A short break in the 'stack

A.k.a. what's it all for?

Hi there.

I got a lot of new free subscribers over the past couple of weeks, probably because of this Eater article and the occasional restaurant reviews I’ve started doing with the marvelous Dennis Lee over at The Party Cut.

That being said, I feel the need to clarify something, first of all: This Substack is not really a place for restaurant content. I started it more as an incubator for the creative food and culture writing I don’t get to do during my day job. I’ve struggled to find an identity for this thing though, because things will come up in my work life that I wanna talk about. For instance, last February I wrote about what I make as a freelance writer, which remains the single most-read thing I’ve ever done here. I’ve also written about why I hate restaurant best-of lists (and still included one like a fucking coward!). Unsurprisingly, that one performed really well, too.

My favorite pieces are generally the least read and least engaged with: missives on pigeons and roadrunners and the horrors of having teeth. I don’t really care about that, and I suppose it’s because people don’t know or care about that part of my writerly personality. But this brings me to the second half why I’m writing today: to share that I need a break from this particular machine, which from time to time amasses chunks of followers who are mainly looking for things I don’t provide, like guides and roundups. There are so many people who do that well and have genuine enthusiasm for it. And the weird sense that I’ve gained momentum for false reasons confuses me.

About a month ago, my dear friend Ari Bendersky (aka Mr. Something Glorious!) and I gave a talk on food media for some high schoolers at Ari’s alma mater. By the way, they all wear sweats now, every single day, which they like to ice up with rad sneakers and layers and layers of Mejuri jewelry. I even heard a story from a mom who said her daughter called it “sad” when a new kid started school there and wore jeans on her first day.

Illustration by Rosemary Wells, from her wondrous book Timothy Goes to School

When we asked the students how they get their “content” at the start of the panel, they pretty unanimously replied TikTok and Instagram. Someone else may have said Reddit. They don’t really read, except when they have to for school. And, from what I understand, assignments to read full-length novels are less common in high school English classes nowadays anyway, as we continue to prioritize standardized testing and bow to the inevitability of shortened attention spans.

Of course, we ended up having a great time creating tiny food-centric narratives together. Ari and I presented a series of food-related objects on the table (a lemon, an onion, Takis, Peeps, a Starbucks cup), then asked the students to write down their observations, memories, critiques, etc. of each item. Their responses were perceptive, often sweet, and really funny. One kid said his dad eats lemons like apples, and I will never be the same.

There have been moments in time when we as a society have collectively feared for the survival of reading. Right now, I fear most for the survival of quality, long-form storytelling. What’s even stranger about that is that I am getting fairly steady work doing just that at the moment. But it all feels increasingly tenuous—through the crappy fees I get, the inconsistency of the gigs, the shrinking sizes of editorial teams, blah blah blah—right?

Most of the engagement I get on stories I write has to do with the headlines (seriously, people lose their shit over headlines) or the cute caption slideshows we writers make nowadays to entice people to read our work. Folks will complain that my New York Times and Bon Appetit stories live behind paywalls (or, more often, they simply don’t bother reading them). I’m proud that these outlets are finally asking that readers value the work that goes into digital as well as print work. But then I ask a group of young people what they’re reading and they look at me like I’m insane. (Then again, they might just think I’m insane for not wearing sweatpants all the time. Like what kind of fool does that?)

I don’t know that the answer is necessarily Substack, which has become so incredibly saturated that I’ve lately found myself unsubscribing from ’stacks I genuinely like that I just don’t have the time to read because there are so. fucking. many. All of them want paid subscribers, all of them are trying to churn out regular enough content or build a strong enough community to achieve some critical mass of followers. It’s hard to hustle so hard only to have five or ten percent of people value the content enough to pay for it. It makes this feel like yet another zero-sum game that we are all losing.

Then again, I never even played it; I post so infrequently here. I currently have five drafts sitting on my dashboard. One is about spoon cake, which is a really unphotogenic dessert for people who don’t like baking (or refuse to practice it because they have a weird insecurity about it). There’s another I started about whether that delivery robot Coco has the right of way at crosswalks, and one that’s blank except for the words: “el músculo de salero salt shaker muscle.”

I don’t want to make people pay for this content. I want them to inherently see its value as part of their cultural enrichment and entertainment, like a streaming service. Maybe it’s not that anymore, or maybe it never was. I’m going to take a wee hiatus from little stories to think about whether my voice on this particular platform is still necessary. To the handful who have supported it financially, please don’t feel the need to keep doing so, but know that it has meant the world to me.

P.S. Fuck trump. Preserve Words.