Coffee in My Coffee

Third-wave coffee is out. Don’t take it from me, though—take it from the data scientists at Inspire Brands.

Over the past couple of months, while walking from the train to work, I’ve noticed a striking ad campaign on the glass door of a Dunkin’ Donuts on Cobble Hll’s Court Street. Highlighting a roast concocted specially for the winter months, it proudly proclaims that Dunkin’ Midnight is OUR DARKEST BREW YET. The imagery is at once inviting and ominous, showing a blue aura emitted from a styrofoam cup that communicates not just an experiment, but a mandate.

Dive a little deeper into the promotional copy and you’ll get a plain view of Dunkin’s rationale:

It’s official—dark roast is having a moment. Coffee lovers are looking for some seriously rich taste profiles, and to that we say, come on over to the dark side… Intrigued by Dunkin’ Midnight but not quite sure what the hype around dark roast coffee is all about? Think of it this way: roasting coffee is like toasting a marshmallow. If you’re patient, you can toast the marshmallow until it’s dark and deliciously caramelized without burning it.

Whether this analogy resonates with you or not, it comes in striking contrast to the norms of today’s specialty scene, where light roasts reign supreme. In fact, more often than not the very fact that you’re drinking an ultra-light arabica can practically remain unsaid.

So why, exactly, are light roasts now the de facto standard? Part of that lies in the fact that, to many aficionados, they let tasting notes come through while darker roasts obscure them. Take, for instance, Sey Coffee, a fine cafe and roastery that supplies many other cool shops around New York City. One of their Colombian offerings produces a cup that is “extremely clean, tasting of ripe coffee cherry, with excellent sweetness and clarity, and a lovely effervescent acidity.” It’s a far cry from burnt marshmallows, that much we can be sure of.

It’s worth clarifying that, historically, I’m a guy who likes spending no small portion of his disposable income on fancy coffee. But a few years of drinking cups of coffee in southern Vietnam—some at world-class cafes in Saigon, others served up by streetside vendors whose ultra-strong concoctions are heavily mediated by condensed milk—helped open my eyes to the many faces of robusta. Often associated with bitterness and unflattering descriptors (burnt, rubbery, or sometimes burnt-rubbery), robusta, which is grown across Southeast Asia, India, and West Africa, has in decades past been used in instant coffees or as ‘filler’ in mixed blends. But that doesn’t mean robusta can’t be great.

In 2020 I went to a cupping session hosted by Vietnamese coffee expert and robusta evangelist Will Frith. His roastery in Ho Chi Minh City has all sorts of scientific-looking devices and produces amazing coffee; but Frith and others, like Nguyen Coffee Supply, are at the forefront of a movement to redefine robusta and get it a seat at the specialty coffee table.

This endeavor is not without its challenges, both in logistics and public opinion at large. “It’s like, where do you put this thing that’s always been automatically perceived as low-quality when you’re trying to create the high-quality version?” Frith said.

Most people, it turns out, don’t necessarily seek out a daily cup of joe with esoteric tasting notes (I, for one, save those for the weekend.) According to recent polling, 49% of Americans indicated that they prefer medium roast on the whole. Maybe the team behind Dunkin’ Midnight is on to something after all and is, in their own full-bodied way, priming us for a future that welcomes coffee of all roasts and regions. I’ll pair it with a jelly-filled donut, as they suggest, and report back.

Mid-Winter Delights

I was blessed and cursed to grow up somewhere that gave winter a lot of utility. That’s simply because, if you were too short to do any damage on the basketball squad, there was really only one sensible thing to do: go skiing. But these days in grey Brooklyn—where there’s no place to strap up the bindings and indoor tennis is largely reserved for people in a different tax bracket than me—I’ve got a little more time to read coffee table books and listen to music. No complaints, all things considered!

Here are a couple of things that are especially good for a sunny interlude.

…

Can you imagine a more annoying phrase than, “I’ve been really into Italian library music lately?” Maybe not—but I’m going to say it anyway.

The genre dubbed ‘library’ is made up of instrumental cuts “written directly for radio, television or ad placement, in this case (Italian) the lush, string-laden, funk- and jazz-informed arrangements of classically trained Italian composers.” These records were produced at a particularly fervent moment; with expensive equipment, very few creative constraints, and a heavy dose of inspiration from the likes of Chuck Berry and Miles Davis mixed with their own orchestral training, European composers of the mid-70’s truly let loose. All that for a bubble gum ad that may have never seen the light of day (or, of course, a number of Spaghetti Westerns that did).

There are a few names you might know from their work in major films, like Ennio Morricone and Piero Umiliani, but there are also a lot of mysterious arrangers about whom little is known. It makes sense, given that Italian Library records sometimes saw as few as 200 pressings. Thankfully there’s something of a revival happening, and even a few modern practitioners like Sven Wunder.

As Finn Cohen described in the New York Times, the spirit of Italian library also reflects the time in which it was created. “The late 1960s until the early 1980s were full of turmoil between left-wing, far-right and neo-fascist protesters in Italy…While these composers were locked away in studios, the fantastical sounds they made were like portals to a different world.” And dreamy they are—sometimes whimsical, even a little silly, yet routinely offering up glimmering moments that stop and make you look around in awe and appreciation.

That’s a nice thing, and reason enough to recommend Piano Fender Blues by Piero Umiliani in particular.

…

A couple of years ago, my pal Mike’s girlfriend turned up to a round of birthday drinks with a gift for me. It was a tote with cute writing and a small cat that said, “I love Haruki Murakami.” Either someone clued her in or she had good intuition, but, either way, she was relieved when I asked how she’d known it to be true.

People identify with Murakami’s writing for all sorts of reasons, but I’m most drawn to his representations of all things banal. In fact, I’m not really into his other-worldly stuff (Kafka on the Shore felt like a slog to me). A story like “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey” is more my speed, mainly because there are nice descriptions of drinking beer, hanging out in spas, and exchanging pleasantries with animals. I have a secret theory that this one is inspired by the James Taylor album Gorilla, but we can save that for another time.

Anyway, that bag is especially relevant given the Murakami collection I’ve lately been enjoying, a set of short essays about his t-shirt collection called Murakami T: The T-Shirts I Love. The book is about as simple as it sounds, featuring entries on the author’s t-shirts that somehow or another intersect with his passions of running, jazz records, bookstores, Americana, and much else. The joy of it, too, comes from him pontificating on the meaning of random t-shirts bearing the names of Google Analytics, universities he didn’t attend, and condiment conglomerates—plus shirts that’ll never be worn, like one that says ‘Keep calm and read Murakami.”

A favorite moment comes from a chapter on t-shirts with bears on them. Picking up a T that reads LIFE’S BETTER IN VENTURA, CA, he wonders,

I haven’t been there yet, but according to an informational pamphlet I read it sounds pretty nice—warm year-round, with little rain, and lots of gorgeous beaches. But will going there really improve your life? That much, I can’t say.

Tough Love

The 2014 film “Whiplash” elicited a lot of strong reactions. Richard Brody called it “a grotesque and ludicrous caricature” of jazz, but broader aversion to the flick is usually due to other reasons. (For what it’s worth, I was a pretty mediocre second-string drummer in the high school jazz band, and my knuckles never came close to bleeding. Maybe I wasn’t trying hard enough). More commonly, audiences can’t stand seeing the conservatory conductor, played by J.K. Simmons, berate and humiliate his student. The underlying sentiment—passion being squashed by a rigid, abusive mentor practicing an antiquated form of adversarial instruction—proved highly relatable for people in all sorts of disciplines.

One person that explicitly stated he’ll never watch “Whiplash” is Ryan Neil, who took on one of the most intense apprenticeships on earth. Neil went to Japan to study the art of bonsai cultivation and styling under the tutelage of Masahiko Kimura, dubbed “the magician of bonsai.” There, he worked twelve-plus hours every day while being subjected to the unsparing criticism of his teacher. From rote tasks like watering twelve hundred trees thrice daily to the more delicate duties of wiring rare specimens’ branches into place, any misstep was conspicuously noted.

At one point, the master bonsai artist looked at a piece of Neil’s work and said, “I’ve never even seen anyone do something this terrible. I would have to try to do something this terrible. Why are you so stupid?”

Of course, this leadership style has been around for centuries—and, for better or worse, has yielded some strong results.

Take Carl Zeiss, for instance, whose brand (and real) name adorns high-quality lenses on cameras, eyeglasses, microscopes, binoculars, and more. If you’d gone to work for Zeiss at his original workshop in Jena, Germany around 1865, you’d have been expected to meet his standards of manufacturing precision or pay the price. It’s said that at the conclusion of each day, Zeiss personally destroyed lackluster microscopes with the workshop anvil. Also, according to the company's Wikipedia entry, the hours were long (11 and 3/4 hours per shift), new recruits were interviewed extensively over a glass of wine at the Zeiss estate (?), the employee healthcare policy was ahead of its time, and morale was high. Who’s to say what was really going on there.

In any case, today there are studies to prove that being nice and offering constructive criticism is better for everyone in the long run than yelling or pulverizing works in progress. In three separate experiments, psychologist R.A. Baron found that destructive criticism left students “less likely to handle disagreements through collaboration or compromise” and led them to set lower long-term goals while reporting lower self-efficacy.

So what do we tell the Zeisses and Kimuras of the world? Changing your ways doesn’t happen overnight, after all. Yet with heightened operational efficiency on the line, stern bosses might just have to be more pleasant or get left in the dust. What I’m really asking here is this: Will they, too, turn to AI in lieu of empathy training seminars?

ChatGPT, the new publicly-available chatbot by research lab OpenAI, is getting all sorts of attention for its ability to spin up convincing pieces of text in seconds. From taglines to funny poems, courteous emails, and college sophomore-level book reports, this thing is pretty impressive. It can’t do everything, but by editing prompts carefully you can get some convincing copy out of it (or at least a useful starting point when your brain is in a fog).

These days, most feedback is doled out virtually. But that doesn’t mean striking the right tone is easy; in fact, tools like Slack can make it even harder. As Emma Goldberg recently described in the New York Times, despite the proliferation of emojis in corporate communications, it’s still pretty easy to tell when someone is less than pleased. And for ultra-old-school bosses, all that informality might make things even harder.

So let’s see what ChatGPT can really do.

The jury’s still out on if robotic assessments like this could really inspire someone to improve; plus, I don’t really want a chatbot telling me what to do. For now, maybe it serves as a different litmus test altogether: If a machine can outdo you in thoughtfulness, perhaps you’d better re-think that critique.

Actionable Insights

Ryuichi Sakamoto walks into a restaurant in Murray Hill (stop me if you’ve heard this one before…).

By and large, we’re living in an age of unprecedented control regarding external stimuli. Part of that is due simply to advancements in technology—central air, silent electric cars, smart alarms in lieu of roosters—but many of us also spend far fewer hours per week confronting surroundings that make us say, “I wouldn’t do it that way.” At the end of 2021, around 30 million Americans worked from home full-time. That number is only likely to increase as more and more companies opt for remote-first arrangements, and polling from Gallup shows that 94% of workers prefer to have a remote setup in the future.

All that being said, I don’t think it’s too controversial a sentiment to note that most of life’s most inspiring events occur outside the home. So how should one express dissatisfaction when it comes to inevitable shortcomings in ambiance? Sure, you could write a strongly-worded Google review; you might submit snarky responses to an anonymous survey; you may even demand to speak to a manager. But maybe the best course of action is to get down to the details and consider how you’d really change things. Instead of seething in silence, why not try building out your own vibe par excellence?

Of course, that’s easier said than done.

Italian inventor and radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi found that wireless waves weren’t affected by the Earth’s curvature, thus setting the stage for an audio revolution—and bad restaurant playlists.

One person who knows a lot about getting that intangible feeling right is Arman Naféei. His official title, in fact, is Directeur D’Ambiance at the Chateau Marmont (a role he pursues in addition to other ventures, like his delightful internet radio show ARE WE ON AIR?).

During a recent interview, he described three crucial elements to ensure a room is on the right track: sound, lighting, and temperature. “That’s what really influences a space,” Naféei outlined. “It can make it incredible or really terrible.” Interestingly, some places that should be seriously attuned to making you feel comfortable swing and miss on these benchmarks. Changing rooms, he said, tend to have awful lighting, weird echo-y sounds, and “usually they’re also very cold.”

Getting the vibe right is big business, after all. Sure, most of us have that one cafe where we know the tunes will always be on point. But what about the big dogs who achieve economies of scale and face new challenges of quality control? Well, they might call up a company called Vibenomics, whose mission is to “help retail businesses control a vibe that will drive their business economics.” The firm’s research-backed analyses center on the bottom-line benefits of outsourcing your audio strategy—their words, not mine—and unlocking the true potential of what can best be described as a captive audience (read: better vibe = way more $$$$).

If all that sends a shiver down your spine, it’s ok. But somebody’s gotta do it, and avant-garde selectors of critical acclaim don’t come cheap—unless you make food they really, really like.

That brings us back to Mr. Sakamoto, upscale dining on 39th Street, and music that was “so bad. so bad.” When the celebrated Japanese composer and trailblazer of experimental ambient records finally decided the sub-par soundtrack was interfering with meals at his favorite restaurant, Kaijitsu, he took swift action. And rather than telling the maître d' to just turn it down or flip to a different radio station, he offered an alternative.

“I love your food, I respect you and I love this restaurant, but I hate the music,” he wrote to them. “Who chose this? Whose decision of mixing this terrible roundup? Let me do it.” Harsh words, no doubt. Sakamoto followed through, though, delivering new selections to match not just the food, but what he saw as key details of the space as a whole (furniture texture, paint hues). The result was a 47-track playlist featuring Nicolas Jaar, Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans deep cuts, Aphex Twin, and much more. It’s a good listen, even if you’re not dining on Michelin-starred Shojin cuisine.

Of course, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s curatorial prowess precedes itself. Suffice to say, I don’t have the stones to pull off a move like this. Not yet, at least. But if I ever work up the courage to voice concerns about my gym’s ear-splitting audio situation, I at least won’t turn up at the front desk empty-handed.

In Season

My introduction to the mangosteen wasn’t quite as dramatic as that of Henry Adams. But it was still pretty satisfying.

In 1891, having journeyed from Boston to Oceania by sea, the writer and historian pushed onward to the Indonesian island of Java. What greeted him initially was a feeling of disappointment. Looking around, he was unimpressed with the architecture, lamented an absence of antiquities, and saw no art to his liking. This detour, Adams feared, was shaping up to be a wash; even the first fruit he sampled, the ever-divisive durian, left him reeling.

Then came a sweet, juicy epiphany.

“The mangosteen quite repays a week, or perhaps ten days, of seasickness,” he wrote, falling deeper under the fruit’s trance with each passing bite. “It is like a Japanese purple-lacquered fig, with a ball of white sherbet inside. From a sense of duty, I have eaten as many as I could… To me, the mango is prose, while the mangosteen is poetry.”

He likely wasn't the first (and certainly wasn’t the last) to be shocked and delighted by the strange fruit. Forty years later the botanist David Fairchild also made bold proclamations about the mangosteen’s powers. No stranger to exotic crops—Fairchild would go on to introduce pistachios, nectarines, dates, and more to the US—he raved: “It is so delicate that it melts in the mouth like ice cream. The flavor is quite indescribably delicious. There is nothing to mar the perfection of this fruit.”

It really is that good. What’s especially strange, however, is that nobody really knows where it came from. What we’re left with is approximations (probably either Malaysia or the Sunda Islands of Indonesia) and occasionally-fruitful attempts to harvest its trees abroad. So when I was presented with a rather unassuming plastic bag of deep red delicacies, I was confused. Then I was embarrassed because I hadn’t the faintest idea of how to consume what lay in my hands. Let me set the scene.

A couple of years ago, I was playing tennis semi-regularly with a few faculty members from the Ho Chi Minh University of Economics and Law. I got to know them through my friend Khoi, who had once been a student of theirs. Now a banker, he took part in their matches some Tuesdays and Thursdays and kindly invited me. This was both a generous offer and a logistical win; matchplay took place on a single, hidden court next to Lê Văn Tám park. This secretive court was manned by many unsmiling parking dudes in light blue uniforms and a mean-looking dog. But it was a five-minute walk from my apartment, and I never could’ve booked it myself.

Dr. Dung, the oldest of the bunch, was my de facto doubles partner. The most communication that generally took place was me sprinting back to retrieve a lob, then him shouting “Sam! Good!” Another guy smoked cigarettes between sets, which was very cool. A cat kept running across the baseline between points. One especially sweaty evening, there were just three of us; as the youngest player present by a couple dozen years, I was assigned to do the running and play 1-on-2. No stress, but for whatever reason, they decided it would be fair that the doubles alleys remain in play for both sides.

After an hour, I was drained and sweating to a degree that I believe may be illegal in some jurisdictions. Then, during a lull, Dr. Dung pulled out several bushels of lychee and mangosteen and motioned for me to join him on the bench.

I went for the lychees first, which were shockingly refreshing in their raw form (my past experience with the lychee came primarily from overpriced cocktails that I ordered to make myself seem normal on dates (if it’s my choice, I’m always opting for a beer)). After observing and failing to understand what lay beneath the hard exterior of the mangosteen, the rest of the guys mercifully handed me a ready-to-eat specimen. And much like David Fairchild and Henry Adams before him, I was an addict at first bite. Before long, I probably looked like one of those old Gatorade commercials where the basketball players are sweating sport drink, but in this case it was the drippings from a perfect tropical fruit.

For a few months thereafter, anytime I passed a street vendor pushing an overflowing cart I stopped to procure a few handfuls. It was all I could do to make up for lost time. As summer comes to a close on a different continent, I’m still trying to recreate that high.

Toward Dereliction

Recently I visited my homeland, the great state of Michigan, for the first time in about four years. There was summer sun, glassy lake water, food cooked over an open flame, and precious time with dear friends. I have many more notes, but what’s likely to be etched in my mind for a while is something very different.

Dotting what seemed like every other road on both the east and west sides of the state were pristine, under-utilized tennis courts. Among the many things I took for granted growing up, I now realize this has to be the most profound. Sure, America’s reputation surrounding public goods might not be stellar, but much of this nation got the tennis court equation right.

So why, exactly, am I making a fuss over this rather mundane piece of the Midwestern landscape? Since diving back into the sport that dominated most of my youth a few years back, I’ve been situated in less than ideal tennis locales. I began playing again with intention in Saigon; the sun was intense and court time, while very affordable, was usually to be found at overgrown clubs hidden within the city or huge apartment complexes on the outskirts of town. Once, I trekked 45 minutes on my tiny motorbike to get some hitting on a single court built on top of a parking garage, then got caught in a tropical downpour after three rallies. In hindsight, I still think it was worth it.

Good courts. District 3, Saigon

Good courts. District 7, Saigon

Generally, I found the booking of courts to be especially challenging. Online reservations weren’t really a thing, and even as my Vietnamese language skills improved, phone conversations were dicey. As such, results were mixed. Eventually, I found a rock-solid group of guys who played in a loose collective called the Lan Anh Tennis Club, where the hitting was good and the post-match beers were excellent. I miss it to this day.

…

In William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days, he describes the draw of surfing as having enough power to derail the rest of life’s endeavors. “The biggest locals can be the biggest derelicts,” a respected San Franciscan big wave ripper reported. “It’s such a great sport it corrupts people.”

I don’t think many people would apply this sentiment to the activity of tennis. In Brooklyn, though, there’s an argument to be made.

According to research from the International Tennis Federation, there are 578,000 tennis courts on planet Earth, of which nearly 215,000 are in the United States. When you break it down, that comes out to .65 court per 1,000 people (compare that to France, which puts up .48 by the same measure; again, we’re punching above our weight).

Of course, these aren’t arranged based on population density—and, as much as it pains me to admit it, this is for good reason. New York City real estate is valuable, both in dollar cost and opportunity cost. The space it takes to put up three tennis courts could be a basketball court or a small football pitch, each of which can accommodate two to three times the players. So yeah, I get it! Anyway…

Lately, on days I crave a match, I show up at Ft. Greene Park around 6:40 AM to scribble my name upon a flimsy piece of paper. Distinctively low-tech and remarkably democratized, I’ve come to appreciate this system deeply. Show up at 7 and the line snakes halfway to Dekalb Avenue—meaning your tennis plans are dead in the water. There’s no algorithm, no outbidding, just commitment to getting exactly an hour of time on one of six slightly uneven courts. No matter who you are—high-powered executives, bankers, lawyers, to say nothing of the neighborhood’s many creative directors—you’ve got to wait it out. Securing those 60 minutes of tennis, then, shapes the early hours of your day.

So is it worth all that to go slap a ball around? Undoubtedly.

Satori in Porto

I received a tip from a very wise waiter in Portugal. The question at hand — where to find the best sandwiches and lightly-battered fish among a landscape of very, very good options — was one he didn’t take lightly. After an appropriate period of deliberation, the advice I received was simple: “The thing that hangs over the sidewalk outside a restaurant, what’s the word for that? Anyway, if it’s the color white that means they carry decent espresso. These places will take care of you.” He was spot on.

Lisbon and Porto are two cities that, I surmise, would be hard to have a bad time in. There, alongside two dear friends, I spent the end of April taking in a great many small beers, life-affirming selections of cured meats and fish, glasses of vinho verde (among other, more challenging varietals), and long walks on steep, cobbled streets. That’s about as good as it gets, if you ask me.

Different Sameness

Where clothing is concerned, I generally like to follow a principle of ‘less is more.’ Sadly, this idea doesn’t apply to workout shorts when you live in a building sans laundry. The almighty Instagram algorithm, though, has paid close attention to this predicament and is dead set on steering me toward 5” inseams aplenty.

After some scrolling, I noticed a recurring marketing strategy: “Just like [insert brand], but at [insert fraction] of the price.” Be it a replica of the staid Nike Flex Stride or a budget-friendly version of a Lululemon above-the-knee-with-liner short in electric blue, I found this phenomenon rather peculiar. In fact, the only real giveaway that these enterprising e-commerce marketers took any shortcuts often came near the end of product descriptions. Rather than promising only marathon-grade aerodynamics or keying in on flexible stitching suited to acrobatic yoga, these garments guarantee applicability to a range of activities spanning pickleball to rock climbing.

So what’s really going on here, and will this radical transparency work? In years past, pulling back the curtains on global manufacturing norms may have been a risky tactic. Prior to 2021, most of us probably didn’t think all too much about the complex series of events that transpire between a click-to-buy interface and our doorsteps.

Yet as 80% of Americans report doing at least some of their shopping online, widespread shipping delays spurred on by accidentally-moored container ships or COVID-stricken locales don’t simply go unnoticed. Such uncertainty about receiving packages on time also shines a light on where, exactly, all these products really come from. Ruel Joyner, the owner of a furniture outlet in Georgia, told the New York Times that the acceleration of online shopping led to “mom and dad pointing and clicking" to buy a couch. And while new purchasing channels are no doubt good for business, what happens when it takes months for that order to show up? At a minimum, it requires a few extra explanations of how many moving parts it takes to get a piece of wood to a factory in China or India then across the ocean in a reasonable time frame.

From a production standpoint, however, budding companies are doubling down on claiming space in the same factory as the top dogs — and letting customers know about it. Whether this is always a smart idea is another story.

A good perspective on the matter comes in a blog post from Fred Perrotta, a marketing strategist and founder of the backpack company Tortuga. He noticed this trend in 2018, writing that, among bag and luggage companies, it’s commonplace to list the other clients your chosen factory works with.

He goes on to describe,

“Every brand-factory relationship is unique. Each company's needs are different. At Tortuga, we work with our suppliers to develop new products and to test new materials. Most factories don't want to do this. They want a sample to copy and big, repeat orders… If Rimowa or Tumi represents the bulk of that factory's business, then your needs do not matter to them.”

Although it might not be a sustainable long-term model for merchants, the ‘how the sausage gets made’ mentality Perrotta addresses is more relevant than ever. Casual shoppers have lately been forced to realize that their orders are competing for space on a Maersk cargo liner with countless other brands; why not turn a similar truth on the manufacturing side into a selling point? This lets online stores, such as Italic, state as their mission, “Luxury without labels. We make quality essentials using the same manufacturers as top brands for 50-80% less.”

Back to shorts that hug the thigh just right, then. When seeking strength in closet size among so many near-identical choices, it can seem hard to justify the higher price point of the real deal brands. I put this line of argument to my pal Lorenzo, a bonafide connoisseur of cool athletic garb and a person with very excellent taste in general. While acknowledging that, yes, the higher-priced labels likely do share an assembly line with an Amazon counterpart sold at a quarter of the price, he noted that what you’re really paying for is something different: accountability, consistency, and a phone number to call if you feel so inclined. Maybe one day I’ll re-trace the relevant supply chains, make some truly informed purchases, and achieve exercise-induced nirvana somewhere along the way.

Until then, damn, I wish I had a washing machine.

On Ice

For a while, I resorted to simply throwing medium soft objects at the perpetually malfunctioning air conditioner mounted defiantly upon the wall of my old studio apartment. Before that, I spoke soft words of encouragement in a strange attempt to coax it into functionality. This piece of machinery became my sworn enemy. So as I sat sweating through another Saigon April, I made a promise: If I ever meet the cold again, I will welcome it into my life unconditionally.

That’s why, trudging through the dark mid-winter days in search of second-hand furniture around Brooklyn, I’m feeling just fine. Meteorologically speaking, it’s true: I picked a bad time to move. But I’ll be damned if a little frigid air is going to stifle this hero’s journey (getting ripped off by well-worded Craigslist ads promising mid-century modern charm.)

Anyway, the novelty of winter hasn’t worn off just yet. It’s also given me an opportunity to compile some tunes to match the morning chill.

Right Place, Right Time

The most entertaining piece of fiction I read in 2021 was, no doubt, Chang-Rae Lee’s My Year Abroad. It has all the makings of a great Bildungsroman: Baijiu-soaked nights among questionable company, a complicated reckoning with suburban comfort, yoga entrepreneurs of dubious intention, the trials of ersatz fatherhood, and much, much more.

One other thing this book gets seriously right concerns a minor plot point that introduces our main character, Tiller, to his future business partner and benefactor. Tiller meets the serial entrepreneur and high-flying, poofy-haired Pong on a chance encounter, serving as his caddy. This sets off a series of absurd events that, for the sake of brevity, I won’t get into right now. But that initial fairway meeting is something worth digging into a little more.

Caddyshack notwithstanding, there aren’t too many representations of the caddy in popular culture—and even fewer are flattering (Happy Gilmore, fine film though it may be, didn’t do much to help the cause; the most positive portrait of the caddy seems to be in a John Updike story about a preternaturally astute Scottish kid). And it’s true: Caddying is not a traditionally glamorous position. There is slogging of heavy bags which clank about during backswings; there are tense moments when, amid the vagaries of a heated round, you may be subjected to astonishingly complex cursing. But there’s also the chance to rub shoulders with figures you usually would have no business rubbing shoulders with. So it makes sense that the absurd sequence of events in My Year Abroad springs forth from a hastily-arranged round of golf.

…

A few nights ago, I met up with some of my closest friends at a cavernous bar in the East Village. Over tall cans of Narragansett, the subject of our former summer job was never broached; but, in fact, it made the very conversation possible.

I know these guys for a pretty simple reason: We were all caddies. At some point or another, when each of us was around 16 and spending our July days walking over well-manicured grass, in Michigan and Connecticut respectively, we got a serious nudge in the right direction from groups of very kind golfers. They said, in essence, “You should continue doing this, keep your grades up, and stay in touch.” And thus we marched on and kept caddying, shook the right hands, put on our only suits for a somewhat terrifying interview and, later, received a letter in the mail congratulating us on a job well done—and a full scholarship to fund our university studies. Some months later, we met face to face, were shown our rooms in a house full of still more caddies, and the rest is history. That’s the short version of it, at least.

The long version involves sweaty hours hauling irons, learning to give occasional advice about a sport I knew rather little of, and a teenage gig that paid off in an unthinkable way.

So when it comes to portrayals of the role on the page and screen, I’m a little sensitive. But this one got it right!

Keep On Running II [Year End Edition]

It was a year of good runs.

Despite being sidelined for a few months, not by injury but rather COVID protocols and fine-issuing men on low-powered motorbikes, I found what have come to be my favorite routes. As usual, there was music involved, too.

Let’s start with 2021’s best loop, a 6-7ish mile jaunt through Ho Chi Minh City (see below for reference). It began at my old apartment, hugged a canal, snuck by the zoo, traversed a very large bridge, chugged along through a half-developed expanse of fast-developing high-rises and fields of affable cows, came back down to the Saigon river, then all the way home. Phew.

Back in the US, I came to learn the joys of running without sweating to the degree that it appeared I had jumped in a significant body of water. This was usually done at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, a terrific, uninterrupted 3.4-mile loop that, no matter how many times I do it over, will never get boring.

To accompany the year in running, I listened to a lot of samba rock from the likes of Tim Maia and Marcos Valle. On other, more serious occasions, it was minimal techno, or often somewhere in the middle, which we’ll call the record Metro Area by Metro Area. Here’s to the new year.

Boxed Out

In 2015, Toyota announced it was discontinuing the Scion XB, an anomalous blip in the arc of US auto life. This perfect square of a car attracted a cult following (if you visit the right message boards) but was widely written off as quirky, ugly, and, of all things, impractical. Nevermind the fact that its original design was based on an idea to create, “a car as a social space or hangout in Japan, where young people lack privacy at home.” In the US, though, its “anti-aerodynamic shape suggested a lack of interest in speed, acceleration or other values associated with the traditional auto enthusiast.”

Still, in the mid-2000s, more than 61,000 American drivers picked up a Scion XB. As sales began to slump, though, the team over at Toyota faced a serious reckoning: follow the times and sand off a few corners, or stand their cubical ground? In the end, market forces prevailed and, with each passing year, the Scion got less and less boxy until it was eventually shelved completely. What a pity.

This was all, it should be said, in the pre-electric vehicle age. Though Scion devotees may overlook this fact, cars that resemble toasters on roller-skates (the words of the NYT’s Phil Patton, not mine) don’t score very highly in JD Power Associates fuel-efficiency reports. Look around these days and you’ll notice that almost every car is rounded off, even those with boxy origins. Take the Volvo 240 wagon, affectionately dubbed ‘the brick,’ for example. Today, it looks more like a cylindrical bullet. Many others, still, have assumed the form of the Kammback, a now-ubiquitous teardrop-shaped vessel named after German aerodynamicist Wunibald Kamm.

In truth, it’s both environmental regulations and matters of taste that have led us to the age of curved cars. As detailed by Vox, beginning in the late 1970’s American automakers had to meet Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards that resulted in better mpg each year; this happened decades after Americans got a taste for European cars, which were more aerodynamic and, to many, seen as luxurious.

Suffice to say, there’s a lot working against a boxy car resurgence. That’s why, some weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see a few photos of a new Hyundai concept EV. It looks something like a Tokyo city taxi mixed with a Town Car, and it is very cool.

This has me feeling optimistic about the possibilities of an electric vehicle future. In addition to the bonus of, well, saving the planet, it’ll be interesting to see if the conventions of modern auto design can take a step back and get a little more creative (if impractical). So when we can all pilot ultra-efficient electric cars and charging stations abound, who’s to say the boxy renaissance isn't also on the horizon.

Can't Put a Price on That

How can one truly calculate the value of obscurity? Do we need to hold hidden gems in our hands to understand their true value? Where could the answers to these questions possibly be found?

In the confines of online marketplaces, of course.

When I was younger, there was a piece of lore in my family involving a faded bottle of whisky. It sat on the top shelf of a seldom-opened closet; from the outside, it looked like a normal old spirit — good for show and not much else. Apparently, however, this relic was — with the right explanation and to the right eye — worth a serious chunk of change and destined to occupy a space in only the most devoted of collectors’ cabinets.

In the days of prohibition, Al Capone liked to (among other things, we can be assured) enjoy a few beverages with his buddies at Chicago joints like the Green Mill. Capone was a man with discerning taste, though, so not just any rail drink would do. It took a small army, by land and sea, to secure the provisions he sought.

As it happens, the previous occupant of my family’s old house, on a leafy street in a tiny town in Northern Michigan, was a diver in his free time. On weekends, he’d suit up and explore the great lakes and adjacent bodies of water in search of, well, whatever was down there. Once, in the Detroit River, he came across something remarkable: A sunken ship full of hundred-year-old scotch whisky. What were these bottles doing in this ship at the bottom of this river? They’d been part of a clandestine operation to move alcohol around the US, with no small percentage of the haul headed to one Al Capone himself. Upon discovering the remnants of the party boat, my erstwhile neighbor grabbed a few bottles, put some up for auction with Christie’s, and offered up others as thoughtful housewarming gifts.

The trouble is, nobody we queried could put a real value on this strange, formerly-submerged flask. Some said a hundred bucks, a few tossed out the phrase ‘priceless,’ while others, still, simply advised, “don’t drink that, kid.”

Alternative assets and the obscurity economy

Any good financial advisor will tell you that diversification is the name of the game. (I’m speculating here, actually, but I bet they say things like that.) Those of us coming of age in the digital world are in luck where this endeavor is concerned. Sneakers, Bitcoin, postage stamps, to say nothing of NFTs, there’s no shortage of ways to possess a nest egg that doesn’t sit in a bank vault or under the mattress.

It’s also becoming easier and easier to know the exact origin of the goods you’re seeking, to hire third-party authentication services and, ultimately, to charge a pretty penny with assurance.

All this has given rise to the world of alternative assets, or any store of value that isn’t cash, stock, or conventional tender — the more obscure, the better.

While in years past the modish alternative asset has been coveted streetwear pieces — monetized and mainstreamed by sites like StockX and Grailed — let’s look at a classic example seeing a resurgence. Baseball cards have been traded among devotees of America’s pastime since the mid 19th century. In laminate binders or dusty stacks, they’re a pre-digital means of showing not only that you’re a student of the roster but also, well, a means.

Enter Alt, an e-commerce marketplace for the savvy 21st century baseball card baron. Alt’s website invites visitors to join the next wave of investing and provides some literature on why it is that baseball cards, of all the alternative assets, are a safe bet. They make a convincing case: Between 2008-2020, the market for sports cards returned 392% (the S&P 500, in comparison, saw 160% returned over the same period.)

And if baseball cards are a little too Americana for your taste, why not look to wine. No, not a Chateau or a 40-year-old Pauillac; I’m talking about something raw, hidden by anonymity, and deeply unadulterated. That’s Brutal!!! wine, a label (or, perhaps more accurately, movement) centering on zero/zero production, meaning 0 added yeast and no tinkering in either vineyard or cellar. In chronicling Brutal!!!, writer Alice Feiring learns from a producer that,

“The wine should be bottled with some sort of technical fault. But that fault is part of the wine’s beauty and should get better as time goes on.”

Far from pristine and obscure as they come, could this be the last bastion of ‘priceless goods' in the landscape of alternative assets? Maybe. Or, likelier still, an algorithm to detect and subsequently value flawed-ness will prevail. In any case, as transitory inflation knocks at the door, I’m leaving no closet unopened.

Sidetracked

Stefan Zweig once wrote, “Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.” Fair enough. There can be, nevertheless, a lot of value in getting distracted from that singular objective.

Some time ago I was listening to the Lala Schifrin record Black Widow, and this very over-the-top triangle part on the song ‘Flamingo’ struck a deep chord with me. Here was a piece of personal expression by way of auxiliary percussion ringing out so proudly that it made me realize that, not only did I share a rhythmic sensibility with this particular player but, further, I think we would get along just fine over a cup of coffee. It’s just that kind of triangle riff.

After consulting the record’s personnel, I found a shortlist of featured percussionists, but who exactly was on triangle remained a mystery. No matter, because in this process I came across a biographical tidbit that is endlessly inspiring.

Among the featured musicians on this record is Don Alias, who backed up all sorts of legendary figures over his long career. But this most astonishing discovery — that he had diverged from his path to being a medical doctor after falling in love with the bongos — is really one for the books.

Forgive me if I’ve gotten distracted.

Something Perfect [Addendum]

Much is flawed, and little is perfect. I may as well, then, share more of the things which are—to me, at least—falling under the latter category.

Anyway, it seems like once every few months I re-enter a phase of deep gratitude for the existence of certain great minimal techno tracks. I’ve written before about excellent running music and about the mysterious producer Shinichi Atobe, and now those two intersect. Essentially, when it comes to exercise in current times and current geography, there’s not much to do but run. So running will have to do, through the sideways rain and the type of heat that just makes one laugh. To accompany it, though, I’m back with a trusted soundtrack of perfect minimal, as presented below:

Good for the Soul

On the tennis court beneath the awning of the Vietsovpetro sport and cultural complex, in Vung Tau, the lighting can be difficult. So, too, can the heat. But what’s a weekend getaway for, anyway, if not a few challenges?

It’s an occasion worth remembering when a few of life’s joys—competitive but good-humored tennis, a beachside run and swim combo, plentiful seafood, and new friends emerging out of nowhere—can converge. So, in short, I’m happy to report that I spent a few days recenty in a coastal city, swung my rackets in a classic setting, listened to some Marcos Valle records, and hopped back to Saigon on a ferry feeling grateful.

Looking at the Past Like It's the Future

The future is now—actually it’s been here for like seven years—and it doesn’t taste very good.

There’s a discussion I like to have with my students that usually yields some interesting and strongly-held ideas. It centers on Soylent, and, after watching the company’s launch video, we talk about if meal replacement shakes are going to become the new norm. What I don’t tell them is that the video is from 2014, around the time of Soylent’s inception. In the intervening years, it seems like the Soylent model of eating (if you want to call it that) not only broadly failed, but perhaps also fueled a food movement of the very opposite nature.

In the video, the company’s old CEO and founder, Rob Rhinehart, sits in front of chemical equations and describes how, with a little research, he realized that the food we eat can—nay, should— be broken down into its simplest parts. The result of experimentation based on this ideal was a chalk-colored milkshake. Looking back, it seems borderline satirical, but the video nevertheless characterizes the drink as such:

“unlike most other foods, which prioritize taste and texture, Soylent was engineered to maximize nutrition, nourish the body in the most efficient way, to nourish the body in the most efficient way possible.”

In truth, I do know of one person who consumed Soylent with some regularity; when I was an intern in an area of Washington, D.C. with very expensive lunch places, one of the other interns, a highly-motivated programmer from just outside Beijing, popped open a bottle around 11:50 am each day. I would kill time by wandering around Dupont Circle with a crummy sandwich I had concocted at home in a rush before fast-walking to work, but this guy didn’t lose a minute of productivity. (I wasn’t nearly as busy as him, it must be said.) By and large, though, most people I’ve talked to about Soylent aren’t really swayed.

That wasn’t the case back in 2014, though. As Lizzie Wittecomb chronicled in a very funny profile of the company called ‘The End of Food’ in the New Yorker from that year, it quickly racked up millions of dollars in investment from the likes of Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz. In discussing Soylent, Wittecomb noted the idea of ‘lifehacking,’ or, “devising tricks to streamline the obligations of daily life, thereby freeing yourself up for whatever you’d rather be doing.”

What do we lose by such lifehacking? Oh, not much, just the social interactions that come alongside years of meals served on plates set on tables, the discovery of the natural world through cooking, and a way to connect with people with whom—aside from food—you share next to nothing in common.

Of course, the above are all well-documented arguments against Soylent. What has happened since 2014, though, is striking. To me, these days it isn’t at all weird when my old college roommate, who I used to share some of the worst beers known to man with (something called ‘Ice House ($0.90, 16 oz, 5.5% ABV’), posts a photo of the natural wine he’s just bought. Similarly, it wasn’t altogether very surprising to have dinner at a craft brewery with a list full of esoteric tasting notes in a tiny town in West Virginia during a road trip a couple of years ago.

Is the recent American renaissance of slow food, natural wine, and fermentation, strictly speaking, a rebuke of the lifehacking proposed by meal replacement foodstuffs like Soylent? Possibly, though perhaps it’s too early to tell if that, too, is a fad that will look silly in seven years. But, especially in a pandemic year when downtime has been plentiful, it appears that food can still be a space insulated from talk of streamlining and efficiency-boosting. I’ll drink to that.

I'm Laughing at the Frozen Rain

Lately, I’m spending a lot of time revisiting the Steely Dan record ‘Katy Lied’ and its associated lore (of which there’s a lot). A few things stick out to me; the first, and what has me listening again, are the drum tracks. Maybe I should’ve been able to detect this, but, of course, it’s a young Jeff Porcaro on the job. He laid it down for ‘Katy Lied’ at age 20, which is pretty astounding. (My mom actually went to Grant High School in LA’s San Fernando Valley with Jeff and some of the other guys who would go on to form the band Toto (they played at the Prom)).

The snare tone is so expert that I keep scrubbing back to listen to his fills. Take, for example, 1:30 in ‘Daddy Don’t Live in the New York City No More,’ an ultra-simple set of open rolls that satisfy to no end. Additional recommended Porcaro fills can be found throughout the duration of ‘Bad Sneakers.’ If you’re ever feeling uninspired and/or unproductive, it’s worth consulting the Spotify playlist ‘Jeff Porcaro session tracks’ (76 hours, 50 minutes) to get in the mood to keep pushing forward with your personal catalog of work, no matter the discipline. Prolific!

What’s also especially interesting about this record is that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker refused to listen to it after its release. In a retrospective review of the album by Mark Richardson, he recounts how the then-revolutionary production processes went on to spoil things for the band members—but, thankfully, not for the rest of us.

The band decided to record ‘Katy Lied’ using dbx technology, a noise reduction system which could pick up a wider range of sounds than any other techniques of the time. Apparently, something got messed up with the master, and the final cut sounded off to Fagen and Becker. In their 1999 liner notes looking back at the album, the doubled down, saying, “A replaying of the Katy Lied album proper, for the purposes of refreshing our failing memories, is out of the question.”

It’s safe to say that, in some respects, ignorance is bliss for me on this album. Though the liner notes, half sincerely, state that you should ‘follow the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) curve’ and meticulously lists all the specs of the expensive gear used to make the final sound, I don’t have any qualms listening on my half-busted speakers at home. Likewise, I don’t really want to read into the lyrics of one of my favorite tracks as far as arrangements go, ‘Everyone’s Gone to the Movies.’ But here’s to re-listens, anyways; wrong never sounded so right (sort of).

Wunderment

There’s something oddly satisfying about falling into the music of an enigmatic producer. Maybe it’s just me, but the tendency to over-research and saturate oneself with co-signs from adjacent artists or glowing reviews can itself color the reaction to a record. So, anyway, coming across someone whose work you can unearth very little about is kind of refreshing.

This has been the case recently after getting back into the music of Sven Wunder, who just released a beautiful single, “En Plein Air.”

Try as you might, there’s truly not much information to be found about Wunder himself. His record label, Piano Piano, lists no location (though a little digging tells you it’s based in Stockholm). But the musician in question brings together a range of disparate influences into something extraordinary. Take 2020’s Eastern Flowers, for example, which melds psych-rock with intricate Middle-Eastern influenced string melodies.

There’s a lot of contrasts going on and not necessarily a clear-cut genre, but the production across the catalog is unshakable. Eastern Flowers is one of those records with which I hit play, zoned out in the best way possible, and realized I was on side B without even noticing the track changes.

It’s as good a time as ever to embrace anonymity, so why not start here. Wunder’s next record, Natura Morta, is due out this summer.