You may know Rex Orange County as the guy doing backup vocals for Tyler, The Creator. JK, who knows anyone that way — but it’s time for you to dig into his solo work if you haven’t. This kid from the UK is gearing up to release his fourth studio album, and if this single is any indicator, it’s going to be a really nice thing. Drawing on the sunniest of chord progressions, “KEEP IT UP” is basically an encouragement anthem, reminding you that life’s struggles are really just moments in the long game, moving you toward whatever’s next: “Keep it up and go on/You’re only holding out for what you want/I know that it’s so frustrating/It’s enough, keep it up.” If you don’t have someone in your life telling this — or even if you do — it hits perversely right coming from a 23-year-old. Get it here.

Remember 2006 or so, when you could walk into a local joint lined with big, comfy chairs, rows and rows of novels, and a neighborly type pouring boxed wine into plastic cups behind some improvised bar?

You thought the bookstore café ended along with the age of the open mic, but the genre is back with a vengeance (where by “vengeance” we mean “glow-up”). In this new iteration, the Franzia is Gulp Hablo and the well-worn tomes are all crisp drops from Riverhead. The employees have restaurant experience and everyone is inexplicably well dressed. Brooklyn’s Center for Fiction (🙋🏻‍♀️ member) feels like the precedent for this niche, but more public versions are starting to crop up around the country. And that’s exciting! When you think about the night scene, you’ve got your regular bars, your fringe non-alc bars, a smattering of venues, and, what, board games in the living room? Why can we not have a space where it’s cool to be hot and saucy and also have your brain on after dark? (Not to mention, you can also go be hot and bookish during the day — lots of these places also do coffee and food and all that.) Cheers to diversifying the vibe.

Natural wine not innovative enough for you? FINE we’ll talk about Gary fucking Vee’s fucking NFT restaurant, which is at this point old news to anyone who doesn’t have to look up Gary Vaynerchuk, and for the rest of you, has come to ruin your day. The quick version: our favorite blockchain booster is spinning up a dining club where you buy an NFT to belong. In an undisclosed Manhattan location at “the intersection of food and new technology,” the club invites you to pay either 2.5 Ethereum (~$8,400) for regular membership or 4.25 Ethereum (~$14,300) for the VIP token that gets you into the omakase room — sorry, the Omakase *Experience.* Your ability to buy the token is the only social filter for membership, in case that indicates the world we want to live in at the Flyfish Club — you can resell yours at any price you want, and you can also lease it out willy nilly. Rando or VIP, though, you still have to make a reservation two weeks out.

But all that profiteering is just angel dust on top of the $14m the club has raised to date, a figure that almost certainly means there’s some kind of future scale involved (in addition to a little strategic copycatting). So all you non-New-Yorkers rolling your eyes at this urban nonsense can keep an eye out for this very business model coming to a venue near you.

Another option: Get your celebrity novelty at home with Katy Perry’s new line of sparkling, non-alc apéritifs. Made by master distiller Morgan McLachlan, De Soi comes in flavors like Golden Hour and Purple Lune, mixing adaptogens (maca, reishi mushroom, and ashwagandha) with botanicals like yuzu, lemongrass, dates and rosemary. Per the pic above, the bottles are a whole vibe for anyone looking to strike their tagline balance between “pleasure and restraint.”  Oh, that’s you?! Get 15% off your order with the code LOREMIPSUM.