Good morning!
This is Issue 61.1 of Digestable, your thrice-weekly mouthful of things happening in the world.
Today’s news, fermented:
Well, it’s Wednesday—I got my wires crossed about Monday, it was a holiday, so on, so here’s a Mondayish issue today.
Here are a few reads/other things to make up for the absence:
There’s a new driver-owned ride sharing coop in NYC, which you can find here. If you take Ubers or Lyfts in NYC, you have no reason to ever do that again. Easy!
Not easy: An Afropessimist on the Year Since George Floyd Was Murdered. This is an intense read, and certainly more so for white folks who have experienced sexual violence. It’s a striking condemnation of the white left, and pushed me to re-examine a number of political moments of the last year.
Also not easy: Big Tobacco coopts Black death to play fake ally to Black-led organizations, and an article that reminds us that US political parties have mastered the art of being fake allies.
If you’re excited to be pushed to dismantle white supremacy in your workplace, here’s a free training in a couple of weeks.
For something a little lighter, here are some birds outsmarting human magic tricks.
(via)
The Second Look
Half-baked cultural criticism from Gabriel Coleman.
In Minneapolis at the corner of Lyndale and 33rd street there’s a White Castle. It doesn’t look like the burger chain building you’d expect to get a slider from, instead it’s an aging stainless steel shack with tiny turrets and column detailing. Also, it sells antiques, not food.
White Castle was the first fast-food burger chain. It was founded in 1921, predating McDonalds by almost 20 years. Though the influence of MacDons on human culture and the planet is often discussed, the home-of-the-slider has also made its own unique mark on specific places and people.
I got curious about the longevity and influence of White Castle while browsing the Library of Congress’s John Margoles Roadside America Archive. It’s a lovely collection of photos taken along US highways from the sixties to the aughts and is tweeted out regularly by the Old Roadside Pics twitter bot. Looking at photos in the collection from Minnesota I found one of an identical White Castle building on Central Avenue, around six miles from the Lyndale antique shop.
Since the steel structure of both buildings was pre-fabricated and mass produced, I assumed these were different shops with the Central Av location being replaced by the current White Castle on the street. To my surprise, it turns out that the quirky antique shop on Lyndale Ave is the same exact building. When White Castle’s lease on the Central Avenue location was terminated in 1950, the city of Minneapolis designated the building a historical landmark to save it from demolition. The historic building sat on Central for another 34 years until it was bought by Calamity J. Construction in 1984 and moved to its current site on Lyndale. Over the following years, the building housed the construction company’s offices, a jeweler, and the antique shop of today.
But why preserve a pre-fab burger joint? Obviously the building is funky looking but as the roadside archive attests, there were no shortage of funky businesses at the time. My theory is that it has something to do with the way White Castle operates as a business. Micky-D’s and other fast food places operate franchises, meaning that individual shop owners license the brand and products to sell at the location. In contrast, all White Castle locations are wholly owned by the family of co-founder Edgar Waldo Ingram. While the franchise model carries with it the idea of a personal community-centered business, this isn’t often the case. Franchisees are under greater pressure to turn profits for the company lest the company terminate the licensing agreement, and today franchise owners often own several locations of a business in a region - not just a single one.
Of course all corporations suck and the idea of a single family owning and operating all 377 restaurants is gross, but this approach has given White Castle restaurants an important ingredient - longevity. Mac-Do locations come and go, but odds are that if you know a White Castle in your area, it’s probably been there your whole life - and that longevity, along with stable pay and health insurance for White Castle employees, builds trust. That’s I think what gets people like those on the Minneapolis Landmark Preservation Commission to identify with White Castle. The Central Ave location had operated out of that quirky stainless steel shack for over 20 years by the time it was closed, and sure enough a White Castle still operates down the block to this day.
I think this is the same pull that Telfar Clemens feels. Telfar Clemens is the influential queer Black fashion designer known for his iconic shopping bag. Telfar recently redesigned White Castle’s uniforms in celebration of the company’s 100th anniversary, including unisex shirts, hoodies, polos, and durags. He’s spoken previously about his love of the chain, having grown up near the LeFrak City, Queens location and hosted fashion week after-parties at the Times Square location. Place plays a primary role in Telfar’s relationship with the chain as well: he explains that though other businesses leave low income neighborhoods, “White Castle is the one restaurant that's actually stayed.” His uniform designs reflect this, including zip codes unique to each location - making them a sort of limited edition piece tied to these places.
The paradox Telfar Clemens is getting at is the same one that sits on Lyndale Avenue: a limited edition fast-food uniform, a historically preserved pre-fab building, a chain restaurant that belongs to its neighborhood.
*Hot Goss*
Brought to you by the superb Latifah Azlan.
As we've established, time is nothing more than a flat circle. We've ushered in the Roaring 20s of the 21st century by living through a global pandemic, potential world wars, and now the reunion of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, who are dating again after first doing so and taking the world by storm in 2003.
I guess Diddy was feeling left out from all the fun because late last week, he decided to post a throwback photo without context other than the burgeoning celebrity ~*Hot Goss*~ cycle of the last few weeks and create some chaos for the girls.
I know this sounds crazy but I've honestly forgotten that J.Lo and Diddy even dated at all. I think I was a bit too young to register the intricacies of celebrity gossip at the time the two were a couple (1999-2001), so I have no idea how long they dated, how the relationship was received, and how they broke up. But apparently, Diddy was pretty hung up over J.Lo after they broke up. This is a ~*Hot Goss*~ blind spot I clearly need to address, so catch me going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole on this Memorial Day, memorializing all the early 2000s celebrity power couples that made headlines and set the tone for the turn of the century.
Anyway, Ben and J.Lo have been having the time of their lives reliving their glory days. The pair have been vacationing together in Montana but now Ben is back in California, ready to "make long-distance work" with J.Lo, who is based in Miami. Remember how big of a PR fluff fest his relationship with Ana de Armas was? Constantpap strolls, incessant selfies, and blowup cardboard cutouts of each other -- Ben's need for approval and validation manifests itself in his inability to be in a relationship that isn't so public and in-your-face all the time. So I think this should be interesting and I think we can expect to see a flurry of leaked stories in gossip rags and tabloids this summer about how they're just jetsetting all over the country meeting up with each other and what not.
Oh, and in case you were wondering what Ben and Jen's vibes are post-hook up, they're just like us normies.