INTAKE #32 - Thoughts on the week.
NIGHT PEOPLE. AI-GENERATED NOSTALGIA. COLLEGE TOWNS. ELLISON FAMILY MOVES. HERMAN CHERRY. OUTLANDER OPEN CALLS. RED HOOK FIRE. LCD RESIDENCY. HEAT 2. AMEX FEES. META GLASSES. EXOPLANETS & MORE...
Serendipitously, there is a through line this week: nostalgia. Lots of returns, from Ronson's homage to the 90s club scene, college towns, 90s animation, 90s movies, 90s businessmen on a tear, and LCD's upcoming residency.
NIGHT PEOPLE
Mark Ronson was everywhere all at once this past month as he rounds 50, from Rick Ruben's podcast, to fashion week, where it seems he DJ'd a party a night for the whole week. Tuesday's book launch of 'Night People: How to Be a DJ in '90s New York City' puts it all together.
I went to the launch Tuesday night, which we were jokingly referring to as 'old head mecca, ' bringing together club kids I hadn't seen in a decade. Dj sets from Stretch, Jeff Brown, and Belinda Becker, and a performance by Souls of Mischief.
“I wrote this book because I wanted to celebrate this era, this magic era I came up DJing the city in. I wanted to pay respects to the craft and the thing that I love most in the world, which is f–king DJing in basements like this.”
- Mark Ronson to the room at Edition
I'm excited to read this book; it predates my experience in New York by a decade, but there's a lot of overlap. I do remember Table 50, the party he did with Q-tip in a basement on Broadway and Bleecker; I designed many flyers for this place. On tetragrammaton, they discuss the unique quality of basement clubs, something about 'being steps closer to satan's domain'. Bad cell service and packed rooms had a magnetic pull on a crowd, keeping them there.
His era informed much of what I loved about New York nightlife in the aughts, which I wrote about deeply in my piece 'How We Go Out Now'. Mark seems to have taken a very serious approach to this book, telling Ruben he probably interviewed 1-200 people, and went through an extensive editing process to really get into the nuances that changed club culture, from Giuliani's war on nightlife, to bottle service.
Mark was very much a staple in clubs when I started out. You could still catch him several nights a week, but it was a very short period, as once he produced Amy Winehouse's Back To Black, he became a different ticket item, elevating to only playing very special events.
This book, for him, sparked what he jokingly refers to as his midlife crisis, and for the past year, he's been doing club sets, 5 hours, all vinyl. He talks with Ruben about how much closer this has gotten him to the core of music, the difference when you're headlining, packing the best hits into 90 minutes vs building a room for a whole night.
For a sonic journey to this feeling, Night People Complete Collection (Spotify).
AI-GENERATED NOSTALGIA
Speaking of nostalgia. Each generation gripes about how things were better before, but the '90s hit different. As a Xennial (born '78–'83), I grew up in this blissful 'between' - we got peak HBO, early internet before social media, the sitcom era, and must-see TV (Thursday nights). Geopolitics was cozy, we got our formative years post-Cold War, but pre 9/11. Of course there were flashpoints, but we were in a more blissful time; global warming was on a far-out timeframe. There's a great 1999 opinion piece about these 'best days of our lives' (NYT).
Stranger Things built a franchise around this very specific time; now a slew of creators are using Midjourney and other AI outputs to build accounts glamorizing a glazed-over, dreamy, simpler past without social media and modern distractions (NYT).
These accounts are racking up hundreds of thousands of viewers, lensing 80s and 90s vibes with a general theme of 'everything was better before the internet'. Some of these accounts are growing 30-40,000 a day. It's essentially a warm bath for an anxious generation, to harken back and provide a version of a time that, while not entirely accurate, is a dream world you'd want to live in. The greater irony is that the subject matter pining for a simpler, less digital world is entirely digitally created.
If you're looking to add some Novocain to your feed, Purist Nostalgia, Nostalgia Voyages, and Maximum Nostalgia. Ironically, most of these accounts are run by people in their late 20s who weren't alive in the time they're creating.
COLLEGE TOWNS
Another form of nostalgia is showing up in the rise of college towns for post-grad living. Rentcafe's recent ranking of the best places for recent grads to live shows a shift from the great migration to big cities like NY & LA post-college, to staying in more affordable rural towns.
63% of rural counties saw population increases between '20 and '23, that's up from a measly 27% in the early 2010s. Census data also shows that business startups in these smaller metros and rural counties have surged 13% faster than in big cities since 2020.
College towns are an oasis in that the anchor of the university will draw amenities and optionality to often rural areas. The constant influx of youth brings energy; it's just that now people are staying past graduating.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, tops the list with a nearly 10% share of Gen Z adults, a strong job market, and affordability. See their full report here.
ELLISON FAMILY MOVES
I'm interested in the interconnectivity of it all, and on a macro scale, how money works. It's data, media, and cultural influence all wrapped up in one family's empire-building spree.
The Ellison family has had an incredible month/year, starting with Larry Ellison making $100b in a single day when Oracle popped 38% off news of $455 billion in outstanding contract revenue from multiple customers in the cloud compute space (OpenAI, Microsoft, Google & Amazon).
The following day, Larry's son, David Ellison's company, Paramount Skydance, prepared a bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Ellison had just become the CEO of Paramount after acquiring it this summer for $8 billion, and he's now on track to acquire Warner Bros., which would give the family significant control of two of the largest media and entertainment entities in America.
By the end of last week, the white house announced the framework of TikTok's American acquisition deal, including none other than Larry Ellison. Oracle, Silver Lake, and Andreessen Horowitz are part of the investor group that will hold roughly 80% of a new U.S. company that will operate TikTok (Forbes).
Oracle will house TikTok user data in a facility in Texas.
This is an impressive late-career resurgence from an 81-year-old; it's also a consolidation of data, media, and power that is worth thinking about. If this merger goes through, there will only be two major media companies left, not controlled by a family, Disney and Netflix. The Ellisons will be in a position to influence everything from blockbuster films to daily news cycles and viral trends.
Prof G Markets dedicates a section to the implications, Scott Galloway’s points about how their ownership of Warner will usher in a much more rapid adoption of AI and technology in filmmaking. He makes valid points that current studio executives have a much greater fear of SAG-AFTRA, the opinions of their peers, and a general sentimental attachment to the industry in which they came up.
Scott makes the point that Ellison doesn’t care about any of that, and with his net worth, could buy Warner 15 times over. His prediction is that they’ll start applying technology much faster to the production process, aiming to make superhero movies for $20 million instead of $200, but what that really means is 300 people working on a film, not 3,000. Think about Oracle's cloud muscle could be applied to scriptwriting and VFX.
HERMAN CHERRY AT GLADSTONE
For those on the West Coast, Gladstone’s exhibition of Herman Cherry, the Abstract Expressionist painter.
Los Angeles
13 September - 25 October 2025
OUTLANDER COVERAGE FROM THEIR COMMUNITY
Really respect this, and surprisingly, I haven’t seen this done in the 15 years I’ve been in this space.
Outlander Magazine issued an open call for people to cover the H&M show, giving selected talent carte blanche on their coverage. Way to send the elevator back down.
Talent discovered: Hector_the_director, Sam Scott, and Frayser.
RED HOOK FIRE
I used to smoke a lot of weed in my studio, one night I came in to paint and found the carpet beneath my computer desk half consumed, burnt to a crisp.
Somehow, miraculously, something stopped the consumption, but it was close enough to sober me into the realization I could have burned the whole building down. Could have lost everything I’ve painted in the past 5 years. I quit cold turkey for a multitude of reasons about a month later.
Seeing the images of Red Hook’s tragic fire at 481 Van Brunt Street hit me hardest when reading about how much art was lost. A fire alarm fire that required over 200 firefighters to put out (NYT).
Many artists in this space may not have had proper insurance, which made me realize I don’t. Beyond that, when it’s your art and craft that burns, that’s irreplaceable. Lanoba Design lost over 900 pieces of vintage furniture handpicked by its team (Ny Magazine).
Massey Klein Gallery owner Garett Klein posted what encapsulates how many artists affected by this fire must feel:
This studio not only held every piece of artwork I had made from college until now, many many paintings which held so many memories, it was an incubator for ideas and a place for me to create…It still does not feel real that all of this could be gone.
Garrett Klein
Some fear this fire, combined with the death earlier this summer of one of the community's patron saints of affordable development, Gregory C. O’Connell, closes a chapter on Red Hook. What’s more likely, a restoration of an aging building with affordable studios, or mega developments to follow?
This building was a rarity for artists, remaining affordable. Warehouses like this are becoming increasingly hard to find. I’ve been fortunate to have my studio in Greenpoint since ‘21, but each year the rent goes up.
Red Hook, like Greenpoint, has managed to stave off gentrification longer than other areas of Brooklyn, mainly due to being less accessible, but the tide still comes. I’ve watched three megastructures go up to the north and south of my humble building’s 2 stories; it’s situated right on the water, and no way it will stay undeveloped much longer.
LUKAS POSCH
Lukas Posch, A painter I just came across. Not a current exhibition, but paintings that struck me and I felt were worth sharing. His last showing was part of Scenes of Disclosure, this summer at Greene Naftali, New York.
I loved some of the works from his solo show last year, ‘Artificial Intelligence’ at FELIX GAUDLITZ in Vienna.
KINGSLEY IFILL
Kingsley Ifill, a British multidisciplinary artist spanning photography, printmaking, and painting, makes haunting large-scale work that manages to give a painterly quality to photography. I appreciate the time he spends on his work; some pieces will sit for years. See Document’s interview with the artist.
THE DARK WELL OF FABLES
The work by Well Of Fables brings me back to the dark analog cartoons of my childhood. They're taking the aesthetics from Thundercats, Black Cauldron, Lord of the Rings, etc., and stripping all the heroes out, delivering straight darkness.
AI-driven, yes, but there is a lot of craft in these; the sound design and consistency across the world build is worth a look.
LCD KNOCKDOWN RESIDENCY
A 12-show run will take place over three consecutive weekends from November 20 to December 13, 2025. There will also be nightly afterparties.
STUDIO PRACTICE
Some pieces from my spring dream pastel color series. Last week I got little time for new painting but was able to fit in two studio visits as I’m shifting a lot of my efforts right now to critiques of the work and connections to curators, directors, and art consultants.
After five years of building a body of work, I’m ready for feedback. More of my work and process can be found on my studio website.
What’s below the paywall:
Heat 2 greenlit, Amex Platinum at $895, AOL’s perseverance, facial recognition, Meta’s new product rollout, deep sea desalination, self-driving data, 6,000 exoplanets, AI use sentiment.
As I mentioned previously, if you’d like a free subscription, feel free to reach out on why, I’ll most likely be happy to oblige.
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