Cappuccino Thoughts 114: Espresso Thoughts on Manhattan's Best New Grocery Store, Pandemic Books, and How to Build a Substack
+ wellness culture and the worst coffee shop
Cappuccino Thoughts is a weekly newsletter about culture and creativity in New York.
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Where are all the great books written during the pandemic? It seemed like coming out of 2020, the book publishing industry expected an influx of manuscripts now that some people had the time to sit down and write. There was talk of a lot of famous people finally writing their memoirs. Five years on, I wouldn’t say the last few years have brought a remarkable set of books coming out of that period.
Also, I am not ready to read about the pandemic! I was relatively unscathed, but I still find it traumatic to think about for too long. Some of my recent reads like Tom Lake, Dream Count, and Dream State (reviewed below) reference the pandemic obliquely, but don’t seem to know whether to integrate it into the narrative. My verdict? It will be a long time before I’m ready for a true pandemic novel.
Also on the publishing beat, it is so hard to write a good novel after a blockbuster. I found Chimamandah Ngozi Adichie’s new book kind of a flop, which is brutal since it is her first full novel in ten years and follows the enormous success of Americanah. Same goes for Amor Towles’s books since A Gentleman in Moscow. (Lincoln Highway was genuinely unreadable). I’m nervous about Katie Kitamura’s new book Audition, after her last book Intimacies had breakout success. I think it’s particularly hard when the wait has been years or even decades. Also on my worry list: Min Jin Lee, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Donna Tartt.
Does anyone use Netflix Games? I was downloading movies for a trip recently and noticed Netflix had quietly introduced games. You would think it would have some kind of publicity around it, no? The rollout seems strange. My suspicion was confirmed when I was at an industry (Hollywood, baby) party in LA recently and someone in CAA’s game department said Netflix’s game play has been a flop. It shouldn’t be that hard for a content developer with a devoted fan base to convert people to a different kind of content. Something funky happened.
Tashkent Market is the hottest new West Village hangout. I can’t tell you how THRILLED I was when this Uzbek grocery store finally opened. The store sat empty for more than two years and I had lost all hope. In the summers, I love to go out to Brighton Beach for some sunshine and real Russian meals, and I always stock up on pelmeni and my favorite Russian tea, which I haul back on the Q train. When I recently ran out, I got so desperate that I got a delivery from Queens via Net Cost. Now the grocer has blessed us with a Manhattan presence. My TikTok algorithm has really nailed my interests because every other video is cool girls telling me what to get at the hot bar; however, I will NOT be getting the herring under pickled beets, no matter how many times you suggest it to me!
Young people need to stop running so many marathons and go out and drink more!! Apologies because I have at least half a dozen marathon-running friends reading this (you people are crazy). It seems like the options when you hit your mid-twenties are 1) graduate school, 2) marathon. I get that people want a long-term goal and structure, but have you seen what multiple time marathoners look like when they get older? And you just sound so tired.
Relatedly, wellness is not a hobby. I’ve recently found myself in conversation with multiple unnamed people who really want to talk to me about the protein source of their favorite nutrition bars or how much magnesium to take at night. It’s just not that interesting! If your biggest project is your own body, it just doesn’t leave that much to talk about. However, if you want to tell me about your crazy treatments, I am all ears! Rarely does a week pass when I don’t think about the insanity of the crypto-heat powered BATHHOUSE. I would also like to hear more first-person accounts of different procedures, like Grace Clarke’s in-depth description of getting her eyes done, because I am nosy and I want to know exactly how much everything costs and exactly what people want changed.
It’s so easy to spend money and so hard to get people to spend their money. I feel like every time I leave my apartment, I spend $100. Conversely, trying to sell my handbags can be so much work.
Substack is a great growth platform. Many brands are late to it, but they should join now. However, they have to be careful to do it in an organic way that audiences actually care about. I’ve been impressed with how fashiontech startups
and have been building their audiences by sharing their progress with their respective businesses as well as sharing fashion news and interviews.Everyone’s cashing in on affiliate links. Meghan Markle, who just should have been just an influencer, recently shared her ShopMy. My favorite Nell Diamond also recently launched a Substack, though I doubt she’s going to be able to keep this pace, and she immediately shared a bunch of affiliate links. You can make a ton of money from this, so it’s smart business. For a full breakdown,
has a great explainer.
Consumer goods companies shouldn’t raise venture capital money. Get a small business loan or line of credit. I’ve had a number of people with great consumer businesses recently ask me about VC funding and I keep thinking about a panel I recently went to with swimwear company Andie’s founder. She spoke with brutal honesty about how she would love to run the business as a lifestyle business and just enjoy the profits at the end of each year, but she’s raised $30 million in venture funding and she needs to exit. How do you exit a swimwear business today?? It’s not something LVMH is going to buy. PE firms have had poor returns on other consumer businesses like Spanx and don’t have an appetite for more. I think venture funding makes so many headlines that companies think it’s their only option, or they get too caught up in raising money and not running the businesses. It’s not worth it.
Newly opened Union Square bakery Salswee is an Instagram nightmare come to life. Everything is so colorful and perfectly laid out like jewels in a Tiffany’s store. When I went, I saw at least three people filming their desserts and very few people actually eating them.
Salswee in Union Square Rhythm Zero, where every DJ/writer/intimacy coordinator/part-time videographer likes to congregate, recently opened in the West Village and is somehow even more insufferable. The Greenpoint location has a genuinely cool vibe full of people who look like they went to the best underground rave last night. The West Village location is just ridiculous.
There should be more founder retreats like there are artist retreats.
It’s so important to be part of something bigger than yourself that will last. I’ve found a lot of personal fulfillment in volunteering with nonprofit organizations and planning how to ensure they will be around for decades to come.
One for my F1 fans: Red Bull management is a mess and Christian Horner will be out by the start of the 2026 season. A real villain arc!
Trump can set all the tariffs he wants, but it does not mean that overnight the talent to produce will suddenly exist. Over decades, this country has systematically let our manufacturing industry perish, something both parties are guilty of letting happen, and that doesn’t just change overnight. I’ve learned firsthand how hard it is to get something made here! We should be investing in manufacturing training and support programs instead of arbitrarily adding tariffs to places, some of which don’t even have any residents.
Just to set the record straight….some things I was right about:
I said that fur coats are in but you have to style them differently for 2025. A week later
wrote a piece.I shared that I was knitting the Sophie Scarf, the Scandinavian bonnet/scarf, and the following week theNew York Times wrote about the piece.
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Happy to join the lineup at The Analog Stationer, Brooklyn’s newest stationery store, located in Prospect Heights! Go check it out for gorgeous pens, notebooks, and pencil cases from around the world.
I had a chance to visit the newly reopened Yale Center for British Art while visiting my grandparents this weekend. After a four-year renovation, the museum looked the same, but it was fun to visit old friends (paintings). My grandfather nominated Elizabeth Erskine, Countess of Kellie, painted by Paul van Somer in 1619, as this week’s look of the week. I love the details in this piece, from her bedazzled shoes peeking out beneath the dress to the lace-cuffed gloves she’s holding in her hand, to the green parrot crawling up her dress to grab a treat out of her fingers! All of that stiff starched lace looks awfully uncomfortable, but she’s inspired me to integrate a touch of lace into my outfit this week. She looks pretty good for 406 years old.
Dream State by Eric Puchner is a new book about calling off a marriage, and the ramifications this decision has on two families. This book is unlike anything else I’ve read. It’s both realistic, and also crosses over to a vision of a future ravaged by the effects of climate change. The novel is set primarily in Montana, and descriptions of glorious vistas are described with the same intensity as the wildfires that increase every summer. More than anything, it’s a book about time. The title is apt because everyone in the novel seems to exist in a dream state, whether through an accidental Ambien dose or an unwillingness to let the past go. Puchner has a masterful grip over time—he moves so seamlessly between years and characters that I had to re-read a page to realize he had moved the narrative forward five years in the middle of a sentence. I do think it could have been trimmed by 100 pages as some of the environmental themes get a little heavy-handed toward the end, but, if you’re looking for absolutely gorgeous writing, a tale of a family over generations, and something set in the American West, this is for you.
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This week, I am headed to Dublin for the first time🍀🍀🍀
All my best,
I wonder what book Ms Erskine is reading?