I walked from Water Street to Houston yesterday afternoon. The streets were covered with the residue of Saturday night: broken glass, plastic water caps, bootleg Knicks merch, orange Birkin bags on Canal Street — and the employees at Los Angeles Apparel were busy re-merchandising the front of the store with Knicks-colored baby tees and shorts. Little kids wore oversize Brunson jerseys, groups of teenagers ate melting cups of frozen yogurt, and restaurant workers on Canal Street slowly started to rearrange outdoor dining setups. Fireworks haven’t stopped, at least as of last night in Windsor Terrace after the Puerto Rican Day parade. There are a million reasons to celebrate being a New Yorker.

My heart is so happy to wake up here every morning, especially today. I’m halfway through this essay by about how there might be a cultural vibe shift underway — good guys are winning, and sleazy, selfish, cruel assholes are losing.

Today’s newsletter includes: New Feed Me merch, Madeline Cash is coming back to New York (and has her next book concept), and Apollo chose Austin for their next office because…there are more private schools than in Florida.

This week on the Feed Me Job Board:

🍴 Senior Public Relations Manager at Mona Creative (clients include everyone from Alice Waters to Radio Bakery)

🎤 Associate Director at 150 Bond (a strategic counseling firm focused on C-suite executives)

✂️ Assistant Video Editor at The Cutting Room Floor

FEED ME JOB BOARD

• New Feed Me merch is launching in time for summer.

• Substack hired Alison Werner, formerly of Bulgari and MasterClass, as its new Head of Entertainment Partnerships.

• While Vanity Fair staff writer Clara Molot was working on this story about Alex Cooper and her Unwell network, she received the following threat: “If the Story so much as suggests any sexual impropriety on Mr. Kaplan’s part, I will make it my life’s mission to ensure Vanity Fair’s days are numbered.”

• Zohran spent Saturday night at Le Dive. I’m told he ordered water, olives, ricotta, and chocolate mousse (dream meal 🫒), and spent the night there during the whole second half of the game, through the win. wrote about what it felt like the morning after throwing the best party in New York City the night the Knicks won the title.

Read more

Two podcasts I enjoyed this week were ’s recent episode about effort and The Cutting Room Floor’s latest episode on envy. It’s illuminating and slightly jarring to hear creators (podcasters, editors, whatever you want to call these two women) pull back the curtain on their vulnerabilities in this complex and evolving industry. Topics discussed include hiring people to do hair and makeup in order to present well at parties and fashion shows, and the reactions peers have when you have a career win.

Today’s newsletter includes: 21 newsletter writers on how/if they take time off, the Goldman Sachs office celebrated the SpaceX IPO with moon-shaped macarons, and Jeff Bezos claims AI will lead to a golden age.

Feed Me’s next West Coast edition comes out next week. Have a story you’d like to be included? Reply to this email or text the Anonymous Tip Line: (646) 494-3916‬ 🏙️🌴☀️

No days off.

Around this time of year on Substack, you start to see phrases like “hiatus” and “vacation publishing plan” and “I’m taking some time offline to enjoy my life.” The newsletter economy has evolved to a place where the reader contract (particularly for paid newsletters) is premised on daily or near-daily sends. In some ways, the expectation of an uninterrupted flow of content is nothing new: readers presume newspapers, magazines, and sites of all kinds will produce and publish new material constantly. But most of those operations are built by teams of more than one. Whereas in the nascent newsletter economy, writers rarely have colleagues or contributors to sub in off the bench (Knicks fever running hot today). So how do these writers take time off and still satisfy the deal they’ve made with their readers? Do they even remember how to vacation? What happens if you take ten fingers off the keyboard to swim in the ocean? (For obvious reasons, these questions are of great interest to me as we approach the season when most normal people take at least some time off, and Europeans put up their OOO message all August.)

To indulge my curiosity (and help me think through my own relationship to Real Life), I asked 21 newsletter writers (most of whom send several times a week, if not daily) how and if they take time off for summer vacation, and what their plans are this summer. The responses painted a vivid picture of a corner of the media industry where audience appetite seems to be endless, and writers aren’t even thinking about requesting vacation days. After all, who would they even ask besides their readers themselves?

Respondents include: , , Matt Belloni, , , , Matt Levine, , Lachlan Cartwright, CJ Gustafson, , , , , Max Read, , , , , and on taking time off as a newsletter writer.

LENNY RACHITSKY (Lenny’s Newsletter)

Do you take time off when you go on summer vacation? If so, who manages the newsletter? If not, what is it like to always be online?

I don’t take a summer vacation. Meaning I don’t take large blocks of time off. What I’ve done over the years is introduce PTO for myself, where I can just take certain weeks off, which took a while for me to get comfortable with because people are paying a monthly fee for the newsletter. If I’m not delivering on what I think is worthwhile for that cost, I’ve always been afraid of taking too much time off. I found that no one really actually cares, so I’ve just kind of slowly added more and more opportunity for me to take weeks off. I just haven’t been able to take more than a couple weeks off in a row and not feel like things are going to start to fall apart.

Where are you going this summer?

Not going anywhere this summer. Just working, working, working.

CASEY LEWIS ()

Do you take time off when you go on summer vacation? If so, who manages the newsletter? If not, what is it like to always be online?

I always take a few days off around the July 4th holiday, because my birthday is the day after, and the feeds are quiet since everyone else is offline, too. I’d always rather take an afternoon here and there than a full week. The nice thing about what we do is that you can work from anywhere. I think I haven’t burned out (despite being constantly online) because I do a lot of my work outside, whether at a beach or in a backyard or on my balcony in Brooklyn. I recently found a lounge chair that has a sun shield at MoMA and is perfect for laptopping outdoors. It was expensive, but it’s boosted my productivity so much that it’s proven to be worth it.

Where are you going this summer?

I’m going to Cannes for work, though I plan to bring a swimsuit and sneak in a few hours at the beach. Later this summer, I’m doing a few roadtrips — from NYC to my hometown in Missouri, where I will lay by a pool and eat Tastee Freeze twist cones (crunch coat, if I’m lucky) and catch fireflies, and then, after that, NYC to Maine to visit my brother. I love swimming at Higgins Beach at the very end of August, when the ocean feels like bathwater.

MATT BELLONI (Puck’s What I’m Hearing)

Read more

Before we begin… I think it would be very wise for someone to invite me to Sun Valley. The invite list is a little light on women. I have new media insights and a great spirit that I think would make for a great addition to the trip. We could do a waterfall tour and re-enact the “we’re listening / we hear you” scene from Succession. I make up fun drinking games. Anyway.

Rickie De Sole was the belle of the pre-Knicks ball in New York City last night. Air Mail threw a party at Temple Bar to celebrate her new weekly newsletter, Dress Code. I had exactly two pigs in a blanket (which upon further review were wagyu beef — living!) and got one Dress Code box of matches. Those came in handy for my single sumptuous Marlboro 100 that I smoked between a quick dinner at the Blue Ribbon Sushi bar and my F train home to Brooklyn in time to see the Knicks win.

Today’s newsletter includes: Movies to go see this weekend (thank you, ), a new model for a menswear consignment store (in Brooklyn), and Alex Cooper’s Unwell expands (to Substack).

Posting and browsing the Feed Me Job Board is free. This week, there are listings from The Cutting Room Floor, L.A. Material, and Alice Mushrooms.

FEED ME JOB BOARD

Spend Friday night with Harmony Korine and air conditioning.

Stay Tuned is a Feed Me guest column about film and entertainment, written by Teddy Kim.

When I wrote my summer movie guide last month, every other comment was about John Early’s Maddie’s Secret. Almost every early screening is sold out ahead of its release next weekend, but there are a couple Q&A screenings with tickets still available at IFC.

Read more

Good afternoon, everyone.

I spent last night gently folding my new pieces from Emily Dawn Long, and placing them in my Cannes Lions packing pile that has taken over my desk. If you haven’t had the opportunity to enter Emily’s fantastic studio, you should find your way over there this summer. Or see her in Paris later this month. The whole shopping experience feels like a Lower East Side version of that bird scene in Cinderella.

Today’s newsletter includes: Noma is re-opening in Copenhagen, Greenwich Village is getting a new Japanese spa, Adam Friedland joins Spotify, and Mammoth Brands wants to acquire more CPG businesses.

I am about to put a series of words together that nobody has ever typed out before: Last week, I moderated a panel called Everything’s a Cafe Now at an all-day summit on 23rd Street called Oatly Aftertaste. The conversation came easily to me because it touched on many topics I regularly write about in this letter, like how people spend their time and money and how luxury businesses create more customer tiers. I’ve covered how businesses, from Alaia to Bilt, have invested in their hospitality strategies and I was excited to speak to three women who were experts on the matter.

Kate Diament (Montauk General Store), Sydney Wayser (Granada Echo Park), and Anjali Lewis (Air Mail Cafe) are all building businesses that check the box that even Starbucks wants in on: the third space. The third space does not run on mobile orders and customers wearing wired headphones while waiting for coffee. In it’s best form, a third space feels like a library or a town square or what most coffee shops were depicted as until 2013. People say Good morning, and maybe sit through several stages of the sun.

Benefits of building a coffee shop that acts as a third space (as discussed in our panel conversation) include:

• Eye contact with customers

• Customers holding the door for each other

• Hearing about the weather from customers

• Having a customer raise their hand to be your new manager

• Customers who decide they want to host events in your store

• Learning about new books from customers who are reading at the store for 4 hours

• Partnering with other local businesses

• Petting your customers’ dogs

Common thread here is obviously people. As we spoke last week, it became clear that while more fashion, tech, and finance brands attempt to reverse-engineer the feeling of community, consumers can still tell the difference. The upside to the business is the ability to merchandise (Montauk General Store and Granada sell everything from records to luxury skincare) and advertise to loyal customers (The Air Mail Cafe’s Anthropic takeover had lines around the block).

☎️ Want me to cover a story in the newsletter?

☎️ Have a tip for me?

☎️ Need to tell me the Feed Me team something?

Reply to this email or text the Anonymous Tip Line: (646) 494-3916‬

• A few weeks ago, I got a tip that the former New York Health and Racquet Club on 13th Street was being redeveloped into a bathhouse. We have an update: Japanese spa Furoya will be opening soon. It appears the spa will have cold plunges, saunas, and a Totonou. The spa has a sister property outside of Tokyo called Fukiya, which has pools and hotel rooms as well as a restaurant. A recent Reddit review said, “Stayed there one night and we regretted not staying longer. The service was impeccable and the food was fantastic. Took a train to the closest city, transferred to a local train, and just took a taxi to the ryokan.”

• Mammoth Brands (Harry’s, Flamingo, Coterie) is looking to acquire more CPG businesses. “We make money, which is great, and we have the opportunity to continue to invest in the brands in our portfolio,” Mammoth’s co-founder and co-CEO Jeff Raider told CNBC. If I were them, I’d be eyeing Hanni and maybe even Necessaire.

• St. George Pizza, a Maine pizza place that I have never been to and yet follow on Instagram, is opening a book store upstairs. Do any of you have restaurants/stores/businesses like this that you admire from afar and root for despite having no plans to patronize any time soon? Last year, Architectural Digest wrote about the couple (Megs Senk and George Korsnick) that owns St. George Pizza. George said, “It’s hard to explain how different it feels to make something that actually benefits people I see every day. Nearly everyone in town has probably eaten something I made.” Upstairs Books will be a used bookstore (with a heavy focus on cookbooks) located above the pizzeria. Anyone who donates books will get free ice cream. Maine, man…

• I am invested in the electricity updates from Pete’s Tavern.

• David Switzer (the restaurateur behind Rezdôra) bought the space that used to house former Greenwich Village restaurant Gotham Bar & Grill.

• The New Yorker hired two former Washington Post writers.

• McNally Jackson’s summer reading matrix is back.

• The Adam Friedland Show is now part of the Spotify/Ringer team — and his pop-up World Cup show, The Beautiful Pod, premieres today. Friedland will co-host the soccer show with Ringer Swiss Army Knife Chris Ryan (co-host of The Watch and The Rewatchables; frequent guest on The Bill Simmons Podcast and The Big Picture), and the duo will break down the tournament twice a week, with walk-on pundits. The soccer show will wrap up, along with the World Cup, in July, at which point The Adam Friedland Show will “relaunch with its third season and partner with Spotify for ad sales and distribution across all podcast platforms.”

• From the Feed Me Tip Line: “Noma just sent out a press release they are reopening August 5 under new leadership. ‘This August, we are coming home.’” I asked this reader to send screenshots of the email (from the restaurant’s in-house PR), which announced that René Redzepi is now the “creative director” and Pablo Soto will be the new Executive Head Chef. The tasting menu price will be 4,500 DKK or about $700 USD.

• Elijah Wood does NOT like the new Alamo Drafthouse ordering system. There are no more pencils or small pieces of paper – instead, now moviegoers scan a QR code to place in-theater orders. One X user responded: “Co-sign. I went recently and was shocked at how inefficient it was. I used to love Alamo precisely because it was so analog. The little pencils and order slips were part of the joy of the experience. Taking out my phone to order a re-fill? I’d rather just be thirsty.”

• How much could Gwyneth Paltrow possibly have been paid to promote a new luxury high-rise in Israel?

Subscribe now

I have good news for everyone who has been asking, Where did the watercress salad go from Haenyeo’s menu? I went last night with friends and asked if they still serve it. Our server said yes, “It’s an if you know, you know thing.”

Today’s newsletter includes: The Cutting Room Floor is hiring a director of partnerships, Glossier is looking for a new creative director, and New York has plenty of new IRL shopping experiences.

For our next Guest Lecture, we’re talking to hotelier Jeff Klein (Sunset Tower, San Vicente Bungalows). Paid readers can ask him anything about building a spectacular hotel guest experience, having his finger on the pulse of the members club boom, managing the needs of VIPs, and the New York vs. LA customer.

Read more

I hope you all had a nice weekend. After back-to-back weekends of East Coast roadtrip weddings (both of which served local ice cream instead of cake), I’m excited to stay put in the city for a few weeks. Where will you all be watching the game tonight?

Today’s newsletter includes: Chloe Malle on Vogue’s Substack strategy, Libertine gets a second life under a new name, Condé Nast sues a food media startup, and the banks are preparing for this week’s SpaceX IPO like it’s a five-year-old boy’s birthday party.

• New York Magazine is now distributing its Book Gossip newsletter on Substack. In the year and a half since launched, the newsletter has quickly become a reader favorite of New York Magazine’s dozens of newsletters. Over the last few months, intel from the newsletter included how many copies of Lindy West’s Adult Braces sold in its first three weeks (3,000) and who Emma Cline’s alleged new boyfriend is (Nathan Fielder). I think it will grow well on Substack, and I’m still confused why many traditional publications are hesitant to carry out the same experiment.

Read more

I’m writing this in the passenger seat on a drive that’s taken us from Brooklyn to Astoria (to pick up my sister) to the Kermit-green trees surrounding Guilford, VT (where we bought Whoopie pies from a 93-year-old woman), and will eventually wind up in Stowe, VT (where my cousin is getting married this weekend).

After dinner last night, I walked from Water Street to East Broadway and passed groups of young men in suits talking to girls in long white skirts at downtown bars. Everyone was spilled out onto the street at Fish Market and Bar Oliver and Time Again and Le Dive. If I was in New York right now, I’d get a giant spritz and an outdoor table at Il Posto Accanto. Try to follow all of their menu rules when ordering pasta.

Today’s newsletter includes: Anonymous Transit Expert on the first annual Cannonball Train, The Jane Hotel’s disco ball lives, Air Mail’s new fashion contributor, and a Hudson hotel is getting a new restaurant.

FEED ME JOB BOARD

A Million-Plus Excess Visitors Are Expected in New York in June. Can Our Transportation Infrastructure Keep Up?

Feed Me’s Anonymous Transit Expert writes a column called Stand Clear. He has to stay anonymous because he has a Real Job in a Real Office.

Summer is here in New York. The first annual Cannonball super-express left for Montauk two weeks ago (Thursdays and Fridays at 4:07PM, if you can get a seat). Lifeguards are back on the beaches, we’re allowed to wear white again, and the entire region is prepared, even steeled, for a back-to-back-to-back gauntlet of the NBA Finals (at MSG June 8th, June 10th, and potentially June 16th), the World Cup (eight total matches, including the Final, from June 13th to July 19th) and America250 (July 3rd to July 8th) that promise to anchor a record year of tourism visits and dollars spent.

Maybe I’m strange, but when I travel on leisure, often what sticks with me the longest is how getting around feels. I remember cutting the line and cramming into dusty slow Renfe service more than I remember the Barcelona Grand Prix, and I remember the ferry that gets me to Nantucket as much as I remember anything on the island (RIP Gazebo). New York is expecting a million excess visitors in June for the World Cup alone. Much of the impression they’ll take home will be how they got around. We would be wise to not light them on fire.

Some of the critical pieces of the Penn Station complex, all critical points of failure that, if something goes wrong, could impact the daily lives of tens of millions of people this summer:

• A Interlocking: the rail junction on the West side of the station that feels like you’re going through a Plinko board. Mostly 1970s vintage equipment. You could legally smoke inside an airplane in the ‘70s.

• North River Tunnels: Twin tunnels between New York City and New Jersey. In continuous service since 1910. The first transatlantic flight was in 1919. Slated for replacement by 2035 after three decades of talking, with the Federal portion of funds often the subject of impoundment shenanigans.

• The Portal Bridge: The busiest rail bridge in the Western Hemisphere. ~200k people a day. The original structure, which crosses the Hackensack River in New Jersey, was finished in 1910 during the Taft Administration and replaced this year at a cost of about $2 billion. To be demolished in 2028 at the age of 118.

Amtrak, responsible for the two most recent Penn Station debacles, is now facing sizable funding cuts in the proposed BUILD 250 act, replacing the expiring Infrastructure and Jobs Act, itself triage for a generation of deferred maintenance at the expense of Americans who don’t yet exist. We have all of the resources readily available to make getting around accessible and pleasant. We’re still missing the will. As I travel to celebrate 250 years of America, I’ll be crossing my fingers all the way, hoping that I’m around to remember getting to 300.

☎️ Want me to cover a story in the newsletter?

☎️ Have a tip for me?

☎️ Need to tell me the Feed Me team something?

Reply to this email or text the Anonymous Tip Line: (646) 494-3916‬

• The Jane Hotel’s iconic disco ball has found a new home in Montauk.

• Phoebe Bridgers announced her 2026 tour dates. The entire tour will be phone-free, which makes you wonder what the photo opp becomes – will there be a boost in merch sales? Will there be printed zines for fans to take home?

• A Brooklyn Heights newsletter called Pineapple Street launched this week.

• A Bed-Stuy and Clinton Hill newsletter called Bed-Stuy Stoop launched this week. The local news boom continues.

• I learned about Artists & Mothers from a dinner they hosted with Ulla Johnson this week. The New York fashion designer has previously worked on collections with women artists (the estates of Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner, as well as contemporary painter Shara Hughes) but this week she teamed up with the beloved art-world non-profit Artists & Mothers on what looked like a very special dinner in Soho. Artists & Mothers gives $25,000 childcare grants to artists with young kids. A smart and relatively low-lift way for a fashion brand to engage with the art world by going right to the center of it. Bonus points for Joana Avillez-designed merch.

• For less that $1 million, you can get a one-bedroom West Village apartment with a little stove that looks like it’s a walking piece of furniture from Beauty and the Beast. It’s a little Gay Victorian, and it’s a little hometown Irish bar but I like it. Benefits include being walking distance from Jefferson Market Garden, C.O. Bigelow, and living inside of a tapestry.

• The Paris Review is hiring an associate editor.

• Kallmeyer is hiring three interns.

• The Knicks’ Plaza33 watch party is back on for Game 2 tonight. Gates open at 7 p.m. The gathering outside Madison Square Garden was so lively on Wednesday that I literally thought the game was in New York. Thank you, New York Street Activity Permit Office, for lifting the ban that was put in place after six fans were arrested following a Knicks win in the Eastern Conference finals.

• Friend of the Letter, , has a sparkly new byline at Air Mail. 🪄

• This morning, I was notified about a new private aviation catering company called Cloud Club. They’re delivering everything from green juice and skincare kits to truffle service and gluten-free chicken nuggets directly to private jets. If anyone flies private and gets their hands on an order, please send photos.

• Robert Pattinson plans to send his daughter to Hogwarts when he shoots The Batman: Part II. “I’ve already looked and there’s a Harry Potter school,” by which he means a school for the actors on the HBO show, which shoots nearby, to attend. He told GQ he went to something similar when he filmed one of the original Harry Potter movies in the early ‘00s. “I was like, This is where you’re going to go to school. To Hogwarts. And I legitimately think that might actually be her first school.”

• Alyssa Vingan, former editor-in-chief of NYLON, has joined the Magasin team.

• Hudson’s Rivertown Lodge is opening a new restaurant called Pez.

• The Norwegian soccer team did a Viking photo shoot before departing for the World Cup. “I knew it might get some criticism, but I wanted to play on that sense of journey that goes back to the Vikings, as if they’re setting sail for America.”

• This year’s French Open showcased a new bonanza in luxury fashion x tennis collabs. Makes me wonder if it’s gonna get even bigger at Wimbledon and the US Open. Reports the FT: “Fashion has long separated itself from sport because they [the luxury brands] felt slightly uncomfortable about the taste level and were confused about how to place athletes in their world,” says Jo Taylor, a 17-year veteran of Nike who now runs the sports-fashion consultancy, Glow Inc. “Now, if you speak to anyone at LVMH or Kering, you see there’s been an awakening that the intersection of fashion and sport is the future of luxury.”

Subscribe now

Yesterday afternoon, around 5 p.m., I got a UPS delivery of David’s cream, set on dry ice. The ice cream sold out in 28 minutes earlier this week and I am reluctant to say it’s quite good.

Today’s newsletter include: and on the New York Tech Week Peptide Party, Cobble Hill appears to be getting its own Deuxmoi (⚠️⚠️⚠️), and Pace Gallery’s mass layoffs.

🌴 The next edition of Feed Me West Coast will be coming out next week. If you have any news, tips, openings, closings, or events that you think Feed Me readers should know about, reply to this email or hit my line: emily@readfeedme.com

The summer box office is scary.

Stay Tuned is a Feed Me guest column about film and entertainment, written by Teddy Kim.

I hope many of you were also at the Screen Slate Gala last night to witness Sarah Sherman roasting every filmmaker and distributor in attendance. As much as I love the repertory screenings in New York, the marquee these last past weeks firmly belongs to new releases. Not since E.T. came out in 1982 has a wide-release movie done what Obsession has, posting box office increases in its second and third weekends. I don’t think a horror movie has ever done it. For context, only 4% of movies even see a jump up for their second weekend and almost all of those happen during the end-of-year holidays.

Backrooms is expected to earn $30-37M this weekend after a very strong $81M opening last weekend. Crossing the $100M mark in less than a week makes it, already, A24’s biggest ever movie at the domestic box office, surpassing Marty Supreme. The back-to-back successes of the two movies—both debuts from very young directors who cut their teeth on YouTube—already have people projecting their dreams of a new, post-superhero era for the movies.

I saw and enjoyed both, although horror isn’t my favorite genre. I’ll write more on them soon (I’ll be writing shorter columns weekly this summer in addition to the longer pieces), but I think both are worth your time, and worth experiencing with other people in packed theaters.

In the meantime, here are some screenings in New York in the coming week that I’d highly encourage you to check out. I’m going to start sharing my recs on a weekly basis. If you make it to any, let me or Emily know what you think, we’d love to hear more about your in-theater experiences:

One New York Tech Week Party. Two party reports.

Last weekend, I was invited to a New York Tech Week event called Peptides: A 21st Century Soirée. While I would’ve loved to report on the scene for you, you’re in good hands: Evie Goodman and James Kettle both raised their hands to report on the event for Feed Me. Below are their stories.

Read more

This is Feed Me’s first Hamptons letter of the summer. Hopefully, after reading this, you will have a better understanding of Rory Satran’s new local media project, , as well as some solid options for where to watch the Knicks game tonight, and a reason to spend the weekend at the Sag Harbor Whaling Museum.

It’s a long letter so I suggest pulling up to the bar tonight 20 minutes before the game, ordering a beer, and reading about the gaps in the Hamptons media landscape.

Today’s letter also includes: A New York Magazine writer left the magazine for a job at Substack, Sean MacPherson’s new Montauk project, and maybe AI isn’t the biggest threat to your media job… maybe 16-year-old Billy Stern is.

Subscribe now

You can finally visit Montauk General Store.

Until three weeks ago, 25-year-old Kate Diament’s Montauk General Store had no physical presence. Despite sold-out sweatshirts, collaborations with Levain and Miami’s Grove Grocer, and lines for matcha at roving cafe pop-ups, there was never a brick and mortar home for the business.

“I saw it as a branding opportunity where people would come and take photos of a matcha latte, and then my logo would go everywhere. And then customers would say, ‘Oh, this logo is really cute. Let me also buy an $150 sweatshirt with the same logo on it,’” Kate told me last week. “And that’s how I built my business.”

When a 250-square-foot space in the heart of Montauk become available in January, Kate jumped on the opportunity to open a permanent general store. The store focuses on the lifeblood of all Gen-Z women, matcha, but also sells Shoppy Shop-esque CPG brands, brand merch, luxurious beachy beauty products, and local ceramics. I spoke to Kate, who grew up going to Montauk, about opening weekend numbers, her plans for partnerships out East, and the biggest surprises in her first few weeks of running the store.

How was opening weekend?

“The whole weekend was freaking insane. I didn’t have a second to actually process what was going on because we’ve never had a brick and mortar space. I was training a whole new staff starting on Thursday and then it was just everything all at once. The line didn’t stop once the whole weekend. There was not one second of downtime, which was crazy from nine to five, but all good things.”

Can you share any numbers?

“So we’re hand whisking, talking to every customer. We served over 300 matchas each day of opening weekend. There’s not one moment where there isn’t a matcha being made.”

Do you have any surprises on the shelves?

“We’re doing a floral program with Amber Waves, which I’m really excited about. I’m trying to work with as many local businesses as possible. We sell Jon and Vinny’s pancake mix, which you can’t buy anywhere else in the Hamptons.

We also are launching our own maple syrup line. The whole brand is based on nostalgia, and my grandparents live in Vermont. For my whole life, I was given very large mason jars filled of my grandma’s neighbor’s maple and we actually used that maple for the first two years of pop-ups and then I outgrew her supply. So now we’re working with a different family, but just someone who actually does it for a living and we’re launching our own maple syrup line. And then that maple is in our classic latte at the store. So it’s called just the classic Montauk General latte.”

Are you open to partnerships this summer?

“Always open to things. The summer is booked and busy, but there’s always a way to find room for something.”

Tell me about your logo.

“The logo that I have now is the same logo that my friend made for me in college. And it has held true. I’ve definitely thought about changing it in the last year or two. And then after the last six months, I’m like, ‘You know what? That’s just my identity.’ And it’s worked and I’m not getting rid of it.”

What’s been the biggest surprise in the last few weeks?

“Seeing the same people over and over again. There’s a girl that comes to every single pop-up in New York City. She’s the last person I’d ever expect to see out at my store in Montauk. I’ve never seen her in the Hamptons before and she took the train all the way out!”

The Hamptons are experiencing a media renaissance.

The two emerging beats du jour of media in 2026 appear to be local news and wealthy people. At the intersection of that venn diagram is the Hamptons. I grew up on Long Island, and my first film was about a private island off of East Hampton, and I write Feed Me, all of which is to say, this intersection interests me.

I’ve noticed an uptick of Hamptons coverage over the last year from traditional magazines and media outlets. This is not necessarily because they have a large audience there, but because what’s happening behind the hedges of the rich and privileged (who live just two hours away from New York City) scratches any reader’s itch. Last summer, New York Magazine released a Hamptons issue (I’ve heard they’re doing it again this year). CULTURED also released their first Hamptons issue. I don’t have data to back this up, but I think between the coverage of the rising prices of lobster rolls, and the competitive workout class scene, there has been increased coverage of the Hamptons from papers like WSJ and The New York Times.

Today, I interviewed three local editors who are invested in covering the Hamptons — 365 days a year — through new media projects:

• Rory Satran, who launched The Hamptons Chronicle on Substack last month. Rory previously spent almost a decade at the Wall Street Journal.

• Frances Sacks, an editor at EAST, The East Hampton Star’s magazine (which is now on Substack). Frances emailed me last week to let me know about the refresh of EAST for the magazine’s 10-year anniversary.

• Billy Stern, editor of Ditch Weekly. I first interviewed Billy when he launched Ditch Weekly in 2024 (he was in eighth grade). Now a high schooler at East Hampton High School, the paper is entering its third summer and launching its first podcast and looking for advertisers.

Rory Satran, The Hamptons Chronicle

What gap do you think exists in the current local news landscape in the Hamptons that you hope to fill?

“A lot of national outlets get mileage out of their Hamptons stories, but they’re often coming at it from an outsider’s perspective, and can veer sensationalist. Meanwhile, the local news outlets out here are wonderful—and I subscribe to all of them!—but tend to be more straightforward. I thought there was room for a local-news publication that brought mischief, personality, and style to topics like police dogs and oyster theft, but also galas and real estate scandals.”

Recently, you posted that you want readers to come hang out in person at coffee shops out east for “office hours” to swap intel. What do you hope to get out of those events?

“My grandfather ran local newspapers in northern Wisconsin, and I remember him holding court at the local Dairy Dan’s and supper club. People would hand him their business cards, or whisper some gossip. I think that’s a great way to operate as a journalist. I don’t want to run this from behind my computer.

The office hours at coffee shops are meant to be super casual ways of meeting people and hearing their ideas. It’s ok if no one comes at first. Last week, I sat at Carissa’s for four hours and met ten people and got so many story leads. I don’t have cards yet so I kept just writing my email on scrap paper.”

You worked at the Wall Street Journal as a reporter and columnist for years before pivoting toward consulting and freelance writing. What are some values and practices from a traditional newsroom that has helped you start The Hamptons Chronicle?

Read more

New York tends to snap a little more into place when is back in town. She tipped me off to a screening of Bob Fosse’s Star 80 at Roxy Cinema last night, which I attended with . and Lili Anolik hosted a conversation about Allie’s new book, Lovers XXX, afterwards. I only wrote down one line from Allie’s Q+A: “It’s hard to be a woman playing multiple roles.”

Star 80 is a suspenseful retelling of the murder of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten by her sleazeball husband, Paul Snider. When the movie ended, several women walked out disturbed, before Allie spoke about her new novel, which takes place in a similar universe: 1980s Los Angeles, specifically the porn industry in the Valley.

The 80s Los Angeles porn scene was very different than the industry being built online today. I listened to Allie answer questions about Lovers XXX and adult film, keeping in mind that today’s newsletter was about OnlyFans, and keeping in mind that OnlyFans was a main storyline of this season of Euphoria, and keeping in mind that many of the women hanging off of streamer Clavicular’s arm are OnlyFans creators. OnlyFans creators made $3.9 billion in 2021. This industry is ubiquitous, and the specifics of how the internet has changed adult film, monetization, and ownership are fascinating to me.

In today’s newsletter, I have an interview with both Leon Neyfakh, a journalist, and Gracie Canaan, a New York-based stand-up comedian and (relevant here) OnlyFans creator. Leon has been behind some great podcasts and audio series over the last decade, including Slow Burn (Watergate, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal), Fiasco (Bush v. Gore, Iran Contra), and Think Twice (Michael Jackson). Last month, they launched a new podcast about OnlyFans called OnlyFantasy.

Today’s newsletter also includes: Recho Omondi is the most interesting person in media this week, the new issue of i-D magazine is going for $500 on eBay, and how much would you pay for a bag of tea?

Posting and browsing the Feed Me Job Board is free. It’s used by hiring teams at Bumble, YouTube, and Happier Grocery.

FEED ME JOB BOARD

“To quote one of the first women I ever lusted after, I’m not that innocent!”

Last week, a friend of mine told me about a new, highly-produced podcast series about OnlyFans called OnlyFantasy. It’s co-hosted by Leon Neyfakh and Gracie Canaan. I had two immediate reactions once I started listening:

1. I thought I knew something about OnlyFans, but the show just kept surprising me—particularly in its portrait of the economy in the 2020s, and the need (/opportunity) for so many people to find new forms of work within the OnlyFans ecosystem. (More on that below.)

2. A well-produced podcast just feels so rare today and it was refreshing to listen to something that wasn’t just chattering between two people on mics.

After finishing the six-episode series this weekend, I had some questions for Leon and Gracie. We discuss AI use in OnlyFans, the barrier to entry to success, and the man who spent $43,915 on a single creator.

Leon, you come to this project with a great deal of innocence—there are many moments throughout the show when you sound blown away by a new revelation about the OnlyFans ecosystem, from the amounts of money spent by an individual user on an individual creator; the existence of chatters (that is, other people who are hired to talk to creators’ clients as though they are the creator); the dim view of humanity broadly (or American men more specifically) held by the “e-pimps” of OF, etc.

What was the single fact or figure that surprised you most — or that you found yourself repeating to friends while you were reporting the show?

Leon Neyfakh: To quote one of the first women I ever lusted after— I was in middle school in 1998 — I’m not that innocent! I saw some commenter say I was trying to act like I’d never seen porn before, which is not the case — what surprised me was the realization that OnlyFans is NOT a porn site, but more like… a paid messaging app, or if you prefer, an online strip club. Men aren’t just using it as a place to buy pictures and videos — they’re on there paying women to talk to them, flirt with them, and pretend they’re in a relationship with them. What I found shocking was that there are millions of people who are willing to pay for what is essentially an imaginary online girlfriend. (It’s not a peer-reviewed study or anything, but an analysis of ~59 million OF transactions found that messaging drives almost 70% of revenue on the platform.)

All that said, the one thing I told more friends about than anything else is that YouTuber Adam22 has a podcast with his wife Lena the Plug where each episode is a long, Marc Maron-style interview with a different OnlyFans model, and then at the end they all have sex. (The theme song of the podcast goes, “Plug Talk is the best, the only podcast where the hosts smash the guests.”) The interview portion of Plug Talk is available “wherever you get your podcasts,” as we say; if you want to see the other part you have to pay for it on OnlyFans. The future of podcasting? (I’m sad to report we never found a place for this in the actual show, but I’m hoping we can release it as a bonus episode.)

Gracie, you are a creator yourself, and you talk to many other creators throughout the show who describe the specific circumstances in their lives—debt; working multiple jobs; the pandemic; the cost of living; etc—that make joining OF seem like an obvious choice.

I think you say something like it got to a point where, when you heard what someone was making as a stripper, you decided it would be financially irresponsible for you not to become a stripper. Everyone can understand the need or the desire to pick up a better-paying side hustle, but what is it about OnlyFans that makes it so appealing for so many?

Read more

I’m back in the city after a New England weekend, including a wedding on Cape Cod. We stopped by Matunuck Oyster Bar on the drive, and they had my favorite category of add-on on the menu, the YOLO Bottle Add-On.

Today’s newsletter includes: An interview with Adam Iscoe about his new job at Notion, The West Village is getting a Negroni-bar-slash-slice-shop, a Caroline Calloway riddle, and Audrey Hobert’s latest brand collaboration.

☎️ Want me to cover a story in the newsletter?

☎️ Have a tip for me?

☎️ Need to tell me something?

Reply to this email or text the Anonymous Tip Line: (646) 494-3916‬

’s summer is off to a big start.

Last week, his story for The New York Times, about the average guys outsmarting Wall Street on prediction markets, was all over my newsfeed. On Wednesday, he produced a live conversation between Oscar Isaac, Bill Murray, and Lois Smith about loneliness and AI. This week, he’s starting a new job at Notion, the $11 billion tech company.

Adam’s new job is part of an ongoing wave of tech companies investing in their in-house storytelling and media teams. Earlier this year, OpenAI acquired tech news show TBPN, but they’d been investing in building a team with traditional media backgrounds for months before that.

To be clear, this isn’t new. Julia Kramer spent seven years at Condé Nast before working for Apple. Eva Chen spent nine years at Condé Nast before working for Instagram. Louisa Strauss spent seven years at Condé Nast before working at Apple. Campbell Brown spent over a decade at NBC News, and later led media partnerships at Meta. Sherwood News, the media arm of investing platform Robinhood, employs alums from The New York Times, Axios, and The Wall Street Journal.

I spoke to Adam today about clearing up the rumors (he’s not a tech bro) and why he thinks telling interesting stories within the walls of Notion is a worthwhile next move.

EMILY SUNDBERG: What exactly is your new job?

ADAM ISCOE: One way to describe the role is as a “member of the non-technical staff” at Notion, an artificial intelligence application company. Another is that I’ll be working on “special projects,” where one of my first big projects is helping people better understand what’s going on right now in A.I.-world (and the world more generally).

I don’t think many people really understand what’s going on with artificial intelligence. I think people are scared, and it makes sense. The world is changing—it’s changing faster than it’s ever changed before, and the pace of change is only increasing—but I don’t think we need to consign ourselves to doom. And I don’t think it helps when you have corporate executives proclaiming that A.I. will wipe out millions of white collar jobs, or that it will become difficult for a substantial part of the population to really contribute to the economy.

I’m not some crazy techno-optimist. At times, I find myself deeply, deeply skeptical about the promise of large language models. But I’m also a reporter, so I’m very committed to investigating what’s happening. I just want people to have a better sense of what’s going on. And I don’t think people understand what’s happening at the fabs or in the data centers or even at the labs—and I certainly don’t think people understand the application layer and what’s increasingly possible not just for banks and giant corporations but also for small businesses and the rest of us. I’m the first to admit: I’m new to all this, but my sense is, just like the photo camera and the telegraph and the telephone and the personal computer and the internet, artificial intelligence can be a good thing. I’m not interested in a vision of the economy in which everyone is forced into some kind of universal basic income because recursive self-improving A.I. has made them obsolete.

ES: You’ve had a nice career reporting for different publications. You wrote for the Times last week, you’ve contributed to The New Yorker for five years. Why are you choosing to pivot from a life of writing for legacy media to enmesh yourself within a tech company?

Read more

Good afternoon, everyone.

I’m driving to Cape Cod this weekend, and reading ’s Pool House in the passenger seat.

If you’ve been scrolling Substack Notes over the last 24 hours, then you’ve likely seen the venue for Substack’s Media Summit yesterday, including the indoor pool. The Asfour Guzy-designed townhouse on Lafayette Street is available to rent for $80k/month if you’re interested. Guzy also designed Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Blue Ribbon Sushi, and Misi in Brooklyn. Substack’s events team has champagne taste.

Today’s newsletter includes: a mysterious nicotine-sponsored portal has appeared at The Surf Lodge, ’s new newsletter, and Feed Me’s Anonymous Transit Expert on the most recent Penn Station plans.

Subscribe now

Taste mass hysteria.

On Wednesday, I hosted a conversation with my friend Emmett Shine, founder of Little Plains, at the Notion office in New York. (The last party Notion and I threw together resulted in multiple hangovers, so we dialed it down this time.) Ahead of the event, we asked attendees to submit questions for us, and then tried to weave our responses into the conversation. In addition to dozens of questions about using Notion, working for yourself, and how we think about using AI in the creative process (I’m not interested in watching AI-generated docs, or any AI-generated movies for that matter), we received a surprising amount of questions about taste. Here are some of them:

• If someone is early in their career and feels like they ‘don’t have taste yet,’ what would you have them do for 30 minutes a day for a year?

• How do you know if you have good taste?

• What’s the best way you’ve helped someone find their taste?

• How do you know when to trust your own taste versus listening to feedback from clients, coworkers, or the internet?

• As founders and creatives, how do you tell the difference between building for genuine long-term taste versus just responding to what feels culturally loud in the moment?

• As your businesses have grown, how have you balanced building systems and processes that scale without losing the originality and personal taste that made the work compelling in the first place?

• How do you keep building ambitious things without losing your sense of taste and self?

The people behind these questions worked at companies like Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, AWS, Mubi, Spotify, and Stripe. Not all of them work in creative-adjacent roles. Toward the end of the conversation, someone in the front row raised their hand and called what we were discussing a mass hysteria of taste.

Emmett defined taste as “experience with knowledge, which is vocabulary.” He referenced a recent clip of Diplo, where he says the best DJs in the world are in their 40s and 50s. Diplo talks about digging through record libraries and doing deep research in order to develop a sound (i.e., taste). “Our repertoire, our knowledge of music is what makes us good.” Emmett compared middle-aged DJs to London cab drivers, whose ability to navigate complicated city streets pre-GPS made them some of the most instinctual, knowledgeable drivers in the world. He encouraged the room to “find your favorite influencer’s favorite influencer’s favorite influencer,” emphasizing the importance of deep research and deep cuts and studying the greats when trying to develop this thing we call “taste.” I think another pattern here is studying artists who didn’t have the shortcuts we have today (Google Maps, Spotify-generated playlists, etc.)

I went to sleep that night thinking less about taste development, and more about why this question feels so top of mind for people. One conclusion I came to is that taste (discernment, judgement, whatever we want to call it) is an obvious edge that people have over AI. But tools like Notion, ChatGPT, and Claude are useless if you don’t have gut instinct. (Related reading: on HumanWashing.) Reading through these questions made me think that people across industries (from investors to creative directors) are catching on to that.

That said, I find Notion to be a helpful tool for the operational tasks that exist apart from my writing, like inbox management (I have it scan my emails every morning to check for inbound emails I haven’t responded to yet), organizing links, and keeping track of my calendar. When we asked the room who was already using Notion, over half of attendees raised their hands. Curious if (and how) any of you are using Notion. If you are thinking about it, start with their Think Together video to get a sense for their approach to integrating AI into their products.

And as far as the Taste Mass Hysteria goes… I think we’ll need another Feed Me event to keep unpacking this.

FEED ME JOB BOARD

• I went through the VELO portal at The Surf Lodge and turned into a 32-year-old wearing a Rolex Oyster Perpetual who is still on my parents’ phone plan. Last week, I wrote that Montauk’s buzziest bar, The Surf Lodge, signed Popeyes as their exclusive chicken tender for the summer. Whatever the hell that means. Last night, I learned that the nicotine pouch brand VELO is not only now served behind the bar, but also has some physical advertisements around the bar, including a portal-like structure that I guess you’re supposed to…. take pictures of your friends inside of? Walk through and turn into a whole new man? Surf Lodge vet Ruby Saracino was shocked enough to share the photos with me. I find the billboard-ification of bars and restaurants gross, but the VELO signs have turned this place into a 7-Eleven. Because of how crowded and photographed Hamptons businesses are, brands have seen everything from hotel mirrors at Gurney’s to frozen yogurt flavors at BuddhaBerry as opportunities to advertise themselves. Earlier this year, I wrote about a new diner in Sag Harbor called Babe’s that said, “In addition to our normal service, Babe’s will be hosting restaurants and creators from New York City and around the country for tasting menu style dinners during peak summer weekends.” Expect to see more brands showing up on your pancake menu.

• From the Feed Me Tip Line: “Hi hi! Not sure if this is Feed Me worthy but I live on Madison and 96th and BOTH Eli Zabars locations on Madison have been broken into in the last 30 days.” Per The Upper East Side, burglars stole $12K in cash this last time.

• Should we be crossing state lines for facials? Julia Fox called Club Aesthetics, a spa in New Jersey, her “happy place” on her Instagram Story yesterday. I will take a bus ride there next week and check it out.

• From Feed Me’s Anonymous Transit Expert: “Renderings of the plans by Penn Transformation Partners (a joint venture of developer Vornado and civil construction firms Halmar and Skanska) for a renewed New York Penn Station were released this week, and they look a lot like some past plans hit with a Trumpification beam. (My favorite idea for a Penn Station do-over remains Grand Penn, a modest proposal that would have required MSG to move across 7th Avenue.) Most importantly, the now-federally-led plan promises through-running of the NJT and LIRR trains that travel through the Western Hemisphere’s busiest station, reducing congestion, and the widening of some congested platforms via removal of some of MSG’s support columns. All of this is contingent on MSG still standing at the end of June, which seems unlikely if the Knicks win their first title since 1973—and New York’s first big-four sports championship since 2012.”

• Sarah Shapiro launched a new newsletter on Substack called Private Label. started writing a newsletter called Retail Diary on Substack in 2019. Retail Diary was acquired by Puck in 2024, where Sarah then wrote for Line Sheet (Lauren Sherman’s daily fashion newsletter). Last night, Sarah announced that she’d be returning to writing on Substack, this time with a new newsletter called Private Label, “the newsletter for everyone who loves to read and discuss retail, consumerism, fashion, beauty, shopping, and more.” I learned that Sarah is no longer working at Puck full-time. “I spent about a year and a half at Puck as a retail correspondent after they acquired Retail Diary, but ultimately, really missed directly interacting with my Substack audience,” Sarah told me last night. “So I’m back with Private Label. I’m getting granular on the brands hitting it big, the trends to look out for, store visits, and business decisions behind what merchandise ends up on the floor. I’m staying on as a Puck contributor, so you can still expect to see my byline on Line Sheet occasionally.”

• Of course you can buy dairy-, gluten-, and dye-free dot cakes in the Hamptons this weekend.

  

☎️ Have a tip for me? Want to tell me something? Respond to this email or text the Anonymous Tip Line: (646) 494-3916‬

It was fun seeing some of you this morning at Substack’s media summit. I spoke to my friend about what it’s been like to build over the last year. Hopefully we can all kick it again soon.

Last night I got dinner at Balthazar with some friends. I recommend ordering their spring pea ravioli before it leaves the menu.

Today’s newsletter includes: L.A. Material is expanding their newsroom, Peter Rahal on how David Protein’s new ice cream ended up on Bella Hadid’s yacht, another bathhouse comes to Greenwich Village, and the highs and lows of Glossier’s new hoodie launch.

☎️ Have a tip for me? Want to tell me something? Respond to this email or text the Anonymous Tip Line: (646) 494-3916‬

A Staten Island Ferry Bar Desire Unquenched

NYCDOT wants you to think you can buy a beer on the Staten Island Ferry. A Feed Me investigation by our Anonymous Transit Expert found that’s not always true. The Anonymous Transit Expert has to stay anonymous because he has a Real Job in a Real Office.

In the midst of New York’s first heat wave of the year, I snuck away from my desk at 5:30 on Tuesday on what should have been an easy assignment: purchase and enjoy one (1) beer on the Staten Island Ferry. I’d taken note of a New York Times article from late March that proclaimed the Staten Island Ferry bar open again for the first time since 2019, ending a seven-year dry spell—precipitated by a lapsed vendor contract and exacerbated by the Covid pandemic—and undoing one of the last remnants of 2020-induced disruption left in the transit system. After the Times ran with the Department of Transportation’s confident proclamation, replete with interviews with the poet laureate of Staten Island, Marguerite Maria Rivas, and employees of the beverage distributor that made it happen, I was genuinely excited to relax and take in the harbor on a fast and free sunset booze cruise.

Read more

Things got a bit disorganized and out of hand when I asked X users about the best bar to watch the Knicks playoffs at, but I’m not scared. I am committed to organizing the responses (and the ones you’ve emailed me about so far) for Monday’s newsletter.

Today’s newsletter includes: on how he’s balancing his new modeling career with being the best social media manager in media, poached an editor from WSJ, and Polymarket bets on Backrooms.

☎️ Have a tip for me? Want to tell me something? Respond to this email or text the Anonymous Tip Line: (646) 494-3916‬

A conversation with one of the Fired Four.

You might remember a video taken within the hallways of Condé Nast going viral last November — NewsGuild union members confronted Head of HR Stan Duncan over layoffs outside his 34th-floor 1WTC office. The next day, four union members were fired. This morning, I received an email from The NewsGuild of New York outlining the settlement that has been reached between the union and Condé Nast.

Under the terms of the settlement, three of the illegally fired workers — Alma Avalle (who worked at Bon Appétit), Ben Dewey (who worked at Condé Nast Entertainment) and Jasper Lo (who worked at The New Yorker) — were:

• Reinstated as employees in good standing

• Awarded significant financial settlements totaling more than $400K

• and provided letters of recommendation, with all disciplinary records expunged

So you’re probably asking: what about the fourth of the Fired Four, Wired’s Jake Lahut? At the time of the dismissal, he was a “probationary employee” and not yet covered under the contract’s Just Cause provisions. He is, however, protected by federal labor law “as a union member and the NewsGuild of New York has an active unfair labor practice charge on his behalf at the National Labor Relations Board.”

I spoke to Jake (who now freelances at Sherwood Media and New York Magazine) about the unusual position he is now in. Topics discussed include: Condé’s opaqueness around his “lesser” settlement, advice for young reporters, and what life has been like since November.

Emily Sundberg: You were fired in November after the viral clip of the four of you in the office was circulated. What has life been like since then?

Jake Lahut: “It’s been something between a very bad trip and a sabbatical. I’ve done some work I’m really proud of, like my scoopy Nancy Mace profile for NY Mag or this behind the scenes piece I had about Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for Transformer, an AI-focused newsletter out of the UK.

Unemployment is never a bad thing for achieving your fitness goals, either.”

ES: The company’s stated reason for your “lesser” settlement was your probationary status, but as your lawyer has pointed out, that doesn’t actually shield them under federal labor law (which is why this case is going to NLRB)… why do you think they drew the line at you specifically?

JL: “I genuinely have no clue, especially if the goal was to put this little PR nightmare behind them. But if I had to put my reporter hat on and use some deductive reasoning to come up with a thesis (before making some calls, of course), I would guess they are looking to hold the line on being able to fire probationary employees for any reason, or no reason at all.”

ES: Your resume includes many shapes and sizes of media companies (Wired, Columbia Journalism Review, The Daily Beast), and you’ve seen sides of the media industry that probably give you a good impression of where this industry might be headed.

What would you say to a young person trying to get a job as a political reporter out of college?

Read more

I’ve had a migraine since Sunday night. I’m thinking it might be some version of shell shock from the screams at a Sunday night screening of Obsession on Long Island.

For our next Guest Lecture, we’re talking to writer and producer Jeremy O. Harris. Today, paid readers can ask Jeremy anything about making Erupcja, working with friends, and life as a playwright.

Today’s letter includes: The Montauk dive bar that moved 2,500 beers despite the rain, Paige Lorenze won Memorial Day Weekend, WSJ’s new power and culture reporter has been named, and bi-borough relationships.

🏀🏀🏀🏀 What is the best bar to watch the Knicks finals*? Please respond to this email with your answer. I’ll publish the responses next week. LGK!!!

* Assuming you don’t want to buy a ticket. The price for the worst seat in MSG is running $3,688 right now.

• Despite the rain, Montauk’s Dive Bar Pizza moved 2,500 beers this weekend. I spoke to the slice-shop-slash-bar’s owner, Pir, for a rundown. “The people have found us again, thank the lord,” he told me this morning. Two summers ago, Dive Bar Pizza moved from Montauk Highway to Gosman’s Dock. “We are now the reliable spot for some of the best food out here, and a place where you don’t need to make a reservation (rare!) to have a good time. We also added pastas, a burger, calzones, and new salads to the menu so it was awesome to see those getting embraced by our regulars so quickly. The chicken parm pasta was a hit in particular.”

• Pir also shared an interesting case study that is about to begin at Boerum Hill slice shop, Alvo. “At Alvo, we originally thought no need for a slice display. Like Why is that important? People don’t need to see slices—no other type of food has that as such an important highlight. We recently folded and bought a slice display, because so many people were asking for it.” I will update you on the results after the case study is complete. I like studying the pizza industry in New York.

Read more

At the end of April, I asked my readers to respond to three brief questions about novels meant to be read during the summer. I wanted to hear about the absolute best summer novel reading experiences you’ve had in an effort to curate both a master list of recommendations as well as some beautiful vivid memories from your past summers of reading.

As always, you delivered in spades. For today’s letter, I’ve edited and packaged the responses into what I’m thinking of as a sort of optional summer-reading curriculum. Maybe you’ll be inspired to read others’ most-recommended novels. Or maybe you’ll be inspired to replicate the experiences in which they were read — the settings, circumstances, or life events that made those reading experiences so memorable that they pop to mind even many many years later. I hope people star it, keep it, mark it unread over and over, print it out, pass it forward, and discuss in the comments.

In total, I received 200+ responses*. Up top are some of the titles that received multiple votes—henceforth regarded as Feed Me’s Mount Rushmore of novels to be read during summer. I was surprised by how many recommendations were from the last 10 or so years. And also surprised that Lonesome Dove—a 41-year-old, 843-page epic Western, set in the mid-to-late 1870s—is the decisive “winner” among Feed Me readers. I’m interested in finding something from the backlist to start my summer reading off. I don’t know if I’m ready for Lonesome Dove quite yet, but maybe, on account of my trip to Cannes Lions in June, I’ll start with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is The Night. My friend Dan says it’s the only novel to read before a first trip to the French Riviera.

That’s enough of a windup. Happy Memorial Day. Happy Lonesome Dove Summer.

*Some books were excluded from the list because they were non-fiction.

Get 20% off for 1 year

Before we dive into the results, there was a shortlist of people whose summer reading appetites I was curious about. Below, Hannah Kingsley-Ma, , , Jake Bittle, , and share some memories of their favorite novels to be read during summer.

“The phrase Single Best Novel sends a shiver down my spine because I love a lot of books, well, not equally, but without a clear hierarchy, and having to identify a number one makes me wonder if I’ve ever read a book before. But I can tell you one of the best books I’ve read in the past few years was Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt.

I read it when I was home visiting my family in San Francisco, where they all still live and where I grew up, and I bought a copy at Green Apple Books, which was the bookstore of my childhood. I remember finishing it lying down in a patch of grass on a rare sunny summer day in Golden Gate Park, maybe stealing some quiet moments away from my sweet nephews, and just being blown away by this book’s clear-eyed, earth-shattering wisdom, the way it wrote into both the urgency and difficulty of certain strains of familial love.” - Hannah Kingsley-Ma

“A lifetime ago, I spent the summer of my senior year going on a high school trip to Europe. It was one of those slogs where students got to see 30 countries in 29 days for 28 dollars. It was a uniquely miserable experience that exposed me to some of the worst parts of Europe’s remarkable cities.

My best memory from that trip may have been spending nights inside our battered hostels, listening to shouts of “Yankee, Go Home!” while reading Stephen King’s post-apocalyptic novel The Stand.

The 1978 novel (eerily enough) starts with a weaponized flu that escapes a government lab and kills most of the world’s population. King masterfully describes the horrors of the unfolding pandemic, while taking readers on a journey that starts inside a Lincoln Tunnel hellscape and ends with a final showdown between good and evil on the Las Vegas strip.

In those 800 or so pages between, the characters move across an unforgiving landscape while survivors pass time by recalling the indescribable thrill of a Yankees-Red Sox game, as well as other uniquely American moments. The Stand is a book packed with magical pop culture references that made this American kid miss home even more. - Joe Scarborough

“Far and away my best summer reading ever was The Three-Body Problem sci-fi series by Cixin Liu. I started them in 2019 on a wonderful vacation with a friend on the Turkish island of Bozcaada, near the ancient city of Troy, and was completely sucked in, transported, obsessed. Then I panicked and tried to slow down because I needed them to last through my subsequent trip, which I was dreading (through no fault of the great nation of Albania). I managed to stretch out the third volume, which explodes the premise on a log scale, to two whole days on the “Albanian riviera” and when I finished, brief euphoria was trailed by an unspeakable comedown. I wished for days, maybe weeks, afterward for a nonviolent amnesia-inducing event so I could read them again for the first time. I don’t think science is there yet, but if the experience awaits you, I am envious!” - Krithika Varagur

“I read Gwendoline Riley’s First Love during a London heatwave. I read most of it on Hampstead Heath, under an oak tree, with my head resting on the thigh of the man I was seeing at the time. It was ninety-one degrees. I read him anything brutal, scatological, cruel—like an exorcism. I finished it at one a.m. that night, alone, in a bath that had gone cold.” - Molly Pepper Steemson

“I immediately thought of reading Lives of the Saints by Nancy Lemann poolside at the author’s own summer house, as the guest of a house-sitter a few years ago. I’m sure the timing was calculated, but I remember it as kismet, and the book itself had this lively, drunk-feeling melancholy that was perfect for the season and seclusion. By another coincidence, the book was reissued just last month, I think, with a great intro by Geoff Dyer.” - Natasha Stagg

“I’m not sure it’s the best novel I’ve ever read during the summer—I read Proust during the summer—but the one that comes to mind is Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler. A lot of people confuse summer books with beach books, but they aren’t the same. A summer book has to be something you can read in massive daylong chunks, like at the beach, but it should also be something you can dip into while waiting for someone to meet you at dinner and then gush about to them when they show up.

This book is a classic of Canadian literature about a family of Jewish bootleggers in Montreal. It has the joy and ambition of both Dickens and García Márquez, it’s long but not too long, and no one has ever read it, all of which makes it a perfect summer book even though it takes place in some quite cold locales. I read my parents’ copy for the first time as an adolescent. I found another copy on a stoop in the summer of 2020 and read it for the second time then, right around the time that New York opened fake outdoor dining, in a lot of little bursts at makeshift tables on Canal Street or Vanderbilt Avenue, and then in gorgeous draughts at my wife’s family’s home in Door County, Wisconsin. I can recall specific pages that I read while sitting inside a screened-in porch at that home listening to a sultry thunderstorm explode all over the house.” - Jake Bittle

And now for the main event…

The most-recommended summer novels (and memories associated with them) from Feed Me readers.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (8 mentions)

“It was August, summer was winding down. I was on NJ Transit coming back from Spring Lake, reading the last 150 pages of Lonesome Dove. It was a weekday, I was supposed to be working on the train, but I couldn’t put the book down. I had spent the past four days physically at the Jersey Shore, but spiritually on a cattle drive to Montana. 800 pages later, as the train pulled into Penn Station, I finished the book, crying. I had work to do, summer was over.” - Natalie

“One of the best memories: taking long walks with my dad on the Cape and talking about the book all summer. He had watched the series in the late ‘80s but not read the book. As I reached the end, I got copies for him and my husband - they both read it, so I kept half-living in the book’s world into late summer and fall, even after I finished it.” - M., art historian

“Reading on lunch breaks, after work with a cocktail in hand in pub gardens, and by lamplight into the wee hours of the morning to keep reading— I couldn’t read it fast enough, whilst simultaneously never wanting it to end.” - Bella

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (5 mentions)

“Staying up late with room service and instead of the usual cable TV, My Brilliant Friend!” - Nicole, Film Executive

The Guest by Emma Cline (5 mentions)

“I was in Nantucket, surrounded by a bunch of multimillion-dollar homes and gleaming green lawns. I felt like an outsider there—like the protagonist of the book in the Hamptons. I couldn’t put it down and read it compulsively in the shade of a big oak tree on my boyfriend’s sister’s lawn.” - Maja, Social Media Specialist

“I was at Pacifica Beach with one of my best friends on an unusually hot summer day (well hot at least for SF) eating crunchwrap supremes from the Taco Bell Cantina that overlooked the dunes. I’d just told her in the car ride over that I was moving to LA. I was dreading this talk for weeks, knowing that telling her meant it was really happening. So we sat there on the sandy towel with the sun in our face and the waves lapping ahead of us and read our books, both not knowing the next time we’d do this again but content that we’d always have this day and this moment.” - Margaret, Communications

Normal People by Sally Rooney (4 mentions)

“I remember reading it while on the subway on a hot day coming home from work. I was so engrossed in the story, so lusty yet anxiety-inducing. I remember feeling like I was so clearly in a different world than everyone else on the train car. Like no one could comprehend the magic I was reading before me. It was unlike any story, any writing I’d read before. I’ve been obsessed with Sally Rooney ever since.” - Makena, PR Consultant

“I read it in London where it was THE book of the summer. Everyone had it open on the Tube or at the parks. I felt like I was part of a wider collective. It was a fun feeling.” - Anonymous

Summer Sisters by Judy Blume (4 mentions)

“I was on a plane. I distinctly remember wondering about Martha’s Vineyard and being jealous that I had never been there (still haven’t!).” - Caryn, stay at home parent, volunteer extraordinaire

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett (4 mentions)

“Sitting in my hammock in the backyard in a relatively new city during golden hour. Feeling completely lost and unhappy with where I was at but trying to trust the plan. This book felt like coming home. My friend described it as a feeling she just wanted to stay in for a while. Summery, sweet, and immersive.” - Sophia, Social Media & Marketing Consultant

“I read it in the park near my house, the afternoon summer sun shining. Last summer, my mother was diagnosed with cancer for the fourth time, this book tells the story of women as individuals and mothers in a beautiful way.” - Elizabeth

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith (3 mentions)

“I had actually just moved to Brooklyn and was starting a job in a few weeks time; it was such gorgeous writing and it made me feel connected to my new home in unexpected ways (and also sometimes funny ways...my apartment is in Brooklyn and on a long walk after reading I saw the ‘A Shoe Grows in Brooklyn’ storefront.” - Claire

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (3 mentions)

“On the Santa Barbara beach reading after talking to a seal.” - PE Analyst

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (3 mentions)

“Read it, loved it, moved by it. Couldn’t shut up about it so my boyfriend nominated it for his book club, and they all loved it, obviously. Deep enough for an emotional pull, small enough to take to the beach. Need more late night wine and oysters in my life.” - Eliza, strategist

“I read it in an afternoon at my friend’s family’s summer house in the Hamptons. She was studying for the LSAT and I, left to my own devices, found the book on her aunt’s bookshelf. I sat by the water and was consumed by it. I think the contrast between the light, peaceful environment, and how lucky I felt to be there, and the darkness and shame Baldwin describes so beautifully, made it feel very intense. I haven’t gotten it out of my head since.” - Rachel, journalist

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (3 mentions)

“I cracked it open on a lazy evening at my family’s lake house in Michigan in July. I could not look away. It was the perfect setting to read a mystery set at a summer camp - I was surrounded by woods and a small lake outside, completely quiet other than cicadas chirping, complete darkness outside the windows. Everyone went to bed and I stayed up late reading under a plaid blanket and a reading lamp. I felt so immersed — the suspenseful and uneasy moments were so heightened.” - Anonymous

The Secret History by Donna Tartt (3 mentions)

“I read it while crashing on a twin air mattress in my friend’s living room in Portland, Oregon. I can still feel it deflating beneath me. I kept my camera off during Zooms so I could read through them and brought it to the socially distanced park with a blanket and a 6-pack of sour beers. I rambled about every detail to the friend I was living with who truly did not give a fuck but kindly put up with me anyway.” - MacKinley, writer

“On a divorced dad vacation in Florida (where you have one week in June with him and the rest of the summer is with your mom).” - Anonymous

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (3 mentions)

“I was on Platis Yialos in Sifnos (bury me in Sifnos!!!). 4 pm. End of season. Locals abound. Breezy. Sun beaming, but in a soft 4 pm - 6 pm kind of way. I had just swam the length of the beach and was wrapped in my sarong that I use as a towel. Hair dripping down my back. Feet up on a teeny tiny white plastic chair. A cold beer. A small plate of chips. A gorgeous book in hand. The feeling of unencumbered joy.

Sun soaked and tipsy, I finished the book right there on the beach and felt a staggering sense of loss when I turned the final page. If my memory serves me right, I clutched the book to my chest and stared out at the ocean. Perhaps grief? Love is worth the loss, they say… I think this is one of my happiest, most content moments I’ve ever experienced?” - Lauren, Workplace Experience Manager

Books that received 2 mentions:

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

“Anna Karenina was in the background (foreground, even) of so many of my summer memories last year. She was with me on the beach, in the evening sun on my balcony, on trains and ferries, on park benches. Summer calls for epic literature; a thoroughly developed, densely packed universe you can immerse yourself in for an extended period of time. A book that makes you reach for it over your phone when you’re lazing in the sun, complicated characters to absentmindedly daydream (and worry!) about when going about real-life tasks. Only drawback is its weight, but I found this to be an effective forcing function: If you lug around a heavy book while out and about, you’re more likely to read it, so the lugging around doesn’t feel wasted.” - Emily, freelance editor/translator

Circe by Madeline Miller

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I read it on the beach in Newport after touring Rosecliff, the mansion used in the Robert Redford version of the movie (the best). I like reading it at the end of the summer, which is when the book ends, after covering the promise and hope of things like summer and love and the American Dream. I think it gets better the more you read it, too (especially if it isn’t for a class!)” - Alissa, editor

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

“I remember quitting weed. I rung in my newfound freedom in college (and coping with the 2016 election) by smoking weed more or less every day. The book helped me immensely in quitting.” - Sayer

Middlemarch by George Eliot

“I went to Maine by myself for eight days in early September, ostensibly to work on my book, but more to escape the aftermath of a breakup and various entanglements. I turned off my phone and email for that whole time, which now seems kind of crazy. And I basically just drove to little towns around where I was staying, went hiking in Acadia, ate lobster, sat on beaches where it was already getting too cold to swim, and read Middlemarch. I was totally engrossed in it. I remember one afternoon sitting at the top of a hike in Acadia reading about Dorothea and thinking, damn, does it get better than this? I was sort of as miserable and as happy as I’ve been!” - Sophie, writer

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

“Alone at the Rockaways with a beach juice from Rippers in hand. Sun out in full force. Skin completely salted over from intermittent dunks in the ocean. Pure bliss.” - Emily, Publicity Director at Penguin Random House

The Shards by Bret Easton Ellis

“I was chilling poolside at the Edition South Beach devouring the savage story. The only thing that pulled my nose out of that book for a few seconds on that trip was my now-husband asking me to marry him.” — Ray, Bartender/Stand Up Comic

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

“I was 19, and in-between my sophomore and junior year at UCLA, I wanted to study abroad in Europe like the rest of the cool kids, I couldn’t afford to, I had never left the United States, so I set up an Au Pair gig in the south of Spain. I begged my grandma to buy me a one-way flight, she did, I went, it was magical and it was lonely. I lived with a local family, I spoke zero Spanish before moving, I knew no one, I brought 3 books. I knew Hemingway was good for the summertime, easy words, easy sentences, lots of self reflection. I read it while lying by the community pool while the children played and while lying on the beach of the Mediterranean coves. This novel reminds you that you’re fine, it reminds you that everyone is a little fucked up, and it’s great motivation to get out and get into some trouble while you’re in Spain.” - Nina, Fintech

Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“At school - summer term in Ann Arbor - with the boyfriend I was madly in love with at the time. Sitting on the porch of an old rickety rental house.” - Dani, stay at home mom

Single-mention books

(94* additional books that a reader called their best summer novel)

2666 by Roberto Bolaño

“I remember being on the subway on my way to my Midtown summer internship reading 20 pages every day and walking into the office with this brick of a book in my hands.” - Brunella, reporter

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

The Ambassadors by Henry James

American Pastoral by Philip Roth

American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez

Another Country by James Baldwin

“I remember reading it on the subway, feeling super sticky and sweaty, and sobbing uncontrollably, rolling into the West 4th Street station on the F because it is so emotionally devastating.” - Anonymous

The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş

Arcadia by Lauren Groff

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

Atonement by Ian McEwan

Before We Were Strangers by Renée Carlino

Big Swiss by Jen Beagin

“I was in Palma, Mallorca on a day bed with the doors open over looking Esglèsia de Sant Francesc. The breeze was breezing, the church bells were belling, and my lover was cooking dinner while I lay reading Big Swiss. I was so swept up in it that when dinner was ready I felt like when parents rip their children away from electronics and they have this dazed lost in another world look about them. Can’t quite return to present moment. I tried to return, but the language was not returning to me. A fight ensued, both of us fleeing to separate ends of the small apartment. I extended an olive branch. It was Big Swiss, like a snake wrapped around my brain. He wasn’t interested so I left to cool off over a walk and rosé in the heat of a Mallorcan night. Sitting alone at Cappuccino, an Italian man offered me a cigarette and another glass of rosé. After showing me pictures of his children he asked for my number. I vengefully gave it to him before he predictably leaned in for a kiss. Which I denied! Obviously! Fighting the clock, my feet scurried me across the slick cobblestones. Returning to the apartment, he told me I smelled of smoke. We always fight in Mallorca.” - Chloe

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors

Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman

Cassandra at the Wedding by Dorothy Baker

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

The Changeling by Joy Williams

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh

Democracy by Joan Didion

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

Dune by Frank Herbert

Emma by Jane Austen

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez

“I brought the novel to Portugal with me — a friend and I were attending another friend’s wedding in Mafra. There are two photos of me with it on the beach in Ericeira: In one, I’m reading while standing up at the edge of the water, in another I’m sleeping with the novel split open over my face.” - Erica, writer

Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Foster Dade Explores the Cosmos by Nash Jenkins

Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

“The book was a high school graduation gift from my (now late) uncle. I remember receiving it and knowing nothing about it, but he told me the book had a huge impact on his life. I remember cracking open the book in the middle of the summer before freshman year of college, and the speeches (especially the closing one) being unlike anything I’ve ever read. The book is one of the most impactful I’ve read, both because of who I got it from, and because the characters and behaviors are universally observable.” - Anonymous, investor

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

The Gloaming by Melanie Finn

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

The Great Chimera by M. Karagatsis

Greta and Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly

“It was recommended to me by a British boy I went out with while on vacation, really adding to the summer of it all. The chaotic family and general humor of the book made me laugh aloud in bed back at home. The great rec from someone I shared a fleeting connection with reminded me what summer is all about: lovely moments are enough.” - Hannah, journalist

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows

Happy Hour by Marlowe Granados

Happy Place by Emily Henry

Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

The Hidden Girl and Other Stories by Ken Liu

Holes by Louis Sachar

“My dad read this to my brother and I when it came out (I was ~7 and my brother was ~5). We lived in the desert beneath the Red Mountain in Ivins, Utah with an un-landscaped backyard and a giant desert field behind that. That whole summer we dug holes in the backyard, measuring them with our shovels like they do in the books. My brother even started eating raw onions haha. I reread the book last summer for the first time since and it held up perfectly. 5 stars for a perfectly heartfelt and innocent short summer read.” - Kaleb

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

I’ll Take Manhattan by Judith Krantz

Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich

Laughter in the Dark by Vladimir Nabokov

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst

The Magus by John Fowles

Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

Marlena by Julie Buntin

Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

Milk Teeth by Jessica Andrews

“I started devouring it at a UES wine bar on a sweltering Friday night around sunset. Door and windows open, really crisp rosé with fat drops of condensation, beautiful prose about a hot Barcelona summer. Andrews writes many rich descriptions of food and wine, so it paired well with the setting. A man started flirting with me, but I scared him off when I said my favorite books were all about 20-something-year-old women struggling. He left me alone and I dove back in, poring over shame and pleasure and everything in between.” - Claire, journalist

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

The Pisces by Melissa Broder

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

“One hot July weekend, I was riding Metro North to visit my parents when an older gentleman saw what I was reading, leaned over, and said: ‘It takes patience to get through that one. But it’s incredible, isn’t it?’ I had been living inside of the book for weeks—it was a pleasurable toil, but a very solitary one—and felt a shimmer of magic to be connecting with a stranger over it, somewhere along the Connecticut shoreline, nearly a century and a half after it was first published.” - Anna, novelist

Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow

The Return Journey by Maeve Binchy

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

“I remember finishing this book in late August as the summer was winding down. I was staying at a friend's house in Southampton and we stopped by her grandpa’s house for a drink before dinner. For context, the main character in Rules of Civility is a Katherine who loves gin. I too am a Katherine who loves gin. Anyways, we walked into his backyard where he and his group of older gentleman friends were sitting at a table by the pool. They handed us a a gin on the rocks. Here I was on one of the last nights of summer drinking gin by the pool with a group of men from a different generation. It felt like kismet.” - Katherine

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead

“I was still child-free and renting a place in the Hamptons up by the bay with my wife and another couple. Picked it up at Sag Harbor Books (in Sag Harbor, where else) without knowing anything about it, which is a rarity for me, thinking it would be fun to read a book about Sag Harbor while in Sag Harbor, and it ended up being one of the most moving and well-written books I’ve ever read. It’s also hilarious, and the perfect encapsulation of a time and place. Colson Whitehead has since become one of my favorite authors.” - Anonymous

Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

The Stranger by Albert Camus

“Fueling my existential dread on a Cycladic beach.” - Kevin, architect

Summer Crossing by Truman Capote

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

These Summer Storms by Sarah MacLean

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki

Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

“On an air conditioned subway car commuting home on the hottest day of the year.” - Martin

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

“Oh, I love this question. I was in Cape Cod (Yarmouth / Harwich area) for the first time with my boyfriend. After eating crab egg benedicts on the beach (with minimal seagull interruption), I only put the book down to reapply sunscreen or tell my boyfriend about a funny plot point. I remember feeling so grateful for having the ingredients for a perfect day at my fingertips: a gorgeous breakfast and a Jennifer Egan page turner all while on the beach with my favorite person.” - Deanna, Communications Director

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

The Women by Kristin Hannah

The World According to Garp by John Irving

One more thing:

Today’s newsletter includes: A deep-dive into Loonen water, a Brooklyn bakery is opening in Manhattan, and the Pope is delivering his thoughts on AI next week.

Holy water.

In this life, I believe we get one or two chances at being influenced by a water bottle brand. For some people, that might’ve been Jennifer Aniston’s Smartwater ads. For others, it might’ve been the reliable, freezing relief of a Poland Spring water bottle during field day in middle school. For me, it was the magenta hibiscus and tropical leaves (which have since been removed) on my mom’s Fiji water bottle. I remember her putting it on the counter after yoga, whatever incense her Long Island Bikram studio was burning still lingering on it. It was a foreign object, a totem of water from some place I’d never been.

Idealizing water seems childish to me now. I am not above Deer Park or Aquafina or Jaden Smith’s boxed water. There are certain high horses I’ve never been called to climb, branded water being one of them. The water fountain at my YMCA hits as hard as the Acqua Panna in Casa Cipriani’s gym — they both bring me great joy and relief. And probably microdoses of microplastics.

When glass Loonen water bottles started showing up on my feed a few months ago, I barely paid attention. There are dozens of bottled water brands at Erewhon that don’t break through to my life in New York. But then Sweetgreen co-founder Nic Jammet posted about it (his brother, Patrick, is listed as an advisor to the company). And then Tinx posted about it. And Leandra Medine. And Lisa Rinna. And Cazzie David. And then I started seeing women on the subway carrying them.

I finally visited the Loonen site, which leans heavily into the fact that their water is bottled in glass (vs. plastic) and is third-party tested. One graphic on the site boasts that Loonen is a great “base for supplements.” A pack of six bottles of Loonen is $35. After scrolling through the FAQs and raving Amazon reviews, I asked my Instagram followers why everyone was treating Loonen as holy water, and received a range of responses:

• “It’s free and looks nice.”

• “I’m convinced it’s a psyop with a really extensive gifting list.”

• “I’m convinced it’s a Meadow Lane MAHA psyop.”

• “They sent me some when they launched. It’s….water. Tastes good, for water.”

• “Olipop head of growth.”

• “It’s actually really good and never touches plastic the entire process.”

• “Finally someone is asking this.”

• “It’s literally just fine.”

• “Packaging is A+, the mouth opening on the bottle is ideal, not too fizzy, and great founder story.”

• “It’s the new Mountain Valley.”

• “The founder Clara is the real deal.”

Read more

I had a lunch meeting at Sant Ambroeus (Brookfield) today, and I think it was the first time I’d ever had their fries. Very hot and crunchy (vs. crispy), which makes me think they batter them. Which you can’t say for many lunchtime fries. As I was walking out of the restaurant, I noticed many tables of suits also had bowls of the fries. Maybe I’m late to the game.

Today’s newsletter includes: is opening a store in New York (and hiring a baker), a former Eric Adams staffer donated to Spencer Pratt’s mayoral campaign, and 831 Books is getting into the movie business.

Have a tip for me? Want to tell me something? Respond to this email or reach out to emily@readfeedme.com

• From the Feed Me Tip Line: “Dockers, beloved seaside restaurant in Quogue, had a really serious fire yesterday. Inside totally wrecked. Tough timing right before MDW.” They’ll be closed this weekend.

Read more

Yesterday, at the age of 31, I braved the elements in an Arc’teryx jacket for the first time. I’d been tracking the weather in Orkney while I was in Edinburgh a few days ago, and while it looked mild by Scotland standards, I knew I’d be exploring the windy cliffs, which can become wet and cold because of the maritime climate. I went to an outdoor store called Tiso in Edinburgh where I caved and bought a black Arc’teryx Beta Jacket, which I rolled up and stuck in my suitcase. My question is, how did I live this long not knowing how well these jackets worked? Outside of my jacket, hail beat against the wet grass and wind blew against the cliffs, but inside of my jacket, under my cashmere sweater, I was not only warm but dry.

This is a letter of recommendation (un-paid, un-affiliate linked) to invest in the technology that is Arc’teryx. And an apology to my husband who offered me his from the closet three times as I walked out the door to head to JFK last Friday. And an admission that I discovered for myself what many of you already know: Outdoor stores are goated and it’s an outright tragedy that the REI on Houston is closing.

Today’s newsletter includes: Rockaway Beach is getting a members’ club, W’s latest hire spent 11 years at Condé Nast, shorting Surf Lodge, and the newsletters replacing HGTV.

Read more

The biggest news story here in Orkland, an archipelago off of Scotland where I’ve been for a few days, is that a young walrus named Magnus has been commuting between Norway and Scotland. After a several-week swim from Orkney to Norway, he laid on a dock in the sun, looking tired. Experts have said the young male is likely to be “just exploring.” There’s a lesson here.

I’m also closely tracking the war between the native Orkney voles (they were selling handmade tweed Orkney voles in town) and the invasive stoats. Orkney Native Wildlife Project told the BBC that the stoats’ invasion was “deeply disappointing.” Redwall up in here. That’s enough Orkney news for today.

As the temperature approaches 93° in New York this morning, your evening plans might be feeling like “remember to check in on friend with summer house” or “try to get a table in the back garden of Frog.” But you can also resist those urges, and instead head to a place where you’ll get air conditioning, a giant cold drink, and walk out as a better person: the movies. If your hair is already blown out and your Resy notification already came through, have no fear. There are plenty of hot nights and summer movies to look forward to, curated here by Teddy Kim in his Stay Tuned column today.

Today’s newsletter includes: an update on the LIRR strike, Bloomberg’s new book newsletter, on summer movies, and a16z’s latest New Media hire.

Subscribe

Teddy Kim’s summer movie guide.

Stay Tuned is a guest column on Feed Me written by .

The box office is still down, but the movie calendar has finally settled back into a familiar rhythm after years of post-Covid weirdness. The end of summer is for the premieres of prestige films at festivals like Venice, Telluride, and Toronto—films that roll out through the fall as the weather gets colder, and that you can enjoy with your friends and family over the winter holidays. The first months of the new year make up the awards catch-up season, with more casual viewers finally getting around to the Oscar nominees, alongside a couple promising horror features and movies that studios are dumping.

We hear about interesting films at Sundance, but it’s hard to keep track of if or when those films will be released. Same goes for the spring’s Cannes Film Festival, the 2026 edition of which started last week and wraps on Saturday. But between Memorial and Labor Day, there is the vast thicket of summer to navigate, where, without a clear Barbenheimer phenomenon, it’s a bit confusing to make out what you have to go see in theaters.

These days, people who still go to the theaters watch 3-4 new movies a year, generously once a quarter. So that’s the framework I have in mind when I highlight one movie I think everyone should go see, like Eddington last summer and The Drama this spring. Looking ahead at the calendar, there are a couple titles that stand out, with strong representation from sci-fi and horror. Here are my top picks for what’ll be worth a trip to the theater over the next four months:

• (May 29) Backrooms — Kane Parsons started making analog horror videos on YouTube about an infinite liminal space called the Backrooms as a teenager. Now at the ripe age of 20, he’s out with his feature debut, adapting his own videos on the same Internet lore. I can’t remember how many times people optioned the rights to Reddit posts from r/NoSleep when I was at Netflix, all for nothing. The Internet lore-to-feature-film pipeline doesn’t have a great track record. 2018’s Slender Man was a modest commercial success but got buried with an 8% score on Rotten Tomatoes. 2020’s Zola, based on a viral Twitter thread, got better reviews but failed to leave much of a mark at the box office for A24. They have another at bat with Backrooms, and if the movie is anywhere near as good as its trailer, I think it’ll be a hit.

Read more