Thankfully, my Abuelita, my 90-year-old grandmother who lives in Pereira, is fine, and so is her house. But the city she’s lived in for most of her life has been reduced to rubble. The cities I spent most of my youth in are totally devastated.

I was in Pereira in early January to celebrate my Abuelita’s birthday. It is horrifying to watch the news and see several buildings I spent my time in reduced to debris. I remember walking through Plaza de Bolivar to see the gorgeous Christmas light displays just six months ago. Today, the Plaza was covered in ash, rendered invisible after a seven-story building collapsed during the violence of the earthquake. Matecaña International Airport, Pereira’s airport and the base I’ve flown into to go home to my Abuelita for the entirety of my life, is now entirely decimated. My access point to my family is now gone for the time being. In two months, I was meant to return to Pereira. Who knows when I will be able to see my family again.

I can’t find the attribution for this quote, but as soon as I heard the news, I was reminded of that one viral tweet about environmental catastrophes like this one: “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.” This morning, the disaster of the week knocked directly on the doorstep of the house I grew up in. And all I can do is watch.

I’ve spent the entire day glued to WhatsApp, desperate for dispatches from family members. It took me forty-five minutes to get an update on my Abuelita this morning. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the helplessness and utter despair I felt during that small window of time. I was incredibly lucky, though. Like I said up top, she is fine. But hundreds of others across Colombia’s western departments do not share her same fortune. And many still are left in the dark after this tragedy: with several power outages and the destruction of telecommunication centers, thousands of people across the country are unable to reach their loved ones. It’s bone-chilling to watch several videos of locals begging Elon Musk for the use of Starlink so that people can communicate again flood my feeds and For You Pages on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram reels while knowing that the trillionaire will most likely not come to their aid.

Colombia is in desperate need of aid right now. With the decimation of USAID, it is almost guaranteed that the US will not be providing proper humanitarian aid to these devastated areas at a federal level, which is an absolute disgrace.

If you are interested in providing financial support (which you absolutely should be), here’s a list of reputable organizations in need of donations for Colombian relief:

The Association of Food Banks of Colombia (ABACO) Donate here

The Colombian Red Cross (They have not yet allocated a specific collections page for Colombian aid, but I will post when they have)

Convoy of Hope Donate here

World Central Kitchen Donate here

On a perhaps more theoretical note, I can’t stop thinking about how interconnected this disaster is to the ongoing decimation of our climate. Colombia’s western region is a place that is used to earthquakes. The infrastructure in cities like Pereira, Manizales, Quibdo, and Cali is built to resist crumble and decay from shocks of a certain strength. To see entire buildings reduced to rubble forces us to confront the fact that this is a climate catastrophe that is entirely unprecedented for Colombia.

It’s imperative to acknowledge the fact that this climate disaster is directly tied to the total destruction of our natural world by Western superpowers. An earthquake of this magnitude is caused by the ever-present aerial warfare that is destroying our world. The several wars taking place right now are releasing insane levels of greenhouse gases, totally disrupting our ozone layer and leaving environmental turmoil in its wake. Every single bomb dropped has a ripple effect that reaches far beyond the battlefield. Couple that with the environmental decay caused by AI data centers and fast fashion waste, and you have a full-fledged ecocide, empowered by gluttonous leaders who care nothing for your survival or mine.

The absolute devastation of Colombia’s western region is an alarm bell, a warning sign that’s reached well beyond the country’s borders. Our fates are interconnected. What’s happened in Colombia is a preview of the kinds of destruction that will reach your backyard if we do not act now to end the total obliteration of our world through war, technological encroachment, and waste.

My heart breaks for my country. As a person raised Catholic, there’s something psychologically damaging in watching hundreds of people fleeing the obliteration of this climate disaster through my phone screen, hearing the cries of people begging for God’s salvation, as they watch in horror while their homes, workplaces, and entire livelihoods become ash before their very eyes. I am brought back to the Bible verse that shaped my outlook on life and my political leanings, the words my Abuelita recited to me as a child, in the hopes that I would become a truly good person: “What good is it... if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?... Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” – James 2:14-17

As cathedrals in Manizales, Pereira, and beyond are demolished by this ecological calamity, it is clear to me that Colombia needs more than our thoughts and prayers. The country, as well as the rest of the world, needs widespread climate action and a total investment in climate resilience. It is clear to me now that God alone will not save us. It is time for us to save ourselves.

Yesterday, The Atlantic published a feature by Faith Hill that asked the bold question “Is Romance Doomed?” She found that the answer is “yeah, pretty much.” That same morning, The New York Times’ Troy Closson published a story on the ways Gen-Z’ers across New York City are being priced out of romance by not being able to afford first dates. Earlier this year, Sammi Caramela penned an exploration of the “crush recession” for VICE. In the media world, it seems that the consensus is that the dating market absolutely sucks.

Unfortunately, my experience as a young woman dating in New York City absolutely reflects this pessimism towards finding love. Most of my Girls’ Nights Out end with one of my famous diatribes about the dating recession (in short: I blame men, misogyny, and those damn phones.) Whenever I am hit on, I find that the attempts are tepid, paltry, and wholly banal. As the new adage goes, nobody yearns anymore. Guys think they are too cool for school, performing nonchalance and disinterest in order to protect themselves from rejection. (And, let’s be real, a lot of them should get used to rejection, because their misogyny renders them uninteresting and downright unenjoyable to be around.) And that’s if they put themselves out there at all: with the rise of social surveillance, many young men have entirely divested from approaching women IRL.

My horrible experiences with dating have me revisiting the rom-coms of my youth to find reprieve from the apathy and utter-bleakness of dating. I’ve gone back to films from pre-phone times in order to find a real sense of what dating was like before the perils of ever-present social surveillance infiltrated the public consciousness. These movies provide an insight into how people idealized romantic situations when they weren’t afraid of being labeled corny or made into a meme by the greater general public.

All of my rom-com studying proved fruitful. While watching The Wedding Planner (2001) last week, I stumbled upon a solve for a lot of these problems with the dating world: the outdoor movie.

Follow me for a second: Hill’s piece in The Atlantic found that many young people are starved for “setups and meet-cutes.” Closson’s reporting in The New York Times found that “the average date night spending for Gen Z Americans is more than $200.” Caramela’s VICE story recommends that young people “take the pressure off of having a crush in the first place, and simply… get to know different types of people.”

The outdoor movie is a venue that provides a solution to all three of these profound problems in the dating world. Seeking a meet-cute? Go to an outdoor movie, where you can chat with strangers about a movie without being shushed like you would sitting in the dark at an AMC. No money for a date? Go to an outdoor movie, where you can watch a film for free! Feeling like the apps and the bars are too overwhelming? Go to an outdoor movie, where you’re literally sitting in a park or a lot somewhere with hundreds of strangers and the stakes are near-zero.

The outdoor movie is one of the last great places for real connection. Yesterday, I went to watch Bridget Jones’s Diary in Bryant Park with my friend Valentine, and the evening was stellar. We sat outside in a crowd filled with strangers, and seeing the way the park roared to life with cheers, laughter, and joy at the prospect of miss Bridget Jones finding love was absolutely electric. I stared at cute strangers in the park and briefly chatted with random people about film! For the first time in a long time, I felt excited by the prospect of meeting people.

I left the film feeling much more joyful about the state of the dating world, though nothing actually changed for me. I quickly realized that, for all of the moaning and groaning there is about the state of the dating scene, getting out into the world with people in a casual, low-stakes environment can make it feel much more manageable. The internet often profits from our doom, gloom, and learned helplessness. When you actually get out into the world and touch some grass, you see that, yeah, things are bad, but not necessarily any worse than it always has been. There’s a reason why most rom-coms start with protagonists who feel disillusioned by dating.

If you’re looking to experience the revelatory magic of an outdoor movie firsthand, I’ve rounded up four of my favorite spots showing films outside across New York City below.

Where to watch movies outside in New York City

Bryant Park Movie Nights

For a romantic night out in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, head to Movie Nights at Bryant Park. Paramount+ screens a movie in the park every Monday between now and September 14th, rain or shine. The affair is swanky, with beautiful views of Midtown’s soaring skyscrapers serving as the backdrop for the park’s massive screen. It’s also incredibly fun. Each week, hundreds of strangers gather in the park and either sit on blankets across the lawn or folding chairs on the gravel and surrounding areas. The park also gathers a series of sponsors who hand out free snacks for guests to munch on (when I went, Sour Patch Kids handed out gummies to everyone who attended.) The lawns open for picnicking and seat-securing at 5pm, but the movie won’t start until 8pm. Try to get there early for prime viewing, but there isn’t a bad seat in the park.

Brooklyn Bridge Movies with a View

Every Thursday through September 18th, Pier 1’s Harbor View Park comes to life with an outdoor screening for Movies With A View. Enjoy films like Bridesmaids, Do The Right Thing, and How to Train Your Dragon screened in full view of the East River and the Manhattan skyline. The sunset is absolutely stunning in this area of Brooklyn, and witnessing it unfold alongside hundreds of strangers while watching a movie together is magical. This is one of the city’s more popular outdoor movie spots, so it’s great for seeing and being seen. The lawn opens at 6pm and the film begins right at sunset. For good seating, try your best to arrive as close to opening as possible, as the park fills up fast.

Intrepid Museum Movie Nights on the Flight Deck

On the last Friday of each month between May and August, the USS Intrepid hosts a free outdoor movie screening aboard the flight deck. Watch a film while sandwiched between strangers, fighter jets, and military aircrafts as you soak in views of the New Jersey skyline. The films tend to lean on the patriotic side (this year’s lineup includes Top Gun, Independence Day, and An American Tale: Fievel Goes West) but they do allow you to bring your own lawn chairs for seating, as well as food and non-alcoholic beverages. Doors open at 6pm, the screening begins at 7pm, and doors close for entry at 8:30pm. No re-entry to the museum is permitted.

Vale Cinema Series’ Dive-In Movies at The William Vale

Sometimes, it’s too damn hot to be outside without swimming. Luckily, The William Vale hotel in Brooklyn hosts poolside movie screenings every other Tuesday with their Poolside Pictures in Brooklyn series, sponsored by Sephora. For $30, you get access to a chaise lounge and the hotel pool for the duration of the film. Their film lineup is excellent, with showings of JAWS, Legally Blonde, and Mean Girls. And, as hot as it’s been this summer, nothing sounds better than a sunset dip in the pool, a cult classic film playing on a massive projector, and sweeping views of Manhattan’s skyline shining in the distance. Grab your tickets here.

These are just my favorite spots across New York City, but there are literally hundreds of places to catch a film outside here. If you want more information about where to see movies outside in New York, check out this handy tool from the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation that lists all of the (free) outdoor theaters available.

That’s all from me today! Get to an outdoor movie stat and start looking for the love of your life (or, at the very least, enjoy a fun little film with a bunch of strangers.)

Used bookstores in the city can be many things: portals to a version of New York that no longer exists, community hubs for book lovers and writers to come together, rehabilitative spaces giving folks down on their luck a second chance at life, sites of resistance to the violent encroachment of surveillance and anti-intellectualism, and even places to procure salty and briny pickles.

On Monday I wrote about Anthropic’s destructive scanning scheme, which is currently working to extract text from several books, including old and rare stories, to train their AI models and then destroying the books, putting several stories at risk of extinction. These organizations are looking to consolidate as much information as possible so that you and I must pay them to access it. With the rise of these damaging practices, it’s more important than ever to find, collect, and circulate stories.

To me, the best way to achieve this is by going to used bookstores and buying forgotten texts. It’s an easy and minimally-disruptive way to do your part to keep reading alive. Head to a used bookstore, find a text that you’ve never heard of before, read it, scan it, and share it: it’s that simple!

If you want to join me on this crusade to keep books (full stop, because that’s the world we live in right now) here are a few of my favorite used and rare bookstores across New York City.

Manhattan

Argosy Book Store

Famous for being Patti Smith’s first place of employment in New York (and the first place she got fired), Argosy Book Store is a hallowed institution that everyone in the city should visit at least once. They’ve been selling rare and used books to generations of voracious readers for exactly 101 years now, making it one of the oldest continuously-operating shops in all of the United States. More akin to a library than an actual bookstore, the space is stunning: beautiful wood shelves line each and every wall, antique-ish looking portraits and paintings sit overhead, books ranging from abandoned stories on discount carts to preciously protected editions of well-loved texts essentially envelop you, and carefully molded ceilings welcome frequent pauses from customers marveling at the history of the store. Argosy has six stories worth of books to peruse. In terms of size and grandeur, it reminds of The Met: no matter how much time you dedicate to a visit, you’ll never see it all.

Mercer Street Books

Mercer Street Books is one of my favorite places on earth, full stop.

Operating in the NoHo (please pardon my eye roll) area since 1990, Mercer Street Books is like a portal, transporting locals and lucky transplants to a real slice of the city. Dark brown shelves line all of the walls, stocked with an insanely well-curated selection of books, most of which were super popular in the nineties and noughties. In the middle of the store is their record collection, an eclectic selection where you can find some of the greatest albums of all time sat alongside a record nobody’s ever heard of.

Sweet Pickle Books

The business model at Sweet Pickle Books is simple: donate a used book, get a jar of pickles in return. This gorgeous little shop in the Lower East Side is a quirky space filled to the brim with incredible pre-loved media: books, records, and old magazines galore. It’s a small shop so whenever there’s people perusing inside, it roars to life. The combination of physical media and pickles draws in some of New York’s sweetest characters. And the pickles are actually good: as a self-proclaimed pickle lover, I approve. (I particularly enjoy their Farmhouse Pickles. They’re thinly sliced and nicely brined.)

Westsider Rare & Used Books

Across the street from Zabar’s sits the safe haven that is Westsider Rare & Used Books: a staple of the Upper West Side for the last 55 years. When you first walk into Westsider, you’re instantly taken back to a much more erudite version of New York City. Everyone of note who ever lived in or frequented the neighborhood spent time here: it was frequented by John Lennon, Joan Didion, and Susan Sontag, among many others. And for good reason: Westsider has an unbelievable selection of books, ranging from forgotten texts like Divine Filth: Lost Scatology and Erotica to first editions of beloved books like James Joyce’s Ulysses.

I typically associate this shop with the feelings of dread and desperation, but that’s my fault. As a messy and oft-unorganized undergraduate student, I would rush to Westsider, two weeks into the start of each semester, to find the right editions of books I needed to annotate for class. (I’d always go there a little too late.) Thankfully, the expert staff there always found exactly what I was looking for, and I would schlep back uptown, saved by Westsider once more. One thing I can say for sure about this bookstore is that it has never failed me, and I doubt it will ever fail you.

Brooklyn

Better Read Than Dead

For die-hard collectors of rare and antique books, Better Read Than Dead is an elusive yet highly-regarded bookseller in Bed-Stuy. The shop, located on Kosciuszko street, is “open by chance or appointment 7 days a week.” They don’t have a set amount of hours, so your best bet for a chance at rifling through their extensive collection is to set up an appointment with them. Browsing through their collection in storage feels more like a treasure hunt than a trip to the bookstore, and that’s what makes this place so magical. Come here with zero expectations and leave with something incredible.

Freebird Books

I spent a lot of time at Freebird Books in my early twenties, because it is the home of the beloved NYC nonprofit organization Books Through Bars. The shop specializes in books related to New York City history and culture, which honestly means it specializes in everything, because the culture of this city is so broad and wide-ranging.

Freebird Books is a bookstore that constantly reminds me of the liberatory power of reading. Whenever the shop is open, volunteers pour into the basement to read requests from currently incarcerated people and then rifle through the collection to find a book that’ll bring them a morsel of hope and humanity. Reading through the requests at Books Through Bars, I was always so struck by how healing these stories were for people facing the depravity of the greater New York carceral system. The way people clamored for a tale made me swear to never take the privilege of reading for granted.

And, as a patron of the shop, I saw how transformative the right read could be firsthand. I picked up my first collection of Allen Ginsburg poetry here when I was 20, after reading that Ginsburg and I went to high school in the same town and then went to the same college in the book’s About the Author section. It was at Freebird Books that I finally decided to become a writer, because I realized someone who grew up like me had actually done it. The right bookstore really can change your life, and Freebird changed mine.

Unnameable Books

Though it is a bookstore, Unnameable Books feels more akin to a community center than anything else. Yes, their tagline is “WE BUY USED AND NEW BOOKS” and I have found a great book here once or twice, the allure of Unnameable Books lies in its amazing roster of events. Poets across New York City gather at Unnameable for readings, chapbook launches, and talk-backs. One look at their events calendar on Google Calendar shows a rotation of events happening six days a week. That’s a level of community engagement that most planners and organizers can only dream of. Stop by Unnameable Books, grab a funky new read, and then stay awhile. Aren’t stories made to be discussed? This is definitely the place to have those discussions.

Queens

Sunnyside Book & Media Swap

Baddies on a budget should check out the Sunnyside Book & Media Swap. They have a collection of books, DVDs, CDs, and more available for just $2 a pop! It’s not the most extensive collection, but you can always snag something fun and very underrated while here. This isn’t a bookshop per se, given that it’s a small set up on a park corner. Nevertheless, it’s a sweet community-run spot giving used books and other physical media a new life, and is definitely worth checking out if you’re in the area.

The World’s Borough Bookshop

The World’s Borough Bookshop is an Ecuadorian-owned store in Jackson Heights that I love to check out when in the area. The store is home to a collection of some very fun Asian, Black, Indigenous and Latino second-hand books, as well as brand-new books (if that’s the kind of thing that you’re into.) The book selection is thoughtfully curated, and worth a visit to pick up some incredible reads by BIPOC authors. On occasion the shop will put out their bargain book carts in front, where you can snag some gently pre-loved books at a steep discount.

Turn The Page Again

Buying and selling used books is all about giving stories a new chance at finding an audience, and the ethos of Turn The Page Again takes the idea of new chances to heart. The bookshop employs people struggling to find work after receiving a mental health diagnosis and gives them job training, coaching, and competitive salaries. The Bayside-based shop sells a beautiful array of used books and frequently hosts 2-for-1 sales. The shop also crafts a series of programming dedicated to destigmatizing mental health for the community.

That’s all from me this week! I hope this post encouraged you to go out and buy some more used books. Remember: a long TBR stack is just a baby library.

Did I miss any of your favorite used bookstores in NYC? Drop them in the comments and I’ll check them out.

Earlier this year, Aaron Schaffer, Will Oremus, and Nitasha Tiku at The Washington Post released bombshell reporting on AI Super Villain—sorry, I meant Start Up Company—Anthropic and its destructive scanning scheme. WaPo reporting was able to verify that Anthropic launched a massive internal initiative, titled “Project Panama,” to purchase physical books from stores, feed the text into their several AI models (including Claude) and then destroy the books. WaPo reporters uncovered internal documents from Anthropic regarding the project that were unsealed during a lawsuit brought by book authors against the company, wherein one of the project’s many architects stated, “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world...We don’t want it to be known that we are working on this.”

Just like every other Brilliant Person has ever done with information they definitely do not want released to the public, this Anthropic employee put it down in writing. Ironic, isn’t it?

The reporting from WaPo focuses mainly on Project Panama’s dedication to illegally acquiring and then re-publishing works from authors across the country, which boils down to a question of intellectual property and proper payment. Unfortunately, this issue isn’t relevant to many members of the general public. I sympathize with the lack of noise this made on the internet when it first appeared. Yes, it’s bad that authors are having their work stolen, but aren’t there more important problems for us to all focus on?

Unfortunately, the answer to that question is yes, and the more important problems still relate to Project Panama.

In June of 2026, Ars Technica’s Benj Edwards released further reporting on the details of Project Panama, which included information about how Anthropic went out of their way to not only purchase and then scan these books to train their AI models, but also made the express effort to physically destroy all of the books they purchased after they stole the text for their trainings. Villainous, but apparently, not on-purpose. Edwards found that Anthropic “stripped books from bindings, cut pages to workable dimensions, scanned them as stacks of pages into PDFs with machine-readable text including covers, then discarded all the paper originals.” Horrible, but understandable to some people with less moral scruples than I possess.

But earlier this week, reporting from Tiffany Chartier at the Dallas Express uncovered the more devastating facet of this project: Anthropic not only acquired books that were easily accessible and circulated in print for their destructive scanning, but went out of their way to find, scan, and dispose of “rare and out-of-print books.” In some cases, Anthropic has been shown to use uncommon editions with limited surviving copies, effectively removing these texts from circulation. Purchase the rare books, cut off the spines, scan the individual pages to train the AI models, and then shred the fucking pages so that no one else can access them. Whether Anthropic has explicitly said it or not, evidence proves that this is the method of Project Panama.

This is an insane, burning of the Library of Alexandria-level loss of information. Rare, difficult-to-uncover editions of books, with all their information, have been acquired and then eliminated by a company looking to consolidate all of the world’s information in order to sell it back to the public at a premium price. Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 as a warning to humanity, and these AI companies seem to be using it as a playbook to guide their destruction of us.

I implore you to read the WaPo, Ars Technica, and Dallas Express articles, because their reporting reveals some of the most cynical, machiavellian machinations of the world’s greatest architects of ruin. I’m being a little hyperbolic, of course (but only a little), yet it is bone-chilling how dedicated these companies are to the pursuit of consolidating all of the information in the world. As if literature, one of the most humanistic pursuits that has endured the test of time across humanity itself, is something that should belong to the few.

But Cat, you might ask, what can we do about it? Thankfully, dearest reader, we have the tools to fight back.

The most important investment you can make right now is in physical media, and particularly written texts.

The aim of Project Panama is to consolidate all of the written media in the world, to have all of the writing in the world stored in AI models, first-hand copies totally inaccessible to you and I. Anthropic, along with several other companies testing and toying with these methods (the original lawsuit cited by WaPo in their reporting was brought against Anthropic, but included information that also claimed Meta, Google and OpenAI uses similar tactics) wants to ensure that you and I cannot access a written text without asking Claude, Gemini, or Chat.GPT for it, first. And the easiest way to combat this is by accumulating a fuck-ton of physical media. Books, magazines, posters, etc. Whatever you can own is one more text in the hands of a real person and not in the hands of one of these nefarious companies. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a win that is.

Buy random written shit. The older, the better. Now is the time to head to the Rare Books and Manuscripts sections of your local bookstores and purchase any and everything that interests you. Go to the yard sales, garage sales, and thrift stores and look for books that seem old and unfamiliar. Buying a $2 discarded copy of a book you’ve never heard of before can mean saving that story forever. It’s a cheap hobby, but it’ll get infinitely more rewarding as access to books becomes hyper-commodified by the rise of AI. Even if you don’t give a fuck about books or reading, owning a rare copy of something that’s left circulation might be worth a lot of money one day. That’s a really sick and disgusting way to think about this investment, but if it gets a book into your collection, I guess I’ll let it slide. (Just don’t sell anything without scanning and/or re-printing several copies of it to donate to local libraries, I beg!)

And then, put these books on to other people. Loan them to your friends. Keep the copies well.

And post about an old book when you like it. The New York Review of Books, The Folio Society, and Kessinger Publishing frequently brings older, more obscure books back into print. If you like a book that you can’t really find in stores, post about it online and tag these publishers.

Access to books and to reading is vital to anyone looking to live a life filled with texture. Stories keep us tethered to our humanity. In this age of cybernetic surveillance and unrelenting apathy, stories keep us firmly planted in the world.

So, add some more books to your To-Be-Read pile. Build a little library of your own. Collecting the written word has just become the sexiest mode of anti-feudalist resistance.

That’s it from me today. Hope you have a lovely excuse to go out and spend some of your hard-earned dollar-dollar bills.

Check back on Friday for a list of my favorite spots across New York City to invest in physical media.

Perhaps, if you’re like me, the mania never left you, but thanks to Christopher Nolan’s spell-binding adaptation of The Odyssey, it is once again cool to talk about Homer’s epics in public. Thank the gods, amiright?

I first encountered Homer in my first year at Columbia, a rite of passage for all the insufferable brainiacs studying there. Though I would have never admitted it back then, I was obsessed with both The Iliad and The Odyssey. At the time, I was still figuring out if I wanted to be labeled a nerd by people I found cool, and so I tried with all my might to seem disaffected and disinterested in the earlier parts of Columbia’s Literature Humanities course. I turned my nose up at the ancients, wanting to fast-forward to the contemporary literature I was more familiar with and earn brownie points with the snobs at school who thought Homer was too elementary to engage with at the college level.

But the truth is, I loved reading about the insanely catty divas causing chaos out in Troy, Ithaca, Mount Olympus, and all the oceans and skies in-between! Why was that? Because everybody from Ancient Greece was messy as fuck. This is the one takeaway that endures for everyone in the world, whether you’ve pored over the classics in school or only learned about Greek mythology peripherally from enjoying the Percy Jackson series. The Ancient Greeks were always getting into some antics because nobody could keep their mouth shut, follow the rules, or stop scheming. This is part of the reason why Homer’s epics have endured for thousands of years: everybody loves some messy bitches. And, my gods, did Homer know how to tell a story about a bunch of messy bitches!

I’m beyond grateful for Christopher Nolan and this gift he’s provided us, because this film brings this story back to the forefront the cultural conversation, and now we can all revel in the endless discourse and gossip that the Greek epics are so exceptional at generating!

Whether you’re true-to-this-not-new-to-this interest in one great man’s long and winding journey home from war or you’ve been spurred on by the hype surrounding Nolan’s take on the poem, I’ve crafted a list of things to watch and read if you’re craving a bit more chaos from the Greek gods and all their followers.

What to watch if you loved The Odyssey

To bring the epic to life: Gods and Monsters: Homer’s Odyssey

Watching Nolan’s adaptation of the epic lends the viewer a lot of distance from the story’s more fantastical elements. Barren, dune-filled beaches as a backdrop service his take on the story, but they don’t give the viewer a real sense of the lush and diverse landscapes that animated Homer’s story. In Gods and Monsters: Homer’s Odyssey, poet and professor Simon Armitage goes on a journey through the lands that inspired these vivid and other-worldly tales. At once a travel documentary and a poetic analysis of what makes Homer’s epic so riveting, Gods and Monsters is essential viewing for anyone looking to get closer to the lands and language that give The Odyssey its chimerical charm.

For a more “faithful” adaptation of the epic: The Odyssey (1997) miniseries

For the pretentious sticks-in-the-mud looking for a more “faithful” adaptation of this 3,000-year-old epic (though I have to ask if a “faithful” adaptation is even truly possible, given how many times this story has been altered and reimagined throughout human history: is there even one “true” version of the story?? Especially if each and every time the text is translated, the translator chooses what version of the story they want to tell… Questions for the more brilliant among us, I suppose!), there already is one. Andrei Konchalovsky’s television miniseries adaptation of The Odyssey works harder to follow the larger-than-life elements of the story. In Konchalovsky’s version, Odysseus swaggers between perilous situations, the ancient braggadocio that the Fagles and Lattimore translations present us with. This miniseries, with a 176-minute runtime across two parts, gives us a more upbeat and energetic take on the story. It’s a pretty fabulous adaptation, all things considered, and watching this one after seeing Nolan’s take can give you a more holistic look at all the ways The Odyssey lives in our mass-cultural imagination.

To transport the epic to a more familiar time: O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)

Take the story beats of The Odyssey and drop them into Mississippi in the 1930s, use a chain-gang prison break as the story’s catalyst, use the racism of the Jim Crow-era South as stand-ins for the grotesqueries of Homer’s monstrous imaginings, and sprinkle a bit of bluegrass, country, and gospel music throughout: You’ll end up with O Brother, Where Art Thou? This oft-forgotten film in the Coen Brothers’ catalog is a raucous take on Homer’s tale, and one of my absolute favorites (sorry to The Big Lebowski, I just have a thing for absurdist semi-musicals.) The cast is stacked with stars like George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, all doing some of the best work of their respective filmographies. This film does a fantastic job of showcasing why The Odyssey has stood the test of time: it places the breadth of humanity on full display.

For the divas who loved the melodramatic elements of the epic: Contempt (1963)

It’s an Odyssey retelling inside of an Odyssey retelling! The baby-daddy of French New Wave cinema, Jean-Luc Godard, took a story about filmmakers making an adaptation of The Odyssey and turned it into an Odyssey in its own right. Godard uses a failing marriage as the vehicle to transport The Odyssey to modern times. It’s not a beat-for-beat adaptation like O Brother, Where Art Thou? is, but it does capture the tragic elements of the epic nicely. In this story, our Odysseus stand-in is not a hero favored by the gods, but rather a typically-flawed man who succumbs to the challenges set before him. Godard dares to ask “What if Odysseus was a regular fucking guy?” and leaves us with an answer that feels painfully human.

What to read if you loved The Odyssey

To learn more about women in the epic: Taking Her Seriously: Penelope & the Plot of Homer’s Odyssey by Richard Heitman

When learning about The Odyssey in college, one of the tutors at my school’s writing center listened to my diatribe about the role of women in Homer’s epics and recommended that I read this book by Richard Heitman. I immediately went to check it out of the library, and for the first time in that semester of college, I actually cared about my Literature Humanities course. Heitman elevates Penelope’s role in the epic to that of equaling Odysseus’. His feminist reading of the story makes the epic infinitely more interesting, and helps add an extra layer of subtext to Anne Hathaway’s searing portrayal of Penelope in Nolan’s film.

To see the impact of The Odyssey on one of its premier translators: Growing up with the Odyssey by Emily Wilson

If you’re wondering how The Odyssey can impact the way we view ourselves, our stories, and our histories today, look no further than this essay in The Paris Review by Emily Wilson. Wilson is the first woman to ever publish an English translation of the epic, and Nolan’s dialogue is heavily inspired by her quick and tight English verse. In this essay, Wilson explores the impact The Odyssey had on her as a young girl living in England, and then again as an émigrée in the United States. It’s a quick read, and gives great insight into the ways people have struggled with and against this text over the course of several centuries. I’ll leave you with one line from the essay that left me reeling when I read it: “I find myself constantly thinking of the Odyssey’s disturbing recognition that one person’s identity and sense of belonging may come at a huge cost to someone else.”

For more mess featuring some peripheral characters in The Odyssey: The Oresteia by Aeschylus

When I first read both The Iliad and The Odyssey, I did not find many of the men central to these stories sympathetic. I think I hated Agamemnon most, given how bad he fucks over his men by refusing to give up Chryseis (literally why would anyone going into battle want to piss off a priest of the gods when they just started a literal war???) so when I found out that Aeschylus wrote an entire play dedicated to Agamemnon’s demise, I was sat. For fans of the Nolan film, The Oresteia focuses on Agamemnon’s return home from war and his subsequent death at the hands of his wife, Clytemnestra. It’s a messy-ass play that, with all of its drama, has even Season 10 of Vanderpump Rules beat and somehow ends in the establishment of the Athenian legal system. (Aeschylus was nothing if not inventive.)

I’m a huge fan of the original book One Day by David Nicholls. I first read it at some point in the eighth grade and was hooked. I was a wee twelve year old in New Jersey obsessed with the beauty and complexity of Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew’s relationship and, as a side effect, entirely enamored by the city of Edinburgh, where the best parts of the story takes place. Back when Tumblr was still a thing, I spent hours reblogging moody dark-academia photo slideshows of the University of Edinburgh and dreaming of my own treks up to Arthur’s Seat.

Fast-forward some eleven years later, and the Netflix adaptation sucked me back into the beautiful world of Emmadex, Edinburgh the stunning backdrop for their love story. Thankfully, this time, I had both income and a career built on set-jetting, so off to Edinburgh I went.

I send this dispatch out to celebrate St. Swithin’s Day and feed the story’s fans. This is a perfect guide to a One Day one-day in Edinburgh (say that five times fast.)

Why on St. Swithin’s Day? And what is it? To ask those questions means you are not initiated into the One Day cult, but I can fill you in. Our story’s protagonists, Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew, meet on the very last day of their final year at the University of Edinburgh. They spend the second day of their friendship together on July 15th, also known as St. Swithin’s Day in England, a holiday meant to predict how rainy their summer months will be. If it rains on St. Swithin’s, the Brits must brace for a wet summer. If it doesn’t, there’ll be an abundance of sunshine. (For my American readers, think of it like Groundhog’s Day.) It’s a really pivotal day for Emmadex, as it solidifies their friendship and helps readers fall in love with them as a duo.

Even though I’m not at all British (or Scottish, for that matter) I check the weather in Edinburgh on July 15th every year because of my love for One Day. Isn’t it funny how the stories we love change us in these strange little ways?

It’s not meant to rain in Edinburgh today, so I guess there’ll be lots of sunshine for the Scots this summer. Hooray.

Whether you’re looking to celebrate St. Swithin’s Day like a proper One Day fan or just seeking out ideas on how to spend one fantastic day in Edinburgh, read on below.

Start your day with a hike up Arthur’s Seat

If you’re familiar with One Day, you knew this was coming. Emma and Dexter spend their first full day as friends climbing up Arthur’s Seat, and it’s absolutely worth the trek. I recommend starting your day with the hike because, well, you only have one day (according to the parameters I’m setting out for you) and it’s very time consuming.

Tourists of all stripes should stick to the “tourist” route, which starts at Holyrood. The walk will take you past the Salisbury Crags, St. Anthony’s Chapel, and a bit of rocks to get to the very top. For a reasonably fit person (see me: a young woman who never goes outdoors, hates exercise, can’t touch her toes, and eats and drinks way more than somebody my age should) the route should take you about 40 minutes maximum to complete each way. I spent a long time bitching and moaning on the way up, so it took me about an hour going up, and about 45 minutes going down.

I started my climb very early in the morning, at around 7:15am, to try and get to the top before sunrise. I failed, miserably, but managed to spend about a half-hour sitting on the grass, reading my book, and basking in the glow of that fabulous omigod-this-is-where-Em-and-Dex-sat fan-girly feeling while at the top.

The whole endeavor took me about two hours and thirty minutes, and got me back into town at about 10 am, which was perfect for breakfast.

Grab breakfast at Cairngorm Coffee

Emma and Dexter were college students and mostly broke during their time in Edinburgh, so they weren’t doing much eating out for breakfast that one could easily replicate. So this one was dealer’s choice.

After your hike, hop on the 106 bus and head to Cairngorm Coffee near Edinburgh Castle for some hard-earned breakfast. While there, grab some coffee (I absolutely loved their flat white and they have great oat milk) and one of their specialty breakfast sandwiches. I got their toasted bacon sandwich, but went back up for a cheese toastie a group of three strangers chastised me for not doing so the first time. Fortunately for me, the strangers were correct, and if you are to get anything off this menu, let it be a cheese toastie.

Take a tour of Edinburgh Castle and then head to the One Day steps

While Emma and Dexter never head up to Edinburgh Castle in One Day, it is a constant backdrop for the show. Also, as a matter of personal taste, I think it’s insane to come to Edinburgh and not take a trip up to the castle, so I am recommending it here.

Grab tickets online (they’re £3 cheaper than if you buy them in person) for standard admission, and then pick up an audio guide on the way in for £1 and take a self-guided tour of the castle. There, you’ll get incredible views of the city, along with some pretty exceptional exhibits on Scottish history.

Start at the Royal Scots Museum and then make your way through the Prisons of War section. If you want to see the Crown Jewels (I know some people have mixed feelings about those exhibits) head to the Honours of Scotland. If not, skip over to the cafe that’s attached to the Afternoon Tea Room and grab a cuppa to recharge. I know this doesn’t sound like a lot, but everything I just mentioned will probably take you an hour and a half to complete.

After tea, wander around the Great Hall and then make a stop at St. Margaret’s Chapel. Most people skip the Chapel, but it’s a beautiful place to go searching for unicorn iconography and admire the beautiful stained glass windows. It was my favorite stop of the castle by far.

Once you’ve finished up at the chapel, walk along the castle walls on your way out. Make sure to take in the beautiful views of Edinburgh, and, if you’re lucky, catch the canon firing, which happens every day at 1pm.

After completing a tour of Edinburgh Castle, it’s time for some more One Day set-jetting. Walk over to the iconic Vennel Steps, just five minutes away from the castle, to see the place where Dexter finally reaches Emma to get her phone number, and also where the last scene of the show takes place. From there, you can get beautiful views (and photos) of Edinburgh Castle. You can also see the little plaque Netflix placed commemorating Emma and Dexter there. It features one of my favorite quotes from the story: “It’s one of the great cosmic mysteries; how it is that someone can go from being a total stranger to being the most important person in your life.”

Visit the Old College courtyard

For the final stop on the One Day tour, it is imperative that you visit the University of Edinburgh’s Old College, where the very first scene of the show takes place. You can enter the courtyard on South Bridge, and see the sprawling field unfold before you. Take all the photos and imagine the chaos of Emma and Dexter meeting for the very first time.

When you’re done with the photo op, head to the Talbot Rice Gallery, conveniently located at the Old College. There, you’ll find free collections of contemporary visual art and classical portraiture for your viewing pleasure. Some highlights there include works by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Eduardo Paolozzi and Victoria Crowe.

Library lovers can also pay a visit to Old College’s gorgeous Playfair Library Hall, with its beautiful barrel-vaulted ceilings, neoclassical architecture, and contemporary art all colliding in a one-of-a-kind academic space. I spent about 45 minutes wandering the halls here and living out my wildest dark academia dreams.

Visit Dean Village and finish your day with dinner at Stockbridge Eating House

A perfect day in Edinburgh requires a visit to Dean Village, the most quaint and picturesque part of town. From Old College, take the 37 bus for a 22 minute ride to Dean Village. While there, head to the Water of Leith Walkway for beautiful photos to fulfill all of your Tumblr-fueled fantasies.

Walking around Dean Village could take you a solid 30 or 40 minutes. For the less adventurous, this could be a great replacement for Arthur’s Seat, though I strongly advise against that. It’s an easy walk around a looped path, and you’ll get some really stunning views of charming cottage houses.

After you’ve built up an appetite with your sweet little walk, head to Stockbridge Eating House in the nearby Stockbridge neighborhood for an incredible meal. This tiny French-inspired spot changes their menu daily, so I can’t give you too much guidance on what to get, but the food there is out of this world. Think confit duck, roasted chicken, and delightful little pâtés. Whatever they’re serving, know that they use lovely fresh produce and great meat cuts sourced from exceptional local vendors. You can’t go wrong with anything there, but if they have their ice cream and cannelle for dessert, it is absolutely unmissable.

That’s a perfect One Day one day in Edinburgh for you. Happy St. Swithin’s Day. You have my permission to sit at home and binge One Day today in honor of the holiday.

Recently, though, I’ve become a bit bored with the abundance of dirty martini propaganda flooding my For-You Pages and timelines everywhere online. If I’m being totally honest, part of the allure of a dirty martini is its rugged masculinity. Ordering one as a lady in her early twenties felt like a slightly off-putting act of rebellion. It was my signature Not-Like-Other-Girls drink, my palate acting as a semiotic calling-card for the irreverence and restlessness I felt towards the onslaught of stringent gender norms slowly taking over Gen-Z. A dirty martini was a nasty woman’s drink, staunchly for the Samanthas and reviled by the Charlottes, and I liked what it said. Nowadays, though, the dirty martini feels like it has been co-opted by the clean girl aficionados, and, just like white tank tops and gold jewelry, no longer carries the edge it once did.

But I firmly believe that a savory cocktail is still the nasty woman’s beverage. Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for those in my immediate vicinity) New York City is home to several experimental cocktail bars taking the classic combination of briny juice + hard liquor and putting a freak-nasty spin on it.

Last Friday, I took my best friend Tiamera, who has a much more temperate palate than I, to Manhattan’s Lower East Side for a Funky and Freaky Cocktail Crawl™. The formula? Two divas, zero reservations, and a list of ten wildly savory cocktails at five of Manhattan’s most in-demand bars. The result? Five walk-ins secured with no more than 10 minutes of line-waiting overall, 15 savory cocktails downed, several sweet snacks consumed, and a final blood pressure measure that would scare my primary care provider.

Here’s how it went, all details included, in case you also love a savory cocktail and want to replicate our salty, spicy, and umami-forward Friday night out in the LES.

The Pre (3:30pm): Sweetie’s Candy + Self-Service Photobooths

I did say that we secured walk-ins at some of NYC’s most coveted cocktail bars on a Friday evening, and this meant starting our night at the totally-irresponsible time of 3:30pm. (Thank God for summer Fridays, amiright?) Our first spot of the evening, schmuck., opened at 4:00pm, so we headed to the area early to scope out the line and gauge how hard it would be to get in. Lucky for us, nobody was there at 3:30pm, and, because I hate looking like an NYC-Transplant-Lemming loitering on a line, we went to Sweetie’s Candy in the LES to kill some time. There, we managed to grab a sweet treat and take several funky photobooth pictures to commemorate the night. I recommend ducking in there to monitor the schmuck. line without standing around like one. (haha)

Bar 1 (4:03pm): schmuck. NYC

Line Situ: When it comes to New York City walk-in culture, fortune seems to favor the freelancers. Getting into schmuck., one of NYC’s most coveted cocktail bar seats, took less than five minutes on walk-in since we arrived right when it opened at 4pm.

Experience: Unfortunately for everyone reading this, schmuck. absolutely lived up to the hype. For starters, they had a bunch of loose cigarettes up for grabs at the hostess stand, an insane and sexy move on their part. (For those wondering, I did not take one because I am working on Being Good.) (I regretted it once I got half-way down the block, though.) The bar space is superbly-designed, an unbelievably cool mix of mid-century modern, brutalist, and cybernetic elements that feels like a sexy bachelor pad that only a gorgeous Parisian model from the 80s could dream up. Brick red tiles meet stainless steel finishes. schmuck. is the kind of bar where the lights would never go up, mostly because there is literally no overhead lighting anywhere. Definitely the most exciting space of the night.

Drinks:

✧ Bread and Tomatoes

Description: “a grey goose savoury highball with bread and well… tomatoes”

My take: Have you ever had a really good slice of rosemary focaccia with tomatoes? Dunk that flavor into water, and you’ll get this drink. I downed it way too quickly. As a certified Vodka hater, I loved this. Herby and mild. Not super freaky to me, but great for Savory Cocktail beginners. 8 olives out of 10.

T’s take: I hated it. It tasted like how it sounds, but I’m also not too fond of tomatoes. Perhaps some cocktails are a bit too savory. 4 olives out of 10.

✧ Pina Colada Pickleback

Description: “coconut fat washed four walls whisky with homemade pickled pineapple brine”

My take: Deceptively unsavory. I’m not a huge whisky fan to begin with, so this didn’t work for me. The pickled pineapple brine was very sweet, and I expected it to be sour and tart. In doing the preparatory research for this crawl, this came up as a savory cocktail on several lists. I strongly disagree. Not salty, tart, spicy, or umami enough for this girl, who drinks pickle juice out of the jar and can eat salt straight when I’m in a bad enough mood. 4.5 olives out of 10.

T’s take: The name was misleading, because I was expecting a pickle brine, but that was on me. Pickled pineapple tastes pretty good, that salty-sweet combination was great. 6 out of 10 olives

Bites: The kitchen at schmuck. doesn’t open until 5pm, so we didn’t order any food, but they provided some very salty cornichons and a yummy little nut mix for us to snack on with our drinks.

Bar 2 (4:58pm): Bar Snack

Line Situ: Walked right into two seats at the bar with absolutely no wait. This was expected though, because I’ve never had to wait on a real line to get into Bar Snack, which is bonkers given how good it is.

Experience: Bar Snack is a near-perfect bar to me. The interior design feels like a perfect blend of old-school dive and funky tiki bar. I’ve only ever sat in the little section up front, but I always have a great time there. The food is always out of this world, and their savory cocktails are seriously salty, which I LOVE. Their bathroom is a literal party space, with wall-to-wall mirrors, funky party lights, and great vibes. I also have to mention that this time I went, everyone who ate at the bar was treated to some free Guinness soft-serve, which is exactly what I needed to come down from my salt-induced haze.

Drinks:

✧ Tom Tom Paloma

Description: “she’s a savoury girl with tomato, roasted tomatillo, fever tree grapefruit & patron 100”

My take: The Tom Tom Paloma isn’t as savory as she advertises, in my view. The salty-spice rim is delicious, but this cocktail tasted a bit like a salt-water paloma. Which isn’t a bad thing at all. I thoroughly enjoyed it. This is just not the most revolutionary nor the most freak-nasty cocktail on this list. But if you’re into a balanced combination of sweet and salty, this is a perfect fit for you. 7 olives out of 10.

T’s take: Very salty for my current state, but it had a great flavor. It did all the things a paloma should: was refreshing, light, and a little tart. 7 olives out 10.

✧ Snoopy Sauce (with Pickle Beer)

Description: “a sexy lil dressed up michelada with tomatillo, grapefruit & pepita hot sauce”

My take: Would you like a side of spice with your incredibly salty beverage, ma’am? Abso-fucking-lutely. This is my favorite michelada in the city. Really spicy, nicely tomatoey, and the addition of a Donna’s Pickle Beer just takes it entirely over the top in the best way. Is it the most inventive cocktail on this list? No. Is it simply perfect in every way, though? Without a doubt. I’m docking a few points because there are much more exciting flavor combinations I encountered on this crawl, but if you love a spicy, salty drink, you can’t get much better than this. 8.5 olives out of 10.

T’s take: Way too salty for me. Might be good for people who like more of a salty flavor profile. The spice levels were really nice though. 5 olives out of 10.

Bites: Bar Snack has some of the best savory food in New York City. My Instagram followers know that I think Bar Snack has the best spice bag in town, and so I had to order it again. It was incredible, as usual. We also got the cheese curds, and ohmigod, I almost cried from how tasty they were. I basically cleared the curds myself, and, paired with the savory bevs we ordered, I was lifted up to the heavens (and so was my blood pressure.) We finished off with some complimentary Guinness soft serve, which was delightfully sweet and yeasty. The best food stop of the night to me, by far.

Bar 3 (5:51pm): Bar Contra

Line Situ: Walked right into two seats at the bar with absolutely no wait. A shocker, given how many times I’ve seen lines here (for good reason.)

Experience: Bar Contra was probably my favorite experience of the night. The small 10-person bar was wonderfully cozy. It was also perfectly intimate, with at least three bartenders working at all times. Our bartender was so attentive and conversational, curating a perfect cocktail and food lineup for us. I wish I could remember their name, because they were so wonderful and gave us the most perfect drink recommendations of the night, but alas I have a horrible memory. (If you see this, plug your info below because we are obsessed with you!) The Bar Contra service was perfect, and their drinks were so inventive and surprising. We were served cocktails that I never would have chosen on my own, and they ended up being some of the best of the night.

Drinks:

✧ Saltair

Description: “umeboshi tequila, lime: a salty plum drink with a tiny beer on us!”

My take: A simple yet perfect salty drink. Simply made, gorgeous presentation. The umeboshi tequila is out of this world, and there’s nothing I love more than a tiny modelito to complement the savory, briny taste of salty plum. Does this taste like a perfectly salty and tart shot of tequila with a little modelito? Basically. I can’t think of anything better, though. This isn’t the most funky drink on the list, so I can’t give it any higher than an 8.5, but I thoroughly enjoyed this salty little bev, and if you’re nervous about a savory beverage, this is a mild-yet-delightful beginning point. 8.5 olives out of 10.

T’s take: Good. Definitely needed the Modelito, but together, it turned out to be well balanced. Who doesn’t love a little beer with their bev? 8 olives out of 10.

✧ Hoja Santa

Description: “sotol, hoja santa, cilantro, orange, lime: springtime herbs with a bite”

My take: This is where the night took a turn for the absolutely elite. The Hoja Santa came as a complete shock for us. An insane combination of fresh and herby flavors with a smoky-bite. It was very cilantro-forward, which provided us with a grassy, spicy taste that we couldn’t stop raving about. Muddled with liquid nitrogen, this drink is the Bar Contra equivalent of Chicken Fajitas (show-stopping and everyone’s heads will turn while they bring it out to you) and I’m not even mad at how extravagant it is. Herby, slightly spicy, and perfect. 9 olives out of 10.

T’s take: Surprising. I didn’t think I would like it because of the cilantro but I did. It tasted fresher than you’d expect. 7.5 olives out of 10.

✧ Viridian Sour

Description: “aquavit, dill, citrus, granny smith: tart, cool, and herbal”

My take: A FREAK-NASTY FUNKY DRINK in the best way. This cocktail was bright, aromatic, and earthy. I found it more citrusy and tart than any other beverage on this list, which was a wonderful reprieve from the crazy levels of salt we consumed. It was herbaceous without tasting either soapy or medicinal, which is a huge feat. Delicate, grassy, and absolutely drinkable. This one was also muddled with liquid nitrogen, giving it a perfect chill. Great for folks who like subtle pickled flavors and/or savory teas. A savory cocktail that isn’t salt-forward! What a treat. My second favorite cocktail of the entire crawl because of how tasty, inventive, and surprising it was. 9.5 olives out of 10.

T’s take: My favorite drink of the crawl. It was the most unique flavor profile but I enjoyed it a lot. I’d probably order it again even outside of a savory crawl. It was a refreshing, and the dill flavor wasn’t overpowering. 9 olives out of 10.

Bites: Several people messaged me about Bar Contra’s Celeriac Crumpet, so we had to order it despite being terribly full by this point. Fortunately for us, it was absolutely worth it. The crumpet was spongey, savory, and a little-bit herby. I’m not the biggest fan of seaweed, so I was shocked by how much I liked the creamy, smooth, and salty flavor of the seaweed butter. I wish we could’ve finished it, but I was way too full by this point in the night. I have to go back to enjoy it on an emptier stomach.

Bar 4 (7:02pm): The Coop at Double Chicken Please

Line Situ: The biggest gamble of the night. We arrived at Double Chicken Please at about 6:54pm fully expecting to be turned away because of how crazy the line here can be (I’ve heard horror stories of people waiting more than three hours to get in.) On a summer Friday at peak going out time? No chance. Lucky for us, there was only one party of three ahead of us on line here, so we ended up waiting less than 7 minutes for two seats at the bar. I almost couldn’t believe it.

Experience: The Coop at Double Chicken Please was definitely the most immersive experience of the crawl. Very grown and sexy vibes, with irreverent nods to their poultry-focused value proposition. Yes, there are chicken-shaped vases and chicken-themed artworks adorning the walls, and their bathrooms do feature the loud “bock-bock” guffawing of chickens looped for your pissing pleasure. This bar is what happens when Old MacDonald leaves the custody of his farm to his extremely horny chicken coop. An eclectic yet upscale experience overall. Shout out to our bartender Zach, who took great care of us.

Drinks:

✧ Red-Eye Gravy

Description: “Teeling Irish Whiskey, coffee butter, corn, walnut, wild mushroom, microwaved cuppa”

My take: A grown man’s drink. This drink put a bit of hair on my chest and I wasn’t a fan. Was this savory? I honestly couldn’t tell because of how whiskey forward it was. It definitely had a decent umami flavor, but it had a sticky-sweet aftertaste the way most whiskey does for me, which made it less enjoyable. The jerkied-meat garnish was lovely and salty, but I was not the target audience for this one, and that’s okay. I was able to finish it, so. 6 olives out of 10.

T’s take: Not my style. My only response is ew. The ham on top was a bit icky to me. 5 olives out of 10.

✧ Cold Pizza

Description: “Don Fulano Blanco Tequila, parmigiano reggiano, burnt toast, tomato, basil, honey, egg white”

My take: Yes, this drink tasted exactly like a cold slice of margherita pizza and boy was it funky. The drink was very tomato and basil heavy, which was a very enjoyable take on the cold pizza concept. I didn’t get much of the cheese flavor here, which was a little disappointing. A solid cocktail, this just leaned more fresh than cheesy-greasy, which is what I was hoping for. 8 olives out of 10.

T’s take: I thought it would be nasty but it was great. It tasted very herby and fresh. I couldn’t taste the alcohol. 7 out of 10 olives.

✧ Thai Curry

Description: “Sonbi gin, illegal mezcal joven, green curry, lime.”

My take: Winner winner, chicken dinner!! This was my absolute favorite drink of the night, which is wild to me because I hate gin and mezcal, but this worked perfectly for me. The Thai Curry was spicy, smoky, and a perfect mix of Thai-inspired flavors, which I could not get enough of. Another savory cocktail that was rooted in spicy and umami flavors rather than just salt, which was super impressive. The kick from the green curry was so playful and gave the drink a nice heat without drowning out the flavor. It also came with a delightful little thai iced tea popsicle, which, when combined with the drink itself, ended up tasting more like a thick green curry with a great coconut milk aftertaste than anything else. Lived up to the name for sure, and left me wanting another. 10 olives out of 10.

T’s take: I didn’t think I would like this based on the description but it ended up being a really well-balanced cocktail. Weird but I definitely liked it. The popsicle was a nice touch for the sweet and savory combination. 9 out of 10 olives.

✧ Japanese Cold Noodle

Description: “Bacardi Superior Rum, pineapple, cucumber, coconut, lime, sesame oil.”

My take: Probably the biggest “how the fuck did they get this to taste like this?” of the crawl for me. Tasted exactly like a cold noodle dish. Umami-heavy without ever having an artificial flavor. Very cucumber forward, but in a cold cucumber soup way. Refreshing in a way that took me entirely by surprise. I know this is supposed to have rum in it, but I honestly couldn’t taste it. 9 olives out of 10 .

T’s take: Fun to drink because it really tasted like a cold noodle. If you’re looking for something funky and weird, this is good because it’s not egregiously savory or heavy. Well-balanced. 8 out 10 olives.

Bites: No bites here, but that is a massive regret of ours. We’ve already discussed going back to try their stuffed wings.

Bar 5 (8:33pm): Guzzle at Sip&Guzzle

Line Situ: Another surprising walk-in. We just-so-happened to walk in the moment that a couple finished at the Guzzle bar, so we were able to snag seats pretty immediately. Luck was on our side the entire night. Results may vary for those replicating this crawl at a later date.

Experience: Guzzle at Sip&Guzzle was a bit of let down, but only because we’ve frequented Sip, the downstairs bar, on several occasions, and loved it much more. We came hoping to snag a walk-in down there (we didn’t) and left sad because we wanted to have the Strawberry Hotpot to finish our crawl. We’ve already tried that one before, and it would’ve been the perfect end to our savory endeavor. Alas, we couldn’t order it at Guzzle. Guzzle is dark, moody, and sexy. It’s a very small bar, and therefore very intimate, but the bartenders were very busy so it wasn’t as fun as other places on this crawl. Overall, I’d say to take everything about this section with a grain of salt, given how much we love Sip and how sad we were that we couldn’t get in down there. The experience at Guzzle was nice, but we would’ve preferred Sip by a landslide.

Drinks:

✧ Sun-Dried Daisy

Description: “Sun-dried tomato blanco tequila, makrut lime cordial, fresh lime, saline, green sichuan peppercorn oil.”

My take: This was fine. A very smooth and light cocktail that wasn’t super savory by any means. Definitely drinkable, but a bit of a let-down. 6 olives out of 10.

T’s take: Very indiscriminate flavor profile. Not offense by any means, but nothing was interesting about it. 4 olives out of 10.

✧ Wagyu Old-Fashioned

Description: “Toki whisky, bourbon, peanut butter, wagyu beef.”

My take: Similar to the Red-Eye Gravy from Double Chicken Please, this was not a cocktail for me. I should’ve known this given the fact that I hate Old-Fashioneds, but it just felt thick and heavy to me. I’m also not a huge fan of bourbon. The wagyu beef slice on top was excellent, though. 4 olives out of 10.

T’s take: Ew. 2 olives out of 10 for me.

*AUTHOR’S NOTE: If I could re-do this crawl, I would make sure to get a reservation at Sip and end with the Sichuan Style, which is their strawberry hotpot drink, and their Tomato Tree, an umami-forward tomato cocktail.

Bites: No bites here this time, but we’ve been to Sip before and had most of their food menu. We recommend the Volcano Roll, the Electric Chicken, and the Royale with Cheese sandwich, and probably would’ve ordered them both if we had even a sliver of space left in our stomachs.

That’s all from me this week! Love any savory cocktails in the LES that I missed?? Drop your recs below.

This is a topic I’ve kept close to my heart for a while now. Ever since I turned twenty-five, it seems like every woman I know has become hyper-fixated on the perils of their dating lives. Every brunch turns into a debate on whether someone should break up with their boyfriend, ditch the femme that won’t stop DM-ing them, or start dressing sluttier on nights out. Discourse has shifted away from getting sloshed and seeing arthouse movies and towards bemoaned musings on whether or not kitten heels are the reason nobody’s approaching us at the bar. And it’s getting exhausting.

Listen, I love girl talk. I am more than happy to listen to my friends talk about these topics because dating is an integral part of their lives, and I am invested in their lives. The problem is that girl talk has become the nucleus of our cultural discourse, the only topic about women in their mid-twenties that anyone wants to talk about, and I’m reaching my wits-end with this topical echochamber. It’s easy to talk about dating with your friends when that’s the only time you talk about it. But when it’s everywhere, becoming a dark cloud of discourse trailing behind you at every turn, it gets to a point where it becomes unbearable.

Yes, dating sucks. Yes, it sucks worse than it did years ago. Yes, it’s hard to find love. We’ve all acknowledged that. Can’t we just accept that this is the way things are and move the conversation along?

Perhaps it has always been this way for women at this stage of life, and I’m just now catching up to the party. If this is the case, I apologize greatly to all my elders. I didn’t realize how bad it would get for me, and I now genuflect at the altar of your wise complaints that I previously discarded.

After Chanté Joseph’s astute interrogation of the state of the dating market last year, I thought the conversational pendulum would swing in the opposite direction. Her bravery in asking the question “Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing?” gave women an excuse to examine our nonstop fascination with dating and relationships. She carved out the space for us to realize how belittling and vapid all this discussion is. But, like everything else happening in this hellscape timeline, the Discourse Machine used her work as a way of missing the point and generating thousands of clicks, likes, and comments on thinkpieces fueling this conversation even further.

Now, the Boyfriend Girl, Pick-Me Pollyanna, TradWife, and every other riff on this insufferable archetype has successfully infiltrated every girl’s night in New York City. Whether we’re rallying against her or adopting her mannerisms, there’s no escaping her. But the more I examine this archetype, the more I feel like Dan at Winkie’s Diner from Mulholland Drive, realizing in real time that there’s a man in the back of this place! And the only solution to my near-constant frustration is to look to the women writers making sense of this never-ending discursive feedback loop.

If you, like me, are looking for respite from this horrible horrible discourse, here’s my curated reading list for this summer that might help.

The Real Women’s Empowerment in the Embarrassing Boyfriend Era Reading List

The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy

I’m cheating with the first title on this list because it is my favorite book of all time. Mary McCarthy is an expert in both investigating and satirizing the performative nature of feminine desire. Our heroine, Margaret Sargent, is hyperaware of how others perceive her, and her interior dialogues showcase how much mental math goes into navigating life as a woman with “unconventional” desires. This book is for the small group of women who find themselves at the center of the venn diagram between fans of Sex and the City and fans of Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. I’m certain that a re-read of this book will return me to my sanity by validating my frustrations and concerns with the dating discourse, and I highly recommend it to anyone out there looking for the same reprieve.

Get it here

Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood

This novella published by Lady Caroline Blackwood in 1977 explores the way trauma is passed down between three generations of women in an aristocratic family. Filled with humor and hedonism, this story is rooted in the lives of three women who just can’t seem to let their vices go. I don’t know much about the book, but I’ll give you a quote from Lucy Scholes’ review of Great Granny Webster for The Booker Prize blog: “Blackwood’s fictional women are all trapped by something, whether it’s duty, convention, motherhood, mental illness, or the men in their lives.” What can I say? I’m sold.

Get it here

Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode by Jen Calleja

Pursuing the Goblin as a mode of being feels like the ultimate antithesis to the Pick-Me Pollyanna. Embracing the sordid energetic pull of “grottiness, slovenliness, and subversion” is massively disruptive to the cultural conversation around dating in a way I find entirely delightful. Author Jen Calleja uses this theory of Goblinhood to examine the world around us, leaning into a radically-messy, subversive ethic to examine pop-culture, grief, lust, and ancestral storytelling that feels like a breath of fresh air. It’s essential reading for this list because I believe Calleja can outline a way of thinking about our culture that will provide fruitful conversations for a girl’s night out.

Get it here

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is the master of writing about the trappings of masculinity, and Song of Solomon is probably her most incisive look at this topic, according to the several reviews I checked out while crafting this list. It also happens to be one of the few books in Morrison’s oeuvre that I haven’t read yet. Though I don’t have much to go on, I know this book is perfect for this list because Song of Solomon is where Morrison’s infamous Third Beer quote comes from. Unfamiliar with it? Let me leave it here: “She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it’s there, because it can’t hurt, and because what difference does it make?” If that quote alone can’t give you the second-hand embarrassment needed to stop talking about dating, I don’t know what can.

Get it here

The Spinster Cookbook by Eli Davies

Maybe the cure to this perpetual exhaustion with girl talk is to just spend more time alone. Ditch the dinners with the girlies once in a while and solo-dine. If that feels like the answer for you, Eli Davies’ memoir The Spinster Cookbook will contextualize your desire for individual pursuits. The book frames solo-dining as “an act of self-care, defiance, and pleasure rather than a sign of lack,” according to its summary on The Indigo Press. No matter how you feel about singledom, this book will help you see the freedom and empowerment in being alone.

Get it here

A Dangerous Liaison by Baroness Sheri de Borchgrave

For the girls who identify a little too closely with Charlotte York, A Dangerous Liaison is a memoir that should serve as a cautionary tale. What begins as an idyllic romance with a member of the Belgian aristocracy takes a terrifying turn. De Borchgrave was trapped in the sordid underbelly of the European elite. Emerging before the violent reveals of the Epstein files, de Borchgrave’s experience explores the ways powerful men entrap women, and just how much it takes to regain freedom after a love affair with one. I recently met the author of this book while on a trip to the Finger Lakes in New York, and de Borchgrave’s sharp wit and clear-eyed perspective on love and romance makes her the kind of narrator you can trust with your deepest fears and longings.

Get it here

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As an angsty teenager in Northern New Jersey, I fantasized about shoes like the 1995 Martin Margiela firetruck red half-bootie-half-pump heels. In college, I scoured Sororité Vintage drops to drool over rare pairs of sporty Manolo Blahniks and mismatched Dior pumps. Part of this obsession stems from my fraught relationship with my mother on sartorial matters. “Will my mother hate these,” is my typical benchmark for whether or not I lust after a pair of shoes. Whether you chalk it up to the remnants of my teenage rebellion or my virulent desire for intellectual independence, the reality is that this little love of mine is not just a phase.

When it comes to shoes, anything jarring, off-putting, and wacky will work for me. With the rise of incredible creators like Mandy Lee, Atiya C. Walcott, and Rabbi Arielle Stein, more and more people are admitting to their obsession with weirdo little shoes, which is great for me. At the same time, many new converts to the dark side of footwear are beginning to dilute the meaning of what a freaked out shoe even is.

Though I deeply appreciate Matthieu Blazy’s S/S 2026 shoe collection, they’re a little too normal for me. While it’s true that his clashing patterned-pumps and sensual slits on slingbacks are more enthralling than anything Chanel has done with their footwear in years, they’re just not kooky enough for what I’m talking about!

All of this is to say, I’ve been in the market for a new wacko shoe. After roaming the streets of Lisbon earlier this year, I found it. The artsy girls of Lisbon are wearing a brand that absolutely understood what I was going for: Miista.

Listen, I know that I’m behind on the Miista train. The brand has dressed everyone from Olivia Dean to Katseye in the last year. They have stores in Paris, Barcelona, and even New York! But to become obsessed with this brand, I had to see these shoes out in my real life.

Until I bumped into an insanely well dressed Spaniard woman sporting the Miista Shana lace-up boots at the Museo do Design in Lisbon, I didn’t understand the freaky-deaky potency of this brand’s footwear. I can still picture the moment I saw them on her: how stellar the black leather of the shoes looked against the streaky-gray concrete floors of the What Are Things For? exhibit, how right they looked with her khaki shorts and crisp white button down. They were the kind of shoes that immediately threw off the balance of the space, disruptive enough that I actually went to the woman wearing them to find out the brand.

That kind of earth-shattering rupture, one that can jolt me out of my Gen-Z cultural training that warns against bothering strangers in public and force me to engage with another person despite my irrational self-policing, is exactly why I love a freaked out little shoe. When I’m out and about in the world, I struggle to connect with strangers on my own, and I know others struggle to connect with me (thanks to my insane RBF.) A wonderful, wacky, unsettling shoe is a conversation starter, a way to signal to the world that, yes, you’re a chaotic little weirdo despite your business casual attire, and you’re looking to engage with others in a world that’s becoming increasingly hostile to IRL connection.

After experiencing the effect Miista footwear had on passersby firsthand, I knew I needed a pair. And, for me, fashion is an experience. I’m not a habitual buyer, and try to approach my wardrobe with an eye for collecting, rather than just stocking up. If I can tie my clothes to a memory, I’ll always opt for that.

And the Miista flagship store in Hackney is just a dream. The space was an old tannery warehouse near Vyner Street until Miista hired DeMachinas, an architecture and design firm helmed by Elina Loukou and Sabrina Summer, to convert it to the storefront. It’s just as freaky and interesting as the fashion label’s designs: concrete slab walls meet beautiful cherry-wood shelves, asymmetrical clothing racks made of repurposed scaffolding pipes collide with reused timber planks. It’s a storefront that’s just as much of an experience as the shopping, and I can’t wait to experience it firsthand.

So I booked a ticket to London for October to visit the original Miista store and find a real connection to a brand new pair of shoes.

What I’m eyeing at Miista before I go

The Lucy Boots are my platonic ideal of a wacko shoe. Leather, strappy, and insanely off-putting, these boots look like they were stolen off of Elphaba Thropp’s feet. Perfect Ozian attire for the girl with a 9-5. Are they a little ugly? To most people, absolutely. But to me, they are gorgeous. These shoes have the capacity to repulse and alienate most people. I can totally see myself sporting these with a pair of khaki shorts and a white t-shirt. Normal up top, freaky on the feet. What more could I want?

At first glance, the Gaelle Sandals aren’t that weird visually. They have the veneer of a 90’s chunky sandal. Blink once and you’ll miss the delightfully asymmetrical pattern of the brown snake embossed leather, or the off-the-rails insole, or the random peep-toe slit in an already-exposed toebox. Inconspicuous enough to be worn anywhere without earning revulsion from bystanders, but intriguing enough to stir conversation with people perceptive enough to notice their funky attributes.

Try as I might, I can’t be a sneakerhead. I hate wearing sneakers. I never find a pair that looks the way I want them to. I’ve experimented with all the cool girl sneaker brands, and nothing fits what I’m going for. I have a feeling that the Edyta Sneakers from Miista can actually elevate my classic style in the ways I’ve always imagined. The reflective sheen of black and white leather paired with the shoe’s silhouette inspired by classic football (that’s soccer for my Americans in the chat) boots and a sick asymmetrical shoelace line makes for a sneaker that’s eye-catching enough to make a real statement.

Where I’ll be spending my time in London

STAYS: Location is essential to a big shopping trip, and there’s no where I’d rather be than Chelsea. It’s walking distance to Duke of York Square, King’s Road, and Sloane Street, and home to some of my favorite restaurants in London. My favorite hotel in this neighborhood is the Beaverbrook Townhouse.

SHOPS: Miista (obviously), Late Night Chameleon Café, magCulture, Serotonin Vintage, London Review Book Shop, Hilda, Rixo, Intoxica Records, The Mercantile (in Spitalfields), Machine-A, Postcard Teas, Crabi, Anya Hindmarch, Anna + Nina, Farm Shop, Niwaki, The Gallery of Everything, Basically anywhere on Children Street

FOOD + DRINKS: Granger + Co., Colbert, Berenjak, Archway, OMA, Nina, 74 Duke, Summer Dumpling, The Dreamery, Jamaica Wine House, LPM, Singburi Thai, Kudu, Salpiké (in Brixton Village), Hagen, Ibai, Slayer Pizzeria, Canteen, Bun House, Castiglione

AMUSEMENTS: The National Gallery, Lucky Voice SoHo, Paradise Under the Stars (Cuban speakeasy), Mulliri, William Morris Gallery, Bambi, Oula Cafe, All My Friends, Richmond Hill, Chiswick House & Gardens

I know we haven’t taken it all the way yet, and I refuse to jinx us (Knicks in four though, motherfuckers!) but I think everyone needs to take this opportunity to celebrate like the sky is falling. In a world where everything seems to be getting worse, New York City has risen from the ashes (mostly thanks to New Jersey’s gifts to humanity, Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, and myself.) The denizens of the greatest city in the world have something to live for once more. And you, dear reader, need to relish in this moment, because it may not happen again in your lifetime.

This is a moment that I have waited for my entire life. As the daughter of a proud Bronxite, a lady born at Beth Israel Hospital in The Lower East Side (RIP) and someone who has virulently rejected every opportunity I’ve had to leave this city, my Knicks fandom is my birthright. I’ve been saying that it’s our year ever since I was old enough to speak. No, I don’t watch basketball. I don’t watch baseball or football either. But when the Knicks, Yankees or the Giants are doing well, I come out of the woodworks to celebrate because I am a Knickerbocker, goddammit! I love this city and will take any excuse to shout about it from the rooftops. Sports just happen to provide a great reason to do so.

If, unlike myself, you are new to this and not true to this lifestyle of stanning the Knicks, do not fret. Just like New York City, everyone who acts right is welcome to hop on the Knicks bandwagon. If you’re going to LARP being a Knicks fan this summer, I thoroughly support you. Here’s my guide to actually doing it the right way.

The Best Places to Buy Knicks Drip

If you’re going to support the Knicks, it is imperative that you put that shit on. No weak outfits. New York City is the most stylish city in America (sorry to L.A. and Miami, but you know I’m right) and this championship run is the time to show the rest of the world exactly what’s up. Get your drip up while you still have time to do so.

And you better not rock any corny corporate bullshit, alright? New York City has some of the world’s best vintage shopping and small businesses, so it is imperative that you shop local and don’t even think about grabbing anything off of Shein. This is the perfect time to show out for your community and put money in the pockets of the people who are the heart of New York City: the mom & pop shops, burgeoning entrepreneurs, and street hustlers grinding overtime to make it here.

New York or Nowhere is making some of the best custom merchandise for the finals that I’ve seen in town. Although the lines out of their SoHo are absolutely bonkers right now, this is the only spot that is worthy of that hype. I would do diabolical things for their Knicks Crossover Varsity Jacket or the Knicks Rafters Windbreaker.

For one-of-one t-shirts and tank tops that pay homage to New York City’s incredible history of street artistry, head up to Dom’s in Harlem, located at 1457 Amsterdam Ave. New York’s finest folks will be sporting one of Dom’s insanely gorgeous designs. I have one of his tanks and everytime I wear it out, swarms of West Village girlies ask me where I got it. Yes, it takes a little bit of time to make, but nothing feels better than knowing that nobody else will have my shirt when I head to the sportsbars. Dom runs a cash-only establishment, though, so come prepped with at least three $20 bills if you want the goods.

If you like a more vintage style, head to shops like Mr. Throwback on 437 East Ninth Street, First Team Vintage on 173 Ludlow, In Vintage We Trust on 105 Rivington Street and Diallo Fashion on 1515 Westchester Ave (this last location is in the Bronx.) All of these shops stock eclectic vintage merch for really good prices, and will make a great impression at the watch parties across town.

Last but not least, ballers on a budget can head to the street vendors hard at work near the Garden. There’s a small stand on the corner of 32nd and 6th selling t-shirts for just $15, but be sure to have cash on hand. On the corner of 125th & Lenox in Harlem, there’s a street vendor selling great Knicks merch for similar prices, and he takes e-payments like Zelle, Cashapp, and Venmo for the cashless baddies.

The Best Places to Watch the Games

After securing your drip, you need to go out and watch the games somewhere. Don’t stay at home for this. The next two games are great opportunities to go out and meet people and you better not waste them.

For my people on the Upper East Side, Supply House is the only correct option. This bar has some of the best Nachos in the entire city. It’s also the best place for meeting eligible bachelors, bachelorettes, and bachelorthems in the UES. During the games, it might pull a little bro-ey, but more in an Off Campus way than a Manosphere way, so you’ll be fine. If you can’t get into Supply House, though, head to SummerStage in Central Park. They’ll be livestreaming the game to thousands of New Yorkers, so you’re sure to get in.

Harlem Hotties should get to Harlem Tavern. Their postgame celebrations are some of the best in town, with an incredible DJ playing hits like Jadakiss, Fat Joe, and Ja Rule’s “New York” and exciting the crowd with “sweep” chants. The Fox is so lit that crowds erupt outside, so it’s a great spot to try but good luck getting in. 120th Street also goes crazy, and there’s nothing more incredible than sitting outside in front of the city’s most beautiful brownstones as Harlemites go up in bliss after a win.

Midtown has an assortment of great options. The working crowd should head to Mulligan’s, with their massive screens and great happy hour deals. And don’t miss out on grabbing a spice bag. There’s also Lilly’s Craft & Kitchen on 47th & 9th, which keeps going up for each game and has a really good mix of people for all of the watch parties. Baddies on a budget should head to The Jeffrey, where those who get there before tip-off will have their tabs taken care of by the bar when the Knicks win.

Buddy’s in Kips Bay is a no-nonsense, 23+ sportsbar serving up glizzy towers and great pours on gameday. If you’re looking for a bit of an older crowd (think folks in their late 20s and early 30s) you can’t go wrong here.

If you want to be near the Garden, I recommend heading to Mustang Harry’s, Stout, or Slattery’s. Beware that it gets rowdy as hell at these places, and it takes a while to make it home after a game because of their proximity to the Garden. But when the Knicks take it, there will be no better bars for running out into the street and celebrating with New York’s fiercest fans.

For my West Village girlies and LES ladies, there’s an abundance of options. For the authentic sports bar experience, skip The Spaniard and head to Amity Hall Downtown, White Horse Tavern, Bleecker Street Bar, Barrow Street Ale House, Rocco’s, Standings, or, my personal favorite (and where I’ll probably be on Wednesday) Phebe’s.

Tribeca and the Seaport has some of the city’s oldest bars, and typically attracts an older, working crowd. Treadwell Park is a beer hall with ample space and a fun energy, so if you don’t want to be chest-to-chest with a stranger, it’s a great option. Monk McGinns is a very popular bar that tends to attract FiDi’s younger set. Don’t miss out on their beer batter cauliflower bites. I love the staff at Ryan Maguire’s, an NYC institution with some of my favorite wings in the city. They have a great happy hour menu and if you’re lucky enough to grab a booth, you’ll have one of the most comfortable sports viewing experiences in the city.

Gym Sports Bar is NYC’s most active gay sportsbar, and will surely be a great time this week. Wilka’s Sports Bar and Athena Keke’s are two woman-owned sports bars in Brooklyn, and will be a great spot for WLW Knicks fans across town.

The Best Places to Go After a Game

Once the final buzzer hits, there are two things that I always do. First, I take to the streets. If you’re lucky enough to be near the Mecca of Basketball, you need to go outside and celebrate with the rest of the city’s craziest fans. I’ll say it again: this is the stuff that dreams are made of. If you catch me crowdsurfing down 7th Avenue on Wednesday, mind your business. While I understand that not everyone can make it to the Garden, I still recommend going outside into the streets, wherever you are in the city, once a game ends. The city becomes electric after a win. Drunk guys in their thirties break out into song like it’s High School Musical. Girls who didn’t know anything about sports last week argue with 50-year-olds about whether Jalen Brunson is better than Patrick Ewing. It’s all magical, and you have to experience it for yourself.

After a rowdy celebration in the NYC streets, I always hit up a bodega or a deli and grab a Chopped Cheese (with a peach snapple or and a nutcracker if there’s anyone selling them near me.) Is it corny? Maybe! But personally, I don’t give a fuck. Chopped Cheeses will always be the best drunk food in the world to me, and there’s nothing better than grabbing one after a winning game, when the lines are out the door and my favorite Ock is on fire from the buzzy crowds.

That’s all I have for you, my dears. However you celebrate, make sure you go hard. This week will go down in the history books, and you don’t want to miss it.

KNICKS IN 4.

Six years later, and I am grateful to say that I did it! I became a Writer, with my very own list of bylines at publications I dreamed of writing for: NPR, Travel + Leisure, Afar, Yahoo… Little Cat is very proud of how far she has come!

In that time, my interests and expertise evolved, too. I’m not just a culture writer critiquing fans, fandom, and the media we all consume like I was when I started this newsletter. I’ve also become a travel writer and worked hard to gain a real understanding of how culture moves people to engage more deeply with the world around them. I’ve written stories about the fans traveling the globe to Long Island for Harry Styles’ first One-Night-Only concert, how to celebrate Jane Austen’s 250th birthday, and what Stanley Tucci looks for when choosing a restaurant.

Now, in this ever-changing world dominated by ominous algorithms and Search Engine Optimization, I find myself hungry for an audience that’s interested in my more frivolous curiosities. Culture Shock is my return to newsletter writing: an attempt at more-thoughtfully carving out the niche I’ve created for myself as a travel journalist.

I’m also looking to speak directly to the readers I want to be in conversation with. As a woman in my late 20s living in New York City, I have spent the entirety of my life crafting a very specific brand of cool for myself, one that blends the high and the low, the voicey and the reserved, the brainy and the bimbo, in order to resist the confines of what is expected of me. I like saying the thing nobody wants to say out loud, disrupting a space and making everyone feel more at ease in the discomfort of the humanity we are hardwired to conceal and discard. In the cultural moment we’re in, women are constantly being told to shrink themselves, to get more palatable, to dumb ourselves down and just shut the fuck up. Culture Shock is my response to this violating denouncement of brash and bold women right now: a space where I can call out the issues I encounter as I experience them through travel and culture, as well as loudly celebrate the people and places around the world that make me feel empowered to be exactly who I am.

Here, you’ll find incredibly creative and sometimes-chaotic takes on the intersection of travel and contemporary culture. These are the stories that I know will hit but never get commissioned because I’m always two steps ahead of my TikTok FYP and, therefore, too early for most editors to greenlight. Expect destination guides curated with an emphasis on cultural interests (think Little Women set-jetting across Massachusetts, museum crawls in Barcelona, and what to do in Chicago during Lollapalooza); practical recommendations for places to go, events to attend, and what to consume to stay ahead of the cultural conversation; and all my observations on culture and how it’s shifting and shaping the way we travel.

This rebrand is dedicated to all my New York City girlies who have begged me to start a cult. I won’t go that far because I hate being a leader, but I will give you curated recommendations and my insider tips on how to stay smart, cool, and sexy in a cultural landscape where the definition of smart, cool, and sexy never stays the same for too long.

Thank you so much for reading my stuff again! Send Culture Shock to a friend who can’t stop talking about planning a nerdy girls trip. DM me on Instagram for itinerary requests. And be sure to check your inboxes on Mondays and Fridays for more from me for the foreseeable future. Talk soon!

Because I cannot believe the sheer audacity of conspiracy theorists on the internet.

The fact that people are misattributing background vocals on Beyoncé’s song “BODYGUARD” to Taylor Swift is sitting heavily on my chest right now.

Because did y’all… idk… listen to COWBOY CARTER?

I must note here that Taylor Swift is NOT on COWBOY CARTER. She is not. Parkwood Entertainment released an official press release this afternoon at about 2pm EST listing all of the producer and vocal contributors to COWBOY CARTER.

The press release lists The-Dream, Pharrell, NO I.D., Raphael Saadiq, Ryan Tedder, Ryan Beatty, Swizz Beatz, Khirye Tyler, Derek Dixie, Ink, Nova Wav, Mamii, Cam, Tyler Johnson, Dave Hamelin, and Shawn "JAY-Z" Carter as all of her contributing producers.

They list Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, Linda Martell, Stevie Wonder, Chuck Berry, Miley Cyrus, Post Malone, Jon Batiste, Rhiannon Giddens, Nile Rodgers, Robert Randolph, Gary Clark, Jr., Willie Jones, Brittney Spencer, Shaboozey, Reyna Roberts, Tanner Adell and Tiera Kennedy as all of her vocal contributors.

All of these names belong to real, identifiable people. There is no one listed under a pseudonym.

On top of that confirmation (that comes straight from the horse’s mouth, mind you!) Jason Lipshutz, Executive Director of Music at Billboard, confirmed on Twitter that Taylor Swift is not doing the background vocals for “BODYGUARD.”

Multiple outlets, including PEOPLE, Billboard and ELLE have all confirmed that Taylor Swift is not on “BODYGUARD.”

And yet. The rumor persists. The misinformation is going viral on Twitter, TikTok and Instagram reels.

I must say, this entire situation reeks of an anti-Blackness so vile and so malicious.

COWBOY CARTER is an album that aims to reclaim the work of Black country and rock artists whose contributions have been misattributed to white artists and therefore erased. According to the Parkwood Entertainment press release, the album is all about righting these wrongs and re-centering the contributions of Black artists within these genres: “It makes no apologies, and seeks no permission in elevating, amplifying, and redefining the sounds of music, while dismantling accepted false norms about Americana culture.”

To expressly misattribute Beyoncé’s work on an album she conceptualized, crafted and recorded to a white woman artist who has literally nothing to do with this album is to repeat the wrongs Beyoncé is expressly setting out to correct. To say that Taylor Swift laid down background vocals that she did not, and to continue to propagate that grotesque, appropriative lie is to miss the entire point of the COWBOY CARTER project.

There are multiple women that could have laid down the background vocals on this track. Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Cam, one of the members of Mamii, Miley Cyrus, Tiera Kennedy… the list goes on and on. And yet, the rumors chose to name Taylor Swift, who is always brought into the conversation with regards to Beyoncé.

There is a rabid cultural obsession rooted in white supremacy that consistently attempts to align Beyoncé and Taylor Swift as musical and cultural equals. There is a demonstrated history of Beyoncé’s critics and detractors using Taylor Swift as a foil to Beyoncé’s success, as if the two women were even competing within the same game. Beyoncé is never brought up as an example of undermining Swift’s success. Yet Swift is constantly and violently weaponized, her music and value as a musician discarded in favor of propagating a campaign to diminish and belittle Beyoncé’s accomplishments. And it’s so lame at this point. Can Beyoncé not just have her hard-earned moment? It seems like she can’t. And the reason for that feels unambiguously rooted in a white supremacist ideology that is (not-so covertly) obscured through tactics like this misattribution rumor.

Bringing Taylor Swift into any conversation about the creation of COWBOY CARTER is superfluous and harmful. This is the entire reason the album exists — the erasure and appropriation of Black artistry, the incessant need to attribute Black innovation to white artists. This is what COWBOY CARTER is meant to dismantle. And yet, here we are, placing the entirety of Beyoncé’s thesis on display.

Rodrigo’s core fans are a group of children, tweens and teens that have idolized her every move since she graced their TV screens as a child actor on the Disney Channel show Bizaardvark. The feral, obsessive energy of these young fans is as frenetic as it is puritanical: though they go to war for her, they also place the heavy burden of the Disney brand’s squeaky-clean reputation on her. 

And now Rodrigo, a 21 year-old woman who has grown up faster than most people during her attempts at becoming the biggest pop star in the world, is ready to let them go.

As an album, GUTS is a rugged attempt at growing up: Rodrigo stumbles through the heartbreak, embarrassment and shame that comes with the transition from teendom to adulthood with a measured amount of rebelliousness.

On the first track of the album, which is aptly-named “all-american bitch,” and acts an anthemic examination of the challenges presented to women transitioning from adolescence to adulthood, Rodrigo boldly proclaims “I know my age / And I act like it.” The line rings out loudly, and seems like an attempt at preemptively addressing much of the criticism that has been lobbed at her since this album’s release. 

Yet, I still refer to this album as an attempt at rebelliousness because there are moments on it where she fails to truly commit to the bit. 

She vaguely references her sexuality without being explicit in her lyrics, choosing to omit raunchier remarks about boys and her body. On the studio version of the song “all-american bitch,” she sings “I'm a perfect all-American bitch / With perfect all-American lips / And perfect all-American hips,” instead of using the raunchier version “With perfect all-American lips / And perfect all-American tits” that she sometimes pulls out for her live shows. And on the wide-release of her deluxe track “obsessed,” she swaps out the more sexually-explicit line “Is she friends with your friends? / Does she give great head?” for a tamer version: “Is she friends with your friends? / Is she good in bed?” 

All of these toned-down changes point to a real sense of trepidation from Rodrigo and her team on their decision to push children out of her fanbase. The album is not a massive “fuck off and leave me alone.” Instead, it delivers a much simpler warning to her younger fans: “I am no longer for you.”

On this album, she also showcases a real desire to break away from the confines of her youthfulness. On songs like “teenage dream,” she explores the ways her success as an artist has been devalued based on her age: “When am I gonna stop being wise beyond my years and just start being wise? / When am I gonna stop being a pretty young thing to guys? / When am I gonna stop being great for my age and just start being good? / When will it stop being cool to be quietly misunderstood?” 

If the GUTS album is a treatise on Rodrigo’s desire to break free from her child star past, then the GUTS tour is her attempt at actually doing it. On the tour, she gains the confidence necessary to effectively enforce the boundaries regarding her artistic persona that she draws on the studio album. Thus far, she’s taken risks while on the road that place her out of the Disney conversation entirely. 

Even before she chooses to take the stage every night, Rodrigo’s opening act, Chappell Roan, creates a thoroughly-adult ambience within each venue. Roan is the up-and-coming pop star behind the debut album “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.” At 26 years-old, Roan’s music is filled with empowered, brazen nods to her sexual exploration. With lyrics like “Knee deep in the passenger seat / As you’re eating me out / Is it casual now?” being sung out each night in every arena on the GUTS tour, Roan fuels the space with a kind of unapologetic adulthood that elevates the environment. 

@rachleahxTeach em about situationships young i guess!!! #gutstour #oliviarodrigo #chappellroan

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Once Rodrigo finally graces the stage, she takes the uninhibited and ribald energy of Roan to the stadium, using it to unleash some of the riskier, more adult themes left restrained on her studio album.

On tour, all of the raunchier lyric changes mentioned earlier take their rightful places within her songs, leaving nothing to the imagination. 

Her costume choices are much riskier than they were during the tour for her debut album SOUR. Whereas on her first tour Rodrigo wore glittery mini dresses and midi dresses adorned with lace that didn’t show much of her chest or midriff, on GUTS, she comes out in bralette tops and short-shorts. She even goes as far as taking her crop top (which is usually adorned with sexual innuendos) off mid-show to reveal her firetruck-red bra. 

Most notably, Rodrigo and her team have been partnering with organizations like the Missouri Abortion Fund to hand out contraceptives like condoms and morning after pills at her shows. While this has garnered lots of pushback, it’s exactly the kind of attention she’s looking for right now. 

It might seem like overkill, but I think this overt sexuality is essential to Rodrigo’s transition into adulthood. Besides the fact that she is a child star, Rodrigo is also Asian-American. A lot of her songwriting acknowledges that she is held to entirely different standards than her white counterparts within the industry due to anti-Asian racism. Her attempt at breaking free from her girlhood is also impacted by this racism. Part of the reason why Rodrigo is infantilized and shackled to her girlhood is because of the long standing infantilization of Asian women within the United States. The reality is that she must work twice as hard to have her womanhood taken seriously by the music industry at-large. Whereas her white counterparts, like Sabrina Carpenter, are allowed to transition seamlessly between girlhood and adulthood, there is a real, vested interest by many in holding Rodrigo hostage within her girlhood. And that interest is reliant upon racist stereotypes. 

And due to this infantilization, it is that much more important for Rodrigo to assert her sexuality on stage and remind people of her age. 

Because the reality is that Olivia Rodrigo is a grown woman. She’s new to adulthood, yes, but she’s an adult nonetheless. Throughout the GUTS era, she has tried to tell us that she’s happy with her adulthood, and wants to engage with all aspects of this transitory experience within her art. And it seems that she wants her fans to be old enough to understand and, more importantly, to accept her womanhood. In order for her to truly grow up as an artist, she has to make her music, tours and entire brand hostile to the children in her fanbase. 

And honestly? It’s about time we just let her. 

One unfortunate consequence of the event is the online discourse that follows. As with every other event, Twitter knows how to kill a good time. And last night, I saw a tweet that literally kept me up at night because of how… wrong it was.

First off, I’d like to address how wrong this tweet is by submitting every example of Jeremy Strong being interviewed for his work as Kendall Roy as evidence. (Here’s one of my favorites!) Reporters and critics alike are all too joyful at the prospect of calling Strong a plethora of adjectives that describe the nasty and awful behavior of the eldest Roy sibling.

But factual evidence of this tweet’s falseness aside, this tweet captured my imagination and sent me on a real mental bender because of how succinctly it captures my frustration with the current settings of our proverbial discourse machine. The tweet attempts to frame questions about Shiv Roy’s evilness (which, if you ask me, is an undeniable marker of her character (source: Succession on HBO)) as a problem of misogyny, a problem that comes up time and time again online.

The inclination online to toss out a hearty “but men do it all the time” in response to any critiques of white women living in the public eye has become standard online and god, I am so exhausted by it. It’s a critique that I find so insipid, uninspired and frankly banal and yet, it seeps into every corner of the internet.

The movement to let women exist outside of the confines of the male gaze across all major works of art and culture has been co-opted. The original push to let women be complicated was meant to serve as a means of liberating us from the firm binaries of angel and devil, madonna and whore, good adjective versus bad adjective etc. The critique that spawned the “Let Women Be Complicated” era of media asked for space: let women be, without placing us in contexts that render us one-dimensional or flattened down into the parts of us that are easiest to subjugate.

But the discourse machine now begs us to flatten women in new ways. “Let Women Be Complicated” has now become “Let (White) Women Be Above All Reproach Or Critique.” So what if Shiv Roy is evil? Have you ever seen the actions of her brother? Her father? They are so much more evil than her, and I don’t see you saying that they are also bad right now, so why are you talking about Shiv? Also, have you every thought about the fact that Shiv is a woman and everyone else is a man? If so, how can you say Shiv is evil?! She’s a woman!

And of course, this isn’t just a problem with Shiv Roy. If you need further evidence, I implore you to seek out any tweet from a major news publication promoting an article that looks at Taylor Swift and her heavy usage of her private jet. You’ll find this kind of rhetoric in abundance.

But back to the original subject at hand here. Because while I am profusely exhausted by this rhetoric, I’m even more tired of the way tweets like these about Shiv Roy obfuscate a much deeper and more interesting analysis of the ways real-life journalists speak about Succession’s Roy family.

“every time someone asks sarah [snook] about playing shiv they preface the question by pointing out that shiv is despicable” is actually a very astute observation here. That kind of observation can be made about any of the major actors on Succession. Replace Sarah Snook with Jeremy Strong or Kieran Culkin or Brian Cox and you have an interesting phenomenon sitting in front of you. “Every time someone asks a cast member about playing a Roy on Succession, they preface the question by pointing out that that character is despicable” is the beginning of a great exploration of many journalists and their strange relationship to the Succession characters.

Because at the heart of Succession is a story about how the majority of people working in media are beholden to the whims of corporate overseers who often make deals and decisions without much rhyme or reason. In the background of so many Succession episodes sits the faceless journalists that work tirelessly under the vision and rules set by players like the Roys and the Pierces.

When Logan Roy runs out onto the newsroom floor of ATN in Episode 2 of Season 4, the people he’s speaking to are meant to represent the real-life reporters asking these cast members questions about the show.

So, to me, questions directed at the Succession cast about the characters they play that are filled with reminders that place extra emphasis on the pernicious evils of the Roys, are so much more than just attempts at misogynistic digs at actors like Sarah Snook.

Sometimes, I think they are subtle snubs at their personal versions of the Roy family. An extra “your character is so unlikeable, they make me sick” can be a soft fuck you to the man upstairs, or, more directly, the people making decisions about their work and their livelihoods without ever taking them into any real consideration.

Less charitably, perhaps, I often feel like these reminders act as attempts to put distance between the complicity of the person given their position within such a system. While these employees are often not as influential or powerful as Succession’s Mark Ravenhead, they are often in the positions of the ATN journalists who carried out the Roy family’s plot to undermine the American election in favor of Republican candidate Jeryd Mencken in Episode 8 of Season 4 of the show. Sometimes, it’s as simple as creating a graph you don’t agree with because your boss said so and you’re on a tight deadline. And so, I think many times, questions like these are devised to let audiences know “I see the terribleness of this character and that means I am good.” These reminders can often be read as hollow attempts at self assurance.

While I might never know the true intention behind the qualifiers added to these questions about the Roy family, I can guarantee that they are not misogynistic digs meant to antagonize Shiv Roy or Sarah Snook for portraying her. And pretending that they are flatten this interesting attempt at analysis into absolute nothingness.

Moral of the story: it’s not misogyny to call a spade a spade.

Hope you enjoyed this musing of mine! Special shoutout to the internet discourse machine for holding my brain hostage enough that I felt the need to write this.

Do you have a piece of internet discourse plaguing your brain? If so, what is it? I’d love to learn more about the moments that haunt you so I can feel less alone.

And once again, Carrie is left looking lonely, goofy and dealing with a massive life transformation made for a man who is no longer with her. 

To say Carrie is back on her bullshit might be a mischaracterization, because truly, when has she ever been off her bullshit? 25 years of nonsense on repeat with this girl. This 50-something-year-old girl. 

Because, truly, why else would Carrie part with a piece of her life that feels so vital to her identity if not for a man she’s obsessing over precisely because of his inability to commit to her? There was Big, then Petrovsky, and now, there’s Aidan. He finally joins the ranks of Carrie’s highly-coveted circle of Men With Commitment Issues, a role he so desperately auditioned for throughout the course of their on-again/off-again relationship.

It’s a glimmer of hope for those looking for a sign that there is life after death (on TV shows, at least): if you don’t get the role you want the first time around, there’s always the reboot! 

Speaking of reboots, this episode was so… disconnected from the rest of season 2? I mean, really, what the hell was going on? My only attempt at a guess is that SJP and the rest of the creative team saw the lackluster reception for the show’s first season and wrote an ending that felt like a series finale in case the show got canned after season 2. 

And honestly, after the way MAX canceled “Gossip Girl (2021)” last year, I can’t really blame them. But, like Jesus himself, “And Just Like That…” rose again, on the third episode of their second season, just enough to snag the viewership necessary to cinch a third season. 

(Lots of three’s tearing up the page here… note to self: google 333 angel number meaning after this.) 

But, my god, did some of these plotlines in this finale feel nonsensical!

First of all, we finally get the Samantha cameo we’ve all been desperately waiting for, and I’m so confused by it that I’m still reeling. 

Riddle me this: why would Samantha come to The Last Supper? We have not heard from this lady in the two years we've been following Carrie and ‘nem around. She didn’t even make it to Big’s funeral. So why would she attempt to show up to mourn an apartment?!

And on what planet does it make sense that she’s been talking to Charlotte and Miranda without the audience knowing? “And Just Like That…” is meant to be an ensemble show, for god’s sake. If Charlotte and Miranda were casually kiking with Samantha on the phone throughout this season, we’d at least have a glimpse of it by now!

Also, massive kudos to the HBO/MAX publicity teams for generating all that noise about Kim Cattrall’s return to the SATCU (the “Sex and the City” Universe) when the woman had a measly 74 second cameo. Y’all had us all rattled over that?! 

And then, there was all the chatter about legendary costume designer Pat Fields’ return to the show to dress Cattrall for her cameo, and we couldn’t even see her outfit because Miss Samantha was stuck seated in the back of a small ass sedan… 

Listen… I can respect PR spin when it’s that good. 

On the topic of spins, this finale was working overtime to convince us that the writers on this show are Hearing Us™. We first see this attempt at the very top of the episode, when we get a real glimpse of Steve Brady’s new life.

And to really show that Steve is Moving On™, the writers continued to flesh out his Dominican-ification.

Yup, Steve got out of that raggedy living situation and moved to Queens, where he now drinks Presidente beers and fights for his life in broken Spanish with his Latine employees. Which is… representation, I guess? 

All I know is that when Steve’s Dominican employee Victor looked at this man and went “English, Steve,” I felt seen and heard by the folks in the SATCU. Because what Spanish-speaking Latine among us hasn’t had that uncomfortable conversation with our Gringo counterparts in the workplace? Sorry to Che Diaz, but Victor won this year’s Token Latine award. Better luck next season.

Jokes aside, the sloppy cleanup of the Steve storyline felt like a response to a Twitter thread about how terribly Miranda has dogged him out throughout this reboot. 

In fact, so much of this finale just felt like it was anticipating critiques made of the characters and their behaviors this entire season. There was damage control for Miranda being New Miranda, an unconvincing exploration of love for Seema after her emotional confession to Carrie about her jealousy (who, by the way, was actually celebrated for this online) and a mediocre plotline about loneliness for Nya that is immediately wrapped up but definitely needed a little more time to breathe. 

When it comes to the writing of this finale, the show manages to undo most of the exciting story choices they made throughout the course of season 2 in order to neatly wrap up the show and defend their characters from expected hate online. Which, fair, given the TV landscape they were walking into this season. They definitely lost the sensical ending award, though. 

In other awards categories, shout out to Charlotte for having the most well-written storyline of this finale. She is tired and telling everyone why: saying no to Harry’s fake support of her career, refusing to engage in the drama of Anthony’s ass virginity, and taking a stand in order to regain her independence.

She’s finally come into her own in the ways that both Carrie and Miranda think they have. Her story is quieter, obviously, and is often relegated to the bottom tier of the reboot’s priority list, but god, Charlotte is actually growing! Gone are the days of the mousey little miss who quit her job in an instant because she wanted to start a family: Charlotte is finally realizing that womanhood doesn’t have to be about either being a mother or a careerist, and is no longer celebrating herself for the sacrifices she makes. That’s called character development, folks, and I’m living for it. 

Now Miranda, on the other hand… Girl, anyways. They rushed through her whole piece and honestly, I’m kinda glad. She is still running with that stupid “Me and Steve Should’ve Never Been Together” bit that is sooo exhausting. She needs to give that up. I’m sorry, y’all, but no amount of revisionist history will ever be able to convince us that Steve wasn’t right for her when they were together. And the resolution with Che… wasn’t really a resolution? She’s convinced that her and Che needed to happen when literally no one else is… Not even Che, mind you! Miranda keeps getting more delusional as she ages, and it gets worse every episode at this point. Really, what happened to our pragmatic queen?

Speaking of people who haven’t grown an inch emotionally, I think it’s Carrie Bradshaw’s turn to step onto the rostrum.

I wonder how it feels for her to get left again. Like, imagine getting left this many times and still being attracted to men who cannot commit… As a woman of Aries Venus experience, I am simply gagging into my trashcan.

I think she actually loves it, lowkey. If there’s one thing Carrie Bradshaw is gonna do, it’s make a major life decision to prove to a man that won’t be with her that he should, in fact, be with her, and then play the victim about it for a few episodes afterwards.

Now, Miss Bradshaw is talking about waiting on this man for five whole years of her life… No offense to her, and long live Carrie Bradshaw, but she could literally be dead tomorrow! Shoot, I could be dead tomorrow. So why would she wait for a man? At her big age?! She’s wasted literal decades of her life waiting on men!

When it comes to Carrie, there is not an ounce of self-reflection in that head of hers. No growth, no development. It scares me that someone can live so much of their life making the exact same mistakes they made at 21. She is a cautionary tale, I fear. And nobody has ever inspired me to seek out therapy more intensely. God help me if I’m still acting the way I’m acting right now in six months, let alone in 30 years from now!

On the subject of time: it was definitely a wasted resource in this finale. We needed more Lisa, Nya and Anthony and way less Carrie, but it is the “Sex and the City” reboot so… I’ll say a very reluctant “I guess,” especially because I bet they expected to get canceled this time around the block. 

For now, my only hope is that those writers can get a fair contract soon so they can be back in the room ASAP and work to give these characters the attention and care they received for most of season 2.

Pop-Closure is back, baby. Yeah, she’s been a lil sparse but hopefully I'm like Carrie Bradshaw and can be back on my BS here.

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Talk to y’all about more stuff I can’t get over soon!! <3

Now, I deeply enjoyed watching this series, but I could not for the life of me figure out why. The acting was… Well, let’s not talk about the acting of a teen show made by a streaming service in the 2020s. That would be unfair. 

I wasn’t a huge fan of either Conrad or Jeremiah, and I think it’s because I am entering an era of my life where the actors playing love interests in these kinds of shows are younger than me, and god that makes me want to book a baby botox appointment and spend six hours on TikTok to feel relatable. But yes, I wasn’t into the male leads, which shocked me because usually I can’t get through shows like this if I don’t find a leading man obscenely attractive.   

I also didn’t necessarily love the aesthetic of the show. Like, I usually would? But something about Cousins just felt… off to me? I wasn’t that invested there. 

So, the fact that I was so into this show was nagging at me. I wanted to figure out why I was speeding through these episodes without stopping for air or popping my head out of my room for a break. And then, as I got to the last episode of the show, it finally hit me. I was just rewatching season 1 of “The Vampire Diaries” stripped entirely of its darkness and repackaged into a coastal grandma aesthetic. 

What a realization, y’all! 

But seriously though, this show is literally just “The Vampire Diaries” in a different font. And I’m not just saying that because this is a show where two brothers fall in love with the same girl that happens to have brown hair. 

For starters, each main character on “The Summer I Turned Pretty” has an archetype that matches a lead on “The Vampire Diaries.” Jeremiah is very obviously a stand-in for Stefan Salvatore. They’re both the vivacious, decidedly “good” younger brother with the swoopy hair who feels fully entitled to the love of the lead and resents the older brother for his “bad” behavior. Conrad is Damon: the broody, misunderstood bad boy who feels an overwhelming responsibility to his brother and also does not believe he is good enough for the lead. 

Belly is definitely Elena: the sweet and bland leading girl with brown hair coming into her own that seemingly the entire world works to protect for no real reason. I mean, let’s be serious here for ten seconds. Belly Conklin is just who Elena Gilbert would’ve been if her parents didn’t die in a deeply tragic and life-altering car crash. Like, pretty, self-absorbed, boy crazy, and super popular? Belly is literally Elena Gilbert, pre-Vampires but post-EMDR therapy. 

Even the secondary cast of characters match up. You have Taylor, who is a stand-in for both Bonnie and Caroline: the best friend who is kinda jealous of the lead, but will nevertheless give up her entire life to accommodate her. And even Cam Cameron maps on pretty perfectly to Matt: the sweet yet incredibly bland hometown boy who is the lead’s first boyfriend that eventually fades into obscurity once she realizes she doesn’t like him enough to even lead him on. 

It’s crazy. And then, you have scenes like the ball scene in episode 7 of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” which is basically a rip off of episode 19 of season 1 of “The Vampire Diaries.” Swap out a Debutante Ball for a Miss Mystic Falls contest at the Mystic Falls Founder’s Ball and you have the same episode. Only this time, instead of Within Temptation’s “All I Need,” you get a string rendition of Etta James’s “At Last” that feels like it was heavily inspired by Bridgerton (derogatory.) 

Add on all of the miscommunication tropes, the multiple almost-kisses and the angry, laced-with-tension confrontations between Belly and Conrad, the multiple awkward dance scenes between Belly and Jeremiah where Belly is laughing like a maniac, and the constant drama, and you’ve got yourself the same show in a different font. 

I mean, I guess! I’m not entirely mad at the show for pulling in that messy, weird and chaotic energy and translating for a much younger generation. I guess the high schoolers can still watch “The Vampire Diaries” on HBO Max (they pulled it from Netflix in 2022, by the way). But “TVD” is becoming a show that 15 year-olds could call vintage, and while that makes me want to pull my literal hair out in clumps and heave dryly into a paper bag, I’m glad that the kids these days (a group to which I delusionally consider myself a member) have a TV show that can elicit that same excitement I once got from my favorite CW show.

Each year, this day is so bittersweet and confusing for me because I have such an immense amount of love for One Direction but I know none of it was good for anyone involved. The boys and their teams were traumatized from the sheer amount of exploitation they were subjected to. 1D was also the first big boyband of the social media era, which set the stage for some of the most intense parasocial relationship marketing society had ever witnessed. The personas of the band members were commodified and then sold directly to their fans. Their marketing teams exploited the loneliness and isolation that a lot of young girls felt and used that to sell us a manufactured idea of community. A lot of what went on in and surrounding One Direction was unethical and downright reprehensible.

But it was also so much fun! Who could forget the video diaries, the lore of the band, and their inside jokes! At the very beginning when we all wanted to dress exactly like them! The hours and hours of watching all of the interviews they did; earnestly reading all of the 1D imagines… It all seemed so innocent and cutesy at the time. It’s so hard for me to look back at that time with anything other than unadulterated nostalgia.

Even though middle school was arguably the worst time of my life, nothing compares to that time in my young adulthood: the very beginnings of my 1D obsession. It was before 1D was a household name in the States, that time between 2011 and 2013, when everything seemed so perfect from my vantage point as a fan. Back when Zayn used to contribute in interviews more than anyone else, when Harry still spoke at a somewhat normal speed, when Liam and Louis were still kind-of rivals, when Niall had braces. It was corny and cheesy and every other patronizing word you can think of, but it was fun. It was lighthearted and exciting and everything they did back then was an instant boost of serotonin to my brain. Some days, I think I would give up all of my organs for the chance to have one day in the summer of 2011 back. Oh, to be sitting in the car while blasting “Everything About You,” writing my little blog posts in my iPod notes, all while dreaming of my future with such a beautiful unfettered sense of possibility.

I don’t really know what it was about that band that made me feel so good about both myself and about the rest of the world. Maybe it was just that the 1d boys were hot and funny. Maybe it was the fact that they were the gateway for my discovery of so many passions, hobbies, and interests (Oh, all the many books I read just because Zayn said he wanted a smart girl! All of the artists I listened to relentlessly because Harry said he loved them!) Or maybe, it was that the idea of 1D (their story being that of five boys from no-name households who faced their fears, formed a family, and then became the biggest boyband in the world) – and the opportunities for connection that idea provided me with, made me feel like I could do anything and be anything I wanted.

Like I said, I’m not sure where any of it really came from. But I know that I loved it — every minute of being a 1D fan has been worth it to me. And I miss those early days— and the spirit I had and my capacity for loving life like that — so much. Nothing about One Direction or who I was when they were together was perfect, I know that much (despite all of my crushingly beautiful nostalgic feelings.) But everything felt lighter back then. And for that gentle reminder of those lighter days, I’ll always be a 1D stan.

Happy 11 years.

I leave you with one of my favorite 1D interviews, as a treat ❤️

I saw this tweet and I was damn-near driven to tears. Because ME TOO!! MEEE TOOOO!! I still remember that horrific day in 2014 when Nina Dobrev announced that she was leaving the show, the same day Julie Plec et al (who are simultaneously my most favorite and most hated people on the planet) announced that they would be continuing the show without her. “Bc wtf” perfectly encapsulates all of my questions and confusions and heartbreak about this stupid little CW series, a show that, towards its end, didn’t make sense. Because how could Elena Gilbert-- the girl who was both being/fucking the vampires and writing the diaries-- leave the show without it completely crumbling? (Spoiler alert: it did crumble, and Episode 1, Season 7 - Episode 15, Season 8, made no amount of sense (because why would it without its literal narrator?) and this is therefore, as Megan herself has pointed out, the reason that many loyal fans stopped watching). 

Love her (as both I and Megan do) or hate her (as many other people loudly do), Elena Gilbert was the glue that held that show together. And for that reason, we have to stan! Yes, Elena could be annoying, but might I remind you all that she was a 15 year old who witnessed the death both of her parents and was being groomed by a 162 year old vampire who basically stalked her and tricked her into a relationship and then watched many of her other family members die because of her stalker-turned-boyfriend but couldn’t leave her relationship because she was being groomed to believe he was her only reason for living. Like… I too would be very annoying if EYE were in that situation!! Also, as Megan pointed out at 5:07pm yesterday, “Think abt this… if there was no Elena everyone would be bored and stagnant my bitch was making people change for the better her whole time on the show.” IF THERE WAS NO ELENA!!!! EVERYONE WOULD BE BORED AND STAGNANT!!!! So true, Megan, literally so true!!! 

If it weren’t for Elena, nobody would like Damon Salvatore. Caroline Forbes (who Megan and I both dislike as well!!) would be just as fucking annoying, vain, and catty as she was in the very first episode of the show. Stefan Salvatore… well, there were no redeeming qualities there, EVER, but at least she got him to stop ruthlessly murdering thousands of people. The only person who probably would have been better off without Ms. Gilbert-turned-Salvatore was Bonnie, but, as Megan said in reference to Bonnie’s character, “That’s definitely my bitch but damn she can’t have her bestie back,” which, is so fucking true!! Like, Elena really never did anything to actively harm Bonnie, and nine times out of ten, Bonnie was choosing to put her life on the line for Elena, because she felt bad for her and all of the loss she experienced so close together and, she knew deep down that Elena would always do the same for her. (Keep in mind the MULTIPLE times that Elena volunteered to die to keep Bonnie safe but nobody would let her ass just croak!)

Megan’s tweet really made me think hard about the Elena vs. Bonnie discourse that has come up in many fan discussions online over the past few years, and I think all of the Elena hatred is misplaced. Like, Elena really never did shit to Ms. Bonnie Bennett. The problem was not Elena as a character; the problem was really that the writer’s room kept molly-whopping Bonnie and stealing happiness from her time and time again for no good reason. When you really think about it, it wasn’t as though Elena and Bonnie were destined to be rivals -- nothing in their characters’ storylines or character arcs really positioned them to be at odds with one another. It was simply that the writer’s room chose absolute gorey violence against Elena and then used Bonnie as the blood-soaked dish rag to wipe down the entire room afterwards. It’s really not Elena’s fault that the TVD writer’s room had zero respect for Bonnie… If the writers were a little more creative and decided to cast a few more witches throughout the series, then Bonnie and Elena would literally never be placed at odds with each other in any capacity. The Elena and Bonnie tension was always situational, and not the fault of either of the characters or their decision making. 

And, guess what? Once Elena was in a magical coma and out of the picture, the writer’s room STILL chose so much unnecessary violence against Bonnie, trying to kill her every other episode. This is literal evidence that Elena Gilbert’s existence on that show didn’t have shit to do materially with Bonnie’s unhappiness. That writer’s room wanted Bonnie Bennett to be broken. So, like Megan said, CAN’T BONNIE JUST HAVE HER BESTIE’S BACK??! (she shouldn’t have had to as many times as she did, god damn -- but that blood is on the TVD Writer’s Room’s hands.) 

So yeah, I am an Elena Gilbert apologist. Nina Dobrev put her back into that character and Elena basically carried the entirety of the show, whether we want to admit it or not. And, thanks to Megan Thee Stallion, I can now say how I feel about it all with my chest. If she’s going to be dragged down because of her Elena allegiance, I’m going down with her.

This was so much fun to write. Special thanks to Megan Thee Stallion for her inadvertent contributions to this piece. Sidenote: I’m obsessed with the fact that she’s a Delena stan. 

And unfortunately, I cannot look away from it. Over quarantine, I have watched After and After We Collided more times than I’m willing to admit. These films have hit that perfect amount of terrible that unlocks a different kind of serotonin boost in my deeply unwell mind. Nothing has been better for my mental health than closing out my laptop after a long day of dreadful zooms and turning on my television to watch Hardin (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) kick down a bathroom door screaming “FUCKING TREVOR???” in his almost-too-terrible-to-be-real (but somehow is?) British accent. Watching Tessa (Josephine Langford) come down the grand hall steps of her hotel in a bright gold dress with the most gaudy gold shoes I’ve ever seen is the closest I’ll ever get to feeling the myth of that divine Catholic ecstasy that I was raised on. Everything about these films is atrocious to the point of hilarity. It’s hauntingly perfect! 

And I use the word haunting with a lot of intentionality, because of its effect on my brain. One scene in particular follows me around incessantly like an actual poltergeist, and I can’t escape it. 

The Damn Ambulance Scene…

About an hour and twenty-four minutes into After We Collided, the already batshit-plot of the film goes completely off the rails. Up until now, the movie feels like it goes on forever -- we get a Hardin/Tessa break up, a Hardin/Tessa make up, an introduction to both of Hardin’s parents, a work trip, and another break up. With less than twenty minutes left in the movie, surely nothing else important could happen for this plot, right?

Wrong. In comes the ambulance scene. 

In an incredibly peculiar turn of events, at 1:24:28 on the watch time, Tessa, who is driving her car, feels the need to silence her phone, buzzing with a call from Hardin, at a red light. As the light turns green, she puts the phone down, drives the car straight ahead, as any normal person would at a green light, and is blindsided by what appears to be a Navy Blue 2007 Ford Explorer.

(So, just to be clear, whether or not she touched her phone would not have mattered as she was going to get hit by a car in the most random way possible either way).

At that same moment, Hardin and his friend are driving past a series of shops and they reach an intersection, where, as fate (and bad writing) would have it, they stumble right onto the scene of Tessa’s accident! 

Tessa is already loaded into her ambulance by this point. Hardin jumps out of his friend’s car as her ambulance is taking off. His intuition must be on 10 because without asking questions (and without the clear ability to see into the ambulance), he runs with all of his might to chase the speeding ambulance, shouting “TESSA! TESSA!”

This scene’s cinematography is the real winner here, though. Because, for some reason, director Roger Kumble thought it would be an excellent idea to shoot the scene from the EMT’s perspective. So we get to watch a lifeless, bruised, and gurneyed Tessa and the incredible visual of Hardin chasing her ambulance down through the window behind her. 

Even though nothing of consequence really happens to either of our protagonists after this scene, it’s used as a device to separate Tessa and Hardin (since his calls are somehow blamed for the accident even though, as I’ve mentioned, her silencing the call had nothing to do with her being blindsided by a car running a red light???) 

This scene and all of its... strange mystique has stuck with me ever since my first watch of the film. Before I go to bed at night, I find myself thinking about Tessa unnecessarily silencing her phone and then getting blindsided by that 2007 Explorer. When I’m sitting in silence reading something, my mind replays the chilling vocals of Harves’s “Do Your Worst” and Hardin’s “TESSA” wails over and over and over again. Sometimes, I even find myself thinking about the fictional EMTs: how they must have felt in the ambulance, watching Hardin floppily chase it down. I envy them and the cameramen who got the pleasure of witnessing this scene in real time (both in fiction and real life). Sometimes I ask myself if the accident was included to solidify the name… I wonder if Voltage Productions felt they had to keep the scene in just to keep After We Collided true to its namesake with an actual collision. I really believe I’m obsessed!

And I think my obsession stems from the fact that this ambulance scene violently transgresses the boundaries of excess. Because ultimately, it’s a scene in a film that is taking itself way too seriously. Everything about this scene is so over-the-top in a way that it doesn’t deserve! It’s a cinema adaptation of a goddamn Harry Styles fanfiction! And all this excess, of pretend-seriousness and drama and absurdity, elicits both screams and laughs from me in a way that’s almost involuntary. 

At this point, I’m convinced that my obsession with these films is tied to the reactions I have when I watch these kinds of over-the-top scenes. When watching anything in the After universe, I am often reminded of Joan Hawkins’ essay, Sleaze Mania, Eurotrash, and high art, where she examines the spaces between categories of high culture and trash films in American cinema and how films can move between these distinctions depending on their framing. The real difference between high and low films, in Hawkins’ view, are low films’ excess and their effect on the body -- “aurally, excess is marked by recourse not to the coded articulations of language but to inarticulate cries’ — laughing, screaming — both onscreen and in the audience.” And, if you ask me and the many YouTube comments left on this scene’s repost videos, this film triggers a kind of inarticulate cry (laughing, screaming, hooting, and hollering), both onscreen and in the audience! And After We Collided is the epitome of a low brow film by today’s standards. I mean, it’s an adaptation of a Harry Styles fanfiction with a 14 million dollar budget and a 14% score on Rotten Tomatoes with a target audience of horny twenty-somethings who haven’t yet escaped the clutches of their One Direction Infection. 

Ultimately, it’s the absurdity and excess of this scene that draws out such an intense amount of satisfaction and joy in me. I’m pretty sure that because this scene is just so over-the-top in a way that’s so reminiscent of all of the 2012 Wattpad chaos from which it was born, I’ll be stuck on it for a long time (or, at least until I find the next movie scene that comes along and shocks me into a laughing spasm). 

So, I guess that scene will continue to haunt the outskirts of my attention, threatening to show its fantastical, bruised, and gurneyed face at any given moment. But at least now I’ve kinda figured out why.

Pop-Closure is back, baby! Sorry for the long hiatus, I’ve been dealing with ~things~ but am now looking for an outlet for all of my weird thoughts again! See you next Thursday!

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