize I had so much to say on this topic, it just kind of poured out of me. So thanks for sticking with me if you’re still here 🙂 I hope this helped you, because I know firsthand how frustrating and debilitating and hopeless it can be to feel like you’re constantly dating the wrong people, and feeling like you’re doing something wrong, but you’re definitely not alone in this.

Reply to this email directly or DM me on Instagram if this resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you!

I’m also linking a few resources below that have helped me, and I think you would also benefit from!

xx,

Victoria

Some helpful resources -

• Breaking old dating patterns - My friend sent me this YouTube video of a YouTuber’s dating journey to meeting her husband, and I felt really seen watching it. Although I have a different dating pattern, I felt validated that she also struggled with dating the same type of wrong guys, and hopeful about the future given her outcome.

• Accepting your current dating situation even if it’s not what you wanted - I loved this podcast episode with a dating coach and a psychotherapist about learning to detach from outcomes and surrender to the process (much easier said than done of course, but it’s relieving in a way to hear this.) The psychotherapist also struggled with breaking her own dating pattern for many long, traumatic years (see, you’re not alone in this!)

• Emotional unavailability versus disinterest - I never though a Reddit thread would speak to me like this, but I felt so validated reading other peoples’ experiences dating emotionally unavailable people, and also reading the thoughts and fears of people who identify as being emotionally unavailable.

So consider this your running NYC hit list with everything new, buzzy, and actually worth adding to your list right now!

Recent Openings

Wild Cherry

This new West Village restaurant inside the Cherry Lane Theatre brings dimly lit, seductive vibes to the neighborhood.

Their menu at first glance looks American with items like a cheeseburger, caesar salad, and lobster club until you look closer and start noticing things like frog legs, monkfish kebab, and kielbasa, which I’m so here for.

Room 207

As if the East Village needed another speakeasy in the neighborhood, but Room 207 has quietly opened in a Prohibition-era, red velvet adorned space with live jazz.

Much Obliged

I’m not sure why it seems like so many new bars/restaurants have cutesy names like this now, but I’m here for it. Much Obliged just opened a month ago in a cute space in the East Village by the team behind the Gator restaurant in Greenpoint. They serve small plates alongside cocktails, and look like they would make for a great date spot!

Los Burritos Juarez

NYC’s Mexican food scene may be looking up finally. This Juarez-style burrito spot in Fort Greene specializes in hand-rolled flour tortillas made with lard. I can’t wait to try it!

Greenpoint Comedy Club

NYC is about to get a new comedy club! This new comedy venue is opening its doors April 11-13th weekend, and will be hosting shows every weekend after that.

Restaurants

Comal

Chinatown has a slew of cool places, and this is one of them. They have a menu of small plates with dishes like aguachile, beef tartare, chicken liver, and squash as well as an extensive wine list.

Huda

This Levantine restaurant in Williamsburg is super cute inside, and looks like it would be a perfect date spot!

Le French Diner

It takes me awhile to make it to places that don’t take reservations, which is why I haven’t yet braved the wait for this tiny, authentic French restaurant in the LES. I have been dying to come here though. Go right when they open, if not a little before, for the best chance of getting a table.

Salvo’s

I’ve been dying to get my hand on one of these famous sandwiches in Ridgewood. They started out being sold in the back of a moped and have since then moved over to their own brick and mortar location.

Wine Bars

Demo

Tiny, intimate, and very intentional. This wine bar in the West Village is tucked away on Carmine Street and has a menu of small plates and natural wines.

Frog

A little quirky in the best way wine bar in Bed Stuy. It has a lot of personality, natural wines, a fun menu, and most importantly, a beautiful backyard patio!!

Stars

Trendy, but still feels worth checking out from the team behind Claud and Penny. Their entrance is a bit hidden, and they only have 12 seats and are walk-in only in the East Village, so plan accordingly!

Lai Rai

This Vietnamese wine bar in Chinatown serves natural wine, snacks, and ice cream bar in a cute, dimly lit space. They don’t take reservations and have limited seats so go early to secure a spot.

Lei

Low lit, stylish, and a bit under-the-radar. Lei feels like the kind of place you go when you want a quieter night with good wine, good conversation, no chaos.

Museums, Galleries, and More

Did you know that there are around 140 museums and over 600 galleries in NYC? So I hope you’re exploring other museums besides the most famous ones! Here are some to add to your list of places to check out.

Neue Galerie

I’m not sure how I lived and worked on the UES for three years and never knew this German and Austrian art and design museum existed. It is also home to the infamous Cafe Sabarsky, a stunning Viennese cafe serving traditional Austrian food. They even have cabaret on select nights!

International Center of Photography

A must if you’re even remotely into photography. Their exhibitions rotate frequently, but they consistently spotlight work that feels timely, global, and thought-provoking. Think less touristy, more “in the know.”

Museum of the Moving Image

One of NYC’s most underrated museums, especially if you love film, TV, or anything behind-the-scenes. It’s interactive, nostalgic, and immersive.

Queens Museum

Spacious, low-key, and home to the iconic Panorama of the City of New York (which I’ve been dying to see). It’s a great excuse to spend a day in Queens and then eat in Flushing after, and do something a little different from your usual Manhattan circuit.

Bonhams Headquarters

The headquarters of this famous auction house recently relocated to a four story building in midtown, and is a place where art, design, and luxury intersect. Their exhibitions (and previews before auctions) feel elevated but still accessible, even if you’re just browsing.

Pioneer Works

This non-profit cultural center in Red Hook blends art, science, music, and tech in a way that feels very Brooklyn. Come for an exhibition, and stay for longer because there’s always something else happening like fun classes and events.

Current and Upcoming Events

Tiki Disco

If you know, you know, but Tiki Disco still somehow feels like a word-of-mouth secret. It’s the antidote to overly curated NYC nightlife with an all day sun-soaked rooftop party at the Knockdown Center where people actually dance, the music leans disco/house, and the crowd feels fun, not performative. The best part is, tickets are free, but you’ll need to snag them right away as they disappear FAST. Sign up for their email list and grab them as soon as they’re dropped. Hosted by Tiki Disco, it’s mostly a weekly summer party, but they have an upcoming event on April 5th. (Unfortunately it’s already sold out, but stay tuned for their upcoming dates!

The Other Art Fair

This annual art fair is coming back to Zero Space in Brooklyn on April 16-19th. I’ve loved browsing the art here in past years, and even purchased a few prints to bring back home with me. I have one hanging in my bathroom that I absolutely love.

NYBG Orchid Show

The New York Botanical Garden’s annual infamous Orchid Show is running through April 16th. Featuring works from renowned flower artist Mr. Flower Fantastic, this is a show you won’t want to miss.

Carol Bove at the Guggenheim

You may have seen her large scale, colorful sculptures being advertised across the MTA. Her exhibition is on view through August 2nd, and can be seen in the Guggenheim’s famous spiral rotunda.

Freize Art Fair

This upcoming annual global art fair is happening May 13-17th at the Shed. GA tickets are currently on sale for the weekend. I have loved coming here in previous years wandering the different artists’ exhibits. The crowd is super interesting and well dressed as well, and makes for great people watching.

Under the K Bridge Concerts

If you’re looking for something that actually feels cool (not overly produced, not overcrowded in a bad way), the Under the K Bridge concerts are it. Set literally beneath a bridge in Brooklyn, these shows lean more underground with curated lineups, a gritty atmosphere, and a crowd that’s there for the music. It’s one of those experiences that reminds you why NYC in the spring/summer just hits different! Upcoming sets include Peggy Gou, Chris Lake, Sara Landry, and others. Check out their calendar here.

Between wandering art fairs and catching shows under the K Bridge, NYC really comes alive in the spring, and I can’t wait to be a part of it all again!

I’m not going to lie, I was in a huge rut before the weather got warmer and I thought it was a me problem. Turns out it was just seasonal depression 😅 So if you’ve been feeling the same way, just know that’s been all of us this long, brutal winter.

Here’s to making the most of the next few months!!!

xx,

Victoria

I suddenly felt reinvigorated and re-energized at all the fun, niche activities and opportunities the city has to offer. I remembered the cute jewelry class I had bookmarked a few months ago but never done anything with. I was reminded of how joyful and alive the city gets at the first hint of warmth and sunshine, and I felt at peace again. I was finally at great liberty to break free of the chains of my monotonous winter routine that I had unintentionally and unconsciously caged myself in.

So of course I spent several hours that weekend diving headfirst into all of the bars, fun activities, and upcoming events I was excited to immerse myself in these next few months. Summer is literally around the corner, and we have officially survived winter!

So if you’re also coming out of winter feeling slightly feral and ready to re-enter society, here’s everything I’m currently excited about, from nights out to low-key creative plans.

Supper clubs

Golden Cat

I had one of the best meals at this secret hidden supper club at the chef’s apartment in Fidi. Chef Nick Tran is Michelin-trained, and his 5-course rotating menu thoroughly shows that. He also infuses his own multicultural background into his dishes, creating culinary twists like his parsley crazy rice dish that is kind of like his take on a Vietnamese risotto. Bookings can be made by emailing goldencatnyc@icloud.com!

For my nightlife friends

Think of this as your precursor to a very feral summer indeed! (Also, the best places to go out in the city are in Brooklyn, I don’t make the rules…)

Selva

I randomly stumbled into this Brazilian cafe/record shop/art gallery/bar in Bushwick during their soft opening phase, and I’m so glad I did. I love a multi functional space like this one. While there is plenty to do here during the day, look out for their nighttime events on Resident Advisor here.

Suono

I went on a date at the negroni bar that’s upstairs from Suono a few years ago, and was so excited when I found out a vinyl bar had opened beneath them. I haven’t met a vinyl bar I didn’t like so far, and feel like this wouldn’t be an exception. Get here before everyone else finds out about them!

CWW Radio Shop

I’m obsessed with the concept of this new record store with a back room with DJ sets and a dance floor in Crown Heights. A curated record store by day and niche going out spot at night that’s right next door to Rodeo, a new natural wine bar I’ve also been wanting to check out.

99 Scott Studio

I love me a venue hidden amongst the grungy, industrial area of Bushwick, and 99 Scott is one of them. You can catch their upcoming lineup of events here.

Mad Radio

A new house music venue recently opened in Williamsburg and I’m so here for it. Check out their upcoming events here.

Night Club 101

I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of this live music venue/bar in the East Village until now. Catch their upcoming lineup of events here!

Art and craft nights

Blok Parti

I went to a block printing and pet nat night led by this block printing workshop a few weeks ago, and it was unlike anything I’ve ever done before. We created several personalized printed cards and gift tags while sipping a curation of pet nat pours. They host workshops periodically at cool locations around the city (the one I went to was at a boutique in Greenpoint), so check their Instagram to stay up-to-date on their next events!

Open Studio and Drop-in Drawing at the Met

The Met Cloisters and the Met hosts fun drop-in drawing, beading and other workshops included in the cost of museum admission on select days. Their next sessions are coming up in April, May, and June from 1-4 pm, and you can find out more info here and here for the Met Cloisters and here and here for the Met!

Art Gurl

Meagan of Art Gurl regularly hosts art workshops in locations around the city where you can do fun things like junk journal and scrapbook. Her events are always empowering, uplifting, and inspiring and the ticket prices are always reasonable, so what other reasons do you need to go?

Recess Grove

This art and creative studio in Williamsburg hosts a weekly social hour on Thursdays from 5-8 pm for $19 per person. Think of it like an art happy hour where you can mix and mingle with others in the studio while painting, collaging, and so much more. They also offer happy hour prices on their selection of wines, beers, mocktails, and snacks!

Rec Create Collective

This creative studio regularly hosts fun creative workshops like zine club, cross stitch journals, incense making, collaging, crafting, and so much more! Here is their full calendar with upcoming events!

Bala Wellness

An art community centered around watercolor painting events at a super cute space! Stay tuned on their Instagram for upcoming events.

Other events

McCarren Park House Events

So I didn’t realize that the McCarren Park House regularly hosts fun workshops and events from speed dating to glass mosaic coaster workshops and journal clubs and free stand up comedy. Some events are free, while others have a small ticket fee. I’ve linked all upcoming events here!

Land to Sea

This cafe in East Williamsburg hosts monthly events in their space like mahjong nights, trivia, and even speed dating. While they haven’t posted their upcoming events yet, you can find out more here.

Book Club Bar

This bookstore/wine bar in the East Village has been high on my list of places to check out. They regularly host a mix of events from speed dating to book clubs to creative writing workshops, which you can find out more about here.

Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter about all the restaurants, bars, museums, and fun events currently on my NYC hit list, and thanks so much for being here!

xx,

Victoria

I put together a comprehensive, curated guide to the best bar date spots across New York City featuring 65+ places I’ve personally vetted for drinks, ambiance, lighting, and noise level (because yes, it matters). These are spots I’d actually recommend to a friend or go back to myself, not just places that look good on paper.

For each one, I’ll tell you exactly what makes it worth going to, what to order if there’s something notable, and whether you need a reservation or can just walk in so you can just show up and not overthink it. The guide spans 18 neighborhoods across Manhattan and Brooklyn, from cozy wine bars to vibey cocktail spots to low-key, easy first date picks.

Neighborhoods featured in this guide: West Village, Tribeca, Chelsea, East Village, Gramercy, Soho, LES, Noho, Flatiron, Nomad, FiDi, Midtown, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick, Clinton Hill, Bed Stuy, and Carroll Gardens.

So let’s get into it :)

West Village

Turks and Frogs

This wine bar is low key and in a quiet enough part of West Village that it does not get super crowded. It kind of feels like you’re sitting in someone’s unpretentious living room in here, and you’ll actually be able to hear each other talk. They serve cocktails in addition to wine as well as small plates (like a charcuterie board.)

Katana Kitten

I absolutely love this Japanese cocktail bar! Their drinks are incredible and I love the vibes. They have highballs, cocktails that blend Japanese ingredients with traditional drinks like a hinoki martini and an umeshu negroni, sake, beer, and wine. They also used to be on the World’s 50 Best Bars list. Make sure you go early though to secure a spot, and don’t forget about their small plates also!

The full guide includes 65+ spots across 18 NYC neighborhoods vetted for actual date potential, not just aesthetics. I break down the vibe and whether you need a reservation, so you can pick a place in seconds instead of spiraling for an hour.

If you want go-to spots you can rely on for first dates, second dates, or just a good night out, the rest of the guide is below.

A subscription also gives you access to all my other exclusive NYC date guides, deeper dives into my dating content, along with new guides and dating content released monthly.

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Before getting to Melbourne however, I made a quick solo stop in Sydney and had the best 5 days there. So here is everything you need to know about traveling to Sydney, Australia, as well as all the best restaurants, neighborhoods, things to do, where to stay, and more!

(I also included a Google Maps guide of all of these recs and more (62 places in total!), which you can find at the bottom of this newsletter!)

Getting There:

Let’s get into logistics shall we? Although I am a frequent traveler, the flight to Australia seemed long, daunting, and expensive from NYC, but let me ease your fears here. I paid less than $1.2k roundtrip for my flight (!!!) which I’m still in disbelief about, and the flight itself and the jet lag were actually not bad at all.

Because Australia is closer to the west coast, I decided to fly from LA to Sydney, where there are many direct, 14.5 hour flight options. My one way Delta Airlines economy class ticket was only $545, and my one way flight from NYC to LA was only $100 (!!!). I stayed in LA for a weekend with a friend before my flight, and it was the perfect extended layover.

Because I traveled to New Zealand with my friends after Australia, I flew back from Auckland, where there are many direct, 15.5 hour flight options to NYC and paid only $500 for my economy class United Airlines/Air New Zealand ticket.

And in terms of the jetlag, while Australia is around 16 hours ahead of NYC, I didn’t find it that hard to adjust because most of the time difference is from a difference in days rather than hours. (For example, Sydney is a day ahead of NYC, but your body doesn’t notice that difference as much.) I landed in Sydney at around 8 am, and stayed out till 7 pm exploring, before sleeping for 7 hours that night and waking up fully rested and adjusted the next day.

Where to Eat:

I actually had the best food during my trip. Everywhere I went used the freshest, simplest ingredients that created the most delectable, unfussy meals that I want to eat over and over again. Here’s everywhere I ate and why you need to go also!

10 William St

I went to this cozy wine bar for my last dinner in Sydney, and I’m so glad I saved the best for last. I got this rec, (among most of the other Sydney restaurants I went to), from Club Raisin, who is from Sydney and also has amazing NYC recs you need to check out!

Located in Paddington, a very cute neighborhood in Sydney just off of Oxford Street, (which is filled with cute boutiques worth checking out beforehand), 10 William St caters to a young, trendy crowd. You’ll want to grab dinner and wine here and then linger for awhile. The staff are all so friendly as well.

I got the whipped bottarga served with a pretzel (this was incredible and one of their popular items), their tomato, bean, and nectarine salad (which was super light and refreshing and the exact dose of fresh vegetables I was looking for to supplement my other heavy vacation meals), as well as their barbajuan (fried ravioli with ricotta and greens that was topped with an olive tapenade and the perfect balance of crispy and salty.) Be sure to make a reservation to guarantee a table!

Continental Deli Bar Bistro

This establishment was recommended to me as a bar as they serve drinks in tins, but I went for lunch and I’m so glad I did. Located in Newtown, a hip neighborhood that reminds me of a cross between Bushwick and East Williamsburg, Continental Deli has the best sandwich you’ll ever eat. It was so good I contemplated going back another day (which is super rare for me on a short trip), and I will definitely be attempting to recreate it at home.

And when you see how simple the sandwich I ordered was, you’re not going to believe me when I say it was one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had. It was their fish & chips sandwich which came with sardines, pickles, potato chips, and hot sauce on generously buttered ciabatta, and omg, I need it again. I was not expecting this sandwich to blow me away but each bite gave you a maddeningly delicious combination of soft, buttered bread, juicy, slightly sour pickles, a light, tangy hot sauce, and oily, straight-from-the-tin sardines that I could not get enough of. Make sure you spend a few hours strolling in Newtown also - they have some cute cafes and vintage stores to check out (more on them below!)

Love Tilly Devine

A cute wine bar with a small menu of shareable small plates, Love Tilly Devine would be a perfect Sydney date spot. (Don’t come here if you’re super hungry though, as their portions aren’t that big.) They also have a daily happy hour from 5-6 pm with drink and snack specials. Make sure to get their potato scallop with whipped roe and mussels in escabeche!

St Jude Cafe

My first meal in Sydney was at this cute cafe in Redfern, and I’m so glad I made the trek over here from my hotel in my tired and jetlagged state. One of the experiences I wanted most in Australia was a proper Australian brunch, and I definitely got that here. They have an extensive menu that will satisfy any craving, and plenty of outdoor seating which I desperately needed after 15+ hours trapped on an airplane.

It was very hard for me to pick just one item to order as many of their entrees were calling my name, but I finally ended up with their aubergine and eggs with help from my server. It came with the softest, melt-in-your-mouth fried eggplant, homemade baked beans, poached eggs, marinated feta, crispy spinach, chili oil, and toasted sourdough that you could use to mop up the excess sauce with. There’s several cute stores near here as well, and the tree-lined neighborhoods nearby are so nice to walk through!

Where to Stay:

Sydney is fairly well connected by public transportation, and I took their tram/bus/metro everywhere and was completely fine. I used Citymapper, my trusted transit app that is my NYC navigator as well, to route everywhere and didn’t have any issues.

In terms of the best neighborhoods to stay at, I would recommend Surry Hills or Redfern if you’re into cute, quiet, artsy places that have a lot of great shops and restaurants, and is fairly central and easy to get around. However, many Sydney hotels are in their CBD (Central Business District), which is their version of midtown, and is where I ended up staying.

While I didn’t entirely enjoy being in the CBD, I loved my stay at IHG’s Kimpton Margot, and would stay there again in a heartbeat. This 5 star hotel has a beautiful rooftop pool, a daily delicious breakfast that was included in my stay, and a spacious, comfortable room. Shout out also to my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card* that got me this 5 day stay completely for free through my points!!) *(P.S. That link is a referral link with 75,000 bonus points when you sign up!)

What to Do:

When I travel to new places I like to balance seeing a few of the main touristy sites with mostly local experiences to get a real feel for the culture and vibe of a place. So here’s what I recommend doing in Sydney.

Sydney Opera House

Arguably the most iconic site in Sydney, the Opera House is a hard to miss architectural masterpiece in the heart of Sydney. I personally wanted to fully immersive myself in the opera house rather than just admiring it from afar, so I went to see the Turandot opera here.

If you want to see a show, make sure you buy tickets well in advance as they can get pricey (like around $200 per ticket). Or, you can try your luck at same day rush tickets through TodayTix, which is what I got and managed to snag $40 tickets with decent seats.

If opera is not your thing, they also have comedy shows, burlesque, dance, you name it. Or you can also get dinner or drinks at Bennelong, their famous fine dining restaurant that is absolutely stunning. (I snuck in there to check it out and take a pic.)

Beaches

Bondi Beach

I almost stayed at Bondi because I wanted to spend significant time at the beach, but I’m glad I didn’t as it’s kind of far from everywhere else in the city. It’s not super well connected to the rest of the city either, and you have to take a bus and a tram to get there from the CBD, which takes around 40 minutes.

I did spend two full days at Bondi and the surrounding coastal area though, and it was a highlight of my trip. Make sure you bring and put on lots of sunscreen that is at least 50+ SPF and waterproof because the UV index in Australia is insane (like 11-13 versus 0-2 in NYC for reference!!!), and I got one of the worst sunburns of my life in Sydney.

Make sure you do the famous Bondi to Coogee walk, which is a 3.5 - 4 mile coastal walk between Bondi Beach and Coogee Beach set along the most stunning coastline. There’s many smaller beaches, pools, viewpoints, and things to do along the way that you can stop at to make a day of it (which is what I did).

While I started my walk in Bondi and ended in Coogee, you can also do the opposite. I personally think that Bondi Beach is a lot nicer and cleaner and there’s more to do there like cute shops, but Coogee is less touristy, so it depends on what you’re into. I also ended up taking surf lessons in Bondi through a class I found on GetYourGuide, which was absolutely iconic and a gorgeous place to do it.

Manly Beach

You can easily take a 15-20 minute ferry to Manly Beach, another beach in the Sydney vicinity. This area also has a street filled with beach town stores, ice cream shops, and more as well as a more secluded beach (Shelley Beach) that is a 15 min walk away from Manly.

Camp Cove (Watson’s Bay)

Another beach in the vicinity you can go to is Camp Cove. It’s a lot smaller than Manly though, and not many places to eat or shop nearby if you’re ok with being a bit more secluded. Since the beach is smaller, it was a lot more crowded and I ended up walking 5 minutes to lounge at Lady Bay Beach (which is a nude beach that had a lot fewer people.) Make sure to grab some famous fish and chips from Doyle’s before you hop on the ferry to leave!

Neighborhoods

The best neighborhoods to explore in Sydney are Paddington, Surry Hills, and Newtown. I had also heard good things about Glebe, but I didn’t make it there so I can’t say for certain. Here’s a quick spark notes on each one so you get a feel for them.

Newtown

Newtown gave me Bushwick/East Williamsburg vibes with its grungy street corners and plethora of vintage shops, cafes, and cute bars. You can easily spend a few hours here bopping in between local businesses. Below are my recs:

• valet: The cutest coffee shop with pastries and a backyard.

• Maeda: Granted I didn’t actually get anything here, but I walked by and it looked really good. This cafe has Japanese food and coffee.

• Ken Neale: A cool home decor store filled with antique furniture and cool objects.

• Repressed Records: A cool record store!

• The Wilde Merchant: A vintage shop with cowboy boots, slip dresses, and fun Western clothing.

• Alas Vinyl Wine Bar and Cafe: An all-day cafe and vinyl wine bar serving food, coffee, and wine.

• kot-j: A high end vintage store with brands like Dries van Noten.

• Hands: An adorable gift shop with a unique selection of candles, cards, and other objects.

Paddington

Bordering Darlinghurst, Sydney’s LGBTQIA+ neighborhood, Paddington is quieter and has many worthwhile boutiques to check out from independent stores like The Intersection to international brands like Zimmermann. Most of these shops can be found on Oxford Street. There is also Paddington Markets, a Saturday market featuring clothing, accessories, and more from local designers. While it wasn’t open when I went, it looked really cute!

Surry Hills

This was by far my favorite neighborhood that I visited in Sydney. It’s filled with cute shops and the streets are lively and filled with mostly locals.

• Title: I love popping into any independent bookstore I come across. This one in particular had records and independent films for sale also.

• Dea: A mecca of handmade ceramics and crafts from global, independent designers.

• The Standard Store: This speciality boutique carries brands like Ganni and SEA New York and a highly curated selection of shoes, bags, jewelry, and accessories that I absolutely adored.

• Elms: I loved the printed satin sets, bags, and jewelry at this colorful boutique.

As promised, here is my full Google maps guide of all the Sydney recs I was recommended (all from trusted sources), as well as the spots mentioned in this listicle that you can reference in one easy spot.

Which destination should I spotlight next?

xx,

Victoria

I’m also including 5 exciting new openings, including restaurants, cafes, and pop-up markets that you need to add to your list!

Culture of Bathing

A new, limited time outdoor sauna festival has just opened on the Williamsburg waterfront and it’s perfect for winter. Tickets are around $100 per person and get you a 2 hour visit where you can hop between different saunas as well as be guided in different immersive sessions. This pop-up will be open until March 1st, so get here before they close!

Lunar New Year Traditions Village

In honor of Lunar New Year, this market is popping back up in Chinatown for every weekend in February through March 1st. You can shop local AAPI vendors at 200 Canal Street from 12 pm - 6 pm Friday - Sunday. Expect to find clothing, food, plants, jewelry, home decor, and so much more!

Lunar New Year Mahjong Party

Green Tile Social Club is hosting a mahjong party in Industry City on Sunday 2/22 where there will be 40 mahjong tables for people to play. There will also be a curated market of AAPI-owned businesses, a cafe, a lion dance, DJs and more! Tickets are $40 and include Martell cocktails and Tsingtao beer.

Not a Normal Vintage Market

This popular vintage market is back this weekend, this time at One Hanson Place in Brooklyn. With over 60 independent designers and vintage resellers, this market is not to be missed. I’ve seen rare Fendi bags, vintage fur coats, jewelry, sunglasses, art prints, and so much more at their past markets. You can get tickets for $23 here!

New Openings

Apartment Ra’el

Designed as a gorgeous apartment, this new cafe in Bed Stuy also has an enviable home decor shop that’s worth visiting in and of itself. Come for coffee and stay awhile.

The Eighty Six

As if NYC needed more steakhouses, but this sultry, intimate, gorgeous steakhouse recently opened in the West Village with just 10 tables from the team behind the Corner Store. You can make a reservation through Doordash or their website, although a walk-in right when they open might be your better bet, as it’s already impossible to get reservations here.

Or’Esh

The team behind the Corner Store has really been on a restaurant opening kick because they just opened this new Mediterranean restaurant in Soho. And surprise, it’s also been difficult to get a reservation here as well. I would set notifies on Resy and check at around 9 am/midnight which is when reservations are historically released on the platform.

Goose Garage

This new pop-up cafe/event space in a converted garage space quietly opened in Greenpoint a few weeks ago, and hosts pop-up markets and other fun events. Check out their Instagram to stay up-to-date on future happenings!

Justin’s Salt Bread

Suddenly I blinked and then salt bread was everywhere. If you like Okiboru Udon, then you will be glad to know that they have opened a salt bread bakery in the East Village that has lines down the block over the weekend. While I haven’t been yet, I can’t wait to try it!

Subscribe and I’ll send you next weekend’s plans.

xx,

Victoria

It happened a year ago, and for awhile I wasn’t sure if I should talk about this particular experience publicly (and you’ll soon see why.) But since you’ve joined me for the good, the bad, and the ugly of my dating adventures…here’s one you won’t forget. (And just to be clear, this isn’t about shaming him - it’s about me telling my story.)

I had just gotten laid off from my job earlier in the day, and happened to be hosting my annual holiday party that night at my apartment. To say that day was an emotional rollercoaster is a severe understatement. And if you had told me the state my bedroom would be in afterwards, I never would have believed you…

A mutual guy friend who I had vibed with a few times before was coming to my party, and I wondered if something was finally going to happen between us that night.

He came late from his company holiday party, and I didn’t realize how drunk he was until it was too late…

Things took a sharp turn shortly after this.

If you want the full story, including the moment my bedroom became a disaster and how I somehow still got rejected afterward, subscribe below! (I wanted to keep this particular story from being too public.)

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