Weekly Intake - Week 04.2025
SAN VICENTE TO OPEN, JFK & MLK FILES TO BE DECLASSIFIED, HARD COPY LA, JAMES BEARD SEMIFINALISTS, MEME COIN MADNESS, KIDNAPPING OF LEDGER CO-FOUNDER, THE BEST TIME TO INVEST IS YESTERDAY
SVB WEST VILLAGE FINALLY OPENING (MARCH)
New york is in the mid-late stage of membership madness, seeing many new clubs opening their doors this year. Of the many opening, I’ve been the most excited for San Vicente Bungalows. Perhaps this is over indexed by the Jane being hands down one of the (if not the) best venues in the city.
Nostalgia plays here, but I also think they will bring the heat in regards to programming and member quality for the first year. Having just received the official email of a march opening, it’s finally tangible.
All these new openings will bring stiff competition, as one can only expect people to have so many memberships, it does become a zero sum game. Emily Sunberg puts it a little more bluntly: ‘San Vicente Bungalows is coming for the crown.’
This was subject of conversation I had this week at Crane club among some long term hospitality players. The model works, two members bring in 10k - vs hitting that with bar revenue where you need 100 people.
Chez Margaux is killing it, much more than some expected to(have heard some takes that they capitalize on the long application list for casa cipriani).
All in all I think this is great for nightlife in NYC as it plays for people skewing slightly older (think 30’s up) who are interested in conversations, good F&B programs, networking and room familiarity. It’s exactly what I want with a night out at my stage of life.
JFK FILES TO BE DE CLASSIFIED
Politics aside, this is exciting and long overdue. Trump signs executive order to declassify files on JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
—THE INSCRIPTION CHOSEN BY ALLEN DULLES FOR THE LOBBY OF CIA HEADQUARTERS, FROM JOHN 8:31–32
A riddle wrapped inside an enigma, the complexity of this one is also deep. One of my favorite books I read last summer was The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, which was the first time I really understood it all.
The important thing to know about an assassination or an attempted assassination is not who fired the shot, but who paid for the bullet
- David Talbot
HARD COPY LA
HARD COPY LOS ANGELES now opening tonight Thursday, January 23rd from 6pm - 9pm.
A labor of love from my good friend and artist Aaron Stern.
THE FILMS NOMINATED FOR PRODUCTION DESIGN FOR THIS YEARS OSCARS
Some incredible work this year in the production design category.
JAMES BEARD 2025 SEMIFINALISTS ANNOUNCED
The James Beard Foundation announced its restaurant and chef semifinalists for 2025. Broken Pallet has a round up of all the categories. A great space to watch for the next generation of culinary stars.
Yoshitaka Amano’s Solo Exhibition in New York
“APOCALYPSE | 黙示録”
January 31 – March 15, 2025
Yoshitaka’s work spans epic fantasy, myth and world building on a grand scale. He is the artistic mind that inspired Final Fantasy, and probably one of the most prolific contribution to the game design space. Those in New York, take this opportunity to see his body of work.
AFFLUENT MILLENNIAL CODED PACKAGING
Blackbird Spyplane’s official Holy Decree against “Affluent Millennial”-coded packaging. The olive oil squirty bottle being the epitome of this.
This is also an observation of the success loop that happens in design / branding. It’s probably tied to the briefs. Clients will reference one incredibly successful product in their aspirations to create another incredibly successful product. Shortly you end up with homogeny. This seems to happen in epochs, the last being ‘millennial branding’ that brought us all that pink and a wave of pharma brands that felt ‘human owned’
Grubstreet had a take on this last summer, ‘why does every shoppy shopp suddenly look the same’?
SMALLWASHING.
PROF G MARKETS
Meme Coin madness. Entering an era of pure grift, Trump dropping a MEME coin 72 hours before taking office was WILD. It’s so shameless it’s comical. He 10x’d his personal wealth in 48 hours (Trump and his team own 80% of the tokens).
The question to ask is who are the people making money off this, who knew to buy at 3am on Friday (tipped off people)?
Subsequently it crashed over 60% as his wife released her own Melania MEME coin the following day. This is where a lot of people probably lost their shirts.
Points in this episode about nation states (Russia), rogue actors or an army in Sudan now have the ability to buy influence through a MEME coin are valid.
Lorenzo coin is the icing on the cake. The pastor who gave the benediction at the inauguration, proceeded to launch a MEME coin the following day, cashing out 4 hours later and crashing it. Truth is stranger than fiction.
Explosion in global ETF’s. The end of stock picking. 90% of active managers under perform the S&P. People are waking up to this, and a huge amount of capital is flowing to simpler better performing ETF’s.
PASSIVE is out performing ACTIVE.
The global ETF industry accumulated $15.1 trillion in assets and attracted $1.6 trillion in flows during 2024, marking the strongest year on record for inflows, assets, fund launches and institutional ownership, according to a new Bank of America report.
TIME TO INVEST
On the subject of investing, start.
The Majority of Americans are not invested in the stock market, this leaves many behind on the growth seen over the past decade and adds to the sentiment that the economy and the market are not correlated. NY Mag has a long story this week on the concerns that leave people on the sidelines and the validity of jumping in.
This leads me to the evolving relationship with financial advisors. The status quo has long been a % of assets under management, and a relationship that is purposely opaque. The method our parents used is flawed because we simply have vastly better access to information (the internet) than they did. Now Morningstar is providing ways advisors can differentiate themselves from AI. Deloitte forecasts usage shooting up from about 10% in 2024 to 78% by 2028.
Shifting from a pay for time vs % of AUM is going to be a big shift in our generation as well, many of us will take the reins ourselves. It’s less complicated than its made out to be.
Lots of us are made to feel as though we need a professional to guide us with investments. But for most people, especially those just starting out, you really can do it on your own online without paying anybody to help. (Ny Mag article)
I give many young people I work directly with The Algebra of Wealth, primarily because I wish someone had given me something like this when I was 25. I didn’t start thinking seriously about money until probably 30, and thats ten years of compound gains I missed out on.
The next best time is NOW and the worst time is tomorrow. - Warren Buffett
The above is more 101 stuff. For a bit deeper market analysis, this is a good thread on navigating the market under trump.
LEDGER CO-FOUNDER KIDNAPPED
I missed this one, it was a busy week. This story is wild, but honestly terrifying. The co-founder of Ledger (the premier cold storage crypto wallet), and his wife were taken from their home on Tuesday in Vierzon, France. The kidnappers then demanded a large crypto ransom and reportedly sent a finger as part of their demands. Sources told Le Parisien that it belonged to Balland.
10 people have been arrested, this was a planned operation.
This is a chilling correlation with the exact fear that ledger users had after their data was hacked 4 years ago. Many people recieved death threats, and kidnapping threats when their home addresses and personal contact info were hacked. The french government had just fined Ledger in October €750,000 ($810,000) for its failure to protect user data.
Thats what I read this week, January 24, 2025.
Love this round up