Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC, San Francisco, and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

This is a friendly reminder to make eye contact, smile, and strike up a conversation. We can help with that last one: if you absolutely MUST go out and meet people, here are some stories that might spark some chit-chat.

For consideration …

• Breakfast news
  Cold cereal continues to get the cold shoulder from consumers, who are rejecting the once-undisputed leader in quick breakfasts. Especially Gen Z, who, according to an article in AP, eat more veggies first thing in the morning than Gen X or Boomers. The decline has been a slow, painful one for cereal companies over the last quarter century, with a brief, glorious bump in sales during the COVID lockdowns. Once-mighty breakfast brand WK Kellogg, makers of Corn Flakes, Special K, Rice Krispies, and others, is being sold to Italian candy maker Ferrero Group. According to experts, cereal also suffers from its essential nature: it’s not a grab-and-go food like a protein bar, and it’s processed. Tom Rees, a food product consultant, told AP that cereal “can’t escape the fact that it doesn’t look like a natural food. You have to create it and form it.” Here’s another first-meal scoop: McDonald’s just announced the Spicy McMuffin, which is exactly like their classic Egg McMuffin — only it’s spicy. (Each puck is blasted with McDonald’s Spicy Pepper Sauce.) Only at participating restaurants.
  

• Hats off
  Every year, the rich and powerful gather in Sun Valley, Idaho, for a conference cheekily referred to as “billionaire summer camp.” This annual get-together is a chance for tech bros, CEOs, and other masters of the universe to kibbitz about the state of the world while the rest of us watch from afar. But eagle-eyed observers at the Wall Street Journal have spotted the fashion accessory of the year: the humble baseball cap. According to the WSJ, it’s not that these affluent movers and shakers haven’t occasionally worn a baseball cap —it’s just that this year, the variety is nigh staggering. Blank hats. Hats with logos. Old-school. Brand new. The article even speculates on why some powerful men wore this hat or that one. Billionaires: they’re just like people! These dudes aren’t trailblazers, though — they’re just following other, more fabulous tycoons. Chalk it up to the still popular “quiet luxury” trend, one in which involves a whole generation of swells wearing deceptively simple sweaters and pants and, yes, ballcaps. These pricey threads aren’t actually quiet. But let’s not hurt any feelings. Here's how to clean a dirty baseball cap, FYI.
  

• Tales From The Crypto
  As Congress plans to debate crypto-friendly legislation, Bitcoin is enjoying an unprecedented rally. Nicknamed “Crypto Week,” the three bills in play—if passed—will supercharge the mainstreaming of the digital currency. Investors are bullish, sending Bitcoin’s value to new heights: over $120,000. George Mandres, senior trader at XBTO Trading LLC, told Bloomberg that this is a sign that Bitcoin is “maturing” as a “store of value.”

Quicker hits …

• Lena Dunham has a new show. So why is she hated so much?

• The new Superman is woke, as in, its studio, Warner Bros., woke up to great box office news.

• A new, terrible dating trend! Aaah!

• How much do you think the world's most expensive cheese is? (More than you'd think.)

• Don't own a sailboat? That's fine. Here's how to provision one for 100 days at sea anyway.

• Cyborg death bees. Oh, they're coming.

• Hey, the TSA made a good decision.
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC, San Francisco, and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

It’s not easy to fill an awkward silence during a social event, but no one said being a hero would be easy. Here are some conversation starters about tech, Peru, and Taco Bell, among other things, guaranteed to momentarily fascinate a room full of people struggling to make small talk.

For consideration …

• Restaurants, ranked
  The “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” were just announced and the number one restaurant on the buzzy list is Maido—which means ‘welcome’ or ‘hello’ in Japanese—and can be found in Peru’s capital city, Lima. First opened in 2009, Maido is where celebrated chef Mitsuharu ‘Micha’ Tsumura fuses Japanese techniques and Peruvian ingredients. Lima's culinary scene reappears in the top 10 with Kjolle, where chef Pía León creates vibrant dishes that celebrate local cuisine. The world's number two restaurant is tucked away in an idyllic Basque village. Asador Etxebarri grills masterpieces from a small kitchen. The highest-ranking U.S. restaurant is Atomix, here in New York, which is number twelve. The NoMad Korean spot is renowned for its sophistication. North America's first appearance on the list (at #3) is Mexico City's Quintonil, which aggressively experiments with local cuisine. Compiled by an "academy" of 1,000 members from all around the globe—fifty percent men, fifty percent women, all gastronomes—the annual list shines a spotlight on the most creative kitchens in every city. Restaurants from Thailand's capital, Bangkok, appeared six times on the list, with the avant-garde Indian eatery Gaggan at number six. I know what you're thinking. "What's number fifty?" Jan in Munich, a restaurant that honors and elevates German cuisine.
  

• Creeper peepers
  From the creators of the social media platform that turned everyone's uncle into a meme-loving conspiracy theorist comes a new way to annoy family at dinner: $499 Oakley smart glasses from Meta. Like their Ray-Ban specs, Meta's new Oakleys are equipped with a camera, microphones, and speakers that are all connected to Meta AI, which is ready to chat with its wearers about anything, including who killed JFK. This new pair is sportier than the Ray-Bans, boasting high-rated water resistance and 8 hours of battery life. And the built-in camera? It shoots 3K video. These high-tech Foster Grants are being pitched to those of us who are athletically gifted, so get ready for more action-packed videos of wannabe parkour enthusiasts doing dangerous things. Paranoids will also love how smart glasses allow them to surveil the people they think are surveilling them. The buzz is positive, though. We’re all going to be wearing these, aren’t we?
  

• Live Mas
  Twenty years after Taco Bell’s fast food doctors Frankenstein-ed life into the Crunchwrap Supreme—a portable hexagonal tostada stuffed with gooey goodness and grilled shut—the popular menu item is inspiring chefs, as well as satisfying the munchies of countless late-night party monsters. In an article that explores the legacy of Taco Bell’s now legendary Mexican food-esque item, the New York Times spoke with multiple chefs about Taco Bell's crunchy-slash-melty snack, an abomination to some and a tasty flavor bomb to stoners. From taquerias in Manhattan to Korean hotspots in Portland, professionals and home cooks are imagining their very own improvisational versions of the Crunchwrap Supreme. Check out the Crunchwrap Supreme hashtag on TikTok. The Crunchwrap Supreme's source code is open, which is great free advertising. The fast food giant has grown to embrace the imitations too. “In the past, you would develop things and you would keep it secret and you would launch it,” says Liz Matthews, Taco Bell's chief food innovation officer. A writer for the L.A. Times, Gustavo Arellano, finally gave in to the decades-long hype and tried a Crunchwrap Supreme. He was not impressed. "The tortilla had no flavor," he writes. "And once again, Taco Bell’s Achilles’ heel was its ground beef, which was as pebbly as gravel."

Quicker hits …

• Two hundred eighty thousand eggs were stolen — a hard-boiled true crime story.

• There are rules in this Waffle House, pal.

• Forget Waymo. The future of transportation is robot horses.

• A two-word solution for lonely men: Dating camp.

• Fifty years ago, Jaws became the first summer blockbuster. Here are the rest.

• Finally, grape soda is having a moment.

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Someone is bound to hit you with some mindless small talk at the dinner table this week. Well, now you've got topics to thwart their attack. Let's dance!

For consideration …

• Self-Elder Care
  If there's one thing The Wall Street Journal knows, it's youth trends — and bond markets. The newspaper is declaring 'grandmacore' a thing: young people are turning away from their phones and the virtual worlds therein and are embracing old-timey activities like scrapbooking and knitting. This gentle mindfulness craze isn’t new, though. Want to live your best bubbe life? Here are some new hobby ideas: gardening, embroidery, and baking — soothing, wholesome stuff. But not every 20-something is quasi-retiring. Many are here for hooking up at the office. Fast Company wrote a brief article about Gen Z work habits: according to a study by EduBurdie of 2,000 20-somethings, 47 percent claimed their sex lives are improved by homework. But a shocking 38 percent admitted that, were they to return to work, they'd want office romances to be normalized, and would be okay with replacing some public spaces with nooks for hooking up. Sketchy!
  

• Da Beards
  The prestigious James Beard Foundation Media Awards took place Saturday night in Chicago, and the restaurant honors will be announced tonight. The Media Awards celebrate excellence in food storytelling by writers, journalists, filmmakers, and other creative professionals across print, digital, audio, and visual media. So many deserving cookbooks, podcasts, and documentaries won. The James Beard's MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award went to Food & Wine's “The City that Rice Built” by Jeff Gordinier and George McCalman, a sprawling history of Charleston, South Carolina, and the humblest of grains. This piece is a fantastic meditation on past and present, and the ways food shapes who we are and where we live. The New Yorker's Helen Rosner won for her deeply reported profile of former Top Chef host and bon vivant Padma Lakshmi. The Feature Reporting Award went to Adam Reiner's piece, "We Need To Talk About Trader Joe's," for Taste, which investigates the popular grocery chain's business practices. A must-read. They're all must-reads TBH. Congrats.
  

• A.I.-Yi-Yi.
  The future of technology, and our little civilization, is artificial intelligence, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be some bumps along the way. Some creepy, unsettling bumps. Anyway, don't freak out, but ChatGPT is allegedly preying on the vulnerabilities of people struggling with their mental health. The popular generative A.I. chatbot has been enabling—and amplifying—the delusions of people who spend hours "talking" to machines. In a New York Times article this week, writer Kashmir Hill wrote that, recently, he and his colleagues at the Grey Lady have been sent messages "by people who claim to have unlocked hidden knowledge with the help of ChatGPT, which then instructed them to blow the whistle on what they had uncovered." In Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré writes about the intense, obsessive relationships some people are having with ChatGPT. She talked to a woman whose husband called his chatbot "Mama" — and how Mama had him acting like a religious fanatic. Meanwhile, according to The Guardian, there's an A.I. cheating epidemic at universities. Thousands of students! These wrinkles will all be ironed out, soon, no doubt. Hopefully very soon.

Quicker hits …

• Spoiler alert: Top Chef season 22 has a winner. (Padma is missed, but Kristen cooks.)

• ​​At Japanese Takoyaki stands, sausage is replacing expensive octopus in the batter of the popular street food.

• Oi! British pub rules are no joke. Learn how to order a proper pint, bruv.

• Jimmy Buffett's true legacy: laid-back tropical party rock and food chain cheeseburgers.

• “Hi. Nice to meet you. Would you like to know the history of Jell-O?”

• Special wrapping paper that makes your gifts look like bread? Sure!

• Breaking news: there are aliens under Antarctica’s ice. (Maybe.)
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Just in: this week's dinner table conversation cheat code. Let's go.

For consideration …

• Road Bots
  Imagine a road trip without boredom. That's the future, according to a new article in The Wall Street Journal that sits somewhere between futurism and public relations. The automotive industry is bullish on self-driving cars and, sooner than you'd think, long drives to grandma will fly by as robots massage us while watching hours and hours of Love is Blind on Netflix. The cars of tomorrow will be powered by A.I., won't have steering wheels, and will monitor your health. That sounds like science fiction, but according to Fast Company, Google's Waymo self-driving cars are a hit in tech-forward San Francisco, capturing nearly a quarter of the Bay Area's rideshare business in just 20 months. Now, imagine a road trip without roads. Last week, President Trump signed an executive order removing more red tape from the air taxi industry. The goal? Loosen regulations to accelerate growth. The trend started in 2024, when the FAA created the first new category of aircraft in 80 years: the "powered-lift aircraft." Federal Aviation Administration head Mike Whitaker said this will allow air taxis to begin sharing the skies with helicopters and small planes. Coming soon: self-flying cars.
  

• Kart Blanche
  For a while, the White House’s tariff plans nearly sparked a revolt when rumors spread they’d raise the price of Nintendo’s Switch 2. That video game system is one of America's favorite non-pharmaceutical anti-anxiety drugs. Luckily, for now, the video game console is available for purchase in the United States, if you can find one. How did the Switch 2 escape being a trade war casualty? The Guardian says it’s a mix of luck, smart moves on Nintendo’s part, and the administration’s on-again, off-again policy. The release this past Thursday was chaotic but good news for Nintendo. Some fans waited outside stores for hours, while others spent their free time reloading websites. The Switch 2 launches with about 25 games, including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and just as many are rumored to be on their way. Mario Kart World, the 17th entry in the series, comes bundled. The reviews? Mostly positive.
  

• Give Cheese a Chance
  Finally, a story that combines high-stakes geopolitical crises with large Extravaganza pizzas from Domino's. The Takeout popularized a Cold War-era theory earlier this year that's gaining traction again: one sign that there’s a potential national security risk brewing is an uptick in pizza deliveries to the Pentagon. At its most basic, the theory says that during threats, DoD hungry wonks are chained to their desks, and emotional eating is a must. It's not that different from pulling an all-nighter in college, only the fate of the free world may or may not be at stake. The so-called Pizza Meter is built on various Beltway legends, the first being that the Soviet Union spied on D.C. deliveries as a way to gauge activity in the capital city of their great enemy. In 1990, Domino's franchise owner Frank Meeks told The Los Angeles Times that he noticed multiple orders to the Pentagon coincided with Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the event that triggered the first Gulf War. More recent examples connecting pizza delivery surges to global conflicts have occurred in 2024, with a notable instance just last week, when Domino's was ordered amid high tensions in the Middle East between Israel and Iran.

Quicker hits …

• The French Open delivered some finals, and some fashion. The backstory on the inspo behind Alcaraz and Sinner's fits.

• Introducing: the drink of the summer.

• Hooters, the creepiest place to eat lousy wings, is filing for bankruptcy.

• Local NYC blog lists 100 favorite restaurants.

• TikTok's "last meeting" theory.
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Below, your ticket to being the most interesting guest at dinner tables this week.

For consideration …

• Disaster season
  Hurricane season has started, but natural disasters are occurring much further afield. In Italy, Sicily’s Mount Etna erupted today, with ash and rock being thrown “several kilometers high.” It’s the first eruption of this size since 2014. Last week, there was bad news out of Switzerland, where the tiny mountain village of Blatten was decimated when nine million tons of rock and glacier collapsed, burying it. Residents were evacuated before disaster struck, as local scientists had been predicting the event (though not at such a devastating scale). Yes, climate change is to blame, but perhaps not in the straightforward way one would think. While glaciers across the Alps have been receding, the Birch glacier above Blatten has actually been advancing for a decade now. However, that’s not due to more ice being formed, but due to rock from above having previously collapsed on top of the glacier, thus pushing it forward. The culprit? Melting permafrost, which causes rock to loosen. Japan might not be immune from natural disaster either. Or so says a “manga” comic book original published in 1999. “The Future I Saw” predicted the March 2011 earthquake, and it warns of another striking this summer. Several psychics have corroborated this prediction, and the tourist industry is taking a hit.
  

• The group chat to blockbuster pipeline?
  While never easy, back in the day a publicist's job was relatively straightforward. Repping a star with an upcoming movie? Cool. Get them a magazine cover, a late night appearance, do the press junket etc. Bingo, bango. But today’s new media circuit is much more fractured and frenetic. Podcasts, TikToks, memes, hot takes while riding the subway? Nobody knows what will stick, stars are spread too thin, and publicists admit they no longer recognize their jobs, likening them to—like everything else on the Internet, from dating apps to the slot machine nature of any social app—gambling. Perhaps these publicists should consider infiltrating the group chat. That’s the tactic of WhatsApp and Offball, who have partnered to create “The Chat,” where some 48,000 members can chat about things like the NFL Draft and Champions League with actual sports celebs like LeBron James (a Cleveland Browns fan) and soccer fanatic Jimmy Butler. The “second screen” viewing habits of Gen-Z make this a potentially interesting play. For the more gossip-oriented, there’s the tactic of seeding a blind item to Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me on Substack. Nothing too new there, as Sundberg has been riding a wave of publicity lately for her Gawker-era level of snark and insider access, but it’s interesting to note that her very NYC-centric newsletter has found a rabid fanbase in London, as the Observer reports.
  

• Yes, Chef AI!
  If you think AI will never make you a meal at a restaurant, think again. It’s already happening in Chicago, where Chef Grant Achatz—of Alinea fame—is using AI for a nine-course menu at his restaurant, Next. In devising the menu, Achatz created nine fictional chefs, and then prompted ChatGPT for recipes from each, saying what chefs they’ve worked under and at what restaurants. “I want it to do as much as possible,” Achatz says of ChatGPT. “Short of actually preparing it.” Some chefs say it’s no different than a band working with a visionary producer (i.e. something that can shake a creative out of a creative rut). Others are less enthusiastic. While AI might never win a Michelin star (then again, you never know), it could be competing with college grads for entry level jobs. That’s one theory that might explain the narrowing gap in lifetime earnings between college grads and non college grads, plus the fact that online job postings targeted at workers with a four-year degree have declined. Also? College grads are typically tasked with reading and synthesizing information into reports, something that AI is pretty good at. All this could also explain the rise of “stay-at-home-sons.” Even a recent Jeopardy champ considers himself one.

Quicker hits …

• The late director David Lynch's coffee makers are up for auction.

• Themed cruises are having a moment.

• The new "it" bag marries Hermès and L.L. Bean aesthetics.

• Eminem is in Happy Gilmore 2.
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Happy Memorial Day, everyone. If you’re barbecue bound, here are some stories with which to dazzle the company gathered ‘round the grill.

For consideration …

• Hot dogging it
  Allow me to redirect your attention to a story that dropped one year ago: between now and Labor Day, Americans will consume 818 hot dogs every second. If that impressive feet doesn’t stoke some bi-partisan patriotism, what will? Although, perhaps you fall in the disgusted camp, in which case I’ll remind you that hot dogs can be classy when they want to be. Case in point: the Jean-Georges “haute dog” cart outside The Mark Hotel, which—though it’s been around for some time—TikTok has recently rediscovered (ofc they’re grass-fed and come with Kimchee). Junk food just might be this country’s greatest cultural export. What’s more American than a cheeseburger? The FT goes in search of some in London. If all this Americana has you feeling nostalgic for the classic summers of your youth, there’s good news finally coming out of Hollywood: the summer blockbuster, and the $4 billion haul that goes with it, just might be back.
  

• Out East Girls
  America doesn’t only do shlock. In fact, we clean up quite nicely. Take The Hamptons, where, yes, Blackbird just launched (open the in-app map, then toggle your location to “Hamptons, NY” to see all the spots you can currently earn and burn $FLY — plus we’ll be adding new joints all the time). At any rate, forget West Village Girls, how about Out East Girls? Getting your Hamptons weekend right for the ‘gram might run you $5k or more — just ask the WSJ, who tallied such expenditures for their itemized “Hamptons Girls’ Weekend.” One such line item—perhaps the biggest—is the hotel bill, which is only getting pricier as the motels of yore are being replaced by design-y luxury hotels (they have bikes!) that cost as much as $1k per night. Even Tom Brady has finally answered The Hamptons’ sirens call, opening up his collectibles store, CardVault, in East Hampton, where the pulls are sure to be as pricey as they are sick. If all this has you pining for a simpler, more wholesome time on the tip of Long Island, consider a subscription to The Ditch Weekly, a newspaper now in its sophomore summer that is exclusively staffed by high school kids. They’re currently chasing a lead on—what else?—an elusive hot dog story.
  

• PE Guy
  From America to the Internet, social media etc. Aka, the ever-evolving new frontier and … a hype coffee shop? This one’s not in the metaverse (remember that place where we were all supposed to be hanging out by now?) but LA — the border of Echo Park and Westlake, to be exact. Couplet Coffee sold 10,000 cups of Joe within the first six weeks of business, and it owes much of its success to founder Gefen Skolnick, who chose to build the brand—and stoke the hype—on TikTok and Instagram long before she’d served her first espresso. Her online storytelling caught the eye of consumers, and investors, like Away’s Jen Rubio. One such storyteller who has caught my eye recently is Johnny Hilbrant Partridge, the Boston-based fitness instructor turned creator behind PE Guy, his hilarious—and sometimes too spot on—send up of the archetype. Even my PE guy friends will probably admit that the impression is, “nnnnyeah pretty decent.” Some folks are less enthused about the Argentinean DJ and music producer Zulan, who is currently everywhere on social. Detractors suspect she might be “an industry plant.” Social media users sure do love a good conspiracy theory — like is whole milk propaganda? And here’s a sad fall from grace: Duolingo and its obliquitous green owl mascot have been scrubbed from the socials. Why? After the company announced that it would be pivoting to AI for certain roles, fans abandoned the brand en masse, causing it to lose some 400k TikTok followers. Others speculate that it could be yet another marketing stunt from the social media savvy app.

Quicker hits …

• Did Omega just inadvertently announce the next James Bond?

• In which a critic gets kicked out of The French Laundry.

• Why cultural elites can't get enough of The New York Post.

• OnlyFans might get sold for $8 billion.

• Mon dieu! Did French President Emmanuel Macron get slapped by his wife?
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

To quote that perennially quotable of films, "The Big Lebowski," “lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta what-have-yous.” Such is the news cycle these days. Amid the chaos, here are the stories you might’ve missed. As always, pull the ones that interest you most and use them any time the dinner table chatter runs dry this week.

For consideration …

• Cannes stand it
  The Cannes Film Festival is currently going on across the pond. Early buzz surrounds films like "Die My Love," starring Jennifer Lawrence, and "The Chronology of Water" by Kristin Stewart, her directorial debut, plus work by typical festival contenders Wes Anderson and Ari Aster. Also: "Mission Impossible — The Final Reckoning," which got a five-minute standing ovation. In fact, all the films mentioned above got considerable standing ovations (heck, even an X-rated movie got one). Said standing ovations are a bit of tradition at Cannes, with the longest ever clocking in at 22-minutes for "Pan’s Labyrinth" in 2006. Vulture is Moneballing how each film faired ovation wise (right down to the decimal) at this year’s festival. Which leads one to ask: what up with standing ovations? Turns out, they weren’t always timed, until news outlets realized using such metrics made for clicky stories. Thus, there’s a love/hate relationship with the practice. Even more confounding? How the festival works. Increasingly, however, Cannes—which has been around since 1946—determines which movies succeed or fail, both at the box-office and award season.
  

• Subscription coded
  I know we all love a good subscription, but maybe not as much as AMC’s A-Listers. For $20-$28 a month, the club’s nearly one million members can go to four movies per week, plus get other perks like VIP concession lines. It’s become a meme online, and a core personality trait of members — “[it’s] my Roman Empire, my TED Talk.” AMC A-Listers is definitely cinephile coded, but is it left or right coded? The Style section does the deep dive on coded, certainly the word of these strange times, one that “sorts the shifty, amorphousness of culture into the hard and fast lines of our polarized politics.” For the auction house coded, there’s Fair Warning, an invitation-only app that allows aficionados to bid on artwork by swiping right, as if they were on Tinder. The app was created, and currently curated, by Loïc Gouzer, the former Christie’s wunderkind responsible for "the sale of the most expensive artwork in history — Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi, which sold for $450 million in 2017.” For Fair Warning, Gouzer only allows personal tastes, not market forces, decide what makes it to auction. As in, would he hang the artwork on his own wall? And here’s another figure who might be determining who buys what: Pope Leo, whose White Sox fandom is boosting merch sales.
  

• Internet wanderlust
  The Internet is upset. That’s because Luke Nichols, the creator behind Outdoors Boys—a YouTube channel with some 15 million subscribers—is taking a break from content, perhaps indefinitely. Nichols made the announcement over the weekend, citing a discomfort with his family’s lives being viewed by so many people, meaning we won’t be getting any more winter survival videos in Alaska or shenanigans with his kids. Truly, it was one of the more wholesome corners of the Internet, and the dude will be missed. Still, there’s some heartwarming stuff online. Like the thousands of people currently taking a virtual road trip with Google Street View. The rules are simple: every ten seconds, those taking the trip vote via Discord on what direction to take (they even can listen to local radio stations). At the time of this writing, the road trip is currently in Ellsworth, Maine. One person who might approve of such whimsy? Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, who is broadening his company’s purview to now include … everything. Airbnb a Michelin-starred chef. Airbnb an architectural tour. Airbnb a wrestling match. Etc. Experiences, not tech, is what Chesky values. “Magic, in hindsight, is not technology,” he tells Wired. “I’ve never had a dream with a device in it.” Cheers to that.

Quicker hits …

• Mr. Beast is giving Zuck a run for his money with his new glow up.

• Can McDonald's cure migraines?

• Why the HBO rebrand didn't work.

• Open AI plans for a data center bigger than Monaco.

• Speaking of Monaco, the Grand Prix is this weekend. Is this the greatest Monaco qualifying lap of all time?
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

For my friends who don’t exist in that Venn diagram cross section where the terminally online and menswear enthusiasts overlap, well, congrats. But also, you probably missed this bit of news last week: Aimé Leon Dore dropped a collab with iconic Italian espresso machine makers La Marzocco. The thing is stylish, ofc, and pricey, ringing it at nearly $12,000 — almost 3x the price of La Marzocco’s standard Linda Micra. Despite the hefty price tag, the ALD edition sold out in less than 24 hours. Reddit has thoughts.

For the more frugal/less hype beast-y among us, there’s the Breakfast Club. Remember: if you are on our yearly subscription—shoutout for being an OG supporter—your membership is due to expire soon. Meaning if you want to keep unlocking daily coffees at the best spots in town, you’ll need to re-up for $25 a month. We got you.

For consideration …

• Off the grid
  Our phone addictions continue to plague us. That’s good news for Snapchat—remember them?—whose 900 million monthly users make them the preferred social media app of U.S. teens. They also have Snap Map—see where your friends are at all times—which now boasts 400 million monthly active users. Instagram is quickly spooling up their own version, the catchy “Friend Map.” Other folks aren’t so on board, like the town in the UK that tried to ban smartphones for kids under 14 — it worked, kind of. And there are the trad wives of TikTok—or former trad wives, those who submissively lived under a patriarchal lifestyle befitting the 1950s, albeit while broadcasting their antiquated routines to thousands of followers—who have fled the movement. The digital exodus doesn’t stop there. How about quitting music streaming, or quitting listening to music altogether? Still, phone-optimized content, aka creator content, is big business, which is why NBC has given development deals to 11 TikTokers.
  

• Do chefs hate burgers?
  As you may or may not have noticed, I typically avoid writing about restaurants in this newsletter — doing so would kind of be like wearing your favorite band’s t-shirt to their concert. A faux pas, indeed. But some stories warrant inclusion. Like this impressive interactive roundup by the Times recounting the last 25 years of NYC dining. What a run this city has had, eh? Do chefs love burgers as much as we do (hey, we’ve got a Burger League, after all)? Well, it’s…complicated. Still, we think a burger reveals a lot about a restaurant. Artist Lucien Smith—a friend of Blackbird’s—is reviving the beloved artists' restaurant/hangout/place of employment Food, and is relocating it to Dimes Square — a neighborhood Smith unironically stands behind. “This is my Soho,” he tells Grub Street, “and I’m very into it.” Beli gets the well-deserved WSJ treatment. Find me on it. And who is the most hype cheesemonger right now? That would be Madrid’s Clara Diez, who owns the chicest shop in the contemporary cheese game, Fromaje.
  

• Greece 2025 A.I.
  As summer nears, one’s mind drifts to Greece. Or at least mine does. The salads, the islands, the … tech hub? Apparently, Athens is the place to be, especially for European startups. Greece targeted tech growth six years ago (branching out from tourism and hospitality, both key sectors of the economy), but missed out on taking big swings at bad bets. Now, the slate is clean, and with a former VC as Prime Minister, the timing could be ripe. Part of Greece’s strategy includes reversing the brain drain with tax breaks and other incentives. For the rest of us, there are the islands, this roundup being a constant source of fodder for my wanderlust, as is this essay by novelist Alexander Chee from a few years back. When I can’t make it to the Aegean, there’s always the Greek frappé — beach bod be damned.

Quicker hits …

• Is this the most hardcore triathlon ever?

• Sliding mitts are enjoying a must-have moment.

• Watch Ferrari's Chief Design Officer sketch their latest supercar.

• Of course there's a hidden tennis court in Vatican City (and, yes, Pope Leo XIV plays).
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

May the 4th (be with you) went down yesterday, and though I don’t celebrate I hope it was a good one for all who did. The White House got in on the action with an AI-generated image of a lightsaber-wielding President Trump. While the caption suggests POTUS is a Jedi, some folks found it curious that he was holding a red lightsaber, which any self-respecting Star Wars fan knows is the color reserved for evil Sith Lords. Gaffe or intentional easter egg? Controversy aside, it goes without saying that George Lucas created an amazing brand and community in Star Wars (not to mention IP, which newsletter Dirt calls "recession proof"). As an entrepreneur (one who loves restaurants the way some of you might love, say, The Empire Strikes Back) I find that fascinating and inspiring. This footage of Lucas sitting down to write the prequels resonates in particular — at the end of the day, no matter what you’ve built previously, even a multi-billion dollar global brand that reinvented cinema as we know it, you’ve got to start from scratch again, staring at that blank page. If Lucas had to do it, so do the rest of us. So go do it, go build your own Star Wars.

Of course you’ll need caffeine to get started. For some of you on our annual Breakfast Club pass, please remember that it will be expiring soon, meaning to keep enjoying the benefit of a coffee every day at some of the best cafes in town, you’ll need to renew your membership for $25 a month.

For consideration …

• Lego my F1
  Speaking of unstoppable global brands, I was down in Miami this weekend for Formula 1, where McLaren teammates Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris went one-two. Or, as Sky Sports commentator David Croft put it, finished in “a different post code” from the rest of the field. McLaren has certainly figured out their car this season. So has Lego. The Danish toymaker constructed life-size cars for 20 drivers, all of whom arrived at the driver’s parade in brick-built replicas of Ferraris, Red Bulls etc. The stunt was eight months in the making, and required 26 Lego engineers who logged 22,000 hours (for those interested in how Lego transformed itself from a dusty old brand on the brink of bankruptcy to the icon it is today, read this). It’s fascinating to see how F1 has blown up stateside, something I’ve written about at length in this newsletter already. And with increased American fans comes the need for an American team. Cadillac is here to fill the void. The 120+ year Detroit car manufacturer is poised to hit the grid in 2026. It’s a serious endeavor, one that’s been a three year effort, and clocks count the debut down to the second in every Cadillac office. One big question surrounding the project is who will be the team’s two drivers? Cadillac assures us that Americans are in the mix, but the big rumor in Miami linked Mexican vet (and Red Bull alum) Sergio Pérez to the team, which could be the type of firepower the project needs.

• Dad drip
  With the Met Gala going off tonight (theme: “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”), fashion comes to mind. These days, from street style to the ‘gram, it seems like we live in a perpetual fashion show. Look no further than the hats that were on display at The Kentucky Derby this weekend. Or ask the dad—Kevin Peter Wilson—who recently went viral on TikTok for showing up to the playground with his daughter while wearing Comme des Garçons and Lemaire. The drip did not go down well with some commenters, who labeled the 26-year-old “pretentious” and “insufferable.” Are dads expected to just give up sartorially? Don’t put us in a box, man! Wilson spoke to Dazed to defend his style, and perhaps redefine how us fathers should be showing up. And how about those Häagen-Dazs t-shirts that are now fetching as much as $450 on secondary markets? You know I love a good piece of merch, and this one’s got history. The price tag has a little something to do with hardcore icon Henry Rollins, who worked at Häagen-Dazs before fronting Black Flag. Alamo Draft House has spun up its own line of merch for the 50th anniversary of Jaws, which includes t-shirts, ball caps, and a Great White popcorn bucket.

• We all YouTube
  Everybody wants to be a YouTuber these days, especially Gen Alpha. According to a recent poll, 30 percent of 12 to15-year-olds want to follow in Mr. Beast’s footsteps, while 21 percent chose TikToker as their top profession. Count Ezra Klein among them. His eponymous podcast is now a YouTube show — the New York Times has hired a full-time director of photography to shoot the thing. Show, not video pod, is the operative word here. YouTube is now TV—full stop—and everyone from Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly to Michelle Obama and Chuck Todd are joining the fray. Rolling Stone rounds up the current wave of “digital talk-show hosts” (how’s that for hip jargon, kids?) and claims they’re coming for late night TV. Short-form is where the eyeballs are, which is why creators like Kareem Rahma choose platforms like TikTok for shows like Subway Takes. Rahma took Blackbird to his favorite Egyptian seafood joint for our show Take Me To Your Spot, whose second season premiered last week with an episode at Bar Madonna. Do check it out. We’ll be dropping episodes every Tuesday.

Quicker hits …

• The New Yorker on why life now feels so unreal.

• Restaurateur Keith McNally chronicles his regrets in his memoir, which drops tomorrow.

• The quest to save Timex's iconic Connecticut headquarters.

• Goodbye to the GOAT — Warren Buffett retires.

• Brock Colyar—another Take Me To Your Spot alum—on the rise of the West Village sorority girl.

• The final Glastonbury tickets sold out in 19 minutes.

• An AI tool that helps you "cheat on everything" got the kid who founded it suspended from school (he also raised a $5.3m seed round).
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Given the news lately, dinner table conversations are sure to be same old, same old. Below, the antidote I’ll be aping from all week. As always, feel free to do the same.

For consideration …

• Go with your gut
  Let’s begin with a sport that’s been through the wringer as far as scandals go: cycling. And when we talk cycling, we’re talking one rider in particular — Slovenia’s Tadej Pogačar. On Sunday, the 26-year-old won Belgium’s 160-mile Liège-Bastogne-Liège, one of cycling’s most prestigious races, as well as the sport’s oldest one-day affair. Lance Armstrong has already declared him the GOAT. It was Pogačar's fifth major victory since winning the World Championships last September (capping a season that also saw him win the Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia, becoming only the third cyclist in history to bag the sport’s elusive triple crown). He also hasn’t finished worse than third in any race all season. Tl;dr: Pogačar is winning everything, on any terrain (flats, hills, cobbles, one-day races, three-week grand tours), and doing things deemed impossible in the sport’s modern era, one that previously saw riders targeting only one to two specific events throughout the season, much like marathoners. Not only that, but Pogačar doesn’t look like your typical pencil-thin cyclist, and his similarly built peers are also pulling off jaw-dropping exploits, breaking the seemingly untouchable records of cycling’s EPO-dominated doping era. The secret? Experts say it’s nutrition, and it’s a tactic that could revolutionize every endurance sport. Today’s riders are taking in up to 140 grams of carbohydrates per hour (delivered by a host of new gels, fluids, and energy bars), and if you think that sounds easy, it isn’t. Thus a significant amount of the off-season is spent training these riders’ guts to absorb such a nauseating amount of fuel, aka force-feeding themselves to develop the necessary transporters in their intestines. Look for speed records to continue to fall (we’re talking riders who can push 30 mph for six hours), and hourly carb intake to climb towards 160 grams. I’ll stick to rigatoni, thank you very much.

• Let them eat AI
  Here’s a story making the rounds: while millennials saw their frictionless urban lifestyles subsidized by startups like Uber, the Gen Z equivalent is free access to ChatGPT Plus and other AI deals. College students are reaping the benefits, and skating through finals, but to what end? Is there a benefit of acing tests that ostensibly prepare one for a job AI might soon render obsolete? In more AI doomsday news, how ‘bout those Meta chatbots intended to engage in “romantic role-play,” even with, uh, children? Concerns abound. On the flipside, Pinterest’s move to encourage teens to close the app during school hours is … encouraging. Good news for podcasters: Spotify has shelled out $100 million to podcast creators since January, all in a bid to compete with YouTube. The Google-owned video platform claims to reach “1 billion podcast consumers every month,” meaning Spotify—whose monthly podcast audience is 170 million—has a long way to go. It also has a lot more to spend. From 2021 to 2024, YouTube paid creators and media companies some $70 billion. Elsewhere in the ever evolving world of new media, New York Mag has joined Substack.

• Do you know what a spaghetti scene is?
  From the new world to the old world: Hollywood continues its decent run. Sinners, the Ryan Coogler period piece/thriller /horror flick everyone is talking about, is poised for an impressive run, seeing the smallest second-weekend box office drop since Avatar (and we all know how that movie performed). Also? Tom Cruise is a massive Sinners Stan. Cruise’s Mission Impossible swan song—whose trailer has been melting the Internet—opens Memorial Day Weekend and hopes are, of course, high. Here’s something I never knew about Mission Impossible: in the first installment of the franchise, George Lucas convinced Cruise and director Brian De Palma to feature a “spaghetti scene.” Don’t know what a spaghetti scene is in cinema speak? Learn here. Lastly, while all the above bodes well for Hollywood, the industry is seeing a California exodus. Thanks to lower labor costs and tax incentives, it’s becoming increasingly cheaper to film abroad — even if that means simply hosting a game show in a studio outside Dublin.

Quicker hits …

• Japan's love of transience.

• Marriott buys citizenM for $355m.

• Is there a serial killer in New England? Police say no, social media says yes.

• We're all crazed for protein.

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Rest in peace Pope Francis, and godspeed to anyone running the Boston Marathon today — I hope you’re caffeinated.

For consideration …

• Putting the Ken doll in Obi-Wan Kenobi
  Speaking of religion, let’s turn to another one: The Force. The annual Star Wars Celebration—something that’s been going on since 1999—took place in Japan last week. Say what you will about Disney’s stewardship of the brand, the global community of Star Wars fans couldn’t be stronger. Which is of course something that anyone building a brand should take note of. As for the news out of the celebration, here's what we're getting: more movies, a Darth Maul animated series (for my Sith-heads in the back), and a Ryan Gosling vehicle, because we all know that a galaxy far, far away could use a little Kenergy. One Star Wars steward not getting any heat? That would be Tony Gilroy. While known for more serious stuff like Michael Clayton, the director returns with the much anticipated season two of Andor (premiering tomorrow), and early reviews are calling it a masterpiece.

• Will Sinners kill Hollywood?
  Here’s another masterpiece: Sinners, or so say the critics. The thriller is currently enjoying a 98 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, reviews that helped propel it to box office supremacy this weekend, dethroning Minecraft. You’d think Hollywood would be happy, but here’s the rub: Sinners might presage the demise of the studio system as we know it, something execs are less than thrilled about. In an eye-popping deal, director Ryan Coogler will get both a percentage of the box office (known as “first-dollar gross,” a practice that has all but disappeared in Hollywood), as well ownership of the film after 25 years. It’s a contract that rival studios are rumored to be horrified by, and definitely something that will make it difficult for Warner Brothers to recoup the film’s purported $150m budget. Also taking a bet on itself? Formula 1. The global four-wheel racing series (owned by Liberty Media) wants as much as $180m per year for U.S. TV rights — that’s double what ESPN currently pays. Despite the sport’s global sex appeal, networks aren’t exactly champing at the bit to pay the hefty price tag. Still, in today’s increasingly fractured media landscape, owning your rights is certainly the name of the game — ask any TikTok creator. With that in mind, Neptune—a TikTok competitor launching in the App Store this week—is giving creators an interesting value prop: the option to hide their likes and follower count so that they can focus on quality over quantity. The app already has some 400k folks on its waitlist.

• Beige bloods + Gen Z golfers
  Breaking old money news: the global elite now prefer the neutral hue of beige for their attire. So reports the Times, who say that said blue bloods like to keep a low profile, especially in glitzy, high profile enclaves like St. Moritz. In keeping with generational wealth, a growing trend among Gen Z in this economy is joining the family business. Yes, it pays to belong to a dynasty, especially when you’re getting into golf, another trend among Gen Z (much to boomers’ chagrin). For anyone who’s not into beige, but needs to make a little extra cash to support the country club habit, there’s apps Pickle and Yoodlize, which allow you to rent out your clothing to people who want to steel your style.

Quicker hits …

• A skull-shaped hill was found on Mars and astronomers say it doesn't belong there.

• Parents are crashing their kids' spring breaks.

• Why are NYC bars closing earlier than ever?

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

It’s another busy week, especially as things ramp up with Blackbird Club, so I’ll keep this one brief.

For consideration …

• Chicken jockey!
  While it might not be my preferred piece of cinema, I’d be remiss to ignore the staggering success of the Minecraft movie. The global haul stands at a sweet $550M, but what’s truly impressive is how the movie has captured the cultural zeitgeist — at least that of teenage boys. Part of said cultural commotion is the Jack Black number “Steve’s Lava Chicken,” which has become a mega meme within an already meme-heavy movie. Released early on socials, fans have glommed onto the tune, as well as the flick’s other ridiculous moments, singing along, throwing buckets of popcorn, and prompting theaters to issue warnings to audiences. Rolling Stone calls it this generation’s Rocky Horror Picture Show. That said, the movie industry continues its slump. Excluding the pandemic, Q1 was the worst Hollywood’s seen since 1996, and original movies (i.e. non franchises and remakes) are not garnering audiences. One film surely to be divisive is Eddington, horror/anxiety auteur Ari Aster’s latest, which dropped its doomscrolling-happy trailer this morning. It’ll make its debut at Cannes next month.

• Boom boom budgeting
  Glossier, Emily Weiss’ millennial pink beauty brand that was valued at close to $2 billion back in 2021 is rumored to be back to raising money, albeit for a much lower valuation — sources say well south of $1 billion. Is this really the final nail in the girl boss era? Perhaps, or it could also be the fact that young women are “recession proofing” their lives by cutting out discretionary spending. The looming threat of a recession could threaten the current boom boom era, and finding saving hacks (ahem, Breakfast Club) is certainly prudent. Or, maybe people aren’t broke but just suffer from “money dysmorphia?”

• Merch mania
  Thankfully, some status symbols are affordable, if you purchase them in time. Take the Trader Joe’s viral tote, now back in four different pastel colors in time for Easter. You can nab one for $2.99 at Trader Joe’s. If not, you’ll have to scour secondary markets like eBay, where they’re already fetching $400. Of course the og iykyk merch has to be that belonging to The Masters. Only available at Augusta National during the tournament, merch sales rake in $70 million over seven days, or $1 million an hour. And, yes, naturally there is a secondary market for this stuff, which one outfit is exploiting. Here’s a family who would be going to Augusta IRL: the Ratliffs, of White Lotus Season 3 fame. The fictitious family of five certainly loved themselves some Duke merch, something that—in case you missed it—the actual University is none too pleased with.

Quicker hits …

• This Italian train? Che bella.

• Behold: Roger Federer as a frosted-tipped teen in his bedroom.

• The fashion crowd dines at Raf's on the DL.

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

While Wall Street braces for a bear market, tariffs will probably be the topic du jour all week long as we commiserate over coffees, meals etc. Should you want to deviate from financial doomsday prognostications, consider the stories below.

For consideration …

• Dire wolves, back from the dead
  Sure, the market might be melting down, but, in the immortal words of Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, “life goes on, man.” Or, in this next case, returns. Yes, I mean the return of the dire wolf, that OG of underdogs. No longer a Game of Thrones fantasy, the dire wolf—which went extinct some 10,000 years ago—has been revived by the ominously named company Colossal Biosciences, who have “effectively for the first time de-extinct[ed] a line of beasts whose live gene pool long ago vanished.” Everyone, it seems, is trying to stave off extinction. According to Bank of America analysts, the wellness industry might well be recession proof given that Gen Z and millennials are spending more and more in that sector of the market, from fitness to activity-based travel to “wellness focused discretionary items.” Even older folks are getting in on it, as are a raft of wellness startups that are quickly becoming the new country clubs. Forget Soho House, the latest status symbol is getting plasma-therapy injections and hyperbaric oxygen therapy at invitation-only clubs with annual dues of $250k. Beyond social cachet, perhaps these would-be Benjamin Buttons are onto something. If futurist Peter Diamandis is to be believed, we are 10 years out from “longevity escape velocity,” at which point technologies will converge to slow, stop, or even potentially reverse aging. Our sole responsibility until then? “Avoid dying from something stupid.” Like, say, running into a genetically engineered dire wolf.
  

• Where will White Lotus shoot next?
  Speaking of back from the dead, Hollywood made a triumphant return to form this weekend with the Minecraft movie. Middle schoolers apparently came out in droves, all to the tune of $163 million domestically, giving Minecraft the biggest ever opening for a video game adapted film. This is good news given the box office bomb that is Snow White, a film whose lackluster performance (a 60 percent drop from opening weekend) has threatened the future of Disney’s next live-action remake, Tangled. Might we suggest a return to more original IP? No such problems for White Lotus. Following last night’s jaw dropper—though, perhaps, not emotionally earned—of a finale, creator Mike White has already teased the location for Season 4 of the thriller. And the Internet, as it does, is already parsing clues and sleuthing the next five-star stand-in for the show’s titular resort.

  

• Row, row, row your boat
  While luxury brands have become synonymous with sports sponsorship, especially watches, here’s one you don’t see in that arena everyday: Chanel. Even odder is the sport the 100+ year-old fashion house chose: rowing. The Boat Race, a four-mile, 374-yard upstream race that’s been held for nearly 200 years between Oxford and Cambridge universities, is now the Chanel J12 Boat Race, named for the brand’s bestselling watch. Yes, there’s the history, the elitism, the Olympic prowess, and the nautical notes of rowing, but what Chanel really saw in this partnership was the synergy between the “swing” i.e. individual rowers performing in sync, and the automatic movement of the J12’s Calibre 12.1. Less successful of a fashion collab, at least according to Casey Lewis, was Target x Kate Spade, which she says might’ve resonated ten to 15 years ago, but now not so much. The culprit? Both the collab’s girl boss aesthetic and the ongoing Gen Z/TikTok-driven boycott of Target “over its rollback of DEI initiatives.” More popular are MAGA-mocking hats, which—from Greenland to Canada—have been popping up in the Trump administration’s wake with, shall we say, less than MAGA-worhty slogans.

Quicker hits …

• The risk of workplace coffee machines.

• This concrete espresso maker is gorgeous.

• Packy with some Monday perspective.

• The Titanic is trending among five-year-olds.

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Mornin’. Quick note on your Breakfast Club membership: if you’re one of our OG members who paid for an annual subscription last spring, check your pass’ expiration date within the Blackbird app and be sure to resubscribe under our monthly model. It’s just $25 per month for coffee every day at the best cafes and restaurants in town, and as a way of saying thanks we’re giving you 2,500 $FLY on us to cover your first month. We got you.

Ok, onto this week’s Small Talk topics …

For consideration …

• "Torpedo Bats" are legal
  How ‘bout them Yankees? Or, more specifically, them bats? The Bronx Bombers dinged 15 homers in their first three games of the season, tying an MLB record. All three games were against the Milwaukee Brewers, and nine of those homers happened on Saturday — a franchise record. The Yankees starting lineup is stellar, to be sure, but a big part of their success can be attributed to a new kind of bat. Developed by an MIT physicist, the “Torpedo Bat,” as it’s been dubbed, is a field-legal bat (no longer than 42 inches, no thicker than 2.61 inches, solid wood, cup at tip no deeper than 1 inch) that moves the sweet spot further down, meaning more wood and thus more mass where hitters are more likely to make contact with the ball. Look to see a lot more teams using them, and a lot more dingers, this season.
  

• Why Hollywood loves fake movie trailers
  Hollywood could use some innovation. A new Deloitte survey finds that 56 percent of Gen Z and 43 percent of millennials view creator content on social media as more relevant, relatable, and compelling than big budget streaming and movies. If that’s the case, no one told Sean Manning, Simon & Schuster’s new publisher, who says he wants to turn the 100-year-old publishing house into the A24 of books. That said, and to his credit, the guy is talking about brand loyalty rather than movies, and his tactics—like the supermarket sweep-inspired “Bookstore Blitz”—are more TikTok than big screen. Anyway, back to Hollywood. As with everything, we must acknowledge the looming specter of AI, which could swing its scythe at any moment. But beyond films, from the scripts to the moving images themselves, one of the weirdest ways AI is affecting the industry is via fake trailers — some so convincing they’ve even duped French National Television. Even weirder? While many decry that this is all a race to the bottom, citing copyright infringement and topics like “sex-upped” images of female characters, the big studios are embracing these fake trailers — reaping ad revenue from YouTube and riding the early buzz.
  

• Those Studio Ghibli memes
  AI was undoubtedly all over your social feeds late last week, most notably on X, where users had a field day generating Studio Ghibli-style portraits of themselves. The “work” comes courtesy of ChatGPT’s latest update, which can Ghiblify any photo, and the Internet, of course, quickly polarized on the topic. Detractors were quick to quote Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, who, in a 2016 interview, called AI “an insult to life itself.” Such opinions didn’t stop one user, who replicated the trailer for The Fellowship of the Ring in the inimitable style of the acclaimed, Academy Award-winning Japanese animation studio. Elsewhere in all things AI, Bloomberg has had to issue “dozens of corrections to AI-generated news summaries,” H&M has cloned the likeness of 30 models—with their permission, of course (the files are IN the computer!)—and, according to some teachers, AI is eroding students' ability to think critically. And then there’s “vibe coding,” the act of a layperson with no coding experience or knowledge using AI to code ideas they have for apps and other things. Some folks are bullish, while experts assure us that “it’s not going to replace programmers.”

Quicker hits …

• Rise of the "vibe restaurant."

• Tinder and Sami Miró partner to help singles upcycle their ex's old clothes.

• Chicago icon Alinea finally arrives in NYC.

• Wait, are male-female relationships actually a deviation and not the norm?

• Our phones could be the reason we're not having more kids.

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Whoa, that White Lotus episode last nigh — actually, I’m not going to go there. Here’s where I will go: if you’re an OG member of our Breakfast Club—THANK YOU—your year-long membership is expiring this month. But fear not, you can resubscribe right here, and unlock 2,500 $FLY (good for your first month) on us.

For consideration …

• Lonely men, sex robots, and TikTok Westerns
  We’ll begin with the bad news, at least for us fellas. Masculinity, it seems, remains in crises, ascending—some would argue—toward its apotheosis. Studies find that many young men suffer from a lack of purpose, leading to self-isolation and loneliness, creating a vacuum for the likes of Manosphere charlatans like Andrew Tate to swoop in. Not good. Also, there’s porn, the ubiquity of which has—according to The Atlantic—made many men prefer it over real relationships. To add fuel to the fire, Elon Musk says to expect “AI-powered sex robots” within the next five years. The alarming stats don’t stop there: 63 percent of men under 30 identify as single, blaming, among other things, the superficiality of dating apps. So what’s the antidote to all of this? Enter Lonesome Dove, the 864-page Western about an epic cattle drive (and men contending with the fact that they’ll never be the man they wanted to be) that won the Pulitzer in 1986 and is currently having a viral moment on TikTok.
  

• Death of the doggy bag
  In a world in which Gen Z is spending twice as much as they’re saving, just meeting basic needs can be difficult. Well, now your young, FOMO-stricken, financially-strapped friends can take a loan out for … pizza. By partnering with Klarna, DoorDash will allow users to “buy now, pay later.” Interesting, though perhaps not the path to financial solvency. Instead, the kids should consider the doggy bag. Many operators are seeing a decline, maybe even death, of the tried and true practice of taking unfinished food home. Blame it on shifting social norms, post-dinner drinking plans, and the fact that people often overorder so they can try one of everything. Still, facts are facts. According to a 2023 study, “the average American leaves 53 pounds, or $329 worth, of food on the plate at restaurants every year.” Have these people never experienced the deliciousness of a day-old pork bun reheated in the microwave? Or maybe they just need more comfort food to rejoin the clean plate club. For the kid in all of us, there’s the fancy TGI Fridays-ification of just about every restaurant on your radar.
  

• Vibecesscion
  Oh, I’m not done with Gen Z this morning. Or at least the terminally online, many of whom see vibes of an oncoming recession. Key predictors include Lady Gaga’s return to dance-pop, Will Smith making music again, and Southwest killing its free checked bags policy (also, there's Peter Thiel). I’m no Paul Krugman, but sounds ominous. And here’s a sinister trend: Snapchat’s half-swipe feature, which allows message recipients to read a message in full without said message ever being marked as seen to the sender. The solve? Subscribing to Snapchat+ of course, which for $4 per month alerts the sender with a pair of emoji eyes that the message is being read. Gross. Can’t we leave these already anxiety-ridden kids alone without trying to monetize every single one of their insecurities? As studies show, from dating to schools to jobs, no generation has ever been ghosted like Gen Z.

Quicker hits …

• Lindsey Vonn stormed to second place in the final race of her comeback season. You go, girl.

• A content creator spent $340 on this cup of coffee.

• Parisian department store Printemps finally opens in Manhattan.

• Amazon fast tracks the next Bond movie (and gives it an impressive budget).

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Pardon the delay, friends, it’s been a bit of a busy one. With that said, and without further ado, here are the stories that I’ll be pulling from this week whenever the breakfast, lunch, or dinner table conversation runs dry.

For consideration …

• Cafe culture reinvented
  While the biggest threat to coffee remains rising arabica bean prices (because extreme weather, because climate change), the industry is combating other headwinds as well. Take Starbucks. As anyone who’s recently had their barista ask if they’d prefer a mug to a paper cup (don’t worry, we know that sometimes you’re gonna two-time the Breakfast Club), Starbucks has been making strides toward better hospitality. That’s all part of CEO Brian Niccol’s plan to make the chain feel more like a local third place rather than a “corporate coffee giant with big Wall Street shareholders.” Other upgrades include more outlets and increased seating. Niccol’s announcement, made last week, came one day after several striking Starbucks union baristas were arrested. UK cafes might not share Niccol’s vision, especially where outlets are concerned. In an effort to bring back the convivial, bohemian dream of cafe culture (and turn tables quicker) over the grind of remote workers yammering away on video calls and hamming their keyboards for hours on end, several coffee shop owners have banned laptops. “No laptop” signs have become increasingly popular in windows across Britain. Then there’s the rising cost of gentrification threatening to take down local cafes, which one Williamsburg owner pushed back against in a tearful TikTok that has since gone viral, even catching the attention of Joe Jonas.
  

• F1 goes full content studio
  For those who didn’t feel like staying up all night on Saturday, you might have missed the opening Formula 1 Grand Prix of the 2025 season, which took place in Melbourne. The action was wild, with rain wreaking havoc to the track and drivers’ tires. Tl;dr: Lando Norris held off Max Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton made his somewhat lackluster Ferrari debut, and five rookies splashed onto the scene. Beyond the grid itself, however, F1 is a brand that continues to fascinate me. For those who know my background, I cut my teeth in content, and narrative storytelling remains an obsession — there’s a reason I love writing this email every Monday morning. Which is where F1 comes in. Back in 2017, the sport—while relatively global—had a niche and elitist appeal. Fast forward eight years, and F1 is booming, particularly among young viewers, with over 750 million fans worldwide according to a recent Nielsen study. Why? Content, storytelling, call it what you will. When Liberty Media took over (acquiring F1 for $8 billion), they treated the then 70-year-old racing federation like a modern day media brand, and appointed Chase Carey—former vice-chairman of 21st Century Fox—to lead the charge. In came YouTube videos, Netflix’s Drive to Survive reality series, and drivers themselves active on social. Turns out that was just the beginning. The FT has got an entire special report (I do love a deep dive) on the reinvented sport, which includes a look at F1’s ongoing “Disneyification” as well as the upcoming Brad Pitt movie — do watch the latest trailer.
  

• Trains, trains, and supercars
  I also love a good train ride, preferably above ground. Belmond’s Orient Express remains on my bucket list, and don’t get me started on an idea I had for a very specific train route I wanted to bring to the public a few years ago. At any rate, there might be an intellectual imperative to slow travel by train. Swiss-born contemporary philosopher Alain de Botton insists that travel by train can aid our thoughts, claiming that “consciousness is assisted by the possibility of looking out of the window, locking onto an object and following it for a few seconds, until a new coil of thought is ready to form and can unravel without pressure.” For those looking to take de Botton’s advice, the Times has got you with this roundup of the best North American rail journeys. Though, if all the F1 talk above has stoked your wanderlust, there’s also Italy’s “Motor Valley,” which has become a destination of sorts for supercar enthusiasts who want to tour the factories and museums of Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Maserati. You can also take some of these cars for a spin. And, as luck would have it for us restaurant pros, said trip takes one to Modena, home of several spots worth a reservation.

Quicker hits …

• What it was like to be Anthony Bourdain's assistant.

• Jean-Georges wants Gen-Z, and the rest of us, to go clubbing.

• Mr. Beast? More like Willy Wonka. The YouTuber makes more money from his chocolate than his content.

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

This one goes out to my fellow southpaws: a funny little essay came across my desk last week about the plight of being a left-handed diner, like the fact that we often self-relegate to Siberia at the end of the table so as not to bump elbows with the rest of our invariably right-handed party. Turns out, servers at the best restaurants often spot us right away and immediately employ the Left-Hand Switch, aka they’ll adjust your table setting accordingly. I feel so seen.

Below, news for lefties, righties, and even the ambidextrous.

For consideration …

• Let’s start with London, which for many of us—especially the hospitality-obsessed—remains a source of perpetual inspiration and curiosity. Or make that controversy. The hottest spot in London right now is the 18-seat Yellow Bittern, a joint that relishes in paradox. It’s only open for lunch, and make that Monday-Friday; serves things like stew and soda bread, which you can pair with $120 bottles of organic red Burgundy; is co-owned by a titled Lady and an avowed communist. Celebrity chefs and London’s cultural elite have been flocking. In fact, there appears to be nothing hotter in London right now than a good old fashioned neighborhood bistro, the more intimate the better, at least according to data from Ten, a concierge service catering to the jet-set. For those with money to burn on things besides meals, there’s the Kettle Kids, a pair of 20-something lads who’ve pivoted from Instagram to a 4,500sq ft office on Old Bond Street, where they’ve got a stranglehold on the pre-owned Rolex market. And here’s a sector you might not expect to find first-rate hospitality in: underground techno clubs. Renowned Farringdon venue fabric recently turned 25 and celebrated the milestone with a gorgeous coffee table book. Known for its bleeding edge bookings and exceptional sound system, it’s been the hospitality the elite dance club delivers night after night that’s been keeping heads and ravers coming back. As Blackbird friend Colin Nagy muses over on Substack, "Everything communicated purpose. Just as the artwork and the curation were top-notch, so too was the door experience, the efficiency of the coat check, the politeness and professionalism of the security and staff, and the manner that people pouring out of the club were safely ushered into licensed rides home." For those in need of a few choice fabric mixes to get them through the work week, here are some of the best.

• The AI friend hack
  From hospitality to loneliness — need I be more on the nose that, yes, the former is most certainly a cure for the latter? But back to the topic at hand … in a world in which domestic ChatGPT use is up 83 percent year-over-year, it should come as no surprise that there’s now an app that uses AI to help you make friends. Pie, the latest venture from Bonobos founder Andy Dunn, has raised an $11.5 million Series A round to help foster IRL events in SF and Chicago. The challenge? Said events, like “Coffee with Strangers,” have become so popular that the hundreds of users who sometimes show up in person don’t know where to start, meaning: who to talk to. Enter AI, which uses a quiz—questions range from “do you pray?” to “are you willing to sacrifice stability to pursue a passion?”—to break users into groups based on their likelihood of getting along before the event. Eureka? Say what you will, at least the app is giving its presumably young(ish) audience a break. No such luck with music. In 2024, the average concert ticket price rose to $135, with some—like Beyoncé's Renaissance tour—demanding $600 just for GA. Perhaps this gives movie theaters a chance at rebounding. Enter the $5 Movie Club, a nationwide IRL Movie Club that gets you into an independent film followed by a post-showing discussion with the rest of the audience.

Quicker hits …

• Hockey hair flowed in all its glory at the Minnesota High School Hockey Tournament.

• A snooker player so unstoppable he's even caught the attention of Sally Rooney.

• Meet the Woolly Mouse. A major step in de-extinctifying the Woolly Mammoth.

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

Kieran Culkin dropped f-bombs at the Oscars last night. Hulu dropped the Oscars altogether. Here are some other, more small talk-worthy stories you might’ve missed.

For consideration …

• In da club
  Clubs are having a moment, aren’t they? Not the unce-unce kind, but a … different variety. For Gen-Z, it’s wellness clubs, like Hume in LA, where for $395 a month you can get lymphatic drainage massages, B12 shots, and sip rooftop matcha with fellow health-conscious ilk. Sounds wild. For older, shall we say slightly more well heeled boomers, there’s former Netflix CEO Reed Hasting’s Powder Mountain in Utah, which now offers a members-only enclave of two-thousand lift-serviced acres. The price tag for poaching powder without having to rub elbows with the hoi polloi? A minimum spend of $2 million on a plot of land, plus up to $100k in annual dues. Such gatekeeping tactics, while certainly under high scrutiny in the—already elitist and highly criticized—world of American skiing, might be welcome at Soho House, at least among members who believe its exclusivity and service standards have gone down since the British brand went public four years ago (ranks have swelled by 70 percent). Feuds over the club’s future are now being waged by two billionaires with differing opinions. It all sounds very “Boom Boom,” the new “aesthetic” fetishizing ‘80s greed and glamour (the term has been coined by the same trend forecaster who coined “vibe shift” and “normcore”). For those without a membership anywhere, there’s always Chez Fifi, the Upper East Side hotspot that, ostensibly, is bookable, even though we all know that securing a table is nigh impossible.
  

• Vance skis in jeans?
  Following a heated Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Vice President Vance headed to Vermont for a ski vacation with his family. His reception was less than sunny. Over a thousand protestors lined the streets and slopes, with signs saying “Vance skis in jeans” and “go ski in Russia.” No matter where you fall politically, it does seem like we live in strange, unserious times. So says The New Yorker, wondering if we’re stuck in a kind of perpetual state of desperate, gallows-light humor (it lacks the transgression of full-bodied gallows humor) as a way to cope these days. Or there’s the anti-fan, those who fixate on things they loathe and make a kind of perverse fan art mocking it, like the viral Johanne Sacrebleu, a short film that skewers, according to its creator, the stereotypical Emilia Pérez. And what’s up with tiny balconies? Curbed does the deep dive on New York’s ever-shrinking decks. If that sounds too serious, there are the thieves who stole a £2.8m gold toilet — their heist was undone by CCTV.
  

• Hire your own bodyguards
  In a world in which Fart Coin can rally, one might ask if, instead of the simulation theory, we all live inside a meme. That might explain Protector, a new app that aims to be “the Uber for guns.” Currently live in LA and NYC, the app allows you to hire your own security detail, and in the wake of the Luigi Mangione/United Healthcare CEO murder, it’s something the company is leaning into. Neom, the Saudi Arabian real estate development that will have things such as upside down skyscrapers and a 170-kilometer-long mirrored skyscraper, as well as be the size of a state or small country, wants five million tourists by 2030. Given that it’s now considered cool simply to line up for things, the coalescence of consumer and experience culture (to say nothing of hype culture) just might make such lofty projections a reality. For the armchair traveler, there’s Monster Hunter Wilds, the sixth installment in a Japanese video game series so rich and detailed it “can make it feel as if you are playing a fantastical version of a David Attenborough documentary.” Killing the “monsters” has also rendered players sympathetic, and so true to the natural world is the game that, say, after you’ve slayed a whale and moved on, the whale’s carcass “can sustain a local ecosystem for years.” Simulations, indeed.

Quicker hits …

• A paralyzed man got a chip put in his brain by Elon Musk and now he can move things with his mind.

• When did Mount Vesuvius actually erupt? There's some dispute.

• The world's biggest fast food chain is from China.

• Watch this touching moment of the late Gene Hackman on Inside the Actors Studio.

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

You’ve got breakfasts, lunches, and dinners scheduled for this week, I’ve got conversation starters. Let’s do this.

For consideration …

• Pride of the Yankees
  Maybe as a two-pronged consolation prize for extending non-winning manager Aaron Boone's contract through the 2027 season, the Bronx Bombers announced two bombshell policy changes last week. First, principal owner Hal Steinbrenner finally acknowledged that the team's no-facial-hair policy—first imposed in 1976 by his father, the late, legendary George Steinbrenner—was a smidge old-time-vibes for today's game, and dropped it. The NY Post called this "shocking" and, given how little anything ever changes at the Yankees, I agree. Second, from now on following losses at Yankee Stadium, Frank Sinatra's "Theme from New York, New York," will be replaced by other Sinatra tunes. Both of these policy changes are top-notch and I love this version of Hal, the all fire Yankee boss who will do absolutely whatever it takes to win. Except replace his manager.
  

• From Amazon Prime with Love
  Speaking of shaking up an institution, let’s turn to James Bond. For a year or more, fans have speculated what actor would slip into Daniel Craig’s tux as the next 007. Instead, late last week, siblings Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson—producers and stewards of the 60-year-old franchise—announced that they’d recast themselves. In a billion dollar deal that would make Dr. Evil weep with envy, Broccoli and Wilson have ceded complete creative control to Amazon MGM Studios. Of course such an announcement was met with shock and outrage, from the British public to former Bond girls. Craig was more diplomatic in his response, while Timothy Dalton, another former Bond, sounded less enthused. Others likened the deal to Disney’s disappointing Star Wars takeover. The silver lining, perhaps, is that we might be getting a lot more of the secret agent than just a movie every few years. One hopes that Amazon understands a Bond film’s fundamental premise: they’re hospitality movies. At any rate, I’m sure in some hollowed out volcano south of Seattle, Jeff Bezos is diabolically petting a white cat.
  

• London Calling
  In an effort to combat bots, some London restaurants are turning to a required minimum spend. Nothing knew, especially for any of us who’ve used certain apps to secure tables, but it is interesting to note that beyond bots, the other culprit that has triggered these required spends are influencers, perhaps the great scourge of our age. Many influencers do not a great restaurant guest make, especially those who “order just one dish and share a glass of wine to generate material for a post.” For those Londoners who want to escape the phone eats first culture of social media addiction, there’s now a club for the that … and a box. To access events organized by the “Offline Club,” Londoners pony up £9.50 and deposit their phone in a box then enter, say, a church to play board games and reconnect with the real world. “Freeing” is how some participants describe it. Or they could just go to a pub, like Mannions Prince Arthur. Old-man boozers, along with “grandad culture” at large, is apparently having a moment among young Brits.

Quicker hits …

• Need a primer on "lore," the Gen-Z narrative trend and word du jour? The WSJ's got you, boomer.

• How Swiss sneaker brand On is outrunning the competition.

• Timothée Chalamet wins SAG Award and reveals "I want to be one of the greats."

• America's Mikaela Shiffrin wins her 100th Alpine World Cup ski race.
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird

Welcome to Small Talk, an email I serve out every Monday morning exclusively to our Breakfast Club members in NYC and Charleston. The premise is simple: my top of mind topics for the week’s worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners ahead anytime some chatter is required. From now on, I’ll be sharing it with subscribers of The Supersonic as well. Enjoy, and crib topics as necessary.

I’m hearing that SNL 50 delivered last night. Eddie Murphy was back. Paul McCartney showed up. Sabrina performed with that other Paul, Simon that is. The real star is creator Lorne Michaels, though. Keeping something afloat, nay relevant, for 50 years, especially within the ever changing mores of comedy (it often doesn’t age well, does it?), is a feat to be admired. Read this New Yorker profile on Michaels, or the hilarious reply-all thread that resulted from an invite to his recent book event. As Graydon Carter put it, “Honestly, I have my own life. I cannot devote any more time to Lorne …”

I’m sure you all are thinking something similar here, so I’ll get to it with today’s Small Talk.

For consideration …

• Breakfast, but make it expensive
  First they came for our coffee, now the entire cost of breakfast is going up. Avian flu, and the subsequent slaughter of 159 million birds, has ratcheted egg prices up to nearly $5/dozen, a new record, while citrus greening is destroying Florida orange groves. OJ “has jumped nearly 90 percent since 2020.” And yet, breakfast at restaurants is bigger than ever. I love to see restaurants thriving, and part of that equation, especially at your high wattage spots, is the maître d’, the best of whom can make much of the magic happen. Our friend Chris Black spoke to five of the finest to get their secrets. For instance: at Tower Bar, in LA’s Sunset Tower, maître d’ Dimitri Dimitrova reveals that a special light switch was installed so that the light above Tom Ford’s table could be turned off, as per the famous fashion designer’s request. Less, shall we say, accommodating is—allegedly—Bon Appétit, who Wishbone Kitchen claims copied her own videos to create their new series, “Dinner with Friends.”
  

• In influencers we trust?
  TikTok this, Netflix that. Whatever. YouTube is king. CEO Neal Mohan revealed that we’re all collectively watching over a billion hours of YouTube a day. Even more interesting, and surprising, is that we’re consuming more YouTube on actual TVs rather than phones. Makes sense, I suppose. Everyone knows you stream on TV while simultaneously doomscrolling on your phone. Elsewhere in streaming, a new video platform has emerged, and it’s targeting independent filmmakers. Olyn likens itself to Shopify for filmmakers, in that it “leans on the power of social referrals to spread ‘à la carte’ streaming content.” Critics, creators, influencers etc. can recommend movies—like the new “Midas Man,” a biopic about Beatles manager Brian Epstein, which recently made its Olyn debut—and be more effective than a multi-million dollar marketing campaign or an algorithm. At least that’s what Olyn is banking on. As CEO/co-founder Ana Maria Jipa told TechCrunch, “a recommendation from someone you trust carries far more weight than a suggestion by an algorithm on a streaming platform.” Speaking of which, Gen-Z admit they’re more likely to trust an influencer rather than an expert like, say, a doctor or a scientist, because influencers meet them where they are: on their phones. It’s a gambit travel booking platform Klook is betting on. The company, which targets Millennial and Gen-Z travelers who use social to plan experience-driven trips, just raised $100 million, bumping its total to over $1 billion.
  

• It's called branding
  Of course not all influencers can be trusted. Take Belle Gibson, the Australian wellness influencer who claimed to have had brain cancer as a way to pedal her holistic cures. Gibson inspired the new Netflix series everyone is binging, "Apple Cider Vinegar." In better beverage news, prebiotic soda (yuuum) Olipop is now valued at $1.85 billion – not bad for a seven-year-old brand. Olipop's success story is a textbook example of excellent branding, something their rival Poppi, who (controversially) sent vending machines to influencers for $25k a pop, could learn something about. Then there’s milk. You think we’d be shunning it, and we are, unless it’s laced with protein. Fairlife is booming, and proving very expensive to its parent company, Coca-Cola. When the iconic soft drink maker purchased Fairlife in 2020 “they agreed on performance based payouts, originally projected to be $320M.” Fast forward five years, and thanks to the one-two punch of protein maxxers and the Ozempic craze, and Fairlife’s “price tag is now looking to be closer to $7.4B over the past 5 years, making a huge dent in Coca-Cola’s operating margin.”

Quicker hits …

• Everyone's favorite Kennedy, Jack Schlossberg, has quit all socials.

• How this show brought one of cinema's most iconic and beloved characters back from the dead [SPOILERS].

• There's a "new" Robert Frost poem.

• Can Switzerland's most old school ski resort survive a new glam hotel?
  

Enjoy your week.

BL

Ben Leventhal
Founder + CEO
Blackbird