IT’S HOLIDAY PARTY SEASON And It’s Complicated This Year!

Good Morning & Hello Friday!
  • We kicked off the Holiday Season with a wonderful celebration at one of my favorite restaurants. By all accounts, it was a mega success for which I am grateful to both the staff and chef/owner of PEASANT and to my friends who showed up ready to party (see #1 below and make sure you watch Laetitia’s video!).
  • Why do I say it’s complicated this year? Partly because of the economy and partly because of optics – check the CNBC article in #1 below on what party planners have been dealing with in Silicon Valley.
  • Also, my take on gift giving – and why we’d all be happier and less stressed if we did a reset on that obligation (#3).
  • And finally, 3 random (but very important) trends for 2023. They go a long way in explaining what’s been going on for the last couple of years and what we can anticipate going forward. (#8 below)

And with that please scroll down for this week’s blog.

HOLIDAY TRENDS

1. ZandlSlant Holiday Party: best ever I’m told!!
And big shout out to Laetitia Longuefosse for the great video!
Holiday Party Trends:
  1. According to a new Siena Research Institute poll, New Yorkers are more excited about the 2022 holiday season than at any time in the last 15 years.
  2. In the Bay Area, Tommy Halvorson, founder/CEO of Foxtail Catering & Events, said what’s been “really striking” has been the back and forth, and failures to commit combined with last-minute requests. The good news: by mid-November, his company was fully booked and he was asked to organize a 900-person holiday party with a short three weeks’ notice. Optics are more important in the midst of layoffs. Many companies are switching parties from luxury venues to the office, switching attire from tuxes to casual, and dialing back the food options from caviar and lobster to tacos and street food. (Source: CNBC)
  3. Key insights from Elevent‘s Holiday Event Planning Survey: 64% of companies will be having a holiday party this year with 24% opting for in-person events, 22% hybrid, and 17% virtual. (Source: BenzingaPro)
2. Kudos to Hallmark for their Sweater-Wrapped Car Fleets
  1. To celebrate Countdown to Christmas, the Hallmark Channel is bringing festive Hallmark Channel cars decked out in custom crochet sweaters to five cities including Austin and Nashville.
  2. These sweater-wrapped car fleets were created and installed by crochet artist London Kaye. Apparently, it’s an annual tradition but it’s the first I’ve heard of it.
  3. The promotion includes Christmas music, lights, and brand ambassadors.
3. I love the Holidays but gift giving is RIDICULOUS (here’s why)
  1. Most of the time, it’s stressful, expensive, and wasteful (all that wrapping paper, all those boxes, all those ridiculous gag gifts). When you really analyze it, most gifts just end up being clutter.
  2. I don’t understand the logic of it. I mean if I need a sweater, am I going to wait until Xmas in the hope that somebody will gift me one? Nope!!
  3. Now lest you consider me a cheap curmudgeon that’s not why I have opted out of gift-giving. I consider myself relatively generous and am a big fan of providing experiences, e.g., hosting a party for friends or having a special dinner at a favorite restaurant, or splurging on travel. It’s obligatory gift-giving that I’m not down with.
  4. Even with kids, e.g., Brad’s nephews, I gave up on gift-giving early on and opted instead to treat them to experiences, e.g., trips to New York (all gifts they are still talking about years later). Based on my observations of the whole gifts-under-the-tree thing, I would say only 1 in 20 gifts usually knocks it out of the park. The rest generally fall into that “no-great-shakes” category.
  5. I know this is not a mainstream opinion. But it goes hand in hand with my earlier decision to stop sending Xmas cards (about 30 years ago) because I also felt that was a giant waste of time, money, and paper/trees. Nowadays, we get about 2 cards a season – and I recognize that might be because we don’t send cards. But I’m good with that!

BOTTOM LINE ON GIFT GIVING: Dial it back. You’ll find your stress levels will be vastly improved and your bank account, come January, will be healthier as well. But best of all, the Holidays will be so much more fun for you and your family – instead of running around like chickens with your heads cut off in order to fulfill your gift-list obligations, you can relax and enjoy the holiday lights, the festivities, grab a mulled wine, just take it all in and ENJOY!! This is not an anti-capitalist or anti-shopping rant just a call for a reset on a few of those self-imposed obligations in order to regain your sanity!

INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCES

4. Golden Girls Pop-Up Restaurant

This is the next iteration of the interactive/immersive experiences that first popped up in 2016 when the Museum of Ice Cream launched. A myriad of other “museums” followed including the Museum of Crayons and then came the immersive art experiences, e.g., Van Gogh, Klimt, Kahlo, etc. I’m finding them all REALLY tiresome. But change is afoot and immersive museums appear to be morphing into entertainment-centric ULTIMATE FAN EXPERIENCES.

  1. Last month Eminem’s Mom’s Spaghetti pop-up arrived in Soho, this month we’re getting the Golden Girls Kitchen pop-up which will run through March with a drag brunch added starting January 8. It’s pricey: starts at $40 per person.
  2. It opened on Wednesday (Dec 7) in the Seaport District (19 Fulton Street).
  3. The big selling point seems to be the selfie and social media opportunities, e.g., “Snap a photo in Blanche’s Boudoir, complete with shag carpet and a palm print bedspread, or pretend to chat with the ladies through the girls’ yellow kitchen phone.”
  4. Assuming this goes well, look for the Golden Girls Kitchen to pop up in 2023 in Miami, San Francisco, and Chicago.
  5. And I also just heard that Netflix is bringing an “Emily in Paris ” pop-up to NYC’s Little Paris neighborhood starting next week (12/15-12/17). It will all take place inside/outside local businesses on Centre Street, e.g., Maman, Coucou, and Catbird. Highlights include a holiday market with pastries, champagne bar, a crepe cart, and, of course, oodles of Instagrammable moments.

RETAIL

5. New Hermes Flagship in NYC!
  1. The new Hermes boutique at 706 Madison is EXQUISITE. I don’t have the bank account to shop there but I can still appreciate its beauty and elegance.
  2. Three things stand out for me: a) the natural sunlight filtering into the building through beautiful windows and skylights, b) the staff and the overall vibe – so friendly, so welcoming, and so accommodating (they even offered to provide refreshments for us, which would have been served on their signature china!) and c) the 4th floor garden with that amazing view and the Hermes “mascot” on horseback.
6. Louis Vuitton’s “200 Trunks, 200 Visionaries”
  1. Let me not beat around the bush. I was UNDERWHELMED. A major waste of resources vs. their 2017 “Voguez, Volez, Voyagez – Louis Vuitton” exhibition.
  2. For those of us even tangentially in the retail/fashion biz, it’s still a must-see and it’s free, but I’m unclear as to what it is intended to do for the brand. My impression is that they are attempting to dial down the luxury element and make the brand more “street.”
  3. That said, I did have a favorite trunk: DJ Benji B’s juke box (see video above).

PODCAST HUMOR

7. LOVE THESE GUYS.
  1. WARNING: Noel and Cody have a very odd and very wry sense of humor but if you appreciate that kind of weirdness, this will be right up your alley.
  2. And if not, skip forward to where they start talking about Noel’s Big Italian Wedding which included truffle hunting with dogs (because apparently, pigs leave the land too messy!), and lots of sentimentality and man-crying.
  3. And if time is of the essence, I’ll pass along my friend Joe’s tip: go to settings on the podcast video and up the playback speed from Normal to 1.25.

8. RANDOM TRENDS ON MY RADAR

  • THE #1 TOPIC IN TECH THIS WEEK (even more than SBF) is ChatGPT, a new AI chatbot system that OpenAI released in November. The All-In podcast guys are obsessed with what it can do and claim this will be the biggest breakthrough in tech for years to come (along with attracting the most VC activity). From the little I’ve seen of it, I agree it is really exciting. But, of course, as we’ve seen with crypto and NFTs, the downsides can be devastating as well. And there are a LOT of potential downsides with this particular technology!
  • ARMED PRIVATE SECURITY. Neil Patel, owner of KARCO gas stations in Philadelphia, hired private armed security (toting AR-15 shotguns) to patrol his stations because he was “tired of this nonsense” i.e., violent crimes plaguing his business all day, every day. Note, all criminal activity stopped as soon as the armed security arrived. This is in stark contrast to the ransacking of the Apple Store in Palo Alto this week where staff HELD BACK customers who were trying to stop the thieves. Tim Cook needs to get with Patel and grow a pair!
  • ELITE OVERPRODUCTION (or Surplus Elites). This concept has only recently gotten on my radar but the theory has been around since 2010 when Peter Turchin first predicted it would lead to exactly the kind of social unrest we’re now seeing in America. Not surprisingly, Turchin’s theory has been gaining increased recognition. He uses Structural Demographic Theory to study the long-term dynamics that create conditions for political stability as well as political disintegration. I’m going to be reading up on this as I believe it will have a great impact over the next decade. If of interest to you, here are three articles worth reading: We’re on the verge of breakdown: a data scientist’s take on Trump and Biden, The Elite Overproduction Hypothesis and The Screaming Twenties: How Elite Overproduction May Lead to a Decade of Discord in the United States
AND ON THAT NOTE, LET’S WRAP IT UP FOR THIS WEEK!

Elite intra-fighting aside, here’s wishing you all a jolly weekend. I’ll be out and about doing a gallery crawl with my friend Dean. We will, I’m sure be running into the Santa Con crowd who will be bar crawling in their Santa outfits downtown. I’m hoping our paths cross for photo ops – BUT not too many times.

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