Vampire Weeknight → Muniball → Dinghycore

Hey Neighbor. There’s a reason champagne flutes always feel a bit disappointing. Humans naturally associate wide-brimmed glasses (think: martini glasses) with more elevated drinking experiences. It’s a psychological quirk. As such, being handed a glass of much-anticipated bubbly in a flute always feels a bit… off.

All the more reason to drink out of a mason jar. There’s one in the cabinet.

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1. You’ll regift a potted plant.

2. You’ll stain your best white button-down.

3. You’ll get a bad performance review and a raise.

4. You’ll wear rubber boots more often.

5. You’ll lose touch with your friends in financial services. 

6. You’ll still hate that rug.

7. You’ll stash cash in a money market account.

8. You’ll abandon two over-active group texts.

9. You’ll try at least three supplements despite having doubts.

10. You’ll make lingering eye contact with an attractive neighbor.

11. You’ll find a new perfume or cologne and wear more of it.

12. You’ll get super into jazz for a week and a half.

13. You’ll buy nicer sheets. [1]

14. You’ll get very close to taking a new job then decide against it.

15. You’ll just say yes to drugs.

16. You’ll have two short conversations with your parents about money.

17. You’ll repaint one room in your home a slightly darker color.

18. You’ll fart and blame a dog.

19. You’ll have sex with Jeopardy on in the background.

20. You’ll learn bad stuff about Brad Pitt and good stuff about Tom Cruise.

21. You’ll get norovirus, but not a diagnosis.

22. You’ll think about going to Buenos Aires.

23. You’ll go to Europe.

24. You’ll look in the mirror with a mix of despair and pride.

25. You’ll age.

Upper Middle Research identifies readers with professional expertise and matches them with surveys and focus groups that pay up to $300 an hour (probably during lunch) and keep them abreast of what’s going on in their field.

On craft beer, golf, and safe spaces for picky dudes.

For the first time in a few decades years, the craft beer market contracted in 2024. The New York Times reports that 335 breweries opened – down from 1000+ years in the 2010s – and 399 closed. And though the presses don’t need to be halted over a downtick in saison production, the beginning of the end of the craft beer movement does have real cultural significance. Drinking and brewing craft beer created communities in which men with refined taste were granted status rather than dismissed as effete or effeminate. That’s a rare thing.

Refined tastes are, as sociologists say, “contested” among men (specifically straight dudes) in the Middle and Upper Middle. Men rarely participate in book clubs. Craft breweries created roughly analogous, but distinctly masculine environments. Lots of hops talk.

Craft beer made taste refinement socially acceptable – desirably, even –  by mashing together a high-status activity (connoisseurship) with a low status activity (slamming brews). This may not have been the original intent of craft brewers, but it was certainly reflected in the high-brow dirtbag aesthetic of brands. Ass Clown Brewing, Evil Genius Brewing, and the Belching Beaver brewery sell extravagantly crafted packaged for sniggering 12-year-olds.

The trouble for craft brewers is that drinking declined in popularity (and status) physical activities have gained popularity post-Covid. In 2023,  beer shipments fell below 200 million barrels for the first time since 1999, when 1500 craft breweries opened. People are putting down the bottle and picking up more active hobbies.

Strangely, craft beer is being replaced by golf.

That claim might sound odd, but golf in its current iteration mashes up a high-status activity (golf) with a variety of low-status activities (gambling, drinking, smoking, bad driving, watching TV). The highbrow-lowbrow tension is simply more extreme. Golf, which is strongly associated with money, is consistently ranked the most “prestigious” sport, but Happy Gilmore fans are on the march. [2]

Again, the high-brow dirtbag packaging gives the status game away. Municipal leads with an anti-country club message. Bogey Boys leads with self-effacement. Malbon, a slightly more refined brand, recently launched a collaboration with Wu-Tang Clan’s Ghostface Killah. Many (if not most) new golfers wear their skepticism if not outright disdain of the white shoe Augusta scene on their sleeves.

Like beer appreciation and brewing, golf is an activity that can be serious and unserious at the same time. In fact, it almost has to be. Experts estimate that scratch players (folks who can consistently play par golf) represent less than one percent of the overall player population. In other words, the vast majority of golfers aren’t good. This is presumably why Barstool’s popular Fore Play podcast (Tiger was a recent guest) bills itself “by the common golfer, for the common golfer.” Golf is a high-status leisure activity men can fail at without shame. 

As for taste refinement, it’s part of the game in a way that it’s not part of other sports. All basketball courts are created more or less equal. Not so golf courses. Elegiac course description are a literary subgenera and there are more than a few coffee table books. 

Sociologists often search for correlations between socioeconomic strata, tastes, and leisure activities. And they find them because most people subconsciously pursue “status-congruence.” People who go to opera also go to wine tastings. People who enjoy heavy metal also enjoy chicken nuggets. It has long been accepted wisdom that people who golf also go to wine tastings. That might be true, but there are more and more (former) beer drinkers in the mix.

→ Upper Middle couch potatoes resolved to work out more in January are at a distinct disadvantage. Wealthier, better educated people rarely wish to bulk up – heavy builds are associated with manual labor and thus lower social status – so they tend to default to running or cross training. They (slightly overpaid and slightly overweight) also live tend to live in colder climes. As such, they have to brave bad weather or move to L.A. The ones who do the former, get tough. The ones who do the latter get weird. (READ MORE)

→ Finnish people, who are regularly found to be the happiest people on Earth, are the least likely Europeans to agree to this statement: “One of my main goals in life is to make my parents proud.” (LOOK AT THE MAP)

→ Crowns were especially heavy in 2024. Most incumbent world leaders lost elections (there were 60 in all) and 1800+ CEOs were fired. It was a year of discontent and turnover. That means 2025 will be, at best, a rebuilding year – a year in which a premium is placed on institutional knowledge.

→ Demographers can finally explain Americans’ persistent, recurring case of Anglophilia [4]. According to recently released data collected in the 2020 census on “origins” (rather than singular origin), more Americans identify as part English than as part German, which was previously thought to be the most common ancestry. Some 46.6 million Americans identify as at least part British, 1.6 million more than identify as part German. At the very least, it explains our egregious lack of schnitzel. (READ MORE)

→ F.L. Woods, a legendary Marblehead, MA marine goods store turned nautical prep boutique , launched an e-commerce portal this week. The launch is notable not only because F.L. Woods is a modern answer to the old Concord Country Store (if you known you know) and dinghycore seems like the next stage of preppy evolution, but because that specific space – once dominated by Land’s End and Ralph – has been empty for a minute. (Also, the Cheap Bastard Yacht Club is a great concept.) (CHECK IT OUT)

→ One cigarette is fine, but only after the kiss at midnight.

→ The justification for splashing out on seaside cottages has always been the same: “They aren’t making any more waterfront.” Except… they are. In Monaco, where real estate prices can hit $12,000 per square foot, a new neighborhood (Mareterra) is being constructed on the water. This is, for the record, how much of Back Bay and Battery Park came to be. It also looks like a plausible path forward in expensive areas, which should frontage chasers some pause. (READ MORE)

→ Apple TV is free this weekend. If you haven’t watched Slow Horses, binge it. If you haven’t watched Shrinking, sample it..

[2] Searches for “John Daly” have been sharply up over the last few years. Given that Daly is the only elite professional golfer to ever reside in a Hooters parking lot, that feels significant.

[3] Byron’s daughter was Ada Lovelac, who absolutely hated her father. She rarely spoke about him even though he was outrageously famous, like Pete Davidson mixed with Tom Wolfe mixed with George Clooney.

[4] Anglophilia requires a belief that English people are sophisticated. Spending time with English people tends to undermine this belief.