James Blake’s new album is full of delights, and by delights, I mean cameos. He’s got Travis Scott, Metro Boomin, Moses Sumey, Rosalía, and this one from André 3000 is one of my faves. André free-associates over a rattly beat, creating a sort of seismic activity over the thrum of Blake’s warm, bleak vocals. People have in fact been critiquing Blake for being too serious on this album (always a risk for him), but André provides a lot of lightness, as friends often do. Even if Assume Form *is* a little self-serious, it’s nicely varied– it feels kind of like walking around the neighborhood and knocking on doors. Each track is its own little world.
It’s a tough time for restaurants. In addition to the blow that they suddenly have to pay fair wages, rents keep going up, and up, and up. Among those who haven’t simply closed, some are cutting personnel (not a great way to accomplish the ‘hospitality’ ideal) and others are finding ways to eliminate waitstaff altogether. But here’s a novel idea: surge pricing. Legitimately on the table at some higher-end restaurants, it works just like Uber: when demand is low, so are prices. And when more people are there, you pay a premium. It’s not paying to skip the line– people are not down with that– but they *are* down to catch a half-price matinee, er, lunch deal. So. You, me, Per Se, 10:30?
If you’re not a freelancer, maybe you don’t track your work by the minute, but now you can! At ‘Made by We,’ the latest infuriating grammatical choice from the recently-rebranded We Company, you can book a desk in a new public coworking space for 20 cents per minute (after an initial $6 half hour). When you’re all done, you can go buy snacks and merch sourced from the WeWork Community, and then like make some really *meaningful* connections at the in-house coffee shop. This is the latest major community-centered initiative from Julie Rice, the founder of Soulcycle who now is a partner at WeWork in charge of building some sense of cohesion out of their white collar factory farm. (Is it working?)
In case you’re curious about that WeWork store from a distance, let’s spotlight one of their items: powdered Gatorade, branded for the style-conscious aspiring mogul. The packaging, like Glossier but yellow, gives you that ‘pulled-together feeling,’ and did you know it’s formulated by an Oxford biologist? Oh, also it’s vegan, for anyone wondering. But so is plain salt, which, office kids, you’re probably getting enough of anyway.
