Episode 306: “Merch Madness, How Did We Get Here?” by Linni Kral

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew. Lenny Krall is a Brooklyn-based writer, editor, and educator. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, the BBC, Condé Nast Traveler, and more. Lenny wrote an article titled Merch Madness that appeared on eater.com, the digital media brand dedicated to all things food and dining. Many of you have probably used Eater to source places to dine when you travel. Lenny's article on merch asks the question, how has branded merch become so ubiquitous and also a shorthand for selfhood? And how did we get here? I discovered the article through our good friend Danny Rosen at Brand Fuel, and then I invited Lenny on the SkewCast to talk about this phenomenon that's happening in culture with branded merch. Lenny not only graciously joined us for today's episode, she also allowed us to read the article to you first so you would have context for our conversation. By the way, you can find a link to Lenny's work in our show notes today or at LennyKral.com. That's L-I-N-N-I-K-R-A-L.com. And here at Common Skew, we have this insanely talented bunch of team members, one of whom is Allison Levine, who is not only our customer success specialist and whom many of you have likely worked with, but she's a skilled and experienced voice actor. As you will be able to tell from her excellent reading of Lenny's article. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Commonsku. Today's episode is brought to you by us at Commonsku, the work from anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow, enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonsku.com. And now here's the article, Merch Madness, written by Lenny Kroll and read by Commonsku's Allison Levine. It's about a 10-minute article followed by our interview with Lenny.

At some point during the past few years, I looked around to find my apartment— nay, my body— had become a temple to everywhere I've ever eaten. Mugs and hats from local grocers, hoodies from roadside diners, t-shirts and totes from damn near everywhere else. I've had to install more hooks in my kitchen mug rack. I'm thinking of buying a second dresser. I need a 12-step program for tote bags. What exactly is happening? Some combination of aesthetic evolution, brand loyalty, and the need to communicate one's identity in the time it takes to view an Instagram story has curdled into a fashion trend uniquely suited to our late capitalist times. What started with indie restaurants and Zizmorcore has spread to chains like Costco and Publix. Los Angeles pastrami spot Langer's now hawks a shirt with its name in Dodgers font. There's a Dimes pepper mill and candle, a glasses cord from Montreal winery Elena, In-N-Out sneakers, not one but two restaurant crock charms, a Kitty's Hudson chip clip, a wine key that reads, "The Fly is a chicken bar." What's next, a pink hot dog's pince-nez? And there are collabs too. Totes from Bagu and Mr. Zhu's, Bagu and Russ Daughters, and Russ Daughters and ECCO, shoes from Rubirosa and Fila, a Carlyle Hotel and DS Durga perfume, a Camp Four Menu varsity jacket, this very publication and Takanaka chopsticks. LA has a streetwear and food festival. I could go on. Restaurant merch is now so cool, resident cool girl Alison Roman is selling merch for a restaurant that doesn't exist. I myself have purchased the infamous Daddy's Little Meatball shirt and, for some reason, a hat that says "Pizza Shirt" from a Philly pizzeria I've never been to. We can't even see the shark anymore. How did we get here? You could say it started with the tote. I was probably standing on a subway platform when I first saw it. The bag it seemed every fifth New Yorker was required to have. That is, the New Yorker tote. The magazine introduced it as a subscription perk in 2014, and it caught like fire. Our parched identities desperate for this elegant way to show the world how well-read we were, or at least how many unread magazines lived on our coffee table. I noticed the pen soon after. You know the pens, tapered at the ends like an elongated dirigible with a thin metal ring around the waist and a restaurant logo on its side. How it became the pen is a problem for another article, but along with the tote, it was symptomatic of a major culture reset. Practically overnight, luggage brands and mattress companies became indistinguishable from the likes of Glossier and Everlane, and eateries learned to surf this aesthetic wave and to sell it. When we opened in 2017, it was clear that restaurants were having some fun and success selling branded merchandise. Says Chad Conley, owner of Portland, Maine bagel shop Rose Foods. He worked with the Atlanta graphic design studio Family Brothers to create his store's whole front logo situation and calls them the real stars. In fact, they're the reason he made merch. I felt so good about the look of the brand, I wanted to make sure we featured it, he says, and it paid off. Heck, I drove to Maine on the strength of his shop's branding. I've only been there once. Yet here I am drinking out of the Rose Foods muted pink mug as I write. This penchant for nostalgia, this "pics or it didn't happen" mentality, is another piece of the merch addiction pie. Merch is a very effective "you are here," a dropped pin on the mall map of your life. It's "I went to [insert trendy eatery] and all I got was a very cool way to show the world what I did." And the cool part matters. I wouldn't be building a mug rack to display all 20+ of mine if they didn't each look like the ceramic equivalent of an Eames chair. COVID knocked the trend into hyperdrive, throwing even the most beloved restaurants into financial freefall. Unable to sell consumables, they sold wearables, and we bought them all. This helped a little, but not a lot. When I spoke to Joe Badia of Pizzeria Badia, makers of the pizza shirt hat, "He told me his food brings in way better margins than his merch." Conley said the same, calling merch "mostly a break-even situation." If this moment is anyone's cash cow, the Heifer is more likely parked in the yard of Hanes, Gildan, and Comfort Colors. Of tote wholesalers and graphic designers. Of whoever sells those damn pens. So why is merch still everywhere? Because of us. For whatever reason, we rep the things we love. Even fans of anti-consumerist punk band Fugazi, who famously did not sell merch, resorted to bootlegging unlicensed "This is not a Fugazi t-shirt" shirts. A story that shores up our complicity. Because what's newsworthy isn't how much restaurants are selling, but how much we're buying. The bait has always been there. It's taking it that's on the rise. And though good design is one piece of that puzzle, it's not the whole picture. The speed at which we now perceive each other online has necessitated certain shorthands for selfhood. Your astrological sign can be one such semaphore, knowing about Musso and Frank another. Now more than ever, we carve out our identities in things that can be posted, hearted, reposted. Is it any wonder then that my body has become a billboard, a mere extension of my feed? That we're dumping the heavy yoke of communicating who we are onto restaurant totes, onto McDonald's ready-to-wear. And of course, it isn't just restaurants, but museums, indie radio, the National Park Service, those magazine totes, anything capable of telegraphing personal taste, good humor, and insider awareness in the space of a reel or tweet. Promotional products have become the ultimate "if you know, you know." Humans have been expressing themselves through fashion since the first person iterated on the loincloth. But our willingness to let our clothes speak for us has ballooned in the very online culture we occupy today, a culture in which plain becomes normcore, not drinking becomes the non-alcoholic beverage juggernaut, and merch abstinence becomes a brand in itself. See not only Fugazi, but MUJI, whose name translates to "no brand." Nothing is metabolized through our digital society's many stomachs into something, something you can post or buy, something you want, no matter how nothing it once was or wanted to be. We memify everything, turning simple cookies into the cookie, simple t-shirts into trends. This from a generation who grew up on Fight Club's Tyler Durden telling us, "You are not your fucking khakis." Where is our countercultural, anti-capitalist backbone? Didn't we all vote for Bernie? It'd be great to say a little brand loyalty never hurt anyone, except that it kind of has. Brand loyalty is just a hop, skip from the corporations are people rhetoric that disenfranchises the American public whenever bottom lines demand it. Most of the companies repped on a mug rack are too small to influence national politics, but still, it's a slippery slope loving things that want our money. David Foster Wallace once wrote, An ad that pretends to be art is, at absolute best, like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. For us, brand loyalty may just be about love, but for the brand, it's always going to be about something else. That something else is sometimes just jokes though. Philly brunch spot Middle Child puts bad customer reviews on totes. Badia said he put pizza shirt on a hat because he thought pizza shirt would be off-putting. The postmodern tone of this wary commentary makes me think the merch moment could be circling the drain. And maybe that's okay? It's not a perfect system for communicating our personalities. Liking the same coffee shop doesn't tell me whether someone's nice to their friends. Still, we have to get dressed every day. And I'm currently having a much better time getting dressed than I used to. It's a heck of a lot easier to exude cool with a hoodless crewneck from Zabars than with an ill-fitting Reformation dress. And if every option is laden with meaning anyways, why not rep the places we like? In this way, I think it's probably okay to be a little bit your fucking khakis, to be what you wear, what you eat. Restaurants are places where you literally become the things you buy. You consume them. They become part of yourselves. I don't personally want to become Mara Hoffman or Acne Studios, but I wouldn't mind being that big green salad at Via Carota. Both physically and in numinous ways that involve the magic that can take place in a kitchen. The look on my friend's face across the table, the feeling of ceremony. We can be forgiven, I think, for a coche of brand loyalty when it comes to restaurants. They feed us, host our birthday parties and engagement announcements. Sometimes they become our actual friends. And COVID forced us to say goodbye to so many we thought would always be there. I think the PTSD of that is behind at least some of this drive to shell out for each and every drip drop. The t-shirts are a way of saying, hey, I like this place, but I can't afford to eat here every night, so I hope you'll eat here too so I can keep eating here forever. And with a lot of these places, I really hope I can.

Lenny, thank you for joining us. This is so much fun to have you on the Skewcast.

Of course. Happy to be here.

So much fun. Where did the idea for this article come from? I mean, was it an assignment? Was it your idea?

How did that come about? It was my idea. I actually had been pitching it around to a couple different places. It got turned down a few times because it was just kind of getting psychotic, I noticed, in my life. Like, I had so many t-shirts and so many mugs. And every time I went to a new coffee shop or restaurant or something, there was a new thing. And I felt this pull like I had to have it. And I— it was like they were so beautiful and I felt so in love with restaurants. I think maybe as like a post-COVID thing, I just was feeling so compelled and I was wearing way more t-shirts than I normally did. Like, I like clothes and fashion and I was finding that a t-shirt could be so beautiful that it felt like fashion. Yeah. And yeah, so a lot of the places I pitched it said People have always bought merch and restaurants have always sold merch. This isn't new. And so it took me a couple of tries to get to a publication that saw the idea and saw that this was definitely a different and a new thing that people were wearing these things as fashion and it was happening kind of all over the place.

And we're going to get into that because what's interesting to me is that you had this lens where you as a writer, you saw something unique happening in culture happening with you first, and then you panned out a little bit, panning out more as you began to survey the sort of marketplace. So you went from personal experience to what's going on in my local market to the marketplace. You were researching the article.

What surprised you the most? I guess how widespread it was. It was just happening everywhere. And I had a friend who told me she lives in the middle of the country, and she was like, I think this maybe is just a coastal thing. And I was like, like, I've seen this in tiny towns, I've seen Nashville, Chicago. I've seen it all over the place. And all these little upstate towns in New York, there's these markets, like hipster grocery stores that all have very cool merch. And so it surprised me how everywhere it was. It's even out of the country. I went to Italy last year and they had cool merch in the stores and the shops there. Yeah. And what else? It was also just really kind of getting weird like there were Croc charms for restaurants. And right, the weirdest thing I saw I think was in Montreal, there's a winery that sells like a glasses cord. Yeah, which is pretty strange.

And also I want it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So as you surveyed this and you saw that there was a cultural shift, there was an attitude change toward merch, because you said you were pitching the story, some people were like, yeah, this has been around, but you're like, no, something's different here. What were you able to pinpoint? What was that change you think that was taking place?

I do think social media has had a big role in it. Generally speaking, just we're putting our personalities out there in pithier little soundbites and a t-shirt with a radio station you listen to or a bookstore you love. It's a great way of saying, this is who I am pretty quickly. I also think that Gen Z has reacted to and pushed back against the sort of millennial elegance, kinfolk, minimalism by having like a, the like weird aesthetic, I think I've heard it called, or like gross aesthetics where you see certain brands having just like pretty ugly design as on purpose. And I think that not that wearing a t-shirt for a store is ugly, but it's, it definitely fits into that sort of more like bucket hats and wave print and kind of cornier, like silly cartoonish style. Yeah. And that didn't used to be cool, but I think that is becoming cool because of how not cool all of the millennial stuff is now.

And we're such complex people. It reaches into a quirky part of our own nature and it's like exhibits this part of our character and personality that's fun and that it's expressive and everybody has some, some part of that.

Yeah. And I saw you talked to Emma Ralph recently about the concept of dopamine dressing. And I do think also that like we were all kind of depressed during COVID and I think there's something way more fun about dressing this way. It's not so self-serious. It's like, I don't take myself very seriously. I'm having a good time. And that's, it's a form of dopamine dressing.

Yeah.

Do you have a favorite merch item that you own?

Oh my gosh, I have a lot. Let's see.

Or did you discover one? Go ahead, keep going.

I'll let you go. I have a tote bag from Russ Daughters that I really love. It's Bagu and Russ Daughters, and it's this print. It says like Queens of Lake Sturgeon in these old woodblock letters. And it's the bag that they used in the '40s for their paper bags that like they gave their groceries in. And then that sort of fell out of use. And the writer Calvin Trillin actually came to them and said, I have an old paper bag from you guys. Do you think you could do something with it? And they printed it on this bag. And I have, I've had this tote for years. I, it got burned in a fire once. So the strap is like singed in half and I still use it all the time because I just love it so much.

Wow. That's an amazing story. The Calvin Trillin, the trill, he wrote a trilogy of some sort, but that, that, that is a fascinating part of that story.

I know.

Yeah, such an old New York story. Yeah, it's great. One quote in your article was this, and I loved it. It was, some combination of aesthetic evolution, brand loyalty, and the need to communicate one's identity in the time it takes to view an Instagram story has curdled into a fashion trend uniquely suited to our late capitalist times. What do you think has evolved in our aesthetic, um, that makes merch like an important part of the everyday capsule? Now, you kind of said it a little bit, but you said that brands, restaurants and brands, were now surfing this aesthetic wave?

I think by, by that, surfing the aesthetic wave, what I refer to is like the direct-to-consumer sea change we've seen with graphic design. I think just how ads used to be a thing that you could just— they were in the background, you'd miss them. And now it's like you're on the subway and the font that's been chosen to advertise this insurance company to you is so compelling that you have to look at it. And I think By surfing this aesthetic wave, I mean like every business kind of has to do that now. If you're using boring fonts and colors, you're not getting noticed. And so you have to kind of be like really stunning and beautiful. And I think everyone's kind of doing that a little bit. Yeah. And also I think brand loyalty has shifted because there's such a murky line between brand partnerships and just showing love on the internet. Like we follow Brands like they're our friends, and some of them even post as irreverently as if they were our friends. So you kind of—

the line between companies and people is less clear. Yeah, Milton Glaser has had a, I think, a profound impact on the way we view advertising, and he talked about it being a method of— his methodology was to inform and delight. And I think that's definitely imbued the merch community now as a part of it because we We talk a lot about surprise and delight. One other thing you said was the speed at which we now perceive each other online has necessitated certain shorthands for selfhood. What a brilliant phrase. You also use the word semaphore, which is a word nerd I love, but shorthands for selfhood.

Can you unpack that a little bit? Yeah, I think that like the culture of posting online has meant that we have to be able to say like, this is who I am in a way that people can perceive really quickly mid-scroll. Like Everything's a meme. We kind of have to become memes in order to be perceived in this way. And we've developed these languages for talking about what we are, who we are. You'll see a post that will say, "A thing about me is," or, "This is my Roman Empire." And the phrases change weekly or monthly, but there's always phrases. And I almost, as gross as it is to say, I think I walk into rooms now and I These phrases pop into my head, things that look postable pop into my head. Instagram has trained me, it's kind of gross. And I think that it's tricky, it can get dangerous because you start assuming you know things about people from these little tiny shorthands. I think this is why astrology is having such a big moment right now. People can feel like they can be known more quickly, and that's a great feeling, but you have to be careful with it because you don't always know everything about someone from something this brief. I met someone once who learned that my husband was a Gemini and she said that she didn't want to meet him because of that.

And I was like, "Okay." [Speaker:AC] That's the wrong side of that equation. That's wrong. The shorthand though reminds me just like it's like a door handle opening to somebody's personality a little bit.

It's like, "Oh, okay, I can kind of understand you a little bit better now." Of course. Yeah, it can be used both ways. It can be used for good. There's a light side. Yeah. Because I love the idea that I could be walking down the street and see someone or someone see me wearing like my WFMU shirt and then they're like, you listen to WFMU? So do I.

And then we have a conversation about it. Right. Another quote that you have in the article, promotional products have become the ultimate if you know, you know.

What did you mean by that? Just that it's like a way to convey that you're hip to something. To show the world that you know what's cool. It's like putting out a billboard saying, like, I like this thing, and if you like it, you're cool too, and we could get along. Yeah, it's like I have a lot of old New York stuff. Like, I have a Zabar shirt and an Economy Candy shirt, a tote from this spice store, Kalustyan's, and I feel very sort of braggy when I wear them. Like, yeah, I know about Kalustyan's.

Do you know about Kalustyan's? Right. Yeah, I love it. It's great. One of the interesting things that we've seen, like, it's so interesting for those of us that have been in the merch industry who create this on behalf of brands, boutique brands or large brands, is this phenomenon that's arisen with the culture like this. I hate to use the word zeitgeist, but this sort of thing happening. I think Gen Z brought us this gift of being able to express yourself no matter how quirky that part of yourself might be. In fact, the quirkier it is, the more affinity and microculture you might develop around you as a community. So lots of things there, but there's also a part of it where, where we still deal with this brand that's trying to sell us something. So on one hand, you gravitate to brands and things that you love and you want to show an affinity for. There's a quote in your article that says this: brand loyalty is just a hop, skip from the corporations are people rhetoric that disenfranchises the American public whenever bottom lines demand it. Most of the companies repped on my mug rack are too small to influence national politics, but still, it's a slippery slope. Loving things that want our money. David Foster Wallace wrote that, quote, "An ad that pretends to be art is at absolute best like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you," end quote. For us, brand loyalty may just be about love, but for the brand, it's always going to be about something else. What are your thoughts about that, if you can unpack that a little more?

And is there this dichotomy that exists with that? I think that it's tough because they'll always have a motive. They need to have your money to get by. But I do think that that motive can be pretty benign when it comes to a small restaurant or something, right? And if you support that restaurant's politics or vision, then you're really— by giving them your money, you're not supporting anything terrible. It's not like Citizens United where, right, it's some global scale problem. I think The restaurant wants to make a living. That's an honest thing, and it can be pretty symbiotic. What's interesting to me, I was thinking about this a little bit, just as the fact that we pay for merch and then we wear it around town, the sense of advertising, the component of that where it's like in NASCAR, you put your sponsor on your shirt and they pay you. And so I guess I get a little upset when merch is like $60 for a t-shirt or something because it's like, Can we, can you pay, can you charge a little bit more closer to like cost for this? Like, do you really need to make a profit? 'Cause like I'm benefiting you too by wearing this around town. Yes. And maybe some recognition of that would be cool.

I don't know. Does that answer the question? Totally answers the question because we're working from the inside and we're working with brands where we are actually trying to help them understand this is about creating brand affinity. And so we're trying to help them get there. So for an example in our world might be a company who wants to sell sell merch to their employees. We reverse that and say, no, that's not what you should be doing. Like, these are your advocates, these are your number one, your number one importance in your business. Therefore, you need to be the one who's gifting these kinds of things to the people who power your business. So we're actually working on the inside in a way that helps brands embrace it in the exact same theme that you mentioned. Yeah, that's great. I love hearing that. The t-shirts are a way of saying— this is another quote from you— the t-shirts are a way of saying, hey, I like this place, but I can't afford to eat here every night, so I hope you'll eat here too so I can keep being here forever. It's a great line, but I love that as a simple definition of brand loyalty. So are there— you already mentioned a few, so maybe you've covered this— are there brands in Brooklyn that you're proud to rep the most?

I have a t-shirt for Yellow Rose, the— which is actually a Texan restaurant, and it's these former Texans who now live in New York and really missed like Texas food. And I really love eating there. It's such a— they, they play The Replacements, there's Christmas twinkly lights, they have Their margaritas are served in like a cactus glass. And I just, I love wearing that shirt because I'm proud to rep them. Cuz they're just like, I don't know, they're 30-somethings trying to make a living in New York City. It's hard. And I think it's like, I like what they're doing and it's a pocket tee and I love a pocket tee. Yeah. That's another thing that I feel like is important is that you can't just have like something with beautiful design. There's. It needs to also be an interesting item. So I really love the, my pizza shirt hat that I talk about in the article because it's a really unique hat. It's made of this like mesh material. That's something that I feel like I would, if I had an ear to the people designing this stuff, that it can't just be a cool logo. I think it also should be like a solid and interesting item. I love that. Like, go ahead. Just a pocket tee or a The, even the tote, the Russ and Daughter's tote is really high quality. Yeah.

It's not like your standard tote. Yeah. It's almost like you're saying, make sure the reflection, or as I interpret, I'm trying to make sure I interpret it right. The, the, the, the item we're giving away should definitely be a reflection of that brand's energy and that ethos. Absolutely.

And not, not just a design that's pretty. Yes, exactly. Sometimes when it's just a design that's pretty, there's an uncanny valley thing happening where it's like, well, I want that. Or maybe I want to want that, but it feels like it's missing something.

It's two-dimensional in a way.

Yeah.

Do you think that we're both probably— I don't want to, I don't want to make this assumption, but I'm assuming we both are probably New Yorker fans. So maybe I'm wrong about that. But do you think there's been an opposite trend where you have these mega brands like New Yorker who have, in your article, you said this too, opened this floodgate, so to speak, with merch as a form of identity with someone? Do you think now there's this reverse affinity toward folks who are looking for more bespoke experiences just for the brands they love. And they want to, and I guess they want to separate themselves from the, I'm a part of the New Yorker tribe too.

Yeah, I do think that it starts to feel bad sometimes when you feel like everyone's doing it. You want to have a small experience with a unique brand. Like, I think I originally really wanted a Costco t-shirt the first time I learned there was a Costco t-shirt. And then I saw like 3 of them in Brooklyn and I was like, I don't want that anymore, right? But it's fun. I don't really know about what mechanism drives something that has longevity, because the New Yorker tote, everybody has it, but it's still a really good tote, and I don't know why.

As someone with a keen cultural observation, a keen eye for cultural observation, the last two things I want to ask: one is, how would you encourage this audience, who is actually the makers of merch— they're either manufacturers, they're designers, they're agencies who are working with brands to help them create distinguishable experiences now that you've sort of surveyed it as an outsider. We always love an outsider's opinion because you see things from a different perspective that we don't. How would you advise this audience to build better merch experiences based on the best of what you saw?

I would say find high-quality products. Like, don't just— if you're putting a lot of money into your graphic design, don't just then slap it onto a standard boring t-shirt or tote. Like I would say find a weird hat, like an unusual hat, and then put your cool logo on it. And I have things with stories are also really are great for me. Like the, the Russ and Daughters tote is great. And when things are funny, I really like humor. This isn't merch per se for anything other than Little Italy, but the Daddy's Little Meatball shirt is— I have and is very funny. And the pizza shirt hat is also very funny because it's a hat that says pizza shirt. I think that kind of weirdness, it draws me in for sure.

Yeah. And I also love what you said about story because I think we can reverse engineer great merch experiences based on some of these stories, founding stories, or some kind of part of the story throughout that business's journey.

It's a direct reflection of that experience. Absolutely. Yeah. And I also, it sounds cheap, but I think it really works to borrow from things that have been working for people who have been doing merch for decades. Some of my favorite items look like they're from an old— like, I'm drinking my coffee right now out of the Phoenicia Diner mug, right? Is, you know, Phoenicia Diner is only 20 years old, but that mug looks like very timeless.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. Lenny, last question. I always ask this question of every guest, but since you're a writer, you might have different answers than some of our other guests have had. What are a few books recently, articles, or something you've read that you'd highly recommend? And it can't—

they don't have to be.

They don't have to be. I know, I know. They don't have to be business related. In fact, sometimes the, the better they are if they're not.

Yeah, it's funny. I'm— so I'm writing a short story right now about a woman who lives in a, like, collective living facility. So she— I'm researching a lot about communes, and it's hard for me to get out of the space of, like, I don't want to recommend any books about communes because they're pretty— they can be kind of dry, right? I just recently reread the M.F.K. Fisher book, How to Cook a Wolf, which is— she's a food writer. Phenomenal. Yeah. I also last year read this book. It's called Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, and it's the transcription of an interview with David Foster Wallace when he was on his Infinite Jest book tour. Wow. And it was made into a movie a few years ago with Jason Segel and Jesse Eisenberg called The End of the Tour. And I came away from that movie just feeling like I wanted to steep myself in those conversations more. And the book is just the full transcript of their conversations and it's really, really excellent. Phenomenal. Thank you.

Just talking about craft and writing. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I will definitely seek that out. And I'm a big M.F.K. Fisher fan. She is in food writing world, she's very well known, but she's not real well known on a general scale, but I love her.

I know she's the best. And I, I really like this folk singer Connie Converse. She's sort of like a— she was Bob Dylan adjacent and lived in the West Village, but no one really learned about her. And she was just a great storyteller and a sort of hard-edged woman. And I feel like M.F.K.

Fisher is like the Connie Converse of food writing. Very good. Very good. Lynyia, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule, for writing this incredible article that was fun to read. I have had it flying around our industry, and folks are sending it in. So thank you for inspiring us.

Inspiring folks with your work. Of course. Oh, that's so good to hear.

Thank you so much for your interest. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SkewCast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SkewCast on iTunes or to our blog at community.comonskew.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.