notes on the cudgel

I recently watched 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and thought it was meandering in the best way. A sub-two hour zombie horror that takes some time to dawdle, to look at the stars, to slowly peel the skin back (literally…). Ralph Fiennes was having a ball the whole time. Highly recommend (though maybe brush up on the franchise’s Wikipedia plot pages before you go…)

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It was never agreed upon what measure of success the National Shutdown on Friday would be judged by, though I’m not sure that automatically disqualifies the effort itself. But like a lot of people in New York—especially those of us who inhabit the “Commie Corridor” of Brooklyn, where anti-ICE sentiment is loud and clear everywhere from your neighborhood coffeeshop to the leftist pottery studio—I was struck by the bind that the call to strike put a lot of local businesses in. It seemed obvious that neighborhood restaurants and small shops carried both the highest social pressure to show their solidarity, and yet they were also the ones bearing the brunt of the January economy, made worse by the city’s deep freeze and the fact that no one has felt incentivized to go outside in weeks.

Scrolling on Instagram on Thursday night and Friday morning, I realized that the shutdown rhetoric had turned into a bit of a role call for these businesses, rather than any individuals or major corporations. You could basically take your own survey of which places were participating and how — and you could really gauge the distress of these shop owners and restaurants as they tried to thread the needle on their messaging. Some closed down resolutely; other places posted in very, very careful language that though they supported the shutdown, they couldn’t afford to close up themselves. A local Thai spot I love for lunch posted about how they were donating 25% of wine and beer sales from the day to the New York Immigrant Freedom Fund, which read as much as a gesture of support as it did a sign of the restaurant’s clearly meager margins. Many posts noted the irony of being immigrant-run and -staffed businesses who wanted, of course, to continue employing and paying their workers for the day. The implicit question: How would shutting down help them?

Vox recently reintroduced the “dual state” framework for understanding life under authoritarianism; I would make the argument that we also live in a “dual state” where the online/offline divide of news, messaging, and organization affects those tasks themselves very deeply, sometimes mutating one intention into another. (To wit: 4 percent of every Minneapolis neighborhood is organized on Signal now, apparently). Does a National Shutdown also kind of a little bit turn into a digital role call? Is one of the major roles of a protest now to simply gather like-minded people and help them confirm the realities experienced otherwise privately on one’s timeline — a vibe check of sorts? Are restaurants particularly, who operate firmly in the IRL realm but are becoming increasingly entangled in the digitization of American life, being made susceptible as culture-war theaters of their own? I don’t think saying yes to any of these questions, again, takes away from the merit of solidarity itself. It’s a beast of a thing; if only one cudgel was all it took.

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To add on to that NYT link above, which is about our growing dependence on food delivery — prompting a new wave of food delivery discourse and Money Diaries-esque outrage — it seems like the paper is generally all in on a kind of affordability voyeurism, via a new series that has so far featured a family of five living on $140K and a house cleaner on $24K. The old Refinery29 law was that audiences only really loved reading and judging how the rich spend their money, but if that story on food delivery is any indication, it turns out we don’t really exempt anyone from a little beady-eyed-ness.

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Less depressing: the Tribeca-based influencer Liv Schreiber, who seemed like one of those dime a dozen singles meet-up event gurus who I figured would inevitably pivot to doing a bad membership club, apparently hosted a non-NY-focused sleepaway camp for women of all ages (up to 70!) to make friends. Per ELLE, it sounded…quite successful, and not as some thin excuse to farm out sponsored product. I liked this tidbit:

She asks that all campers follow the 10-foot rule—as in, if there is someone within 10 feet, you must say hello—and it really sets the tone. The vibes here are good, no mean girls, and I never felt scared to approach a new group to say hello or share a meal.

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The Gagosian is exhibiting Jeff Koons’ “Porcelain Series” until the end of February, and it’s absolutely worth a visit. My friend Ginger and I went over on Saturday and took in the larger-than-life “porcelain figures,” many of them modeled on classical sculpturel. Gaudy, gleaming, glorious. The use of mirror-polished stainless steel cunningly recalled the pleasing meltiness of clay, versus the jagged angles of the usual bronze and marble used for figures of this scale. We peered extra closely at the color coating and wondered how the “pastels” were added without leaving behind brushstrokes. The show reminded me of my high school Spanish teacher, who was obsessed with Lladró figurines, as well as the more down-market Precious Moments ilk that were basically set pieces of my midwestern upbringing. An adorableness abounded. Everyone at the gallery stood around smiling at the shiny surfaces.

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Finally, per Jane Starr Drinkard on Substack Notes…The Nation does cruises?

mymind is one private place to save screenshots, bookmarks, highlights, images, notes, videos and whatever else inspires you. No feed, no ads, no intrusive AI features. It’s basically a beautiful search bar for your brain.

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HIP REPLACEMENT is a weekly conversation between Gen X, Y, and Z about culture and online/offline life, hosted by Ben Dietz of [SIC] and Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick of The Trend Report. EP.42 welcomes Willa Bennett of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen. Subscribe for free today.