Micah's Read of the Week, Vol. 113
For New Yorkers, 6 p.m. Is the New 8 p.m., Luke Combs, New Yorker Cartoon of the Week, Butter boards, and more.
Hello, and welcome to Micah’s Read of the Week.
This is a newsletter filled with things Micah Wiener finds interesting. Check out the archive of previous newsletters here.
For New Yorkers, 6 p.m. Is the New 8 p.m.
Why are restaurants in the city filling up at hours that were once unfashionably early?
One of the joys of visiting The City that Never Sleeps is that you can get anything at any time. I LOVE a 9 PM dinner reservation when I know it’s the start of a long night. I especially love it on vacation (good luck getting me out of the house after 8 for any reason at home) these days. So, this article caught my attention.
It’s the latest reminder that it’s 2022 and things are DIFFERENT now.
I was eating French fries at the Odeon when I noticed that a server had begun to repeatedly check in. “Oh,” I realized, “she needs the table back.” It was 6:22 p.m. The restaurant was full. Once, 11:40 p.m. had been “a little too early for Odeon,” according to “Bright Lights, Big City,” Jay McInerney’s 1984 chronicle of druggy downtown Manhattan, which featured the spot’s red neon marquee on its original paperback cover. “We sometimes didn’t get busy until, like, 8:30,” says Roya Shanks, the restaurant’s longtime maitre d’. But lately, she reports, there are “waves of people making 5 o’clock reservations” — unheard of just a few years ago. Farther uptown, at Danny Meyer’s Ci Siamo and Gramercy Tavern, “People sit down at 6:30, and our restaurant is full,” says Megan Sullivan, the director of operations for Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group. “Eight o’clock is what was hot for New Yorkers,” adds Roni Mazumdar, a co-owner of Dhamaka, a difficult-to-reserve Indian restaurant on the Lower East Side. “Now, people email, ‘Can I come in for that 6:00 reservation?’”
Our new work habits are the biggest driver of this trend.
These days, the boundaries between one’s professional and social lives have collapsed: Though this fall may bring an uptick in commuting, only 8 percent of Manhattan employees have been going into an office five days a week, according to a May survey from the Partnership for New York City. And when work is home and home is work, an early meal is one of the easiest ways to assert that the day has come to some kind of conclusion. Not that 5 p.m. is necessarily when people want to eat, says S. Margot Finn, a food studies lecturer at the University of Michigan; it’s just “when they want to be somewhere else.”
Mazumdar thinks these industry changes are here to stay — “We’re going to see this trend go on for at least the next half-decade, if not longer,” he says — another of the many small, perhaps trivial-seeming pandemic resets that may nonetheless affect how New York and cities like it function and do business forever.
In appears that the once-geriatric stigma of being an early bird is gone.
Or perhaps everyone’s become more geriatric: prioritizing sleep and giving one’s body a few hours to digest before bed; intermittently fasting and trading cocktails for all those new low- or no-alcohol aperitifs. In that light, eating early is just another way to reject the corporate hegemony that once defined a capitalistic city. “You dress up head to toe, go to dinner and then go home and watch your HBO show and [are] asleep by 11,” says Anthony Geich, the maitre d’ at Sona, a gold-pillared Indian restaurant in the Flatiron district. “The pandemic pushed us all into early retirement.”
Luke Combs is country music’s newest mega-star, and its fiercest defender
At just 32 years old, the North Carolina native is becoming the face of a genre that he feels is misunderstood. He’d like to set the record straight.
I generally despise the schlocky Nashville country sound and the hits the industry produces. I find it full of cliches, unimaginative, and boring.
I met him once. He came through the Grandex office and appeared as a guest on the old Inside TFM podcast. Some no-name country singer was coming on the pod to talk about playing frat parties at SEC schools. Yawn.
I was less interested when a chubby dude with a bad beard walked in with a PFG fishing shirt. And truthfully, the interview was pretty boring.
Then, Luke Combs sat down and did this.
Holy shit.
Fast forward six years and this dude is the biggest star Nashville has produced in years. Seriously, check the numbers.
Since the release of his debut album five years ago, Combs has shattered sales and streaming records in a way rarely seen in the genre.
Each of his 14 singles has reached No. 1 on country radio, with the swooning “The Kind of Love We Make” (from his new album, “Growin’ Up”) at the top of the Mediabase chart this week. He had the best-selling country album of 2019 with his debut, “This One’s For You” (originally released in 2017) and repeated the feat in 2020 with “What You See Is What You Get” (released in 2019). Already on a sold-out arena tour this fall, he just announced a 2023 world tour that will take him to 16 stadiums stateside starting in March, followed by arenas from Australia to the U.K.
After the bro-country craze of a decade ago, fans are embracing ’90s nostalgia and favoring performers who seem like real, down-to-earth people. For his part, Combs oozes everyman relatability, with more listeners seeing him as a reflection of their lives and experiences than many of the genre’s more entrenched stars.
Jonathan Singleton, his longtime co-writer and producer, noting that there are “a bunch of suits in town” that aren’t living an authentic country lifestyle. “And here’s a guy that is — so what happens if we don’t mess with that and let it be what it is? It’s purely, beautifully raw. … If you’re trying to understand modern country music, you would take a big long look at Luke.”
He also seems like a pretty nice guy!
He estimates he spent $2 million paying his band and crew’s salaries when touring stopped during the pandemic.
“I’m not trying to brag,” he added quickly. “I just wanted those guys to not have to worry about what happened next, and I’m lucky enough to have made enough money at that point.”
“There’s probably some other chubby kid out there that is self-conscious about the way he looks, and he’s a great singer — and if he digs into that and does that, and it’s because of something he heard me say,” Combs said, “that would be a win for me to give somebody hope that things are going to be all right.”
Having sat about 5 feet away from him, the description of his talent below rings very true.
“Luke came into our office and sang, and when he walked in, he did not look like a lot of the archetypical male artists within country music at the time,” said Randy Goodman, chairman and chief executive of Sony Music Nashville, not naming names but alluding to the muscled, coifed singers (perhaps the Sam Hunts or Florida Georgia Lines of the world). “But the voice that came out of him was one of those kind of things where everything else kind of melts away. … It was so powerful to be in his presence and have him playing his acoustic guitar. It was pretty overwhelming.” Soon, he had the first of many No. 1 singles with “Hurricane.”
Combs’s booming vocals come from a place deep within his chest. That voice sets him apart from the other singers that populate country radio. “He starts out at 10 and then he goes to 11, 12,” Goodman said. “It feels like a bear is coming at you,” Singleton added.
Podcast Promo of the Week
I had the opportunity to join the Loyal Littles podcast this week. It’s a podcast for Loyal Littles ABOUT Loyal Littles and fans of Tony Kornheiser. Hosted by Chuck & Roxy.
We talked about my history with Mr. Tony, podcasting, and connective tissue (IYKYK). I really enjoyed the conversation. Check it out below or visit their website.
And while we’re talking about podcasts, you should subscribe to our sports podcast Back Door Cover. Football season is back, and we did more than 68,000 listens last week! We’re previewing and recapping all of the college and pro football action and we’re sharing picks from our proprietary Value Index Algorithm. Subscribe now and get episodes as soon as they are released.
And, one last podcast-related note: we are thrilled to have our good friends at EarlyBird CBD back as a sponsor this football season. Visit earlybirdcbd.com and use promocode: ALGO to save 20% off all of the best full-spectrum CBD products on the market. Earlybird ships to all 50 states and I highly recommend.
Thank you for your support.
M
New Yorker Cartoon of the Week
Butter boards are the latest food trend churning through TikTok
Way back in the innocent mists of early 2020, we reported that boards were no longer just for cheese and artisanal meats — people were heaping boards with pancakes, salads, french fries and anything else they could find for artistic (and Instagrammable) tableaus. But, folks, it seems we’ve reached a new summit in our collective food-on-boards journey: All hail the butter board.
Perhaps you noticed that butter boards — boards smeared with softened butter and topped with all manner of savory and sweet accouterments — started popping up on social media last week. Why? Because we have TikTok food influencers, that’s why.
Justine Doiron posted on TikTok introducing the concept. “I want to make them the next charcuterie board,” she says in the video, which has been viewed nearly 8 million times as of this afternoon. “Not to usurp charcuterie, but maybe, a little bit.”
Her version is topped with lemon zest, salt, edible flowers and a “honey coriander situation,” resulting in an appealing, colorful spread through which she drags hunks of warm, crusty bread.
Why now?
It’s food that’s meant to be shared. “No one is making a butter board just for themselves — I mean, if they are, more power to them,” he said. “But it’s connecting people, and that’s super cool, especially at a time when the world is so weird.”
Voraciously staff writer Becky Krystal basically sums it all up for us.
“Look, I love butter slathered on bread, and it’s a staple of my diet, but do we really have to make it A Thing now?” she Slacked me when I asked for her thoughts. “Especially one that’s basically just a messier way to eat compound butter.”
Note from Micah: we’ll be back with Recipe Corner next week.
Did Micah practice yoga this weekend?
Yes. 60 minutes Saturday at Searsana in Dripping Springs.
That’s 35 in-person weekend classes in 38 weeks this year.
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