Cooked + Cooking Volume 1
A Cursed Neighborhood and A "Broooo let's start a brand" done right.
WELCOME AND HAPPY THURSDAY!
Thank you so much for subscribing. I am genuinely shocked and grateful at how many of you signed up. Expect this in your inbox every Thursday from now until FOREVER.
I’ll be talking about two things today.
One of which will be Cooked (seared, done, whack, fried, beta) and the other Cooking (legendary, epic, heating up, chill, humble, awesome).
The topics will range from brands, neighborhoods, restaurants, trends, TikToks, internet personalities etc… really anything that I would make memes about.
Let’s start with what is #COOKED
MEATPACKING
I understand it’s annoying to call an entire neighborhood cooked but what is going on over there? Is there anything that has enticed someone to spend time in that freaky little pocket of the city recently?
Sure - you have the Whitney (which you visit once a year and talk about for a little too long) and The Standard (with it’s associated venues that continue to stay “in the mix”) but even the objectively nice cobblestone streets are starting to give me the bad type of chills.
I think Meatpacking may primarily be what Hugo Boss Logo Tee European’s dream of when they think of New York City? Perhaps it’s the sleuth of “boutique” creative agencies or “chill” tech companies? It is unclear exactly why the aura is bizarre over there but this screenshot helps answer that.
You’re looking at a truly WOATed starting line up here. You see Serafina, Common Ground, Catch, RH Rooftop, Salt Bae’s Steakhouse and Tao/Buddakan just out of frame — the soulless list goes on and on. You literally couldn’t get a a lo-fi native yeast natural wine over there if you tried… insane.
Up&Down and NeverNever closing up shop around the pandemic seemed to symbolize a definitive end to Meatpacking’s decade long “cultural bull run” — because we all know a neighborhood is only as good as it’s Richie Akiva blessed venue.
It felt nostalgic scrolling through Up&Down’s now archival instagram — not because I was at any of the parties posted on there lol — but because it reminded me what Meatpacking and life in general was like when Sheck Wes dropped Mo Bamba. It now seems the offensively large Starbuck’s Reserve Roastery on 15th and the Tesla dealership hold the center of gravity over there lol.
This probably goes without saying but the owners of these 2010s hot spots that are still operating couldn’t care less that the 2024 leather jacket + baggy acne denim bro and/or ballet flat girlies aren’t chilling over there.
That’s because some girl named Becky and her Syracuse sorority sisters, Brody who’s in town from Miami for an NFT conference and players from the 2017 Charlotte Hornets keep the proprietors pockets sufficiently stuffed for a few St Barts getaways each year.
The perfect representation of Meatpacking is the #HITME dessert from Catch.
If you had 46k on IG in 2015 you were legally obligated to go there and post this interactive dessert before aggressively hitting Avenue or 1OAK with some Amiri-pilled promoter. Like most things — being nearly a decade removed shows us how truly ridiculous a $24 dessert with edible instructions in the form of a hashtag is.
I can only hope in 2034 someone will write a similar piece to this but instead using “Olive Oil Cake” or a “Classic Sundae” as a symbol for another lost era.
@ FUCK.THIS.INDUSTRY IG ACCOUNT
One of my favorite corners of the internet right now is from the East Village based brand fuckthisindustry2008. FTI’s Instagram feels like a group chat where you’re just sending fried shit back and forth with the #gang. You can viscerally FEEL the crisp 3pm Modelo tall boy in Tompkins influence.
Many of their pieces are referential to things from the late 2000s / early 2010s like the use of the OG Xbox logo in their “2008” collection seen above and a bootleg Project X movie poster. I cringe using the word “referential” because that implies FTI has some cork board tacked full of reference / inspo pieces when there is most certainly not. FTI and their instagram runs on the best type of energy — which is single brain cell firing energy. No thought, no hesitation — pure “fuck it we ball” mode.
FTI also touches on things happening online right now with shirts like the classic “got dat dog in me” tee below (zoom in to see 6 pitbulls in the chest cavity) or this video that racked up 2.1 million views on their 2nd burner / “finsta” account.
Wrinkly fashion marketing execs spend hours talking about “so team how are we going to speak to gen-z in the coming years 🤓” — if they want to learn anything they should just hire someone from here. That may be tough to do because FTI is primarily a one man operation led by 24 year old legend and Doc Holiday’s aficionado Myles Underwood.
Even when a new piece gets posted that I wouldn’t wear I am always locked in, chuckling while scrolling through the entire carousel of pics/memes/edits and emphatically smashing the like button. It is an exquisitely nonchalant breath of fresh air from the herd of menswear dweebs glazing themselves about some recycled Portuguese wool blend. i don’t care about that shit, sorry brother.
My final thought on FTI (and i suppose one last stray bullet) is that I’d bet they do MUCH better $$$ numbers than a lot of brands that pop up and spend 4k a month on PR for meaningless schmoozy articles. If you have the juice and you’re constantly firing on single brain cell mode, like FTI, you don’t need any of that.
Now — with zero spent on PR — fuckthisindustry2008 and their IG are officially #COOKING on the inaugural piece of the world’s most IMPORTANT media outlet.