How Bryan Johnson and Andrew Huberman Killed NYC Nightlife
Just as empires have a certain cadence to their rise and fall, so do late night spots in New York City.
If you’ve lived long enough in NYC, you come to understand the basic truth that no establishment stays cool forever. Every big club of the late 00s from Cain to Bungalow 8 no longer exists. Everything succumbs to the “cycle.”
Last night, I watched Road to Perdition, a film I last saw in the movie theaters 25 years ago.
I didn’t remember it being a particular remarkable film. But seeing it again, I was transfixed. I sat there and watched the movie from beginning to end without checking my phone.
India is the most populous country on the planet and will likely have the biggest economy in the world by the end of this century. It has given birth to major religions and major social movements. It is one of humanity’s great civilizational nodes.
Indians have achieved a lot in practically every domain, except the Olympics.
If you were to name the most beautiful woman of the 20th century – Anita Ekberg would be in the running. Anita won Miss Sweden in 1951 before coming to Hollywood in the 1950s. She would star in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), stamping herself into the popular zeitgeist with her infamous Trevi water fountain scene.
In 1970, there were no female partners at Goldman Sachs, no female supreme court justices and only two female US senators.
Today, four of the nine supreme court justices are women, more than a quarter of the Senate and almost half the recent partnership class at Goldman.
Things have arguably never been better for young women.
I caught up with a friend at a park the other day and we sat nearby a bunch of moms having a toddler meet up.
The moms were mostly white, in their mid to late 30s and wearing expensive Alo yoga gear that had magically de-aged their bodies. While their toddlers stared off into space, they sat there and complained about their significant others.
What are you worth?
Most religions will answer you with metaphysical concepts.
In this respect, the new woke religion also has an answer. The answer is that it depends – it depends on where you fit in their victimization hierachy.
When I see the crazed rhetoric of political leaders today, this quote by John Maynard Keynes comes to mind:
“Madmen in authority are just distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
Political actors, in other words, are not independent thinkers with independent thoughts – they are slaves to frameworks that someone else – an academic – dreamt up years prior.
The #1 Billboard song today is Rich Men North of Richmond.
The song is an elegiac ode to the working class sung by Oliver Anthony, a laid off paper mill employee (see here). Oliver recorded the song on an iPhone with no vocal training and no grand ambitions of becoming famous – he just wanted to speak his truth.
When later offered an $8 million dollar recording contracts, Oliver turned it down and stuck to that truth – “I don’t want to be in the spotlight. I wrote because I was suffering with mental health and depression.”
While the world was busy locking itself down during the spring of 2020, the US government publicly released UFO footage. The footage showed what appear to be flying objects zipping around in front of an airplane and defying the laws of physics.
60 Minutes did a story on it. Joe Rogan interviewed the pilot (see here). It stayed in the news cycle for a while and then eventually went away.
The way this story peaked and crashed always struck me as odd.
To really understand how the economy is going to change, you have to understand – Jerry and Jose.
Jerry is the stereotypical “skilled” laborer. He grew up in an upper middle-class neighborhood and graduated from college. He has bounced around tech firms working in product and then in human resources. He has no discernible skills but makes between $120 to $150k a year.
In 2015, El Salvador was the most dangerous country in the world with 103 murders per 100,000 inhabitants.
In 2023, that number is down to 2.5.
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If you go to a sceney party these days in New York City, you will encounter guys – grown adult men - who dress like wizards.
They wear colorful capes and tunics and crystals. They are surrounded by beautiful women who pulsate about as a DJ pumps trance music set to a tribal African chant.
I realized the other day that this new breed of adult males was becoming a recently formed species in the anthology of American bro types.
I was having a work dinner with a French capital allocator and he mentioned to me that he had gone on a date with a female friend of mine.
I asked how they met and what he said next startled me:
Seeking arrangements, you know it?
Several years ago, I shared a long Uber ride in South Beach with an attractive girl in her early 20s who was into crystals – not crystal meth – but healing crystals. She believed crystals had unique vibrational qualities that cured your illnesses. She ended the ride by offering to sell me some.
I didn’t make much of the conversation - the attractive, minimally educated female who is grifting through life is a common encounter in Miami, but it did make me think – where does a girl with a crystal hustle end up?
The inflationary asset bubble didn’t just support high stock prices and Crystal girl becoming a millionaire, it supported our whole transition from being practical to being full of abstracted, though passionately-held principles. That may sound good but it could spell our collective doom.
To understand what I mean – let me first explain what practical thinking looks like.
Instagram makes everyone miserable. Human beings were not meant to compare themselves to each other four times a day. But it is addictive misery and let’s face it, you are probably stuck on it.
So let the following be a helpful guide to how to master it.
Last weekend, for the first time in several years, I ventured into the basement of a NYC night club – not just any NYC night club but Tao Group’s leading entrée into the scene, Little Sister (in my defense a friend of mine had a birthday there).
NYC night clubs are finally opening up and an old social order is trying to re-exert itself.
But will it succeed?
My answer after a one-hour excursion is no.
The last few years much of our cultural and political discussions have been driven by short video clips taken on iPhones that get posted on Twitter and feed us some outraged narrative.
You always wonder when you see these videos – is there more context?
Just as empires have a certain cadence to their rise and fall, so do late night spots in New York City.
If you’ve lived long enough in NYC, you come to understand the basic truth that no establishment stays cool forever. Everything is subject to the “cycle.”