First Chapter
Chapter Fifteen
“Thank you, Ms. President, and Mr. Secretary-General. It’s my privilege to come and speak to everyone present during such a momentous time in human history. One which, I hope, will lead to a brighter future for us all…”
US President Correa’s boilerplate beginning flowed out as she scanned the room. Behind her rostrum sat a larger dais tiled with green marble, behind which sat the UN President, Secretary-General, and Under-Secretary-General. Two huge screens flanked the dais, and those screens now showed Correa’s face as she continued.
“…and we are committed to our country’s pledge to finding a peaceful and just way for Coalition technology to be incorporated worldwide, and to not attempt any reverse-engineering of our own. Make no mistake; we do not do this out of any sense of altruism or fairness, as pleasant as that may sound. We will hold this pledge sacred for the simple reason that, if the United States were to attempt such efforts the rest of the world would, without a doubt, find out. That, of course, would lead to a great instability.”
‘Great instability’ was diplomatic-speak for ‘the rest of the world then gangs up on the USA and then everything goes to hell’.
“I know there has already been a great deal of debate in this august hall as to the best way to proceed forward, in a fair and impartial manner. We believe that we have found what one might call a ‘trial run’ which will allow us to work out such matters.”
The general murmuring from the many semi-circular rows of desks in front of her increased.
“To begin with, during the first weeks after first contact we wanted to make sure our guests from the Coalition would not starve to death. Much like humanity’s own ships during the Age of Sail, Coalition exploration vessels store enough provisions for years…but such provisions never last. They have very advanced recycling, but mostly for water and even that is only a stop-gap measure. It is unknown even at this time as to how long it will take to repair the Exultant Finger of Rithro, and we did not want to risk the crew running out of food.
“Therefore, we undertook an emergency effort to have their ship’s medic examine various Earth foods to determine their compatibility with our guests’ varied biochemistries. I am pleased to report that there are quite a few Earth foodstuffs which are indeed compatible, although there are some specific items which act as allergens amongst some of the Coalition species. During these efforts, we did learn a bit about how their alien biochemistries work…information which has been duly published and is now openly available. We also began to get glimpses of something wonderful, and asked the Coalition crew for more details. They supplied us with some general ideas of what their medical technology can accomplish; I must emphasize that we do not possess any knowledge of how they can perform such miracles.”
Now the murmuring got quite a bit higher, but not quite to the point where they’d have to call for order.
“Yes, I use the word ‘miracles’ advisedly. For example, take Captain Sadaf. You have all seen her, and how she moves like a person in the prime of their life. Now. What if I told you that she is a little over four hundred years old?”
The murmuring died down into a shocked silence.
“Her species, the auhn, is no more long-lived than we are…but they are able to regenerate and remove the effects of aging. I hope the esteemed ambassadors can see what I am driving at. I propose that we set up a research institute, international in scope, to be placed at a neutral location which is still to be determined. The purpose of that institute will be to study and adapt Coalition medical technology for use in humans.”
Now the murmuring started again; she hoped they were actually listening instead of hatching side-deals with each other.
“You all have families and friends. I’m sure you have at least one family member, one good friend, who died of some horrible and unnecessary affliction. Think of what this means to the world, to us. It is also an excellent way to determine the inevitable issues and frictions which will arise from such a concerted international effort, and that, in turn, will inform our efforts in mutual reverse-engineering of other Coalition technology.
“I know this is, in many ways, a frightening time. Change can be frightening. But I am convinced that you will all know the right way forward, and that you will all see the need for us to unite in this matter, even if others may not be so clear-cut. I thank you for the opportunity to speak.”
As she stepped away from the rostrum, the UN President cleared his throat.
“We will now begin the debate on Madame President Correa’s proposal. Paper copies, with specifics of the proposal, are now being distributed to you all. We’ll now begin the debate period…yes, the gentleman from Portugal…?”
__________
Correa’s Chief of Staff was a shorter, tubby man with an olive complexion by the name of Pablo Rosas. He and Correa sat in a White House conference room, staring at a big screen which now showed the results of the UN vote. “Well, I suppose that went about as well as we could expect,” said Rosas.
“Yep. I was surprised they even agreed with our asking them to kick in some money.”
Rosas chuckled. “Keep in mind that all of this new medical tech will be available for anyone patent-free. Should be air-tight legally, since nobody here on Earth invented it; we’re merely adapting it. I think that was the sweetener we needed to get it passed.”
The president gave a brief nod, then tapped a few keys on the controls in front of her. The screen now showed a world map. “Now we just have to figure out where to put the damn thing without everyone getting butt-mad about it.”
“Hmm.” Rosas laced his fingers over his substantial gut as he regarded the map. “Someplace not ‘the usual’, then.”
Correa growled in frustration. “I keep thinking Switzerland, but I know there’s gonna be a lot of shit flung about that it’s too European-centric. Taiwan would be great; they’ve got both a good tech base and excellent transport infrastructure.”
“But way too controversial, for obvious reasons,” replied Rosas. “Japan?”
“China will, again, kick up a fuss. Huh. New Zealand?”
“That might work. They tend to be more neutral…but then again some might say they’re in too close with Australia, and that this whole effort is too Western-centric.” His eyes flicked back to north on the map. He was about to move his gaze elsewhere, but then he paused. “What about Iceland?”
“Iceland?” Correa almost scoffed, then looked more thoughtfully at the map. “Okay, they’re a NATO member which is a minus. But they tend to remain mostly neutral, which is a plus. Decent transportation infrastructure…don’t we have a naval air base there?”
“I think so, let me check…” Rosas tapped at his phone. “Hey, Jack? What can you tell me about any US naval air bases in Iceland? Just the highlights.” After a couple of minutes, he responded with a curt, “Okay, that’s enough, thanks.”
He put his phone away. “We kinda-sorta have one, at a place called Keflavik. The base there used to be a lot bigger during the Cold War. Then we shut it down after the Soviets were no longer a going concern. Iceland uses it now, and they allow us to fly submarine-search aircraft out of there, but a few years ago they nixed the DOD’s request to rebuild it into a more permanent base.”
“That does work in their favor. It makes for better optics if they’re known for keeping NATO at arm’s length.”
Rosas sat up. “Think the UN will go for it?”
“We can only try. I’ll have our ambassador in Reykjavik make some discreet inquiries, let’s see if they’d be okay with our proposing them as a candidate.”
The Chief of Staff smiled. “If it goes through, this institute will be pumping well north of a billion dollars per year into their economy. That should make it more than ‘okay’.
__________
Agent Cécile Savoie sat in a secure-location breakroom, silently grumbling as she held an as-yet un-drunk mug of coffee in her hands. As the agent-in-charge of the security detail during the Camp David incident, she’d been put on administrative leave, right alongside every other agent who’d been there. But it wasn’t like she had much down time; the inquiry board into that incident now summoned her damn near every other day for yet another round of tedious questioning.
“Hey,” said Hanson as he strolled in, looking just as sour as she felt.
She looked up in surprise. “Hey yourself. I thought you were assigned to the alien detail.”
“I was,” he said as he seated himself across the circular table from her. “Guess being in Alabama when the shitshow went down wasn’t far enough away to be completely out of suspicion. I just finished running my own gauntlet. But the rumor is, I’m getting it easy compared to everyone who was at Camp David, including the special forces people. Especially you.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty much a colonoscopy every day,” she muttered. “Going over the timeline, where I was at which times, who I had direct line of sight on, who I was in radio contact with.” She finally sipped her coffee.
Hanson’s sour expression deepened. “Do you really think it was one of us?”
She sighed. “It has to be. My gut tells me that there’s more than one mole and I told the inquiry board as much. The fuckers who got in knew too much about our patrol patterns, where everyone was, when they’d have a clear shot at an infil. That means someone with access to our methods and comms, and as to the latter we don’t use CB radios.”
The other agent leaned back. “Fuck. I wish I knew why any of us would do that. We’re supposed to be quiet professionals, not frothing radicals.”
Savoie turned the mug in her hands. “Not to tell tales out of school but, through the whisper network, they’ve been leaning hard on the captured dudes from the attack. Apparently one of their main ‘objections’,” and here she made some one-handed air quotes, “is that they think the whole Breaker thing is a ruse. It’s all smoke and mirrors, so that we’ll beg the Coalition to come and save us. And then…well, it gets vague after that but I guess they claim that at best we’ll get turned into the galactic equivalent of a Native American reservation. Worst case, we all get harvested for our precious bodily fluids.”
Hanson stared at her for a moment in disbelief. “That is, if you will forgive the uncouth term, utterly retarded. For chrissake, the Hubble got some beautiful shots of their ship once they’d spun that shield around to reveal it to us. I mean, I’m no spacecraft expert but even I could tell it had gotten the shit pounded out of it.”
She responded with a shrug. “Hey, Flat Earthers are still a thing.”
“Flat Earthers don’t stage FUCKING mortar attacks in our nation’s capital,” snapped Hanson. Then he subsided and spoke more softly. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be so on edge. This whole thing just pisses me off.”
“Join the club,” said Savoie as she sipped more coffee. “I just don’t get it, though.”
Hanson made a gentle ‘continue’ wave of his hand.
She leaned forward. “Okay. Our comrades in the CIA managed to identify the four who made it into the compound. They were all mercenaries, each with at least ten or fifteen years of experience in kicking ass around some of the worst hot spots in the world. Syria, Burma, bunch of places in Africa. One of ‘em even turned out to be ex-Wagner group.”
“Okay?” It was a leading single-word question, but not an unkind one.
“So why was the rest of the attack made up of nothing but a bunch of goddamn shit-kickers? And that includes the aborted attempt in Decatur. I’ve seen the files of those we rounded up in the Camp David attack. They were all low-life idiots just banging around, maybe they might have once held a gun in their lives. Hell, from what I’ve heard, the shootings that triggered the alarm at Camp David were an accident; those intruders were supposed to sneak around that patrol, not kill them. They all had the same top-of-the-line kit, so we know whoever is behind this has deep pockets. Why not hire an entire bunch of competent people instead of doing it onesy-twoseys?”
“It is a puzzle.” Hanson got up and set a styrofoam cup of water into the nearby microwave. As the cup turned within its electromagnetic prison, he leaned against the nearby counter and pondered her question. “Maybe the team in the woods was intended just as a distraction?”
“That’s what I thought at first, but then I reconsidered. I mean, what if the four who went in failed? You’d still need a proper backup plan. Same thing with the Decatur bunch. By the way, did they ever catch them?”
Hanson let out a dark chuckle. “Decatur PD found a pile of vests and rifles, hastily wiped down. They were able to pull a few partial prints off of ‘em. My guess is they’ve fled to the proverbial four winds, hoping to lay low for the rest of their lives. We’ll nab ‘em eventually.”
The microwave dinged and he retrieved his hot water, then pulled a tea bag out of his jacket pocket as he re-seated himself.
Savoie smiled. “I never figured you for a tea guy.”
He unwrapped the bag and with a bit of ceremony dunked it into his cup. “Well, I used to be a coffee guy, but my gut doesn’t agree with the acidity.”
“We do have tea here, you know.” She pointed to the storage bins behind him.
“Yeah, but it’s cheap-ass stuff. The brand I like is expensive, but worth it…” Hanson’s eyes widened as he trailed off.
She raised an eyebrow. “Hanson? Do you smell burnt toast?”
“They couldn’t afford it,” he said in a near-whisper.
Savoie was about to tell him to stop being overly dramatic, then she realized he might be on to something and that she didn’t dare distract him. “Keep talking.”
He leaned forward, his forearms on the table. “Okay. Imagine you’re a hard-bitten mercenary. You’ve been in the literal shit, in every nasty conflict anyone cares to name. Somehow, someone finds you and comes to you. They say ‘hey, these aliens are bad news, do you want to kill them?’ Even if you, as the hypothetical mercenary, are down with the cause…”
“From what the intruders were yelling, they were,” said Savoie.
“Yeah but even then, our mystery financier is asking you to infil and exfil out of one of the most heavily guarded pieces of real estate on the planet. Oh, and kill a bunch of special-forces-maybe and aliens-definitely in between. What do you do then?”
She replied with a grim smile. “If I’m that mercenary, then I ask for a metric fuck-ton of money. And there were four of them, they would have all done the same. Hell, they must have been doing collective bargaining.”
Hanson dunked his tea bag as he thought it through. “Okay, so our mystery mastermind has a lot of money, but not billions on hand to hire a literal army of hard cases. Huh. So those other dipshits might indeed have been a distraction.”
“Maybe. They must have also spent quite a bit on the mortar attack. That wasn’t made by some hobbyist in their bedroom, they knew what they were doing. Given that nobody saw them set up the launcher or leave, they were more pro.” Savoie hoped that the FBI’s efforts to track the various mortar components turned up something soon. Thus far, those efforts were bogged down; as it turned out, quite a few companies had ordered the identified components, and tracking the subsequent second-hand purchases was time-consuming.
“And those mortar-making pros would be more expensive.” Hanson sipped a bit of tea. “Did they ever get anything off of the launcher itself?”
“Sadly, no. Turns out the whole damned thing was homemade, constructed out of tubing and other off-the-shelf components. It was also wiped down thoroughly, no prints. Like I said, pros.”
“But limited in resources,” said Hanson. “Which explains one of the things that’s bugged me. Namely, that our OPFOR didn’t use some proper artillery. If they have a couple of moles in the Secret Service, then it should be easy to recruit and pay some military dudes to slip ‘em some gear and alter the logs. They could stow a howitzer inside a semi-tractor-trailer. You could park that thing anywhere up to 25 miles away. Use a single 155mm Excalibur GPS-guided munition, boom. That would have pretty much obliterated the stage and everyone on it. Then you just re-stow the howitzer and toodle off all innocent-like, right when everyone is freaking the hell out.”
“So they couldn’t afford that type of arty strike,” she said. “Or they simply didn’t have the contacts to pull that off. Hmm. I wonder if our moles are getting paid at all?”
Hanson resumed his thousand-yard stare. “The mortar attack must have been planned first. The other two attacks feel much more like rush jobs.”
“Eh? Oh, I get it. Sadaf’s speech was known well in advance. It was going to be one of her first big public appearances since the initial presidential speech. They were broadcasting it online to the world. Having her get turned into chunky red salsa, in real time, would be one helluva statement. So that’s what they focused on.” She drank a bit more coffee, and now it was time for her eyes to widen. “Our mole or moles didn’t arrive at Camp David until after Sadaf’s speech was announced.”
“That…oh, yeah, that makes sense. Originally the mortar attack is the OPFORs’ only focus, but yet somehow they’ve suborned one or two Secret Service agents and they have ‘em in their back pocket. Then one, or better yet both, of the moles gets assigned to the Camp David detail, and they realize that now that they have a golden opportunity to get at the other aliens as well. So they go off and hire four pros for the actual attack inside, plus a bunch of chucklefucks to act as a distraction, because that’s all they can afford since the four pros are asking for some serious money.”
Savoie leaned forward. “When did Chao and Grakosh leave Camp David?”
“It was, ah, three? No, four days after we got everyone settled, both the aliens and the special forces types.”
“Okay, so then the OPFOR gets word, courtesy of our moles, that one of the aliens is now heading to Alabama. But now they’re stretched so thin that they can’t afford anything other than to hire another bunch of dipshits to make a run at them and hope for the best.”
“And then the second bunch lets the FNG drive.”
They both laughed, but that humor settled down as they both thought through the chain of inference.
“It is pretty thin,” said Savoie at last. “There’s a lot of assumptions in there.”
“Yeah. But I do like the idea of our moles getting assigned at the last minute.”
She rubbed her forehead. “We had a bunch of new people come in when they decided to stow the Rithro crew there. Seven, no eight in all.”
“It’s a place to start,” said Hanson. He finished his tea. “C’mon, let’s see if we can get a meeting with the inquiry board.”
__________
A little while later and not very far away, three people sat in a well-lit but otherwise deadly dull room. At least the chairs were somewhat comfortable. Matt and Martinez sat at two chairs against one wall, while across from them McCoy sat sprawled sideways on another with a foul look on her face. She glowered at the far beige-painted wall. “This completely sucks. Why can’t we have our phones? I could at least play some mahjong.”
“This is a secure location, Corporal,” replied Matt. “Ixnay on the onephays.”
Martinez’s leg jittered. “How long are we gonna sit here? They said they’d call us in, like, an hour ago!”
“Dunno, it’s some kind of last-minute interview thing,” replied Matt with Zen-like calm.
The corporal looked over at Matt. “I don’t get you, man.”
Matt grinned. “Nobody gets me. I’m like the wind, baby!”
“That’s not…I mean, I watched you open up a dude like he was a bag of fuckin’ Doritos using nothing but a fuckin’ knife. Now you’re being all Caine from ‘Kung Fu’.”
“It’s good to know that the classics are still appreciated,” said Matt.
Martinez pointed at him. “If you start calling me ‘Grasshopper’ I will shoot you.”
McCoy turned her glare to the ceiling. “Maybe it’s a psychological test. They want to see if we crack under pressure and start yakking secrets.”
“I mean, I’m sure they’re recording us right now,” replied Matt. “But it’s merely as a precaution. I am also five-nines certain that none of us are suspects. We weren’t integrated into the compound’s overall security, and thus it would be unlikely that we could have let our four attackers in.”
“Not to mention, we were the ones to kill ‘em,” added Martinez. “Well, except for the one that Takh took care of.”
“Yep. This is…I won’t call it a formality, but the board just wants to know where you were and what you saw. Walk them through your personal timelines, understand? Tell them only what you know. If you don’t know something, then say so.”
McCoy turned herself around so that she now sprawled the other way. “This whole bullshit just bugs me. Takh and the others are off with a bunch of strangers and I…I mean, we aren't there to help protect them.”
Matt and Martinez shared a meaningful glance. “From what I heard, Takh is quite capable of taking care of himself,” said the latter with a grin. “You told me he pitched that one dude across the room like he was throwing a softball.”
For once, the petite corporal looked a bit flustered. “Yeah, but, I mean, what if some other potential bad guy gets the drop on him with a gun? I don’t like not being there. I just wanna know that he’s okay. I should be there, just to make sure.”
The smaller man snapped his fingers in the face of the taller, who sighed and took out his wallet. With great ceremony, Matt pulled out a five-dollar bill and placed it upon the now-upraised palm of Martinez.
“Told ya,” said Martinez with a grin.
She sat up and glared at them both. “That doesn’t mean anything! Takh is a good guy!”
“Nobody said he wasn’t,” replied Matt as he stowed his wallet. “He is indeed a good guy.”
“Yeah, seriously, we’re glad you two hooked up,” added Martinez. “Takh’s solid. Hell, I’d let him date my sister.”
“I. Am. Not. Hooked Up. With ANYONE.” McCoy now looked furious enough to chew nails.
Martinez stroked his chin. “Kissing might be a problem, though.”
Matt performed a similar chin-stroking action. “Hmm, indeed, Corporal, I do believe it might be a serious issue. One has all of those mandibles to contend with.” He hooked his fingers next to his mouth in an approximation of an udhyr’s face. “Still, I think that, with enough will and effort, one could figure it out. Like the man said, life finds a way.”
“But how much tongue is he packing?” posed Martinez. “You know what the man also says. Big dude, big tongue. Could make things more interesting, all around.”
The woman did not look amused. “Martinez, Toke? You are now both officially gigantic flatulating assholes.”
“C’mon, McCoy!” protested Martinez. “Think of it this way. A few years from now, let’s say we filthy humans are now part of the Coalition and I’m at some meet ‘n greet, and I just so happen to spy me an oh-so-very-fiiine udhyr mamacita from across the room. Now, I wanna do my bit for my species and approach her, and get some good old inter-species cultural interaction going on. But there’s all sorts of questions. How do I compliment her without insulting her culture? How am I supposed to get in good with her? How do the mechanics work? How do the various bits line up? We need details! You’re at the tip of the spear, we all need good intel!”
McCoy slumped back into her seat. “Over seven hundred billion Dimmadollars of defense spending, and yet somehow I wind up stuck in a room with you two fuckos…oh, by the way, Toke,” she added, pointing a finger at Matt, “why the hell can you and Sarge never go back to Okinawa?”
“Nice distraction, McCoy,” said Martinez. “My guess is some sort of wet-work shit.”
Matt just smiled. “Oh for fuck’s sake, I don’t kill everyone I meet. I was a Second LT at the time, managed to somehow leapfrog my way into officer ranks all the way from enlisted. Anyways, the Okinawa affair was merely a case of, well, one particular case of rye whiskey. The good sergeant…was he a sergeant then? Oh yeah, we had done some other stuff I can’t tell you about in someplace I can’t tell you where, and we were celebrating Shaw getting his third stripe. We’d got ahold of the previously-mentioned case of whiskey and then we began toasting to each other’s good health. We did a lot of toasting. Quite a lot of toasting. As you can imagine, the toasting went on and on until we, um, well we did some unwise things. It started out with us sparring-for-fun with each other in public and escalated from there. No locals were harmed, and nothing we did was hella illegal, or I would’ve never made Captain. Buuut the local government would definitely throw a shitfit if me or, God forbid, both of us set foot back on the island.” He chuckled. “Hell, the Okinawan customs people probably still have both of our pictures taped up inside their booths with a big old sign saying ‘DO NOT ADMIT THIS PERSON, YOU FOOL’ written above them.”
“What did you do?” asked Martinez. His eyes were big and soulful, like a kid asking for yet one more story before bedtime.
Matt shrugged. “I mean, I don’t remember much for obvious reasons. I’m almost sure we didn’t piss on any monuments, that would have definitely been cause for a serious demotion. We did do a number on some shrubbery, that I do remember. We decided it needed to be trimmed back, and so we did so. Using our bare hands. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
A fearsome light came into McCoy’s eyes. “Martinez, do you know what this means?”
He looked at her all uncertain. “Um, Toke and Sarge have cast-iron livers?”
“No, you fool. Blackmail material.”
Matt pointed back at her. “Hey, now, I told you that in confidence. Besides, Shaw has a lot more to contend with right now.”
The reminder of the sergeant’s current crippled state brought the elevated atmosphere of the room back down. McCoy nodded as her smile faded. “Right. Hey, did you see the Prez’s speech at the UN?”
“Yep,” said Matt. “From what I’ve read, the political wrangling after it seems pretty tame compared to the usual.”
Martinez snorted. “No shit. Did either of you see the laundry list of shit that we might be able to do? Anti-aging, limb regrowth, cancer treatments which work well and which don’t half-kill the patient…hell, maybe even Alzheimer’s could be in our rear-view mirror. The grand high muckity-mucks are falling all over themselves to get that out into the world, for themselves if nobody else.”
“You’re way too cynical, Martinez,” said Matt.
“Oh fuck off. What if…okay, I know this sounds like a cheesy sci-fi concept, but what if they hoard all of the good shit for themselves and we peons get just the crumbs?”
Matt lapsed back into his meditative demeanor. “In that case, my dear corporal, you or I or McCoy or someone like us will show those hypothetical elites that, while they are indeed long-lived, they are not in fact immortal.”
The trio fell into silence for a few minutes. Then Martinez leaned over towards Matt. “Ah, a little birdie told me you were involved in questioning the prisoners we nabbed at Camp David.”
“I merely facilitated certain conversations,” replied Matt.
Martinez sighed. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies…Corporal.”
McCoy let out a growl. “Well, I heard these terrorist assholes are saying that the Breakers aren’t real, that it’s all fake videos from the Coalition.”
“Just to play devil’s advocate,” said Matt, “our AI image and video generation is already getting to the point where, soon, we puny humans could manufacture such evidence.”
“What?” Martinez looked as if he was about to launch himself at Matt.
Matt held up a calming hand. “I’m not saying it is fake. The Hubble pics are damned convincing.”
Martinez hiked up one foot to place it on his seat, then rested his chin on his knee. “Fuck. I guess it didn’t convince everyone.” He mused for a few moments. “Wait. What if we made it even more convincing?”
“How?” asked Matt.
“We send some humans up to the Rithro. Two or three at least. The boats can still make it up to the ship, right?”
For once Matt looked uncertain. “I think so? Dunno how many times they can come and go without recharging, we’ll have to ask ‘em.”
“Right, so we set up an even better publicity stunt than the Hubble pics. Choose a few people, from all over the world. We have ‘em travel up to the Rithro, take pics and video up close showing the damage. Even take ‘em inside the ship and get a full tour, maybe…if the crew is okay with that, of course.”
“Huh.” Matt sat back and pondered the idea. “That’s a really good idea, Martinez. I guess you aren’t as dumb as you look.”
The corporal responded with a slight smile at the verbal jab. “We’d need to choose the right people, though.”
“They’d have to be trustworthy…or at least someone that the entire world will consider trustworthy,” said Matt.
“Well known,” added McCoy. She no longer looked vengeful. “With recognizable faces and voices, and then they can go on all the talk shows after and say that, yes indeed, I got a tour of the ship and it is indeed quite banged up.”
Martinez stared at the far wall. “Some kind of celebrity? Heh. You think Tom Cruise would be up for it?”
Matt laughed. “That beautiful maniac? Hell, he’d insist on shooting an entire movie up there, with at least one action scene where he’s hanging off of the outside of the ship.”
They all smiled at the resulting mental image.
“Chao could work,” said McCoy into the silence. “She’s kind of a celebrity now. After all, she was the first human to come into contact with aliens, eh?” She gave Matt a big and very un-subtle wink.
To skirt the rather…unconventional methods used to achieve a positive First Contact, Matt’s role had been very much demoted in the official story. Now every recounting of the tale included a bit of ‘…oh, and there was also another person who stumbled across our brave woman in the midst of her attempts at informational exchange with the aliens…” His exact identity was also not published, under the screen of ‘he wishes to remain anonymous’.
“Oh bite me, McCoy, it’s fun,” replied Matt. He waggled his eyebrows. “Besides, I work better in the shadows!” He threw his forearm across his face like a half-assed Count Dracula trying to hide behind his cape.
Then he dropped his arm. “Yeah, Chao would be good as a current social-media darling. Of course, she might not want that. She strikes me as more of the wallflower type, for the most part.”
“We need more people,” said Martinez, as he stared at the floor. “Chao might be good on her own, but she’s got that motor-mouth talking thing when you get her going. It’s one or the other. Either she’s trying to shrink into a corner and take up as little space as possible, or suddenly you’re getting pulled into another corner for a doctoral dissertation on how minimal-energy transfer-orbits work.”
Matt pondered for a moment. “Wait, when did she do that? I never sat through one of those lectures.”
Martinez looked away and…well, Matt hoped that their supposed overlords were indeed recording this particular moment in time because the hard-bitten Hispanic special-forces corporal actually blushed.
McCoy, of course, realized a golden opportunity for payback and immediately pounced. “Why, Corporal Martinez,” she purred. “Doooo tell us. When did Chao Me Chu, heh, pull you into a corner? Hmmm?”
“She’s…she’s just real nice, that’s all,” replied Martinez. “I asked her a couple of questions, and she answered them. That’s all. We both love classic sci-fi, like Asimov and shit. I guess we bonded over that.”
Matt cleared his throat. “Aaaaand may I remind you two and everyone listening in that we have all been cooped up nuts-to-butts for awhile? Don’t mistake familiarity for romantic bullshit.” He pointed over at Martinez. “But you. If you can follow at least half of what she talks about, then you are absolutely without-a-single-fucking-doubt wasted as a corporal, even if you’re in a low-drag high-speed outfit like this. You hear me?”
“Um, yes sir.” It was the first time in McCoy’s memory that anyone had addressed Matt as befitting his perhaps-former rank.
“Good. You get your ass into college, somehow. You’re a smart guy, you’ll figure all that shit out. And as for Chao? Just give it room to breathe. Let her know you’re interested, but don’t press the matter.”
“Let her know?” For once Martinez looked completely lost. “How do I…” he trailed off. “I mean, I like her…and yeah, I mean I like her in that way, but she’s so damn smart and pretty and I’m just some dipshit meathead.”
“Hey, don’t sell yourself short,” said Matt. “You’re our dipshit meathead.”
McCoy’s vengeful smile faded. “Martinez…no, Luca.”
Martinez looked up in surprise at her use of his first name.
She continued. “Just talk to her. Neither of you have any clue as to what ‘normal’ social interactions look like. In your case, it’s because you’ve been a soldier for all of your adult life. In her case, it’s because she’s, well, because she’s Chao. So just walk up to her and be straightforward. Trust me, it’ll be like a breath of fresh air for her to not have to navigate social cues. Just say something like ‘Hey, I really like you, do you like me and do you want to go get a coffee sometime’? Start with that. Chao’s good people, the worst thing she’ll do is say no. She won’t yell at you or talk shit about you online. Buuuut, some sixth sense is telling me she won’t say no to getting some coffee with ya.”
Matt smiled. “McCoy, I think you might have a calling after you leave the military.”
She snorted. “Oh yeah, I’ll hang up my match-making shingle on the internet and start raking in the big bucks. Martinez is right, though. If we try to do a publicity stunt up at the Rithro, then we’ll need somebody alongside Chao to win the world over. Somebody well-known, but preferably someone not in the traditional Western pop-culture sphere. That’ll make it more palatable…”
Her voice trailed off and she stared into space. The two men now looked at each other in genuine concern until she spoke again a few moments later.
“Guys? I think I just had the best idea ever.”

My parents' bedroom set, purchased in1967. Is this considered MCM? I have an Armoire, a Long Dresser with Mirror and 2 Nightstands. I was not able to move the bigger pieces to see what's on the back (they're in use!) but I found a mark in a drawer, and a sticker over a mark in a different drawer. The mark might say "Wayne". I need to sell the set and don't know what to call it. Purchased in North New Jersey in 1967 or 1968. Currently located in Southern New Jersey.
Armoire Front
Armoire drawers
Mark inside a drawer
Furniture Store Sticker over Makers Mark?

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Disable adblock (both on GCR and the store you’re shopping from) and click the affiliate store link. From there when you make a purchase, GCR gets a small amount and they basically split it with you.
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Hello, and welcome to RepWeidianSneakers! Whether you’re a long-time member or someone new who just straggled in from one of the other replica subreddits, this recurring post will serve as an introduction to or reminder of the subreddit rules. This group runs in several key ways that may be different from other groups to ensure we maintain a high-quality group where well-informed replica buyers can engage in constructive conversation regarding the best batches for various shoes, batch flaws of popular and commonly purchased batches, and QC posts of new and old products alike.
Please do your best to stay up-to-date on the latest subreddit rules and cultural norms in order to make sure that your participation in the group is in accordance with how we run things here! All sub rules are visible along the side bar if on desktop, and under the "About" tab if on mobile. We appreciate your attention and diligence to subreddit policies, and hope you enjoy your time here!
The following rules will be outlined in the following ways:

1. Most Important Rule of the Sub
2. Post Formats (QC, Find, Help Me Find)
3. General Subreddit/Reddit-Wide Rules

Rule #1: Sneakers from Weidian, TaoBao only
This one should be self-explanatory - QCs for shoes purchased from middlemen are not allowed on this sub. I understand that many users value the input from members in this subreddit specifically due to their reputation and credibility, but we want to keep this sub as pure to its purpose as possible. If there are specific people from whom you want input from, feel free to post in the other rep subs and tag them.
Additionally, when users ask for recommendations on where to purchase, make sure to provide links to Weidian or TaoBao stores, and not middlemen. Middlemen sell Weidian/TaoBao products at a markup for convenience - always focus on the actual product.
Rule #2: QC Post Title Guidelines: [QC] {Price in Yuan} {Batch} {Shoe Name} from {Seller Name}
When posting your QCs or Finds, use the following format: [QC] {Price in Yuan} {Batch} {Shoe Name} from {Seller Name}. Example: [QC] 400¥ FK Batch Travis Scott x Jordan 1 High OG Mocha from A GDJ Supplier
The Group Automod comments on every single post in this group with a reminder of this title format. If your title does not include each of the necessary components in the brackets above, please be proactive and repost with the correct format. If you don’t delete the post, a moderator will, and that or repeated infractions may result in a temporary ban from the group. This rule exists to ensure the group is easily searchable to help make researching batches on your own as streamlined as possible.
Rule #3: QC Posts need W2C Link:
If you are posting a QC, make sure to post the W2C link. If the listing link is dead, please post the link to the store where the shoe was purchased instead. No W2C link will result in the deletion of your post!
You are welcome to post Weidian links, TaoBao links, or links from any shipping agent except for PandaBuy, given that PandaBuy forces you to login to see the item, whereas the other agent links do not. Linking a PandaBuy link and not an alternative link will result in the deletion of your post.
Rule #4: Help Me Find Post Title Guidelines: [HELP ME FIND] {Shoe Name} + Picture of Shoe
If you are hunting for a certain pair, your post title must include the Full Shoe Name and Colorway as well as a picture of the shoe in question. If either is missing, your post will be deleted. This rule exists to reduce the number of repetitive “Help Me Find” posts, as a user will be able to search previously posted “Help Me Find” posts for the shoe they want.
Example: [HELP ME FIND] Jordan 1 High Chicago
Rule #5: Find Post Title Guidelines: [FIND] {Price in Yuan} {Batch} {Shoe Name} from {Seller Name}
Okay, so you’re on WeChat, and a seller has posted a new product. You want to be the first one to post about it on Reddit, so you rush over and make the post. Great, pat yourself on the back. Just kidding. Don’t just stop there - put some thought into the post. How does this new find compare to other products on the market? Do they have potential? You don’t have to be an expert QCer, but give your general thoughts. In short, were these worth finding? The hope is that with this general subreddit policy, it will encourage people to post high-quality finds and reduce clutter from low-tier finds that don’t add much to the group.
Rule #6: Be Respectful of One Another
Please be nice and courteous to one another. All rules of Reddiquette apply. Your membership in this subreddit is contingent upon your overall Reddit activity, not just limited to this subreddit. To put explicitly, this includes but is not limited to: harassing or disrespecting others in other subreddits, posting hate speech of any kind, or spreading misinformation. Any violation of this will result in the banning of your account and any alternate accounts you may be known to have!
Rule #7: No Cussing
In line with the previous rule, no cussing on the sub, please. Often, on the rep subs, the only time people are cussing is to insult one another, spread misinformation, or speak illy in general. For this reason, an AutoMod is in place that will regulate posts and comments on the sub. Your post/comment will be deleted and you will receive a message alerting you if this happens. Bonus: Mr. Frosty can't post or comment without some sort of explicit language, so this simple rule (and the accompanying AutoMod) keeps the sub safe
Rule #8: Support Your Statements with Evidence
Essentially, cite your source. Let's avoid being like other rep subs where people make up rumors or decide their opinions without any research or evidence.
If you comment saying a batch is the best or better than what has been posted, show us why. Link reference posts, rep vs retails, QCs, etc. Show, rather than tell, us why what you're saying is correct. If your statement is a good one, this shouldn't be difficult. As above, don't default to name calling if you can't support your statement. It is okay to have a well-informed opinion - it is not okay to have an uneducated opinion that you spread as fact.
If you run into issues with a member or members in the group that are not participating in this group norm, please tag a mod, and the situation will be handled accordingly.
Rule #9: No Seller Ads
Self-explanatory. This especially applies to lost middlemen posting their fake QCs to try to gain business. If you are a member and see this, please report the post. If a post receives enough reports, it is automatically removed and sent to the mod queue. This helps keep the group clean through community effort.
Rule #10: No WeChat Verification Posts
I understand that you may want your WeChat verified in order to communicate with sellers or see their WeChat Moments. There are other subs for WeChat Verifications though. Please do not make these posts here. Use the appropriate subs. Posts will be deleted.
Rule #11: No Memes
This group aims to be a research-focused subreddit. It prides itself on providing the most objective information possible. Please keep the memes or satire posts in other subs. This includes meme titles or captions such as "how fast do I need to walk" or "fire up the rep machines." These posts add little to no value and are often unoriginal anyway.
Any use of meme titles will result in a 14-day temp ban as previously announced, as will repeated infractions of posting other memes.
Lastly, this Group is Not Meant to Be a Direct Line to u/poncecatchemall
Please reference his guides and resources linked below for answers to most commonly asked questions. He does not read chats asking repetitive questions, and mod mail is not meant to be used to ask specifically him questions, so do not use it for that purpose.
- Poncecatchemall’s Recently Updated Beginner’s Batch Guide where I cover top batches for popular shoes.
- Poncecatchemall’s Select Weidian/TaoBao Finds: November 2022 Edition covering popular purchases with all W2C Links
- Never used an agent? Check out Poncecatchemall’s Updated Weidian, TaoBao, Agent: How-To Guide for a step-by-step guide on how to purchase reps using WeGoBuy
- How to Ask Poncecatchemall For a QC/LC please follow these instructions if you want a response.
​
Thank you in advance to everyone for following the sub rules and for keeping this sub a great, high-quality sub to be a part of. If there are any rule addition recommendations, we are always open to suggestions.

Fully admitting I’m a big nerd here, but is anyone else using ChatGPT to have it make capsule wardrobes for fictional characters and celebrities to mine the lists for style inspiration (and also just cause it’s a fun way to waste time)?
I find that the lists get a bit better if I ask it think think about capsule wardrobes principles first. For example, here’s one I did for Sally Owens from the movie Practical Magic.
“What are the capsule wardrobe principles of Anushka Rees?”
And then after it responds I ask it to apply those principles to the character and develop a 20 item capsule wardrobe. It helps to tell it specifically what level of detail you want.
“For each of the items above, tell me how Sally Owens from Practical Magic would respond. Following that and based on those responses, develop a 20 item capsule wardrobe for Sally Owens. For each item mention what it is, the cut, the color, and a store where she might purchase something this style”
And then here’s the response! It even got the crochet top lol. Try it with different characters!
”Certainly! Based on Sally Owens' bohemian and earthy style in Practical Magic, here's how she might respond to each item and a 20-item capsule wardrobe that reflects her character:

1. Flowy Maxi Dress - Sally would love the ethereal and free-spirited vibe of a flowy maxi dress. She would prefer a loose, flowing cut in earthy tones like a floral-printed maxi dress. She might find something like this at Free People.
2. Patchwork Denim Jacket - Sally would appreciate the unique and artistic nature of a patchwork denim jacket. She would choose a relaxed-fit, cropped cut in a variety of denim washes. She might find a suitable option at Anthropologie.
3. Lace-Trimmed Blouse - Sally would adore the romantic and feminine touch of a lace-trimmed blouse. She would go for a loose, bohemian cut in a soft neutral color like ivory or blush. Spell & The Gypsy Collective might have a perfect match for her.
4. High-Waisted Flared Jeans - Sally would embrace the vintage-inspired and figure-flattering style of high-waisted flared jeans. She would opt for a wide-leg cut in a medium blue denim wash. Madewell might have a suitable pair for her.
5. Embroidered Boho Top - Sally would be drawn to the intricate and artisanal details of an embroidered boho top. She would choose a loose, flowy cut with vibrant embroidery in earthy tones. Free People might have a great selection for her.
6. Wrap Midi Skirt - Sally would appreciate the versatility and bohemian elegance of a wrap midi skirt. She would prefer a flowing cut in earth-toned prints or solid colors. Reformation might offer options that align with her style.
7. Off-the-Shoulder Romper - Sally would embrace the playful and carefree nature of an off-the-shoulder romper. She would choose a loose, boho-inspired cut with a vibrant floral print. Show Me Your Mumu might have a suitable romper for her.
8. Crochet Cardigan - Sally would adore the handmade and cozy feel of a crochet cardigan. She would prefer an oversized, bohemian cut in natural or earthy tones. Urban Outfitters might offer a suitable option for her.
9. Floral Print Sundress - Sally would love the feminine and whimsical charm of a floral print sundress. She would choose a loose, flowy cut with a mix of vibrant and muted floral prints. Anthropologie might have a sundress that matches her style.
10. Wide-Brim Hat - Sally would appreciate the bohemian and sun-protective nature of a wide-brim hat. She would choose a floppy, straw hat in a natural or neutral color. Lack of Color might have a suitable hat for her.
11. Bell-Sleeve Blouse - Sally would embrace the flowing and bohemian style of a bell-sleeve blouse. She would opt for a loose, breezy cut with intricate patterns or prints. Free People might offer a suitable blouse for her.
12. Distressed Denim Shorts - Sally would embrace the casual and laid-back feel of distressed denim shorts. She would prefer a relaxed, mid-length cut in a light to medium blue denim wash. Levi's might offer a suitable pair for her.
13. Embroidered Maxi Skirt - Sally would be drawn to the colorful and detailed embroidery of a flowing maxi skirt. She would choose a loose, bohemian cut with vibrant embroidery. ASOS might have a suitable option for her.
14. Boho Kimono - Sally would appreciate the flowing and boho-inspired nature of a kimono. She would opt for a lightweight, fringed kimono.
15. Embellished Sandals - Sally would gravitate towards sandals with unique embellishments or beading. She would choose a comfortable, bohemian-inspired pair in neutral or earthy tones. Free People might have suitable options for her.
16. Bohemian Tunic Dress - Sally would embrace the loose and breezy style of a bohemian tunic dress. She would opt for a flowing, relaxed-cut dress with intricate patterns or prints. Anthropologie might offer a suitable tunic dress for her.
17. Wide-Leg Jumpsuit - Sally would appreciate the relaxed and effortless feel of a wide-leg jumpsuit. She would choose a loose-fitting, bohemian-inspired jumpsuit in earthy tones or a vibrant print. Free People might have a suitable option for her.
18. Crochet Halter Top - Sally would love the bohemian and handmade feel of a crochet halter top. She would choose a halter-neck style with intricate crochet details in earthy or natural tones. Urban Outfitters might have a suitable top for her.
19. Printed Wrap Dress - Sally would embrace the feminine and flattering style of a printed wrap dress. She would opt for a flowy, wrap-style dress with a colorful print. Reformation might offer a suitable wrap dress for her.
20. Suede Fringe Bag - Sally would adore the bohemian and textured nature of a suede fringe bag. She would choose a medium-sized crossbody bag with fringe details in a rich earthy tone. Free People might have a suitable option for her.

Please note that these suggestions are based on Sally Owens' style in the film and are fictional examples. The mentioned stores and specific items aim to represent the overall aesthetic and may have variations in availability or designer preferences for the character.”

Hello all,
Just completed 4 days of in-person visits in New York City (Manhattan NYC) shopping for an engagement ring and thought I'd share my experience (as many of your posts helped me). Please know I am not an expert so just sharing my personal experience.
I met with 6 companies and learned a lot. In addition I also shopped at numerous online retailers. All the companies showed me eye-clean sparkly looking mined diamonds. However, I learned the industry does not provide enough information for us to truly make an informed decision to compare and contrast the diamonds and to ensure we're getting good value for the diamond we end up purchasing. The reality is, most consumers don't seem to care. They buy based on carat size, setting type, price, and sparkle. For those that care more, internet research discusses the 4 C's (usually described in a report from a grading company like GIA or similar). But sadly, this report does not provide all the information required to identify a sparkly mined diamond.
They allow you to compare and contrast in a controlled setting (in-store with fancy lighting), against a few other diamonds (also controlled). If you have a favorite diamond from one store and want to contrast it against another (or against one online), you are unable to do so. Only seeing diamonds side by side, without the controlled lighting, would we be able to truly see the possible difference in color tint and sparkle.
However, there are add'l reports and tools that allow you to ascertain how sparkly your diamond will perform - but almost none of the stores provide these reports. Some of the online retailers do - but they only provide some, not all, of these reports.
Finally, because consumers only care about carat size, setting type, price, and sparkle the cutters (who cut the raw diamonds) are incentivized not to create perfect sparkly cuts without inclusions, but to keep as much of the raw material as possible, which results in many of these diamonds have inclusions, clouds, and angles that do not optimize the sparkle of the diamond (but do leave them a higher carat size) which is what consumers (and retailers want). Retailers want this because they know 2 things... they can charge more for larger stones, and they can sell stones that aren't perfect to consumers since they don't provide us with enough info to make an informed decision. The result is what I found when shopping. Almost every retailer trots out diamonds that appear sparkly and pretty - but have significant flaws (which are not generally noticeable to the naked eye - but do reduce the shine nonetheless and would be more apparent if shown side by side in natural light).
At a bare minimum, the reports one should look at are GIA Report, Holloway Cut Report, and the Gemex Light Performance Report. Most retailers do not provide these reports unless asked. One must ask, if the diamonds they are showing rank as good on these reports, why would they withhold this information? It seems obvious to me they withhold it because the diamonds we are shown do not rank well on the reports. And without data, one is left to choose a diamond solely based on their "eye" and budget, which will not get you the highest quality diamond at the price you can afford.
When in store, optimally, you also want to do 3 things.
1- Look at the diamond through an (Idealscope) hearts and arrows viewer to make sure the hearts and arrows are clean and present (one can be purchased for ~$15 if you want to bring your own). But, imo, any retailer who doesn't have one sitting there for you to use, is obviously showing you diamonds that will not pass this visual inspection.
2- Use an ASET Scope or other light scope viewer to identify how much "bleed" the diamond has. That is, how much light is refracted back to the eye - vs how much light passes through the diamond (and not back to the eye). This will help you ascertain the brilliance/sparkle of the diamond. You can buy/bring your own, but again, any retailer not offering this knows the diamonds they are showing you won't allow their diamond to grade high.
3- Look at the diamonds side by side, over something white, in natural light (put your hand over the bright lights the store has). See from the top if the sparkle differs and see from the side if you can see a yellow looking tint. This may prove difficult if you cannot sufficiently block their bright light and use natural light (which is how you'll be looking at the diamond through your life when it's on your finger).
If you use all the tools above you'll be more equipped to make an informed decision. Now, sadly, after doing all the above, I'm still not 100% confident I received the best diamond at the best price. I am however, more confident I received an excellent cut, sparkly diamond, in the largest size for my budget. In fact of the 24+ diamonds I saw, only 3 passed the tests above - and odds are I would've ended up with one of those rather than the one I bought. So at the very least I ended up with one of the 3 and put the odds in my favor that I wasn't as ripped off as I would've been.
Another thing to consider is your setting. Setting prices (for the exact same setting) were all over the place (from a low of $850 to a high of $3,600). Again, these were for near identical settings. This is another trick... a store may appear to be giving you a deal on a diamond - but once you include the setting price - you end up not saving at all (or vice versa).
On to the reviews. Budget was $20k all in, incl setting, taxes, and shipping/insurance. Round brilliant natural mined diamond. Setting 14k yellow gold 4 prong pave, and thus my color grade to optimize size was ~I (for a round brilliant cut excellent stone any of the near colorless options (G-J) will look white next to yellow gold so figured no need to pay more for a colorless grade). Based on my budget, stones I was shown were in the 1.8-2.2 carat range.
Lauren B Jewelry:
(i) Showed 4 eye clean diamonds within my budget. Did not provide any reports alongside the diamonds. However, upon request, did provide the GIA reports. Did not offer any add'l reports and did not provide me with a hearts/arrows ideal-scope or ASET viewer in store.
(ii) Setting price was $2,100 (14k)
My take: Excellent friendly in-store service. Diamonds shown were the lowest quality of any I saw during my visit (as it appears to stay within my budget and size request they had to drop down to SI level) GIA reports and loupe confirmed a variety of inclusions and clouds. Settings were some of the most beautiful however and were priced on the lower end of the setting prices I received.
Jangmi Jewelry:
(i) Showed me 3 eye clean diamonds with GIA reports provided without asking. Showed me stones through hearts and arrows viewer without asking. Provided Holloway Cut reports after meeting upon request. Claimed Gemex reports are redundant and not required once someone has seen the HCA Cut report.
(ii) Setting price quoted at $2,800 (14k, but quote includes adding pave to prongs which may have increased price slightly).
My take: Friendly service, although English was 2nd language. Diamonds were priced competitively however GIA and Holloway showed only average stones (with the better GIA report having a worse Holloway score and the worse GIA report having a better Holloway score). They had a hearts and arrows viewer in-store and the stones did have them (to my untrained eye). However. without a Gemex and ASET viewer it was impossible for me to truly identify the sparkle/brilliance of their stones. It is ultimately possible the stones are above average, however, I was not provided the tools to corroborate this.
Soho Gem:
(i) Showed me 5 eye clean diamonds with GIA reports alongside (without asking). Would not provide Holloway Cut or Gemex reports but did offer to have me come back to the store to view the diamonds through their ASET viewer as well as through an Ideal-Scope. This was not offered to me while I was in-store.
(ii) Setting quoted at $3,400 (18k). 18k increased setting price slightly as well as pave around basket.
My take: Friendly in-store service. The specs of the diamond I liked the most were similar to the stone I ultimately chose. It is possible had I been willing to trek back to the store to see the stones through the ASET viewer and Ideal-Scope the stone may have proved excellent in terms of light leakage and hearts and arrows. But without the add'l HCA and Gemex reports, I'd have lacked the information to truly make an informed decision. Further their diamond was $1,300 higher - so it seemed a waste to go through the effort only to see a diamond that matched the specs of the diamond I bought. Plus their setting was significantly more expensive (even when taking 18k into consideration) and they required a 50% deposit to begin.
Ring Concierge:
(i) Showed me 3 eye clean diamonds. Included GIA reports but would not offer add'l reports calling them "unnecessary as GIA certified diamonds with a cut grade of triple excellent... will have maximum brilliance". She claimed any add'l reports function as a "sales/marketing technique".
(ii) Setting quoted at $3,600 (14k). They do however offer the thinnest band at 1.5mm which no other retailer would build (thinnest anyone else would go was 1.8mm).
My take: Friendly in-store service. However, setting prices were the highest of any retailer and when a customer asks for reports on physics/facts only to be told these are sales/marketing techniques, my antenna go way up. She knows (or should know) that not all of GIA's excellent cut diamonds are optimal in terms of brilliance/fire/scintillation and light leakage. Alongside their high setting prices this store was a hard pass. But ahhh, those beautiful settings.
Frank Darling:
(i) created a 4 diamond flight for me to see in store.
My take: Prior to the meeting I called to ask if they would provide any of the reports described herein and they said they do not provide any of the reports, or ASET or hearts/diamond viewers, so I cancelled the meeting. No point in wasting everyone's time if I will not be provided with enough data to make an informed decision.
I.D. Jewelers (Yekutiel Davidov):
(i) showed me 1 stone in-store (and had another queued up for the following day). Provided GIA report alongside the stone and walked me through minimum specs of the GIA report (i.e., showed me how to weed out certain stones immediately, such as what depth % is optimal, what fluorescence is acceptable, etc). Provided Holloway Cut Report and Gemex report via request.
(ii) Setting quoted at $850-$1,100 depending on 14k or 18k gold preference.
My take: Super friendly and knowledgeable service. The diamond graded very well on all 3 reports but the diamond price was on the higher side. However, with the lowest setting price of all the retailers, the total net price was the same as almost all the others and within budget. Only required $1k down. Ultimately was my 2nd favorite diamond. Would've been great to see the diamond through an ASET or Light Scope Viewer but decided not to as I found another slightly larger diamond that passed all the tests.
David S Diamonds:
(i) showed me 2 in-store diamonds. Provided all the reports and viewers described herein. Also provided training as to why I needed all the reports and viewers (full disclosure - this is the store that explained why I needed all the reports and viewers described herein). So obviously he'd provide everything.
(ii) Setting quoted at $950 (14k).
My take: Very friendly and patient in-store service generous with their time. Provided training on how to buy a diamond and implored me to go back out and to the retailers and shop with my new knowledge (before buying). Showed me a diamond I ultimately bought (2.03 carat, J, VVS2, GIA certified, excellent Gemex scores, excellent under light scope, clean hearts and arrows). Saved me ~$2,200-$3,500 vs the other stores with excellent confidence that the stone I bought is as good as it can get within my budget and specs.
James Allen:
Also shopped online at James Allen and even looked at the "competitor" diamonds that the Holloway Report showed once I ran that report. James Allen's True Hearts competitive diamond (with similar specs and grades) was over $5,000 more than the diamond I purchased. And this from the "low cost" online retailer without a storefront.
Other retailers: Kamni, R&R Jewelry and NYC Wholesale Diamonds could not accommodate in-person meetings the week I was in town so I couldn't asses them.
To sum up, if someone wanted me to recommend them a place to start, I'd start with David S Diamonds to get the learning he provides. Then once you have a diamond and price you like from him - go to Yekutiel at I.D. Jewelers and see if he can source something similar at a similar (or better) price. This way you'll have a few options to choose from. You can also double check either of the diamonds you found vs James Allen (or Blue Nile) once you pull the Holloway Cut Report (or have David So or Yekutiel Davidov provide you the Rapport pricing for the diamonds they are showing). This may give you some confidence that you're getting a decent value/price.
If I had to start this process over again, I would not visit any of the diamond stores that have storefronts and significant overhead - I discovered many of them are Instagram stores - selling much lower quality diamonds for the same price because they are popular among the IG crowd . Further, from my limited experience, their settings are way overpriced in comparison and their deposit policies (generally 50% down) are absurd. After all they haven't given you the diamond yet... all you should be required to pay for is the setting.
Finally, please know I am not a diamond expert, and am just a noob who is sharing their learnings over a very small period and very small sample size. I'm simply sharing what I learned and if it helps someone, great. If not - feel free to ignore.

For Canadians 🇨🇦 only
The way it works is Rakuten gives you cut of their affiliate revenue.
Make sure your adblock is disabled on both Rakuten and the store site you’re purchasing from, or it might not count.
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Thanks for considering this referral :)

I've shared fiction here before and it didn't go altogether too poorly, so I'm going to press my luck and do it again. This was written about a year ago, and I'm tired of trying to peddle it to lit magazines. Might as well share it here, know that it met a few eyeballs, and have done with it.
It's relevant to the sub insofar as it's about urban alienation and the working conditions at a small business run by IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE people. (I tried to pitch it as a story of the great resignation with a momentary flicker of cosmic horror.) It's based on a similar job I took on after getting laid off during the lockdown, and the circumstances of the main character's breakup are faintly similar to one I went through several years back (her job sucked the life out of her).
Without further ado:
* * *
It was getting close to midnight, and the temperature outside was still above 80 degrees. We’d locked up the shop at 10:15 and walked over to Twenty, the dive bar on Poplar Street, where a single wall-mounted air conditioner and four wobbly ceiling fans weren’t putting up much resistance against the July heat baking the place from the outside and the dense mass of bodies giving it a stifling fever from within.
Just now I came close to saying it was a Wednesday night, because that was usually when the cyclists descended upon Avenue Brew, the gritty-but-bougie craft beer and sandwich shop I was working at back then. Every Wednesday between March and November, about fifteen to twenty-five Gen Xers dressed in skintight polyester, all packages and camel toes and fanny packs, locked up their thousand-dollar bikes on the sidewalk and lined up for IPAs and paninis. They reliably arrived around 8:00, an hour before we closed, making it impossible to get started on the closing checklist and leave on time at 10:00. The worst of them were demanding and rude, and even the best got raucous and stubborn after a couple drinks. There were nights when bringing in the sidewalk tables couldn’t be done without arguing with them. Most were sub-par tippers, to boot.
After Wednesday came and went that week without so much as a single 40-something in Ray Bans and padded shorts stopping in to double-fist two cans of Jai Alai, we dared to hope the cyclists had chosen another spot to be their finish line from there on out. But no—they’d only postponed their weekly ride, and swarmed us on Friday night instead.
I was the last person to find out; I was clocked in as purchaser that evening. The position was something like a promotion I'd received a year earlier: for twenty hours a week, I got to retreat from the public and sit in the back room with the store laptop, reviewing sales and inventory, answering emails from brewery reps, and ordering beer, beverages, and assorted paper goods. When I put in hours as purchaser, my wage went up from $11 to $15 an hour, but I was removed from the tip pool. On most days, tips amounted to an extra two or three dollars an hour, so I usually came out ahead.
This was back in 2021. I don't know what Avenue Brew pays these days.
Anyway, at about 8:15, I stepped out to say goodbye to everyone and found the shop in chaos. Friday nights were generally pretty active, the cyclists' arrival had turned the place into a mob scene. The line extended to the front door. The phone was ringing. The Grubhub tablet dinged like an alarm clock without a snooze button. Danny was on the sandwich line and on the verge of losing his temper. Oliver was working up a sweat running food, bussing tables, and replenishing ingredients from the walk-in. The unflappable Marina was on register, and even she seemed like she was about to snap at somebody.
What else could I do? I stayed until closing to answer the phone, process Grubhub orders, hop on and off the second register, and help Danny with sandwich prep. After the tills were counted out, I stayed another hour to take care of the dishes, since nobody had a chance to do a first load. Oliver was grateful, even though he grumbled about having to make some calls and rearrange Sunday's schedule so I could come in a couple hours late. Irene and Jeremy, Avenue Brew's owners, would kick his ass if he let me go into overtime.
Danny suggested that we deserved a few drinks ourselves after managing to get through the shift without killing anyone. Not even Marina could find a reason to disagree with him.
The neighborhood had undergone enough gentrification to support an upscale brunch spot, an ice cream parlor, a gourmet burger restaurant, a coffee and bahn mi shop, and Avenue Brew (to name a few examples), but not yet quite enough that the people who staffed them couldn’t afford to live within a ten-minute walk from the main avenue where all these hep eateries stood between 24-hour corner stores with slot machines in back, late-night Chinese and Mexico-Italian takeout joints with bulletproof glass at the counters, and long-shuttered delis and shoe stores. Twenty on Poplar was the watering hole set aside for people like us. It was dim, a bit dilapidated, and inexpensive, and usually avoided by denizens of the condos popping up on the vacant lots and replacing clusters of abandoned row houses.
When we arrived, Kyle waved us over. He didn’t work at Avenue Brew anymore, but still kept up with a few of us. He was at Twenty at least four nights out of the week.
So there we all were. I sat with a brooding stranger freestyling to himself in a low mumble on the stool to my left and Oliver on my right, who tapped at his phone and nursed a bottle of Twisted Tea. To Oliver’s right sat Marina, staring at nothing in particular and trying to ignore Danny, who stood behind her, closer than she would have liked, listening to Kyle explain the crucial differences between the Invincible comic book and the Invincible web series.
I recall being startled back to something like wakefulness when it seemed to me that the ceiling had sprouted a new fan. I blinked my eyes, and it wasn’t there anymore. It reminded me of an incident from when I was still living with my folks in South Jersey and still had a car, and was driving home from a friend’s house party up in Bergen County. It was 6:30 AM, I hadn’t slept all night, and needed to get home so I could get at least little shuteye before heading to Whole Foods for my 11:00 AM shift. I imagined I passed beneath the shadows of overpasses I knew weren’t there, and realized I was dreaming at the wheel.
I was pretty thoroughly zombified at that point. Heather and I had broken up for good the night before, and I hadn't gotten even a minute of sleep. Calling out at Avenue Brew was tough. Unless you found someone willing to cover your shift on like six hours' notice, you were liable to get a writeup, a demotion, or your hours cut if you couldn't produce a doctor's note. So I loaded up on caffeine pills and Five-Hour Energy bottles at the corner store, and powered through as best I could.
I finished the last thimbleful of Blue Moon in my glass. Oliver wiped the sweat from the back of his neck with a napkin and covered his mouth to stifle a laugh at the KiwiFarms thread he was scrolling through. Pool balls clacked; somebody swore and somebody laughed. The TouchTunes box was playing Bob Dylan’s “Rain Day Woman #12 & 35,” and enough bleary 40-something men around the bar were bobbing their heads and mouthing the words to make it impossible to determine which one of them paid two bucks to hear it. A guy by the cigarette machine who looked like a caricature of Art Carney in flannel and an old Pixies T-shirt was accosting a woman who must have been a toddler when he hit drinking age, and she momentarily made eye contact with me as she scanned the area for a way out. Danny was shouting over the bartender’s head, carrying on a conversation with the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, who was sitting on the horseshoe’s opposite arm.
I never got his name, but when Oliver first referred to him as the Hot Guy from Pizza Stan’s, I knew exactly who he meant. Philly scene kid par excellence. Mid-20s, washed-out black denim, dyed black hair, thick bangs, and dark, gentle eyes. He was only truly alluring when he was on the job, because he seldom smiled then—and when he smiled, he broke the spell by exposing his teeth, stained a gnarly shade of mahogany from too much smoking and not enough brushing.
“How’s Best? Marcus still a joker?” Danny asked him.
“Yeah, you know Marcus. You know how he is.”
So the Hot Guy had been working at Best Burger (directly across the street from Avenue Brew) ever since Pizza Stan’s owners mismanaged the place unto insolvency. (Afterwards it was renovated and reopened as a vegan bakery—which incidentally closed down about a month ago.) Danny used to work at Best Burger, but that ended after he got into a shouting match with the owner. I happened to overhear it while I was dragging in the tables and collecting the chairs from the sidewalk the night it happened. It wasn’t any of my business, and I tried not to pay attention, but they were really tearing into each other. A month later, Oliver welcomed Danny aboard at Avenue Brew. I hadn’t known he’d been interviewed, and by then it was too late to mention the incident. But I’d have been a hypocrite to call it a red flag after the way I resigned from my position as Café Chakra's assistant manager two years earlier—not that we need to go dredging that up right now. Let's say there was some bad blood and leave it at that.
Anyway, I was thinking about giving in and buying a pack of cigarettes from the machine—and then remembered that Twenty didn’t have a cigarette machine. I looked again. The Art Carney-lookalike was still there, fingering his phone with a frown, but the girl was gone—and so was the cigarette machine.
I had only a moment to puzzle over this before Danny clapped me on the shoulder and thrust a shot glass in front of me.
“Starfish!” he said. (Danny called me Starfish. Everybody else called me Pat.) “You look like you need some juice.”
He distributed shots to everyone else. Marina declined hers, but changed her mind when Kyle offered to take it instead.
She and Kyle had stopped sleeping together after Kyle left Avenue Brew to work at the Victory taproom on the Parkway, but Marina was still concerned about his bad habits, which Danny delighted in encouraging.
We all leaned in to clink our glasses. Before I could find an appropriate moment to ask Marina if I could bum a cigarette, she got up to visit the bathroom. Danny took her seat and bowed his head for a conspiratorial word with Kyle.
I watched from the corner of my eye and tried to listen in. Like Marina, I was a little worried about Kyle. He got hired at Avenue Brew around the same time I did, just before the pandemic temporarily turned us into a takeout joint. He was a senior at Drexel then, an English major, and sometimes talked about wanting to either find work in publishing or carve out a career as a freelance writer after graduating. But first he intended to spend a year getting some life in before submitting himself to the forever grind.
He read a lot of Charles Bukowski and Hunter Thompson. He relished the gritty and sordid, and had already been good at sniffing it out around the neighborhood and in West Philly before Danny introduced him to cocaine, casinos, strip clubs, and a rogue’s gallery of shady but fascinating people. (None were really Danny’s friends; just fellow passengers who intersected with the part of his life where he sometimes went to Parx, sometimes came out ahead, sometimes spent his winnings on coke, and sometimes did bumps at titty bars.) Kyle recounted these adventures with a boyish enthusiasm for the naked reality of sleaze, like a middle schooler telling his locker room buddies about catching his older brother in flagrante and seeing so-and-so body parts doing such-and-such things.
Marina hated it. She never said as much to me, but she was afraid that the template Kyle set for his life during his “year off” was in danger of becoming locked in. The anniversary of his graduation had already passed, and now here he was trying to convince Danny to contribute a couple hundred dollars toward a sheet of acid his guy had for sale. He wasn't doing much writing lately.
I was the oldest employee at Avenue Brew (as I write this I’m 37, but fortunately I don’t look it), and when Kyle still worked with us I felt like it was my prerogative to give him some advice. The longer he waited to make inroads, I once told him, the more likely he’d be seen as damaged goods by the publishing world. He needed to jam his foot in the door while he was still young.
I could tell the conversation bored him, and didn’t bring up the subject again.
The bartender took my glass and curtly asked if I’d like another drink.
“No thanks, not yet,” I answered.
She slid me my bill.
I missed the old bartender, the one she’d replaced. I forget her name, but she was ingenuous and energetic and sweet. Pretty much everyone had some sort of crush on her. Sometimes she came into Avenue Brew for lunch, and tipped us as well as we tipped her. Maybe three months before that night—Danny witnessed it—she suddenly started crying and rushed out the door. Everyone at the bar mutely looked to each other for an explanation. (Fortunately for Twenty, the kitchen manager hadn’t left yet, and picked up the rest of her shift.)
She never came back. None of us had seen her since. But drafts still had to be poured and bottlecaps pulled off, and now here was another white woman in her mid-twenties wearing a black tank top, a pushup bra, and a scrunchie, same as before. Twenty’s regulars grew accustomed to not expecting to see the person she’d replaced, and life went on.
“How’re you doing?” I asked Oliver, just to say something to somebody, and to keep my thoughts from wandering back to Heather.
“Just kind of existing right now,” he answered. His phone lay face-up on the counter. He was swiping through Instagram, and I recognized the avatar of the user whose album he hate-browsed.
“And how’s Austin been?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. Not even three weeks after getting over the jetlag from his trip back from the Cascades, he’s off touring Ireland.” He shook his head. “Living his best life.”
He’d hired Austin on a part-time basis in September. We needed a new associate when Emma was promoted to replace a supervisor who'd quit without even giving his two weeks. There was a whole thing. I'm having a hard time recalling the guy's name, but I liked him well enough. He was a good worker and he seemed like a bright kid, but he was—well, he was young. Naïve. One day he found Jeremy sitting in the back room with his laptop, and took advantage of the open-door policy to ask why the store manager and supervisors didn’t get health benefits or paid time off. Jeremy told him it "was being worked on," and that he couldn’t discuss it any further at that time. I understand the kid got argumentative, though I never knew precisely what was said.
Irene started visiting the shop a lot more often after that, almost always arriving when the kid was working. No matter what he was doing, she’d find a reason to intervene, to micromanage and harangue him, and effectively make his job impossible. A coincidence, surely.
It’s something I still think about. By any metric, Jeremy and Irene have done very well for themselves. They’re both a little over 40 years old. I remember hearing they met at law school. In addition to Avenue Brew, they own a bistro in Francisville and an ice cream parlor in Point Breeze. They have a house on the Blue Line, send their son to a Montessori school, and pull up to their businesses in a white Volkswagen ID.4. But whenever the subject of benefits, wages, or even free shift meals came up, they pled poverty. It simply couldn’t be done. But they liked to remind us about all they did to make Avenue Brew a fun place to work, like let the staff pick the music and allow Oliver and me to conduct a beer tasting once a day. They stuck Black Lives Matter, Believe Women, and Progress flag decals on the front door and windows, and I remember Irene wearing a Black Trans Lives Matter shirt once or twice when covering a supervisor's shift. None of the college students or recent graduates who composed most of Avenue Brew's staff could say the bosses weren't on the right team. And yet...
I'm sorry—I was talking about Austin. He was maybe 30 and already had another job, a “real” job, some sort of remote gig lucrative enough for him to make rent on a studio in the picturesque Episcopal church down the street that had been converted into upscale apartments some years back. Austin wasn’t looking for extra cash. He wanted to socialize. To have something to do and people to talk to in the outside world. He wanted to make friends, and all of us could appreciate that—but it’s hard to be fond of a coworker who irredeemably sucks at his job. Austin never acted with any urgency, was inattentive to detail, and even after repeated interventions from Oliver and the supervisors, he continued to perform basic tasks in bafflingly inefficient ways. Having Austin on your shift meant carrying his slack, and everyone was fed up after a few months. Oliver sat him down, told him he was on thin ice, and gave him a list of the areas in which he needed to improve if he didn’t want to be let go.
When Austin gave Oliver the indignant “I don’t need this job” speech, it was different from those times Danny or I told a boss to go to hell and walked out. Austin truly didn’t need it. He basically said the job was beneath him, and so was Oliver.
It got deep under Oliver’s skin. He did need the job and had to take it seriously, even when it meant being the dipshit manager chewing out a man four or five years his senior. He earned $18 an hour (plus tips when he wasn’t doing admin work), had debts to pay off, and couldn't expect to get any help from his family.
The important thing, though, the part I distinctly remember, was that Oliver was looking at a video of a wading bird Austin had recorded. An egret, maybe. White feathers, long black legs, pointy black beak. Austin must have been standing on a ledge above a creek, because he had an overhead view of the bird as it stood in the water, slowly and deliberately stretching and retracting its neck, eyeing the wriggling little shadows below. As far as the fish could know, they were swimming around a pair of reeds growing out of the silt. The predator from which they extended was of a world beyond their understanding and out of their reach.
The video ended. Oliver moved on to the next item: a photograph of the bird from the same perspective, with a fish clamped in its beak. Water droplets flung from the victim's thrashing tail caught the sunlight. And I remember now, I clearly remember, the shapes of like twelve other fish stupidly milling about the bird's feet, unperturbed and unpanicked.
Danny peered at Oliver’s phone and observed a resemblance between the bird—its shape and bearing, and the composition of the photograph—and a POV porn video shot from behind and above, and he told us so. Elaborately. He made squawking noises.
“And mom says I’m a degenerate,” Oliver sighed. “Can you practice your interspecies pickup artist shit somewhere else?” Oliver flicked his wrist, shooing Danny off, and held his phone in front of his face to signal that he was done talking.
Danny sagged a little on his stool and turned away. I sometimes felt bad for him. For all his faults, he had the heart of a puppy dog. He really did think of us as his tribe. There was nobody else who’d only ever answer “yes” when you asked him to pick up a shift, and he did it completely out of loyalty.
He was turning 29 in a week. I wondered how many people would actually turn out to celebrate with him at the Black Taxi. Kyle probably would—but even he regarded Danny more as a source of vulgar entertainment than a friend.
Then it happened again. When I turned to speak to Oliver, there’d been a pair of pool cues leaning side-by-side against the wall a few stools down. Now they were gone.
This time it might have been my imagination. Somebody passing by could have casually snatched them up and kept walking.
But a moment later I seemed to notice a second TouchTunes box protruding from the wall directly behind me. I let it be.
Marina returned from the bathroom. Danny rose and offered her back her seat with an exaggerated bow. Before she got settled, I asked if she’d like to step outside with me. She withdrew her pack of Marlboro Menthols from her canvas bag, which she left sitting on the stool to deter Danny from sitting back down.
Marina never minded letting me bum cigarettes from time to time. I couldn’t buy them for myself anymore; it’s a habit I could never keep under control, and was only getting more expensive. Like everything else in the world. About once a month I reimbursed her by buying her a pack.
The air out on the sidewalk was as hot as the air inside Twenty, but easier to breathe. After lighting up, Marina leaned against the bricks and sighed.
“I wish Oliver would fire Danny already and get it over with.”
I nodded. Marina rarely talked about anything but work.
“He sneaks drinks and doesn't think anyone notices he's buzzed,” she went on. “He steals so much shit and isn’t even a little subtle about it. He’s going to get Oliver in trouble. And he’s a creep.”
“Yeah,” I said. These were her usual complaints about Danny, and they were all true. “At least he’s better than Austin.”
“That’s a low bar.”
Three dirt bikes and an ATV roared down the lonely street, charging through stop sign after stop sign, putting our talk on hold.
“Remind me. You’ve got one semester left, right?” I asked after the noise ebbed.
“Yep.”
Marina was a marketing major at Temple. She’d had an internship during the spring semester, and her boss told her to give her a call the very minute she graduated. Her parents in central Pennsylvania couldn’t pay her rent or tuition for her, so she was a full-time student and a full-time employee at Avenue Brew. Her emotional spectrum ranged from "tired" to "over it." She’d been waiting tables and working at coffee shops since she was seventeen, had no intention of continuing for even a day longer than she had to, and feared the escape hatch would slam shut if she dallied too long after prying it open.
She’d considered majoring in English, like Kyle. She went for marketing instead. I couldn’t blame her.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’ve been kind of off all day.”
“I’m terrible.”
“Why?”
I gave dodgy answers, but she asked precisely the right follow-up questions to get me going about what happened with Heather the night before.
It was the new job. Before the pandemic, Heather worked as a server at a Center City bar and grill. (That's where I met her; we were coworkers for about a year, and then I left to work Café Chakra because it was quieter and closer to where I lived.) When the place closed its doors and laid everyone off during the lockdown, she got a stopgap job at the Acme on Passyunk, and hated it. Then in March, she found a bar-and-lounge gig in a ritzy hotel on Broad Street. Very corporate. Excellent pay, great benefits. Definitely a step up. But her new employers made Irene and Jeremy look like Bob and Linda Belcher by comparison. It was the kind of place where someone had recently gotten herself fired for leaving work to rush to the hospital after getting the news that her grandmother was about to be taken off life support, and not finding someone to come in and cover the last two hours of her shift.
Heather seldom worked fewer than fifty-five hours a week, and her schedule was even more erratic than mine. At least once a week she left the hotel at 1:00 or 2:00 AM and returned at 9:00 the next morning. Neither of us could remember the last time she’d had two consecutive days off, and it had been over a month since one of mine overlapped with one of hers. She’d spent it drinking alone at home. All she wanted was some privacy.
I’d biked to South Philly to meet her when she got home at 1:30. The argument that killed our relationship for good began around 2:30, when I complained that we never had sex anymore. Heather accused me of only caring about that, when she was so exhausted and stressed that her hair was falling out in the shower. Quit the job? She couldn’t quit. The money was too good. She had student loans, medical bills, and credit card debt, and for the first time in her life she could imagine paying it all off before hitting menopause.
So, yeah, I was cranky about our sex life being dead in the water. Say whatever you like. But at that point, what were we to each other? We did nothing together anymore but complain about work before one or both of us fell asleep. That isn’t a relationship.
She said my hair always smelled like sandwiches, even after bathing, and she was done pretending it didn’t turn her off. I told her she was one to talk—she always reeked of liquor. As things escalated, we stopped caring if her roommates heard us. “You want to be a father?” she shouted around 4:00 AM. “Making what you make? That poor fucking kid.”
We fought until sunrise, and I left her apartment with the understanding that I wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t be calling her ever again. I biked home and sat on the steps facing the cement panel that was my house’s backyard. After my phone died and I couldn’t anaesthetize myself with dumb YouTube videos or make myself feel crazy staring at the download button for the Tinder app, I watched the sparrows hopping on and off the utility lines for a while.
At 11:40 I went inside. One of my roommates was already in the shower, so the best I could do was put on a clean Avenue Brew T-shirt before walking to the shop and clocking in at noon to help deal with the lunch rush.
“That’s a lot,” Marina finally said. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. She was sixteen years my junior, after all, and just a coworker. She didn’t need to hear any of this, and I definitely didn't need to be telling her. But who else was there to tell?
She’d already finished her cigarette. I still had a few puffs left. She went inside.
I decided to call it a night.
The second TouchTunes box was gone—naturally. Danny had taken my stool, and regarded my approach with a puckish you snooze you lose grin. I wasn’t going to say anything. I’d just pay my bill, give everyone a nod goodnight, and walk the five blocks back home.
And then Danny disappeared.
One second, he was there. The next—gone.
Danny didn’t just instantaneously vanish. Even when something happens in the blink of an eye, you can still put together something of a sequence. I saw him—I seemed to see him—falling into himself, collapsing to a point, and then to nothing.
You know how sometimes a sound is altogether inaudible unless you’re looking at the source—like when you don’t realize somebody’s whispering at you, and can then hear and understand them after they get your attention? I think that was the case here. I wouldn't have known to listen if I hadn't seen it happen. What I heard lingered for two, maybe three seconds, and wasn't any louder than a fly buzzing inside a lampshade. A tiny and impossibly distant scream, pitchshifted like a receding ambulance siren into a basso drone...
I don’t know. I don’t know for sure. I’m certain I remember a flash of red, and I have the idea of Danny’s trunk expanding, opening up as it imploded. A crimson flower, flecked white, with spooling pink stalks—and Danny’s wide-eyed face above it, drawn twisting and shrinking into its petals.
For an instant, Twenty’s interior shimmered. Not shimmered, exactly—glitched would be a better word. If you’re old enough to remember the fragmented graphics that sometimes flashed onscreen when you turned on the Nintendo without blowing on the cartridge, you’ll have an idea of what I mean. It happened much too fast, and there was too much of it to absorb. The one clear impression I could parse was the mirage of a cash register flickering upside-down above the pool table.
Not a cash register. The shape was familiar, but the texture was wrong. I think it was ribbed, sort of like a maggot. I think it glistened. Like—camo doesn’t work anymore when the wearer stops crouching behind a bush and breaks into a run. Do you get what I’m saying?
Nobody else seemed to notice. The pool balls clacked. A New Order track was playing on the TouchTunes box. A nearby argument about about Nick Sirianni continued unabated.
Finally, there was a downward rush of air—and this at least elicited a reaction from the bartender, who slapped my bill to keep it from sailing off the counter.
“Danny,” I said.
“Danny?” Kyle asked me quietly. His face had gone pale.
“Danny?” Oliver repeated in a faraway voice.
After a pause, Kyle blinked a few times. “You heard from him?”
“God forbid,” said Marina. “When he quit I was like, great, I can keep working here after all.”
“Oh, come on—”
“Kyle. Did I ever show you those texts he sent me once at three in the morning?” The color had returned to Oliver’s face.
“No, what did he say?”
Oliver tapped at his phone and turned the screen toward Kyle.
“Oh. Oh, jeez.”
“Right? Like—if you want to ask me something, ask me. You know? Don’t be weirdly accusatory about it…”
I pulled a wad of fives and ones from my pocket, threw it all onto the counter, and beelined for the exit without consideration for the people I squeezed through and shoved past on the way.
I heard Marina saying “let him go.”
I went a second consecutive night without sleep. Fortunately I wasn’t scheduled to come in the next day.
The schedule. It’s funny. Oliver was generally great at his job, and even when he wasn’t, I cut him a lot of slack because I knew Irene and Jeremy never gave him a moment’s peace. But I could never forgive him those times he waited until the weekend to make up and distribute the schedule. This was one of those weeks he didn’t get around to it until Saturday afternoon. When I found it in my inbox, Danny’s name wasn’t anywhere on it.
As far as I know, nobody who hadn’t been at Twenty that night asked what happened to him. We were a bit overstaffed as it was, and everyone probably assumed Danny was slated for the chopping block. The part-timers were, for the most part, happy to get a few additional hours.
Oliver abruptly quit around Labor Day after a final acrimonious clash with the owners. I never found out the details, and I never saw him again. Jeremy and Irene took turns minding the store while a replacement manager was sought. None of the supervisors would be pressured into taking the job; they knew from Oliver what they could expect.
About three weeks after Oliver left, I came in for my purchasing shift and found Jeremy waiting for me in the back room. I knew it was serious when he didn’t greet me with the awkward fist-bump he ordinarily required of his male employees.
“You’ve seen the numbers,” he said. Business for the summer had fallen short of expectations, it was true, and he and Irene had decided to rein in payroll expenses. My purchaser position was being eliminated. Its responsibilities would be redistributed among the supervisors and the new manager, when one was found. In the meantime, I'd be going back to the regular $11 an hour (plus tips of course) associate position full-time.
Jeremy assured me I'd be first in the running for supervisor the next time there was an opening.
I told him it was fine, I was done, and if he’d expected the courtesy of two weeks’ notice, he shouldn’t have blindsided me like that.
“Well, that’s your choice,” he answered, trying not to look pleased. His payroll problem was solving itself.
I racked up credit card debt for a few months. Applied for entry-level museum jobs that might appreciate my art history degree. Aimed for some purchasing and administrative assistant gigs, and just for the hell of it, turned in a resume for a facilitator position at an after-school art program. Got a few interviews. All of them eventually told me they’d decided to go in a different direction. I finally got hired to bartend at Hops from Underground, a microbrewery on Fairmount.
I’m still there. The money’s okay, but it fluctuates. Hours are reasonable. I’m on their high-deductible health plan. There’s a coworker I’ve been dating. Sort of dating. You know how it goes. In this line of work you get so used to people coming and going that you learn not to get too attached. I walk past Avenue Brew a few times a week, but stopped peering in through the window when I didn't recognize the people behind the counter anymore.

Getting Rid of Most of My Flavors, Part 46
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Starting Flavor Count: 2,434 (down from 2,972)
TASK OR TRASH - Each flavor gets assigned at least one task or it goes in the trash.
 

CAPELLA Honeydew Melon

Update. I gave CAP Honeydew Melon one chance to stick around, a recipe called “Melon Blow Pop.” Before trying it, I wondered what made this recipe a "blow pop" considering there aren't any gum flavors, but something about the way these flavors combine does give it a very interesting bubblegum-y aspect in addition to the candy melon and apple. And the candy apple-melon is great. Unfortunately, I also get a slight perfumy-type off note from the recipe. Specifically, a baby scent perfume. You know, whatever it is that makes baby stuff like baby lotion, baby oil, baby powder all have that same baby scent. I hate that, so CAP Honeydew Melon is history. TRASH 1
 

FLAVOUR ART

 
Royal
Accidentally passed over this one last time. I found it to be a kind of warm and spicy tobacco; with a spice note or notes similar to cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and ginger, but not specifically or distinctly any of those. Also found it odd that despite having no menthol taste or cooling it kind of hits me right in the same spot that menthol does.
I purchased this flavor to make Chem Twista Lime - cigarette with a pinch of lime - and will continue to use it for that. TASK 1 But, I can’t find anything else that I want to do with it.
 
Shade
I don’t know what this is, but it’s not tobacco. It tastes like dirty cooked fruit sweetness, like just part of cooked dark berries or stewed prunes, just the sweetness from them and not their distinct aromas, mixed with something earthy and pushing dirty tobacco but not authentically tobacco. But, it does taste like it would be a good ingredient to use in a fruity tobacco, like you would need a tobacco, and a fruit, but this could be a bridge ingredient.
Already plan to mix CBV’s Cherry Oak Tobacco that uses it. Will also try his Southern Lights recipe for a bourbon-vanilla tobacco that uses it TASK 2, and the very solid looking Bob’s Bacco. TASK 3 I just wished the new ATF showed steep times because I’m not sure how long to steep these. Anyone have a guess? Three weeks sound about right?
 
Soho
I don’t consider this tobacco flavor. It’s more like... Dirty Trail Mix, but in the best possible way.
Slightly dirty roasted nut crust? It’s an odd, complex, flavor that’s oddly weak for FA (8% is not unusual for a mix) with something lightly tobacco-ish, kind of toasty, in there somewhere along with a lot of other stuff - some roasted nuttiness, something like a graham cracker-type or pie crust bakery, a bit of caramel or brown-sugar like sweetness but not too sweet, maybe some raisin-y type sweetness as well. Dry, yet smooth. It’s not a rich flavor but it has plenty of dry bakery-like body.
No, I’m not throwing away FA Soho. I need it for 1-2-3 Burley TASK 4 and it’s used in about 10 recipes I’m planning to try.
Adding to that - I can’t wait to try Pistachio Brulee - Soho. It’s a lot of TFA Pistachio and not a lot of FA Soho for a “comforting warm deep dessert tobacco,” but I still think it’s going to be terrific. TASK 5
Will also add Maga for the simplicity - it’s just FA Soho, FLV Mild Tobacco, and FLV Vanilla tobacco. TASK 6
And because I’m feeling brave, Arcanite, a weird-looking recipe that mixes Soho with Meringue, White Peach, and TFA Dragonfruit. TASK 7
 
Sour Wizard
Held off on ever trying this for a long time because I’d already been burnt by too many supposedly sour things to get excited about FA coming out with Sour Wizard. Anyway, it doesn’t really taste sour, not like sour candy tastes sour, not at 2% anyway, but it definitely has a noticeably tart “pop” to it, more so than the others. Very bright. Other sour additives don’t have much fruitiness but this one does have a very slight green apple kind of taste to it. Top heavy with a dead finish but the sour-ish flavor does carry just a little deeper than just being right on top. The usual suspect acids might be the main ingredients, but FA definitely did more than just put malic and/or citric acid in a bottle with PG, and it shows. Unfortunately, I could not find a single recipe using it that I both felt inclined to mix and had all the ingredients to mix. TRASH 2
 
Spearmint
Aka, “White Winter.” Tastes like the disembodied spirit of weak spearmint gum. Not much body or sweetness. No leafy green stuff. Not extra methol-ed up.
I’m pretty sure I would be fine without it but there is just one recipe I want to try first, just to make sure.
Spearing Mint, Creamy Concoction is one. Although FA and TFA Spearmints aren’t the mints I’d choose for the job, I’m really interested in this “slight spearmint note with sweetened heavy cream” profile, and the sweetened heavy cream part looks great. TASK 8
 
Stark Apple
Sweet red apple, fairly accurately tastes like a red delicious apple or apple juice. I think red delicious is actually the least delicious of apples, but if you don’t, or you need that as a component, this offers it. I guess some people say it tastes more like a yellow apple but I always associate those with having more of a “ripe,” kinda sweaty taste. FA Stark Apple is quite sweet, with a deep natural sweetness, not a ton of flavor, but the flavor that’s there is on point. No tartness or crispness - not very fresh tasting. Sweet and timid enough that I would use it to sweeten a mix of other fruits without worrying much about it getting in the way. Not dry, but not really juicy. Very smooth, does not add any throat hit. Some body, with that mild flavor on top and a medium thick sweeter base, not too thin.
I really liked Strap-On Aid when I tried it six years ago, let’s see if I still do. TASK 9
There are a bunch of apple bacco recipes and at least a handful of them use FA Stark Apple. The one that looks most appealing to me is this Starkonja’s Head, mostly because it has serious, grown-up tobaccos in there and not just RY4 Double and Soho. TASK 10
 
Strawberry (Red Touch)
Fairly weak for FA. I call it the astronaut strawberry, not that I’ve ever had one, but it’s what I imagine eating a freeze-dried strawberry would be like. It tastes natural, with that subtle earthy note that brings some realism to the party, but unnaturally dry. Not juicy at all. Top notes are mild, slightly tart, and the finish is weak but there’s a solid middle that tastes like a semi-sweet ripe strawberry only without any juice. It’s not the best standalone strawberry by far, but it is a great tool. Seems to work really well as part of a strawberry layer to make sweet candy strawberries taste more natural and fill out the middle more, despite not working so well by itself. Cranking it up too high that earthy note starts to get a little grassy, like freeze-drying that strawberry leaves and all.
No, I do not agree with those who say it smells like farts, and no, I’m not throwing away part of the original Strap-On and many of the Strap-On variants. t’s in more than half a dozen things on my to-mix list.
I also need it for Lychee Blossom, which is a fantastic lychee recipe that I love. TASK 11
And I want to try Strawberry Whirl which is described as “layered strawberry jam, light fluffy cream on a whirl cookie.” It had me at OoO Strawberry Jam. TASK 12
StrawMelon Melee because I love cantaloupe and strawberry together and this looks like a great new cantaloupe-strawberry mix. TASK 13
Custard’s Last Stand because I’m very interested in how that WF Sugar Cone fits in there. TASK 14
Daveberry Cheesecake because it’s named after me! TASK 15
Yuno because it looks like a great strawberry milk and I’m really interested in the combination of WF Macadamia Nut and OoO Cream Milky Undertone it uses. TASK 16
 
Strawberry Green
That’s what it tastes like, underripe strawberry. Very green like you can taste the chlorophyll, and pretty tart, but very clearly a strawberry, and has some syrupy sweetness. It tastes like a small amount of it could do amazing things with other strawberries, like making them taste brighter and more refreshing, maybe making a flat sweet candyish strawberry taste more like the real thing.
Pretty excited to try things with this one, already have a couple planned. Mike’s Peach, Strawberry and Vanilla looks like a winner, too. I’m really interested in the combination of WF Strawberry Gummy Candy and FA Strawberry Green for the strawberry and even more interested in the combination of FA Peach White and SSA Nectarines for the peach. TASK 17
 
Summer Clouds
I’m not sure who started calling it FA Dryer Sheets, but I can confirm that is an accurate description. It’s supposed to be peach and rose, it think, but I get a hint of peach and a whole lot of dryer sheets. TRASH 3
 
Tiramisu
There’s a really nice ladyfinger cookie buried in here, and accurate cocoa notes, but unfortunately nothing resembling mascarpone flavor or richness, and even more unfortunately, it’s all soaked in, not liqueur-spiked espresso like it’s supposed to be, but booze-free coffee brewed by a skunk who had recently sprayed skunk spray and burned some popcorn in the same kitchen where he made the coffee. TRASH 4
 
Torrone
As best I can tell it’s actually accurate to a certain type of Italian nougat that contains lemon zest, almonds, pistachios, vanilla, sugar, honey, and egg whites. I’ve never had that, but it pretty much tastes like what I imagine all of that stuff mixed together might taste like. It’s sweet and creamy and nutty and lemony all at the same time. I’m not personally a huge fan of this mostly because the lemon feels weird in there and it seems a bit busy, for a single flavor, but it’s not terrible. It’s a little on the thin side, but just a little; there’s still enough body there to pull off a sugary creamy texture. The nuts aren’t distinctly almondy or pistachio tasting and more of a generic nuttiness.
Need it for Stag Night, also interested in trying The Key To Happiness, described as “a nice piece of store bought key lime pie like you find in the freezer section of your local grocery store. TASK 18
 
Up
This one is so odd. It’s coffee, cream, and... cereal? I don’t know why there’s a bakery flavor in there. It’s coffee forward and that coffee is not terrible, it’s kind of burnt but not dark, like a light roast coffee that’s been on a warmer too long or at too high a temp. There’s a little milky cream that makes an appearance and then there’s some bakery that is, for whatever reason, supposed to be a cereal. I guess it’s cereal? It’s kinda dry and gritty, almost graham cracker like. It finishes on that note and I’m not sure what you’re supposed do with that other than use this to add a coffee note to a bakery recipe, or get really creative. No skunk spray or burnt popcorn or anything like that, so above average for a coffee flavor, but also nothing I want to mix that uses it. TRASH 5
 
Vanilla Bourbon
Thin, natural-ish and darker but not quite spicy vanilla. Really very plain to my taste, Rick calls it warm and a little floral. I’m not getting any warmth or floralness, it tastes more like an attempt at vanilla bean that doesn’t quite get there but is more of a bold natural vanilla than a lot of other offerings. There's a richness or depth to the vanilla flavor, but not to the concentrate itself, it’s actually rather thin, it will most likely will not add the perception of creaminess or thickness that many vanilla flavors do.
Three or four things I’ve planned to mix use it. Here’s two more: Premium Vanilla Custard - obvious from looking at it that it’s going to be delicious. I see you, OoO Marshmallow. TASK 19
And Shunsui Kyoraku. I’m scared of the WF Egg Yolk in there, but not too scared to give it a try. TASK 20
 
Vanilla Cookie
tTis is a very vanilla cookie. Loads of baked in kinda bright but not overly bright vanilla taste. Also, pretty buttery. There’s a nice cookie there in the middle of that butter and vanilla. Without steeping, the cookie is just a little too sharp (nutty, overcooked, pyrazine) for my taste, but it vapes smooth overall with all that vanilla and butter. If it had just a little less pyrazine sharp overcooked nuttiness (and I’m told it does have less of that with a longer steep than the five or six days I gave it before sampling 2.5%), it could get fairly close to a Golden Oreo type of thing.
I already have at least 10 recipes I’m going to make that use it, but also:
3 2 1 Stroopwaffel I don’t know how accurate that will be, but I love VT Honeycomb and looking forward to seeing how SSA Crisp Waffle and FA Vanilla Cookie mix with it. TASK 21
And Makoto Shishio, because I love the idea of an “oreo waffle with cream filling." TASK 22
 
Vanilla Ice Cream
Milky, plain base, not custardy at all - more like gelato. Darker vanilla. I don’t love it, simply as a matter of personal preference and liking a richer style of ice cream, but there’s nothing wrong with it. I’ve got at least recipes in line that use it, and here’s one more that stood out: Lemon Gelato. Looks refreshing and satisfying. TASK 23
 
Vanilla Tahity
This is every bit as much an almond flavor as a vanilla flavor, I get more almond than vanilla. It even has a bit of a cherry-ish note to it the way some almond flavors do. It’s like sweet almond-vanilla-cherry, or amaretto and marzipan. It’s a bit dry, but there’s fluffy marshmallow-like body to it, and it’s not dry enough to be unpleasant. I actually kind of enjoy vaping this as a single flavor. The hint of cherry is similar to the hint of cherry in amaretto, not a medicinal plastic cherry. The vanilla is very bright and artificial, like the vanilla in a vanilla coke, not a coke with vanilla syrup added like at a soda shop or Sonic, but just the vanilla from a can of vanilla coke.
Already planning to keep it long enough to mix one custard recipe that uses it, now I have two more things to try:
This recipe for Vanilla Crescent Cookies looks wonderful. TASK 24
And I’m really interested in the combination of VT Creaming Soda and WF Cotton Candy Jelly Bean in this Blue Balls recipe for blue raz and vanilla hard candy, even if I think FA Vanilla Tahity was probably not the best vanilla for the job. TASK 25
 
Vienna Cream
Absolutely requires a steep, not just to come into itself, but to not be disgusting. It’s weird how much better this gets after steeping for just about 4 days. Freshly mixed, it tastes like someone tried to make spiked eggnog and substituted nail polish remover for rum. After a short steep, it tastes like a very sweet, light dairy cream, on the thin side of creams but still very much a cream. with a bit of bright vanilla and an interesting sort of ice cream-like crispness to it. Very smooth, clean tasting. Have found it sometimes works when other creams don’t, just takes a little patience.
I need it for four of my all-time favorite recipes, Mango Beauregarde, Notorious, Vurve’s Vanilla Almond Milk, and Vanilla Cronut.
Gotta try The Worlds End, too. It looks like too much TFA DX PB for the profile - banana nut bread with chocolate sauce - but looks delicious, regardless. TASK 26
 
New Flavor Count: 2,429
 
Just a short one this time, to get back in the groove. I went on vacation, brought COVID back as a souvenir, and have had a bunch of work to catch up on because of all that. Will finish off the Flavour Art next week.

Hi, so I called a local furniture store to order some furniture. As a naive person who is buying furniture for the first time, I think I made some mistakes.
The delivery date of the furniture is important, because I'm coordinating a cross country move. After emailing a representative at the store, I was advised to call and schedule a delivery date.
During the phone call, I was asked to send my desired furniture items to a sales associate via text message. The sales associate confirmed that the items were "in stock" and then asked me to call her to process the payment.
I called her, provided her with my card information, and then she informed me that the items would arrive at the store within two to three weeks, at which time they would call me to coordinate a delivery. She was very enthusiastic in her tone, so I just went along with it and we ended the call.
That was Thursday. On Friday, the day after making the purchase, I realized that something didn't feel right. After reflecting further, I realized a few things:

1. I did not receive a receipt.
2. I did not know what the return policy was.
3. I didn't really have a good sense of the quality of the furniture I'd purchased.

I continued to just kind of sit with the feeling until evening, at which time I decided to try to find out what the return policy was. The website actually doesn't list a return policy. It just states that you need to email the owner to request a written statement of the return policy. So, I went online to look for it in reviews.
What I found in the reviews were numerous complaints about furniture orders being delayed by several months.
I then did some thorough research about the items that I ordered and realized that I didn't want them due to their poor quality.
Then, I found a couple of reviews that stated that the store does not honor any returns or cancellations, though they sometimes offer exchanges. One review posted a photo of a return policy that stated "All sales are final, no cancellations," etc. That policy required that the buyer sign it.
Given what I'm finding out, I'd rather not deal with them at all at this point. I'd prefer a refund, and am not really open to an exchange.
Given that it's been less than 72 hours since I made the purchase, and that I didn't receive a receipt, and that the return or cancellation policy was never explained to me, what options do you think I have here? How do you think I should approach the situation?
It's kind of pathetic, but I wasn't able to sleep last night because I was so stressed out about this. Something about being disagreeable when the sales people were so nice has me feeling particularly anxious. Maybe that's part of the sales strategy?

BeyondtheGM EP 22 featured special guests Doodles CEO Julian Holguin and head of Business Development and Strategy Austin Hurwitz. Great listen where many heard the vision from the Doodles team for the first time.
If anyone wants to listen back: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1OdKrzqrMbYKX
I've shared some of the Doodles related Q&A and alpha below:
Can you share some details about your latest announcement for those who haven't seen it yet?
Julian: Doodles is partnering with a company called Camp to launch our first ever immersive retail experience and for those of you that don't know what camp is, it's basically a network of hybrid play / shopping experiences where the front of the establishment is basically a toy store, but think of it like a specialty toy store. It's kind of like a modern day FAO Schwarz or something like that. It's got all the viral kids toys. It's not just like walking into a Toys R Us or a Target or something like that, t's kind of got that specialty feel to it. That makes up about I'd say less than a sixth of the space but in the back of that toy store, there's this hidden door and a camp counselor is waiting for you if you purchased a ticket to the immersive experience, you push through that magic door and behind that is essentially a 6000 square foot immersive experience that totally brings the world that you're going into to life. So they partner with some big IP to actually program those experiences. Los Angeles is Nike. It's called Nike Kids Camp.
New York is Disney's Encanto, a really big Disney animation movie that kind of took the world by storm last year. Dallas is Mickey Mouse and friends. Atlanta is The Little Mermaid. So obviously some of the biggest IP in the world. We are launching a new location with them this summer. So basically, we're going to be introduced to a whole new set of potential people in the particular market that we're going to be in because these experiences actually serve a purpose in those specific markets for longer than say 2 or 3 days. They are permanent establishments in those markets. So we're going to stay there for about 3 to 6 months and then the Doodles show will likely go on the road to some of their other locations. The solution that camp solves is what do you do with your family today? What do you do today? Do you have something to do with your kids, which is always on a parent's mind, right? Whether you're taking them to the park or you're taking them to Disneyland or you're taking them wherever you want to go. This is like a 2 or 3 hour thing that is really kind of hard to replicate, that gets people out of the house and you can have truly an incredible time.
My kids love it. So the the cool thing for us is that we get to bring one of our core competencies to life in a really material way where we know it's valuable to pop up at these big cultural moments like South-by and Art Basel, but it's a pretty resource intensive process to do that, and it's a pretty budget intensive process to do that. So we figured it made a lot of sense to kind of reallocate some of that funding into turning this concept into a true business, which is essentially what camp is, One, we're going to be selling merchandise, we're going to be selling tickets to the event, we're going to be selling sponsorships to the event. So there's a real business there but the big opportunity for Doodles is there's going to be thousands of new people that don't know anything about Doodles coming into this experience, and we have the opportunity to bring them into our world. We have the opportunity to bring those people on chain, especially with what we have planned and how the technology is almost going to be invisible to the people that are in there.
It's ultimately just going to be a great digital / physical consumer experience. So really, really excited. The utility that that's going to drive ultimately to holders is VIP all access, it's going to be free entry, whereas everybody else has to pay. There's going to be merchandise credits, there's going to be true like white glove concierge services. So whenever a Doodle holder is going to go to the the space in a given day, week, whatever it might be, they're actually going to have the really VIP experience that's going to come with all the bells and whistles and they're going to feel very, very special and not the kind of experience that everybody else is going to have when they go to the event and hopefully in time that space is going to travel so a lot more Doodle holders are going to be able to take part in it but one of the big things that we've heard in general from holders about our live events is, oh man, it's two days, three days, like what if I'm not able to make it that particular weekend? This is going to enable people to have a little bit more travel plans put together if they do want to make it all the way out here but the cool thing is, it's going to travel.
We're still going to do live events in other parts of the world but this is a big one for us. The other part is that we're actually going to introduce our first line of kids merchandise, goods and apparel, which is something that the community has been asking for. We have a lot of parents in the Doodles community and it's also a way to introduce the brand to a lot of new people. As far as the experience itself, there's going to be like dayparting programing. So kids and family programing is going to be in the day for the most part and then at night there's going to be stuff that's more focused on adults. So multiple generations can take part in this. It's going to be a blast. I can't wait for everybody to see the designs, what the experience is going to look like, how it's going to connect to our collector ecosystem in the studio and bring NFT's to life in a really meaningful way. It's going to be awesome. Can't wait for you all to see it.
I'm looking forward to the day parting. Could share any timelines, anything in terms of location and where we can expect them or should we stay tuned?
Julian: The location is going to be a reveal within itself so I don't want to say that here because the reason we're not bringing up the location yet is because there's a really big opportunity to get a lot of local press. You want the local newspapers, radio stations, local bloggers and everything like that talking about it. So we want to reveal the designs and everything when we announce the location so we get as many people in the particular area that we're going to be in aware of the activation as possible. Timing wise, the experience is going to open in August. There might be a little fluidity in what exact time in August but it's August right before the school year starts for everybody so it's not too far away and then as far as like you asked kind of a leading question with adult versus kids experiences. You know, if you grow up in New York or any of these cities and you do kind of more mellow, like you've been kind of like boozy painting before or doing like casual things you bring drinking like wine and beer into it. It turns into like a really fun night out for adults. This isn't going to be a rage fest kind of thing but the idea is that we're going to be able to serve alcohol and create some really cool friend and family driven experiences that are a lot more geared towards adults. So it'll be a good time.
What's it like working with Pharrell and what's his involvement with the Doodles project at the moment?
Julian: That was the first thing we did, again remember how much interest there was in the blue chip NFT projects back in April, May, June of last year and there were a lot of opportunities for us to work with some major major musicians that have global reach and millions of followers and we really saw the value in working with a creator to help us incubate the brand but they needed to be dynamic and Pharrell is the most dynamic, genius, brilliant creator that in our opinion has really ever lived and he spans music, he spans art, he spans fashion, film, television, technology, everything. So, we had started talking to him basically right when I started and we got the deal done very quickly. Pharrell is a pretty material part of the business, most of the work that he does is kind of behind the scenes, the Pharrell pack and him coming into the Doodles universe as a character was the first big collab that we did but we're working on music together, we're working on audio identity and visual identity and brand development etc and the doors that guy can open are truly unprecedented, the rooms that he's walked us into. I don't want to name drop but top C-suite in the world, top creators in the world, top everything. Pharrell's name comes with so much weight because he has the respect of everybody from business to creative and fashion and everything in between and the thing that surprised me most well, I shouldn't say surprised me, but the thing that I think would surprise most people is how shrewd of a business mind the guy has, he's always leaning into new technology, new ways of doing things. He's kind of contrarian, but he really understands business. He really understands opportunity and he's very leaned into Doodles, which is exciting. We couldn't be more blessed to have his have his support and have his mind on the on the company.
I really enjoyed Scott's (Burnt Toast) version of Pharrell. Could you talk about the expansion of the Doodleverse and the ethos behind it?
Julian: You brought up Scott and Pharrell, the first meeting that we had, Pharrell was talking about how he can hear colors and Scott had this moment where his eyes opened up. He's like, "Whoa, me too" and it was this crazy thing that went completely over my head. It was just this really cool moment between artists that everybody else in the room was like, okay, there's a blank spot in our minds when we try and think like that but these two connected on such a deep level. It was really cool to see.
If you look at the end card to the most recent trailer that promoted the Pharrell pack, Doodles2, the stoodio, everything that we released last month, what you're going to find in that is a bunch of random Doodles characters that could be anybody, could be anybody on this call, could be people in South Dakota, could be people in Hong Kong, could be people wherever.
Then you see Pharrell, who is Pharrell in that universe and then you see our mascot who is obviously going to be the main character of our fictional universe. So you have the real world in there, through their Doodle, you have Pharrell who's also part of the real world in there through their Doodle and then you have the fictional characters from Doodles in that photo as well. So if you think about where we're going as a brand, we're developing this fictional universe of characters that are derived from the original collection. So you've seen the mascot, you've seen the cat, all of that stuff is going to be developed into a fictional line of programing and then running parallel to that is the lifestyle brand that is Doodles, right? You make your Doodle, you buy your Doodle merch, you go to Doodles events, you're on Twitter talking to other Doodles, there are Doodle holders that are more well known than other Doodle holders simply because they engage more and they're more kind of public figures in the community and we kind of believe that as that starts to grow, those two, that kind of lifestyle brand and real world aspect of the Doodles will crash into the fictional world at times.
Maybe you do see a creator or someone that you know in the actual fictional world of the universe, or maybe you as a Doodle holder, whether it be through your Doodle or the customized Doodle that you create, will be in that fictional universe as well, the same way that Lady Gaga was a character in The Simpsons, or The Weeknd was a character in The Simpsons, set in the fictional world of The Simpsons but they're Lady Gaga. They're The Weeknd. So we have this really cool track of programing where you can bring digital identity to the table and collecting. We have this kind of sincere belief that digital identity paired with collecting connected to every single consumer touchpoint, whether it be going to the movies, watching television, buying stuff at retail, playing video games, if you can bring that back to a collecting hub where the brand knows who their most loyal supporters are, who engage with the company the most, who are supporting the most and you can reward those people and create aligned incentives as our business grows. That's something really special that brings the brand and the ultimate collector closer together, which makes them feel like they are part of the universe because they actually are going to be part of the universe. They're not going to be just a passive participant and the best way I can give you kind of a framework for how that doesn't exist today.
If you look at most movie IP, they license the movie rights out to a distribution company that actually puts the movie out, which then goes to theaters so they don't actually own the relationship with their customer. You buy merchandise through another third party, so they license it to another third party. They license their books and publishing rights. They license their music rights. They license everything out and they don't actually own the relationship with a lot of their audience. So they have no way of knowing who their most loyal supporters are, who goes and sees the movie three times, who plays the game, who buys the merch, who shows up at the theme parks and the events? What's really cool about the technology that we all work in is we could figure out a way to track all of that and make sure that those people are not just being seen and heard, they're getting stuff, they're getting more rewards, they're creating this sense of identity being close to this brand because they're actually going to feel like they're part of it with all the activations that we have planned. We think that's a business model and a mindset that doesn't exist today and that that's really where we're leaning in.
Are there any projects or founders or individuals that you guys chat with a lot or anyone you guys want to meet?
Julian: Yeah, obviously day to day work kind of gets in the way of people spending too much time together but Luca and I talk pretty often, he hooked me up with a couple of the plushies for my kids. They loved them. So there's definitely love and support there. I talk to Greg from Yuga every now and then, I've connected with Zag a couple of times but it's not as much as it should be and I think the kind of the real takeaway is that we should be coming together as leaders in this space more often, because if one of us wins, all of us wins and there's so much incredible work being done right now, we just we need to figure out better ways of kind of taking ourselves out of the day to day and the kind of the pitting ourselves against each other that exists so much on the timeline right now and just remember, we're all fighting the same fight, right? We're trying to take market share from all the biggest companies in the world, not from each other. If Web3 makes it, it's not going to be just one of us that makes it. It's going to be a few of us. It's going to be a bunch of us and it's ultimately just going to create more opportunity for everybody building in this space. So more of that 100% needs to happen.
How do you feel about the sentiment? Obviously you guys went through a lot of FUD and now you're kind of bouncing back. How do you feel about the NFT space and where you guys kind of see yourselves fitting in?
Julian: I think anybody who saw our keynote at NFTNYC last year, we are doing every single thing that we said we were going to do. I think there's a misconception in how long this stuff actually takes to develop, to reach millions of people around the world, how long it takes to get music to market and film and television content to market and true partnerships and things like that. You know, especially when you kind of have the bar for quality that Doodles does. I think one of the areas that we've fallen flat is just communication and community building in general and I think that's something that if hopefully you've been paying attention lately, you've seen that there's a real concerted effort internally to try and bridge that gap and to try and rebuild that vibe in the Doodles community. It's something we think about every day. Austin has been invaluable in that regard and truly making the community understand that we are a Web3 company. We do care deeply about this space. We do sincerely believe in the technology and what it's going to do for brands and IP.
We really do feel like every action and activity we take is not just going to benefit Doodles, it's going to benefit everybody in our community and everybody in the Web3 community at large. So has it hurt to see kind of Web3 not as pumped about Doodles anymore? Yeah, it's definitely something we think about, but we're not going to sit here and try and sell, sell, sell to the space on why we're great. What we're going to do is just prove it by shipping product and show people that we really are in this for the right reasons and it'll start to make more and more sense over time. We're kind of sick of talking about what we're going to do and we're just going to show people and think by the end of the summer, by the end of September, you're going to you're going to see a very, very different looking business that the community is truly at the center of. So we're excited for that.
You guys are talking about collectibles and I think Burnt Toast recently shared a photo of a monochrome dude. You guys are working with All Rights Reserved who is definitely a premium art / toy sculpture producer. I would love to know a little bit more about how you connected and maybe a little bit more that around what we can expect for that that drop.
Julian: So this relationship predates me joining but Evan got introduced to SK, I believe through Todd Kramer, who's a big art collector, and he has a gallery in New York and I believe they really hit it off kind of from the beginning and the first vinyl that came out was so successful, people were going crazy for that thing and it became very clear that hese vinyl stand toe to toe with Bearbrick statues and Kaws statues and we had a real opportunity in the designer toy market. So we really wanted to start to double down on that concept and try and play in that space. So we've been developing a strategy for a while on how we actually bring that to a wider audience and get that in the right kind of environment so this, this summer, August, actually, we're going to be doing a big drop tied to the physical's, the vinyl that you saw. There's going to be multiple colorways. There's going to be some really interesting, I'll say expanded things outside of the toy, outside of the figure itself but it's going to have some specialty retail distribution so it'll be at some key retailers, both digital retailers and physical retailers, All those retailers are going to be distributed around the world.
There's some pretty select markets that we're going into and then that is going to lead directly into the camp opening a few weeks later. So it's pretty exciting. The vinyls are definitely a big area of growth for us because we see them as a way to reach new collectors, new people. It's not enough to try and sell everything to the people that are here today, what we need to be able to do is actually bring these these experiences and these products to as many new people as possible. I think one of the things that Luca actually said when they did the toys was, being financially independent so you don't need to continue putting more and more NFT's in the ecosystem. I don't think that means any of us are going to stop producing NFT's but the whole idea of being able to make those experiences incredible because you have a real business outside of it. I think that is a really great takeaway and something that we think is possible through this drop and the other stuff that's coming soon. We're talking so much more man. It's going to be crazy.
How are you trying to bring value back to holders from these events? If I walk into a Camp store, do I know that Doodles is a originated from an NFT project or is there another another strategy like a Trojan horse?
Julian: I think the goal for us and thank you for that question, but the goal for us is more how do you eliminate the technological barrier between someone that has no appetite for it but might be interested in your brand? And as the brand grows and as the technology gets a little bit more seamless and people start to understand what the original collection actually means, that there's a lot more demand for that because there's only 10,000 of them. So if we all of a sudden reach millions of people and those millions of people know that there is this collectible that started it all, it's the original artwork but that artwork is also it's the first edition Pokemon card, right? That's kind of the parallel that I'd say and then that art is attached to this essentially membership, that is the ultimate access pass within the ecosystem, right? Like the Pharrell pack, there was only 300 of them, but you couldn't get one if you didn't have an original Doodle So that was basically a free airdrop. You had to hit certain metrics, engagement metrics within the community to actually get the pack but that was just one iteration of it. We'll have that for a lot of drops where, there will be, a certain amount of things that are free and the free thing will always come to people that own the original Doodle and then the free entry specifically speaking about camp, free entry to the experience when everyone else has to pay, merchandise credits and then a true white glove concierge service where you're you're going to reach out to Doodles before you go and then you're going to be set up with this kind of VIP experience at that location.
If you believe that Doodles has the opportunity to grow and turn into a bigger brand, you know that free airdrops and claims and free claims on merchandise in one location is not going to be all the utility that there is for the original collection. We're going to build a lot more than that and that is kind of how we see value trickling back down to the original token, we're also going to be licensing people's Doodles to use in media, to use in products. We haven't done it yet because we just haven't figured out the right way to make it scalable. It's kind of a big thing to set that precedent this early, especially if you have the kind of ambition we do to go as big as we want to go but we are thinking about that and we are going to bring that to market soon and then the last thing that I'll bring up is just the Doodle bank, which is honestly, I feel like a really under the radar thing. We have a $5 million or so fund that only people with a Doodle can access to build businesses around the Doodles brand, to build creator platforms around the Doodles brand. I would love to see a Doodle holder try and access the Doodle brand to actually build some of the stuff that you've been able to build, right? How can we help subsidize costs so they can create their own podcast studio so they can advertise their content a little bit more all through the Doodles brand, which is ultimately aligned incentives
You as a creator get bigger. Doodles gets more of a microphone because you're getting bigger as a creator and then the last couple pillars of the Doodle bank is also rewards , so how can we use the funds in the Doodle bank to actually create more rewards for Doodle holders, is it sponsoring a concert tour? Is it trying to get memberships to a specific social club? There's so many different things that we can use to drive value back to the original token with this fund and ultimately empower the creators and the entrepreneurs that exist in our ecosystem. So I'd say we're doing so much to try and drive value back to the original token, but I think people will I think people will start to see that when there's truly like real world utility Pharrell pack was one iteration. We've done an airdrop with the Dooplicator, we're doing this experience with camp and it'll keep going from there.
Have you guys kind of like established your council? How do you guys kind of think about the Doodle Banks as it operates as I guess a "DAO" tied to Doodles itself? What does the structure look like, high level?
Austin: In terms of where we're at with it right now. We've installed the first class of the DoodleBank community council, which consists of a chair to oversee the council, a treasurer who is distributing the funds and tracking the finances, an events lead who is going to be building out community global programing, a grants lead, which is really when Julian speaks about how do we empower individuals to build businesses, whether it be through grants or ways to prop up businesses through their IP and then a rewards lead who is focused on how can we bring in additional benefits to holding a Doodle. They have been live since the top of May and right now are developing the processes for how approvals come in, what the approval process looks like, effectively what are our guidelines and what we're looking to support, our budgets overall per quarter and then have also been fielding questions and feedback from the community. So it's been great. They serve multiple roles in addition to just their remit, given their different titles. They're also really our first line of taking in feedback and doing product reviews.
Austin: They're all under NDA and really have a clear sense of where we're going. So it's been great to be able to build with the community in that way but our intention is that in pretty short order, like within call it the next few weeks, we want to get these processes out to the community for feedback and start taking in the first set of proposals. We also really love the nouns model of like the prop house RFP, so for things that we know we need to do as a company, but we want to be able to empower the community to be able to help build with us we effectively want to have bounties that we can put out there, whether it be to create content or create merchandise or whatever the case may be, have it be more of a two way street than just reactively taking in proposals. We're we're moving really quickly. I'm literally in a Slack channel with with the council right now as they're giving me all of their weekend updates but it's been progressing and hope to have more for the community soon.
I think we've noticed that you need a processes, onboarding and kind of filtering and controlling budgets and you sometimes see proposals that are grossly overestimated so being smart about allocation, making it efficient etc
Austin: It's a great point to illustrate and we are very fortunate with the few individuals we have as Treasurer and the grants lead. John Shank, who is our Treasurer was a CFO for a large corporation for a long time and really focused on having a balanced budget. How do we ultimately bring additional funds into the bank and what are the checkpoints over time? So instead of distributing all those funds up once, how do we ensure that we're getting the necessary reporting and then Eyal who is our grand lead has actually run incubators in the past and ensuring that we have the right checks and balances as we're deploying that capital to ensure what you just said doesn't happen, that we're not put in a situation where we're deploying funds and we're not seeing the direct action that's being taken against them.
Does it mean that there are no more pop ups this year?
Julian: It definitely does not mean no pop ups. That's core to our DNA and it's also such an incredible onboarding opportunity, when we went to Something In The Water festival, Pharrel's festival in Virginia Beach, there were so many spokes to that partnership where we basically brought a 30 by 30 space. We sold the new collaboration that we had on site with ice cream. So all these people now have Doodles products that were there and bought the merchandise and right next to that was kind of a live demo of Doodles2 where we were able to capture people's emails so we can send them marketing after the fact. We got a few thousand emails at that activation, we sold a bunch of merchandise and we basically introduced a lot of people to the brand and on the other side of it like, okay, what does that do for the holder apart from growing the ecosystem, which we do find pretty valuable to ultimately Doodle holders and our entire ecosystem but we were able to secure 50 tickets that we gave to the community for free in a raffle and they were VIP tickets. They were super close to the stage, there were credits involved in them and for the people that went, it was a really awesome experience.
The other piece is that when you talk about creators in our community. JKB, I'm not sure how familiar any of you are with them, but they're very prominent members of our community. They've been around for a very long time have basically started their own media brand based on their Doodles PFP's and this is the second time that we've actually had them kind of live blog and create content on behalf of Doodles at the actual festival. So you saw them kind of do like A day in the life with Doodles and JKB, taking content of like festival goers, the stages, the experiences and then distributing that stuff, on Twitter and their other social channels. So it was a really cool thing that we could do for creators in our space and what I'll say kind of directly answer your question is, Something In The Water was just the first festival thing that we've done this year. We're going to show up at other music festivals. We're going to continue to do live events and what we built for something in the water was an activation that can travel a lot more easily. So South by Southwest, Art Basel, those things were very hard to pack up and repurpose, we have aspects of that, but this new activation that we've built, we can actually ship it from place to place and we can continue to add on to it depending on the actual activation itself. So festivals will always be and other live events will always be a way to drive utility for holders and also onboard new people into the ecosystem. Doodles is about fun, man. We want to color the world with joy. We want everybody to feel the vibes and it's incredible to work on it every day. It's hard keeping things a secret, it's painful sometimes.
Can you tell me anything about the Pharrell album? I understand it's with Columbia, who are part of Sony Music. Is there anything you can kind of say on the project and when that could be landing?
Julian: So the album's not actually going to roll out as a traditional album where there's like a bunch of songs they're going to roll out. It's going to roll out kind of song by song and more as a platform on a perpetual basis. Columbia is going to distribute the music and I don't want to give too much detail because there's going to be a lot of hype in the reveal but you're going to see things like a music video set in the Doodles universe featuring whatever artist is going to be on it. Pharrell curated or produced tracks. Collectibles that are paired both physical and digital with the actual music itself and wide distribution so the songs are going to be on Spotify, Amazon, YouTube, radio, etcetera. So that's kind of how it's going to come to life and if you looked at Pharrell as a Doodle and Pharrell coming into the Doodles universe as a character, imagine some of your favorite artists coming into the Doodles universe as a character too. It's going to be a pretty eclectic mix of artists and it's going to roll out again, like I said, over time. That really is all I can say at the moment, but we'll update everybody as soon as we possibly can. All I can tell you is it's going to be fire.
You guys recently made an amazing acquisition with GoldenWolf Studios. Can we expect more animations and stuff on the Socials? What's the sort of direction with Golden Wolf and how did that come about?
Julian: That's a great question. So we acquired GoldenWolf back in January. They are an Emmy nominated creative studio. They're one of the most highly regarded animation studios in the world. Lot of brand notoriety from them in the entire animation industry. The goal, if you think of what Doodles is, there's a term in media called transmedia and that essentially means you tell stories on different channels, right? So different channels means you could be telling stories through live events, you could be telling stories through the distribution of toys, you could be telling stories through social media, you could be telling stories at the box office with a big film and the whole point is, you're not trying to fit one story or one thing for each of those channels that have very unique characteristics from a distribution standpoint. Doodles is the kind of brand that needs to tell stories across all of these channels and meet people where they are, where they're actually spending their time versus trying to put the same thing out across the board. So GoldenWolf, which is very much specializes in social content and brand identity in advertisement. They're an incredible partner to keep kind of the always on content flow pumping out for Doodles, which is just starting to ramp up now and at the same time, with all the incredible creators, plus Scott and the people that we're working with in the traditional entertainment industry, bringing the actual story together, the universe that is Doodles, who the characters are, what adventures they go on, what is the backstory? What's the conflict?
GoldenWolf, Scott and a few others are actually developing that now and that is going to manifest itself through all of our content, through all of our product, all of our storytelling opportunities, while we're also developing long form content. So what does Doodles look like as a streaming television show or a motion picture? How does Doodles go into music videos like GoldenWolf is going to produce the music videos. So from a creative standpoint, we have, in my opinion, the best creative studio in the world, developing Doodles content and brand and I'll just say we just started the integration recently, there's kind of been really nothing yet. We've gotten started. It's been amazing, but there's so much coming from GoldenWolf soon and then I'd say on the flip side, GoldenWolf being in Web3 is not an insignificant thing either. So yes, it's amazing that they're going to help develop the Doodles IP but GoldenWolf has a lot of other ideas that NFT's and blockchain technology could be a really great format for incubating that IP or bringing new stories to life and new projects to market and leveraging the tech in new ways and Ingi who founded that company ten years ago is one of the smartest guys in the entire space, he's a true innovator, leaned into tech really leaning into AI tooling and how that can help Doodles as a business, how that can help the whole animation industry as a business. So we're just kind of seeing a little fruit from that partnership right now, but it's going to continue to grow pretty, pretty significantly from there. We really do have a crazy, talented team like Scott and then also Sammy and Alfie. There's so many brilliant creatives at GoldenWolf, and you'll get to know a lot of them soon.
Have you guys made any new key hires or are you guys planning to make some key hires to kind of push this forward?
Julian: We kind of wrapped up the majority of our hiring after our head of business and legal affairs came into the company about a month or so ago. I mean, we're at 60 people right now across Doodles and GoldenWolf, so we're pretty staffed well, there's some more product and engineering resources that we're going to be bringing in so we can be quicker to market with a few things but I'd say we're pretty well staffed at this point.
So to build on top of what you've said, I was wondering if you guys could give us any insights into the Doodles culture, the work culture.
Julian: I love that question. So we just opened an office in Miami a couple months ago. Our team is distributed, so we have some people that are remote. We have some people that are here in Miami. We have an office in New York. We have an office in London and again, there are people that are remote. So for the people that are in Miami, the office is pretty awesome. It's got a pretty, pretty cool view. It's right in a really good area of the city and when you walk in, it's very much neutral tones and colors and things like that and then we make the space pop with product that we have. So there's vinyls all over the office. We bring other IP into the office like we have this gold Mickey Mouse that that Jordan donated, it was a Fantasia Mickey Mouse with him holding a Bitcoin instead of a magic ball, just a lot of different artists and IP that we respect to try and inspire some creativity in the space. We have this really cool synthesizer that Evan got made, where people come in, play it. It's actually like a Doodles synthesizer.
We have a merchandise kind of like retail display. We have all of our statues on display so you can check out our brand, learn a little bit more about us. We also have this pretty cool ice cream machine set up then the New York office couldn't be a different vibe. It's more of a grunge studio, true artsy vibe and then it's the same kind of thing in London - the original GoldenWolf office.
It's awesome. I think what we're trying to bring to life is the inspiration of creativity and trying to emulate a lot of the incredible IP that we respect so much and we do remote work sessions, so we try and bring people all together, at least once or twice a quarter so we can all get those creative juices flowing, build relationships with each other because if we're going to truly be a community outside of the company, we got to be one internally first so it's been really cool trying to build the culture here and I think we've been doing a pretty good job.
I'm wondering for future activations, will there be places where people can actively onboard into the community, whether that's Doodles2 or the original collection?
Julian: Definitely at what I'll call Non-endemic to Doodles stuff, so festivals and more consumer facing events. The reason why we showed up at South by Southwest and Art Basel last year was because we were this really hot Web3 brand in a sea of some of the biggest companies and brands in the world. Whereas as when you go to the when you go to the NFT events, you're like the headline. Right? I think the opportunity to gain notoriety in those environments is really a big opportunity, but it's also an opportunity to bring your holders close to the action that all the influencers of the world, are part of. So when Doodle throws the massive event at Art Basel and it's like one of the tickets of the weekend and our holders are the VIP entrance into that thing we're going to continue to do stuff like that. We really love that concept and at the same hand, use that opportunity to bring new people into the brand. The goal right now is to onboard, people into kind of like information gathering until the stoodio product is actually out of beta. So we're collecting emails so we can retarget these people and make sure that they understand who we are, what we're doing etc so that's kind of the strategy for us.

Hello,
J'ai remarqué un phénomène étrange sur /france ces derniers jours : certains posts qui arrivent en front page du sub accumulent un nombre de crossposts astronomique.
Par exemple, ces deux posts qui sont arrivés en tête du sous hier ont respectivement 46 et 38 crossposts:
https://www.reddit.com/france/duplicates/13y9wlu/exclusif_8_fran%C3%A7ais_sur_10_ne_voient_pas/
https://www.reddit.com/france/duplicates/13yf2vz/je_ne_pensais_pas_que_vous_me_retrouveriez_de_la/
Vous pouvez faire le test vous-même en triant les posts du sub par top de la semaine.
D'autres exemples en vrac :
https://www.reddit.com/france/duplicates/13vlrvl/%C3%A9ric_coquerel_d%C3%A9clare_recevable_la_proposition_de/ (8 crossposts)
https://www.reddit.com/france/duplicates/13uplf3/le_ministre_fran%C3%A7ais_du_num%C3%A9rique_se_d%C3%A9clare_pr%C3%AAt/ (18 crossposts)
https://www.reddit.com/france/duplicates/13wt7wp/cyril_hanouna_la_cha%C3%AEne_c8_condamn%C3%A9e_%C3%A0_une_amende/ (10 crossposts)
https://www.reddit.com/france/duplicates/13viliq/gr%C3%A8ve_in%C3%A9dite_%C3%A0_disneyland_paris_le_climat_social/ (8 crossposts)
Dans tous ces cas, les crossposts sont quasiment tous faits en direction du profil de l'utilisateur en question et pas sur un autre subreddit. Les comptes qui crosspostent massivement ces sujets ont tous des noms générés par défaut par reddit, très peu de karma, postent sur des subreddits de type /FreeKarma4You, et surtout : ils sont tous très intéressés par des subreddit liés à Temu. Pour ceux qui comme moi ne connaissent pas, il s'agit d'une companie Chinoise d'e-commerce fondée en 2022.
Wikipedia:

Temu is an online marketplace operated in a number of countries by the Chinese-based company PDD Holdings Inc.[1] It offers heavily discounted goods[2] which are mostly shipped to consumers directly from China.[3]
Temu is owned and operated by the Chinese-based and Cayman Island registered[4] company PDD Holdings, which also owns Pinduoduo, a popular online commerce platform in China.[5] The platform first went live in the United States in September 2022[1] In February 2023, Temu launched in Canada.[6] That same month, the company aired a Super Bowl ad.[7] In March 2023, Temu launched in Australia and New Zealand.[8] In the following month, Temu was launched in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK.[9]
Temu allows China-based vendors to sell and ship directly to customers without having to rely on warehouses in the destination country.[10] Online purchased on Temu can be made using an Internet browser or through a dedicated mobile app. In late 2022, the Temu app was the most frequently downloaded app in the United States.[11]
Temu offers free goods to some users who successfully encourage new users via affiliate codes, social media, and gamification.[2] It also uses online advertising on Facebook and Instagram. According to Sarah Perez writing for TechCrunch, "These ads appear to be working to boost Temu's installs. But dig into the app's reviews and you'll find similar complaints to Wish, including scammy listings, damaged and delayed deliveries, incorrect orders and lack of customer service."[11] According to Andrew Chow writing for Time, Temu is also starting to develop a reputation for undelivered packages, mysterious charges, incorrect orders, and unresponsive customer service.[2]
In May 2023, concerns were raised about risks to users' personal data as the Pinduoduo shopping app was removed from Google Play Store after some of its versions were found to contain malware.[12]
On May 17, 2023, Montana governor Greg Gianforte banned Temu on government devices state-wide, along with ByteDance applications (including TikTok), Telegram, and WeChat.[13][14] The ban was criticized by the American Civil Liberties Union as "anti-Chinese".

En pratique, ça a l'air d'être un concurrent à Wish avec tous les problèmes que ça implique (par exemple, on retrouve souvent ces profils parler de dropshipping). Apparemment, j'ai eu de la chance de ne pas en avoir entendu parlé jusqu'ici étant donné qu'ils font de la pub de manière très aggressive et avec un budget énorme.
De fait, les subreddits liés à Temu ressemblent un peu à un champ de bataille, on y trouve quasiment uniquement des posts pour mendier du karma:
/TEMU_Official
/temu
/TEMU_Canada
/TemuHelp (celui là a carrément un post en sticky qui parle de vendre des bots...)
Il faut admettre que ces comptes ressemblent quand même fortement à des bots. Je ne sais pas trop quel intérêt ils retirent de toutes ces manoeuvres, peut-être que quelqu'un qui connaît mieux la plate-forme pourra nous éclairer là-dessus.
Finalement, à part le haut nombre de cross-posts, on est pas vraiment impacté sur /france étant donné que ces comptes sont, de ce que j'ai vu, très souvent en dessous de la limite de 50 karma nécessaire pour que AutoModerator ne vire pas leurs posts automatiquement. Je me demande quand même pourquoi ils ont l'air de viser /france si massivement. C'est peut-être juste parce que j'ai pas remarqué le phénomène sur d'autres subreddits que je fréquente moins, donc si vous avez des exemples je suis preneur.
C'est peut-être aussi une bonne idée de prendre note de ces comptes et de les bannir du sous tant qu'ils sont en dessous de la limite de karma et facilement identifiable par ces crossposts. Une fois qu'ils auront acquis le karma nécessaire pour poster ici, que leurs commentaires soit juste des reposts ou générés par IA, je pense qu'il y a de bonne chances qu'ils passent inaperçus.
C'est tout pour moi !
Edit : J'ai pris quelques captures d'ecran sur PC pour ceux pour qui les liens ne fonctionnent pas :
https://i.imgur.com/A6FwDNQ.png
https://i.imgur.com/BI2KJ3i.png

Sure! Gift cards are a popular choice for special occasions or when you're unsure of what to get someone. They allow the recipient to choose something they really want or need. Here's some information about gift cards:

1. Types of Gift Cards: There are two main types of gift cards:
   - Closed-loop gift cards: These cards are typically issued by specific retailers or businesses and can only be used at their locations or websites. Examples include gift cards for popular stores like Amazon, Walmart, or Starbucks.
   - Open-loop gift cards: These cards are usually issued by major credit card companies such as Visa, Mastercard, or American Express. They can be used at any merchant that accepts those card networks, giving the recipient more flexibility.
   
2. Purchasing Gift Cards: Gift cards can be purchased online from the respective retailer's website or in person at their stores. Many supermarkets, convenience stores, and online marketplaces also sell gift cards for various retailers, offering a wider selection.
   
3. Denominations: Gift cards are available in various denominations, allowing you to choose an amount that suits your budget or the occasion.
   
4. Activation and Usage: Most gift cards need to be activated either by the cashier at the time of purchase or by following the instructions provided with the card. To use a gift card, the recipient usually presents it as a form of payment at the time of checkout, either physically or by entering the card details online.
   
5. Expiration and Fees: Gift cards typically have an expiration date, so it's important to check the terms and conditions. Additionally, some gift cards may have fees associated with them, such as activation fees or inactivity fees if the card is not used for a certain period.
   
6. Lost or Stolen Cards: If a gift card is lost or stolen, it's essential to contact the issuer as soon as possible. Some gift cards can be replaced if you have the necessary proof of purchase and card information.
   
7. E-Gift Cards: In addition to physical gift cards, many retailers now offer e-gift cards or digital gift cards that can be sent via email or text message. These are convenient for last-minute gifts or when distance is a factor.
   

Remember to read the terms and conditions of the specific gift card you're purchasing, as they may vary depending on the retailer or issuer.
Gift card Fashion Nova $100.

I'm looking for a very recently discontinued silverware pattern in a certain color and finish:
Cambridge Radin Satin White Metal ^maker, pattern, finish, color https://cambridgehome.com/products/radin-satin-20-piece-flatware-set
The mirror finish is still available in a few places. I specifically want the satin finish in the light colored metal. (I also already have sets of the black satin, and I'm not looking for any other colors... Although the copper wouldn't be terrible. 🤔🤷🏻)
More info: I recently discovered the perfect flatware, and was somehow able to talk my husband into agreeing with me! :-D
The pattern is by Cambridge Silversmiths and it's called Radin, and it's only JUST been discontinued. We bought one set of the black ones to test, and then start only a couple weeks, I had to hunt down more by actually calling around to a bunch of places! :-O I mean, who calls places anymore?!
But I'm discovering that I really want to combine the white and black metal sets in the satin finish, because I think that would be awesome, and the White Satin finish was the very first one to sell out.
But here's the thing: Cambridge is a MASSIVE company, which owns 5 other HUGE housewares brands, including Onida and Lenox. They're enormous. 😳 So it's literally impossible that a set or two of this flatware in this color and finish doesn't exist for purchase SOMEWHERE in the wide, wide world, or is sitting in a warehouse all by its lonesome, just waiting for me to rescue it! ;-D
However, I have seemingly scoured the internet from edge to edge, and have been unable to discover this unicorn. :-/ I've checked Cambridge's actual website, as well as Wayfair and all its subsidiaries (Joss & Main, AllModern, Birch Lane, Perigold), Replacements Ltd., Overstock, Bed Bath & Beyond (closing, so inventory is sketch AF rn), Walmart, Macy's, and Bloomingdale's (actually phoned these last 3, and Bloomies was where I found the other black ones I bought). I'm about to call every brick/mortar store purported to carry any of Cambridge's products (JC Penny, Kohl's, Neiman Marcus, Home Depot, etc.) just to see if they can search inventory chain-wide. (Macy's did, and they were very sweet about it.)
I've heard there are sites where you can buy discontinued things directly from the fabrication centers in China, India, Korea, etc. Cambridge manufactures in all these locations (and more, I'm sure), and I'm hoping that if I can't find it anywhere else, I might be able to hunt it down through one of these sites.
Any help is hugely appreciated!

Game Title: "Chronicles of Eternia"
Game Concept: "Chronicles of Eternia" is an immersive open-world RPG set in a vast and visually stunning fantasy realm. Players will embark on epic quests, engage in thrilling battles, and forge alliances as they navigate a world brimming with diverse races, powerful clans, and guild houses. With an extensive character customization system, players can choose from multiple races, each with unique traits, and select from a range of classes, allowing for diverse playstyles and character progression.
Races: 1. Humans: Versatile and adaptable, humans excel in a variety of fields, such as combat, magic, and diplomacy. 2. Elves: Agile and attuned to nature, elves possess exceptional archery skills and heightened magical affinity. 3. Dwarves: Resilient and skilled craftsmen, dwarves specialize in mining, forging powerful weapons, and defensive combat. 4. Orcs: Mighty and ferocious, orcs are natural warriors with an affinity for brute strength and close-quarters combat. 5. Merfolk: Graceful and amphibious, merfolk are adept at underwater exploration and possess strong water-based magic abilities. 6. Dragon Kin: Descendants of dragons, dragon kin possess dragon-like traits, such as scales, wings, and enhanced physical abilities. They can harness elemental powers, such as fire, ice, or lightning, depending on their lineage.
Classes: 1. Warrior: Masters of melee combat, warriors are skilled in wielding various weapons and excelling in physical confrontations. 2. Mage: Proficient in arcane arts, mages harness the power of elements and spells to cast devastating magical attacks. 3. Archer: Deadly marksmen, archers excel in long-range combat, employing bows, crossbows, and utilizing tactical precision. 4. Rogue: Masters of stealth and subterfuge, rogues excel in sneaking, lockpicking, and dealing swift, precise strikes. 5. Paladin: Holy knights dedicated to justice, paladins possess healing abilities and excel in both offense and defense. 6. Necromancer: Masters of dark magic, necromancers can summon undead minions and manipulate life force for destructive spells. 7. Engineer: Skilled in technology and machinery, engineers construct deadly gadgets, traps, and ranged weapons. 8. Blacksmith: Experts in metallurgy and forging, blacksmiths craft powerful weapons, armor, and accessories, and can enhance existing gear with unique abilities.

1. Tamer: Masters of animal companionship, tamers can forge strong bonds with creatures and employ them in combat, utilizing their unique abilities to aid in battles.

Key Features: 1. Clan and Guild Houses: Players can join or create their own clans and guild houses, providing a sense of community and allowing for collaborative gameplay experiences. These houses can be customized and upgraded to provide various benefits to the members.

1. Housing System: Players can purchase personal houses in towns or remote locations, allowing them to store items, showcase achievements, and even host social gatherings.
   
2. Dungeon Exploration: Engage in thrilling battles against formidable bosses and their minions in challenging dungeons, offering valuable rewards, rare loot, and progression opportunities.
   
3. Voice Chat: Seamless voice chat integration enables players to communicate and strategize in real-time, fostering a more immersive and social experience.
   
4. Crafting System: Players can gather resources, learn recipes, and craft a wide array of equipment, including weapons, armor, and accessories, tailored to their preferred playstyle.
   
5. Dynamic Economy: A thriving in-game economy enables players to buy and sell items, weapons, and resources at various stores, forging alliances with merchants and enhancing their financial status.
   

Dragon Riding: As dragon kin, players have the unique ability to tame and ride dragons, allowing for aerial exploration and epic aerial battles. Dragons can be customized and trained to become formidable allies in combat.
Dragon Sanctuaries: Discover hidden sanctuaries where dragon kin can commune with their dragon ancestors, unlocking powerful abilities and gaining access to exclusive quests.
Legendary Weapons: Engage in epic quests and challenging dungeons to obtain legendary weapons with incredible powers and unique visual designs, further enhancing gameplay and personalization.
Beast Taming: Tamers can seek out and tame a wide variety of creatures, ranging from majestic beasts to fantastical creatures, to fight alongside them in battles. Each creature has its own abilities and growth potential.
Expanded Crafting: Blacksmiths can not only forge weapons and armor but also create powerful accessories, enchantments, and cosmetic items. Crafting and enhancing equipment becomes a crucial aspect of character progression and customization.
Class limits:

1. Warrior:
2. Limited proficiency in magic: While warriors can learn basic combat-related spells, their magical abilities are limited compared to dedicated spellcasting classes.
3. Heavy armor restriction: Warriors are unable to effectively use light or medium armor due to their focus on heavy armor and melee combat.
   
4. Mage:
   
5. Fragile physical defense: Mages have low health and limited physical defense, making them vulnerable to close-quarters combat. They rely on their magical abilities to deal damage and control the battlefield.
   
6. Mana management: Mages must carefully manage their mana pool as casting spells depletes their resources. They may need to rely on mana-restoring items or wait for natural mana regeneration during combat.
   
7. Archer:
   
8. Limited melee combat skills: Archers excel in ranged combat but are less proficient in close-quarters battles. They rely on maintaining distance and precision attacks.
   
9. Lower physical resilience: Archers have lighter armor, providing less protection against physical attacks. They need to rely on evasion and kiting techniques to survive.
   
10. Rogue:
    
11. Fragile defense: Rogues have lower health and rely on agility and stealth to avoid damage. They excel at burst damage and quick strikes but can be easily overwhelmed in prolonged battles.
    
12. Limited spellcasting: Rogues have access to minor utility spells but lack the depth and power of dedicated spellcasting classes.
    
13. Paladin:
    
14. Limited offensive magic: Paladins focus primarily on defensive and supportive magic, with limited offensive spells available. They excel in protecting and healing allies but have reduced damage output.
    
15. Alignment restrictions: Paladins must adhere to a strict code of conduct and moral alignment. Engaging in certain actions or choices contrary to their code may result in penalties or loss of abilities.
    
16. Necromancer:
    
17. Vulnerability to light and holy magic: Necromancers are weakened by holy or light-based magic. Spells from these sources can hinder their abilities and deal increased damage to them.
    
18. Ethical considerations: The use of dark magic and manipulation of life force may have consequences on the character's alignment and how they are perceived by NPCs and factions.
    
19. Engineer:
    
20. Reliance on gadgets and resources: Engineers require a steady supply of resources, materials, and tools to craft and use their gadgets effectively. These resources need to be collected or purchased regularly.
    
21. Fragility of gadgets: Gadgets created by engineers may have limited durability or charges, requiring maintenance or repair to keep them functional.
    
22. Blacksmith:
    
23. Resource and time requirements: Blacksmiths need access to various materials and specialized equipment to craft powerful items. The creation process may require time, skill, and additional components.
    
24. Dependent on external sources for magical enhancements: While blacksmiths can enhance weapons and armor, they cannot directly imbue them with magical properties. They need to collaborate with mages or acquire magical materials to infuse magical abilities into items.
    
25. Tamer:
    
26. Limited control over higher-level creatures: Tamers may struggle to tame and control extremely powerful or legendary creatures. These creatures may require special conditions or quests to unlock their full potential.
    
27. Bonding time: Developing a strong bond with a creature takes time and effort. Instantly taming or changing companions may hinder the growth and effectiveness of the tamer's bond
    

Extra class: Sanctifier: As a Sanctifier in "Chronicles of Eternia," you embody compassion and healing. Armed with restorative magic, you mend wounds, bolster spirits, and empower your allies. Your touch brings renewal, while your blessings strengthen defenses and amplify attacks. Purifying ailments and cleansing curses, you protect from corruption. While limited in offense and reliant on allies, your presence brings hope and resilience. As a Sanctifier, your healing touch turns the tides of battle, ensuring your allies stand strong against darkness.
Limits
• Limited Offensive Abilities: Sanctifiers focus primarily on support and healing, which means they have limited offensive capabilities. Their offensive spells are less potent compared to dedicated damage-dealing classes.
• Fragile Defense: Sanctifiers typically wear light armor, providing less physical protection. They rely on their healing abilities and supportive spells to keep themselves and their allies alive.
• Mana Management: Healing spells consume mana, and Sanctifiers must manage their resources carefully. They may need to use mana regeneration abilities or rely on potions to replenish their mana during prolonged battles.
• Vulnerability to Disruption: Sanctifiers' casting can be interrupted by enemy attacks. They need to be positioned strategically or protected by their allies to ensure uninterrupted healing and support.
• Limited Mobility: The Sanctifier's focus on healing and support restricts their movement abilities. They may not possess swift dashes or teleportation skills commonly found in more agile classes.
• Reliance on Allies: Sanctifiers thrive when working in tandem with other classes, as their healing and support abilities are most effective when there are teammates to protect and assist. They may struggle to solo certain challenging encounters or battles.

So I just reached a full 6 months of Funko Pop collecting, It has been a crazy journey so far and I have learned so much.
I want to use this post to share my statistics, experiences, and tips for new collectors!
(Current Funko Pop Collection: 216)
(Mistakes)
1. At the start, I did not have an inventory management system and just bought and bought and bought, till I had too much to store.
2. I bought Funko Pops that I didn’t have a great deal of interest in because they had a great sale on them and had FOMO.
3. I bought duplicates of certain Funko Pops as I really liked them, but I hadn’t establishing that I have no need for any more than 1 of a particular pop.
4. I would buy common Funko Pops, and neweupdated molds would be released.
Solutions
1. An inventory system helped me out IMMENSELY. I bought storage containers, and finalised my maximum collection capacity based on how much I was able to store in them. This allowed me to be very picky with my current inventory, and also what I purchase going forward. Through this I was able to trade away pops I really didn’t need and make space for ones that I really liked.
2. I narrowed down my collection to ONLY lines that I enjoy/have a passion for. This allowed me to free up A LOT of inventory and create space.
3. I have stopped buying multiple of a certain Funko Pop just because I “really like them” Funko Pops take up a lot of space, and with how production is currently going, new pops are constantly being produced very frequently. Buying multiples of the same pop is going to cause more issues when newer ones you want to purchase have been released.
4. I completed stopped buying common Funko Pops (unless they are older, vaulted ones) and focused on exclusives, glows, flocked and chases. In my experience of purchasing common Funko Pops, most of the time they either drop a hefty amount in price due to a lack of demand/over supply, or a newer and updated variant is released later, rendering the basic common Funko Pop undesirable (in my opinion).
My tips for new collectors
1. CREATE AN INVENTORY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM!!
This is the most crucial advice and MOST important aspect to Funko Pop collecting in my opinion. Funko Pops can an take A LOT of space. Especially the 6” / Deluxe and 10” ones. My advice would be to buy storage containers, figure out how many Funko pops can fit inside each storage unit, and base your inventory management and maximum capacity around that. For example: if your storage container fits 20x Funko Pops, and you want to limit your collection to 100x Funko Pops max, then buy 5 storage containers and have that as your maximum allocated Funko Pop space allowed.
2. ONLY buy lines your are interested in - NO MATTER how great the sale is!
As with the first point, Funko Pops take up A LOT of space. Even if you find Funko Pops for a heavily discounted price, I would advise not to buy them UNLESS you have the space and the desire for them. In my experience, I ended up trading mostly away all of the pops that I bought for cheap (as these were lines/characters I was not interested in). Don’t get tempted by the price, doing this only adds more unnecessary work in the long run when you want to get rid of those pops for ones that you actually like. It is better to limit yourself early.
3. If you need space, cut off pops that you are not as interested in
I know it is hard to decide which Funko Pops to keep and which to part with. Chances are, a lot of the times you might lose money on trading away Funko Pops, but it is important to understand that this is the best decision you can make. If newer pops release that you really like, but you refuse to purchase them because you have too many already, then that is your mistake. Get rid of those pops you have grown out of or are not interested in anymore. Otherwise you are missing out on newer pops that you really like, and it’ll be more difficult to obtain them later, rather than now at retail. Buying pops at release ensures that you are purchasing them for the RRP, they are 100% legit, and you are obtaining them in the best possible condition as factory new.
4. Try to focus your collecting on a certain nichè in your desired lines.
For example, I do not buy modern common pops anymore. I only buy exclusives/glows/flocked, chases etc. This narrows down my collection to very specific variants of Funko Pops and helps me manage inventory more efficiently. A lot of people like to give themselves a rule to only purchase 1 mold of each character in a certain line. While I personally don’t do this, it is still a very good way to manage your inventory.
5. Try to avoid larger pops - especially 9” / 10” / Deluxe Pops
Don’t get me wrong. I would always advise collectors to buy what they enjoy as a first priority, but storage needs to be a huge consideration when collecting. 9” & 10” Funko Pops are MASSIVE, and are the space size equivalent to several 4” Pops. Rather than purchasing a 10” pop, you should ask yourself: is this really worth storing over multiple smaller pops instead? the choice is up to you.
Thanks for reading! I hope I was able to help at least some of you out, and I wish you all good luck on your collecting journeys!

I am 41, female. My mom is 71 and her ex-husband is 75. They started dating when I was 6 and were married for 29 years. I grew up with this man in my home as my primary male role-model. He has a number of problems including being an alcoholic and narcissist. He made my life a living hell for over 30 years - he was constantly degrading, controlling, and gaslighting myself and my mom. I honestly do not understand why/how they ever "fell in love" because from the time that I moved out of the house at 17.5 I have avoided him as much as I could without cutting off contact with my mother.
About 2 years ago my mother and stepfather got divorced. Long story short - my husband and I now own most of the property (house in FL and house in ME) that used to belong to both of them. I purchased it from her in order to finance a large payment/buy out to my ex-stepfather to make the divorce happen. My mom and he have stayed amicable but she is finally at a point where she doesn't want to deal with his destructiveness anymore.
Fast forward to the present day. Ex-stepfather has asked my mom numerous times to let him come live with her again. She allowed him to stay rent free in the FL house while she was in ME, but the house was destroyed (along with everything in it) during hurricane Ian. After that he has lived in a motel in CT near his remaining family. He asked if he could "rent" a room at the house in ME. I said "absolutely not - I own it and you can tell him that I'm the bad guy who said no" because I don't want him anywhere NEAR my 2 little kids (both girls - 7yo and 5yo). Frankly, I also don't want him around my mom!
About 2 weeks ago he announced that he found a room to rent for the summer! It's half a mile away from mom's/my house. (Incidentally, he's staying with a woman who I am 99% sure he had an affair with). He still has all of his crap (furniture, clothing, boxes) in the garage of my/mom's house where it has been for 2 years. I want to hire a mover to come and get everything of his out of the garage and move it to his new place. I am worried that if we rely on him move it himself, it will never actually happen. He will just use it as a reason to keep on showing up unannounced at my mom's house whenever he wants to. Am I an asshole for wanting to butt into this situation and move the stuff even if he doesn't want me to? I will gladly pay for the movers and give him a range of delivery dates. To be fair, I am pretty sure he will not have a place/space to store it all, but he can rent a storage unit or something right? Why should we have to store his stuff and wait around for him to pick it up? The lack of good/safe boundaries with this man while I was growing up make it feel like this is an asshole thing to do - but my brain keeps saying "MOVE THAT SHIT"!

Inaccurate name to limit easy access
Disclosure I did not receive any incentives or discounts for this review
Sorry for the delayed review! I have been wanting to review this bag for a minute now, but first I wanted to research since I completely ordered this little cutie with absolutely no education whatsoever, I just thought she was adorable and I wanted her… sooo. I bought her! Then every time I sat at my desk to write the review my boss kept asking me to do other work (rude by the way!). Finally, I got fed up and said, “Sure, I’m happy to get that done! But first I have to finish the Wagoon Report. I am on a strict deadline from the top floor.”
Hehe. Moral of the story? Just like with reps, say it with conviction and confidence and no one will second guess! Haha. Either that or my boss is also a wagooner and understands the importance of the Wagoon Report, leaving me to it!
Either way, time was allotted and here it is :)
Also, can we play a game pretty please? I have read numerous reviews that one of the biggest differences between the rep to the authentic is the sound of the charms. I am going to venture that these charms have a “cheapy” sound. But for the seasoned experts out there, could you rate on a scale of 1-3 just how cheap these are? The video is on the Imgur link with sound :) Please disregard Daniel Tiger in the background. My 4 year old daughter is learning to be kind :)
1 being “not cheap sounding at all, you’re all set to go” 2 being “a little cheap but no one else would know. just wear it in more noisy places” 3 being “Yep, that’s the calloutable cheap sound I was talking about”
Seller Emily Lunghon (Lunghonbag) Contact Info what’s app 8615507692093
Price $310 USD + $75 (for two bags) via bank transfer ( +$45 but this was by choice and I wouldn’t do it again)
Shipping Fed Ex
Timeline Contacted seller 4/16 4/17 seller said the Original item was not in stock, and requested this bag 4/18 bag in stock with the quote provided 4/19 I changed the color of another bag in the order 4/20 new order details provided by the seller and payment information sent 4/21 bank transfer sent and confirmation received 4/25 PSPs sent and GL the same day 4/30 tracking information sent 5/1 bags delivered!

• [Factory photos] no factory photos
  
• [PSPs] https://imgur.com/a/IFqDcvl?s=sms
  

25- [My Photos] https://imgur.com/a/7WvpvIP?s=sms
[Authentic] I couldn’t find this model on the official website but found it on fashionphile https://www.fashionphile.com/p/christian-dior-lambskin-cannage-mini-dioramour-lady-dior-white-965187
*Quality *(9/10) Overall it does feel very good quality and well worth the actual paid cost - Materials - the leather feels extremely soft and buttery (to be honest it feels a bit “too” soft that it may be fragile, but I just might be new to nice quality :) On the inside of the handles the leather feels and looks a bit “thin” (-0.5)

• Construction the item appears put together very well. It feels quite sturdy for the most part and has a very solid feel. I am not sure if this belongs in construction or materials but on the inner handle stitches one handle looks like the leather is literally tearing at the stitch (see pictures). This to me is a relatively big deal if it was an authentic, however, given it is a rep and I paid $310 I’m less irritated but it does give me pause as to how long it will last (-0.5)
  
• Hardware - looks good here too for the most part, but because I think the color is a bit “off” I can't quite put my finger on it (any thoughts are much appreciated!) I didn’t deduct points here because I deducted them in the accuracy field and overall it does look well made.
  

So initially I was actually pretty peeved because there are already chips in the infinity rings and I was certain this was a major callout! (See pictures) Then doing my research I learned this is expected?! Like, what the actual f****? I mean I’m not mad about it since I paid a few hundred dollars but I can tell you that there were be some seriously disappointing discussions with customer service had I paid more than my first car for this bag! But as it were, since this appears to reflect the authentic there are no point deductions (but seriously WTH?).
Accuracy (8/10) - OK so full disclosure this may be a bit harsh because really it is a beautiful bag (and during my research I watched probably 30-40 YouTube videos of some TERRIBLE fakes, and some of those people had the audacity to pretend they’re real unboxing videos of the authentic (insert shameful headshake). So with that said, this is one of the best reps I saw from the videos I watched. However, in true critical fashion it isn’t perfect. I also have not seen or felt the bag in person, so there are some things I am giving the benefit of the doubt (which apparently is possibly too generous because I thought the authentic wouldn’t chip soooo….???)

• Dimensions - dimensions are accurate. Both are: Base length: 6.5 in Height: 2.75 in Wide 2.75 in Handle drop 2.5 in Strap: honestly I didn’t measure
  
• Color: the white color looks good to me, the color of the hardware I think is a bit off (see pictures) but I am too naive to really know what looks off. If there are any vets out there that can help me understand what is off that would be greatly appreciated! (-0.5)
  
• Lady handles: so the handles are The Thing for this bag. And can I tell you I am a complete moron, because I kept reading that the handles should “never flop to the side) and that that happening is a dead giveaway. Here I am all pouty because I think my second rep ends up being a dud because my handles “flop” . Come to find out that this is not what they mean. Forward to back to the “side” of the bag is ok, but the O rings should be stable so the handles cannot shift side in an upright position. After properly understanding such a simple concept I felt much more comfortable that I have yet to receive a dude (woohoo! But in due time I’m sure). However, I do think the shape of the handles is just a touch off but again I can’t explain exactly why, but if anyone here can enlighten me I’d love to learn (-0.5)
  
• stitching: to mee the stitching looks pretty good. It is the same color as the bag, decently uniform, the shapes seem clean and uniform in size as well. There are no visible loose stitches, the seams are clean and the pattern looks accurate. The one area is the inside handles where it looks like the leather is tearing just a bit (-0.5)
  

-One other thing that looks a bit off to me is the “hole where the needle goes in” (I completely forget what it’s called) looks big. I would never notice this in a million years but it is technically there and I promised to do my best with the research so therefore it must be mentioned (-0.5)
Rep Satisfaction Rating (10/10)- definitely was not intended for a daily purse, but I actually am pleasantly surprised to learn that it is pretty versatile and can go from day to night pretty easily. It holds a small wallet, my iPhone, lip gloss, and my keys which is a lot more than I originally thought. It looks adorable with the strap or the handles which makes it an easy bag to actually use.
Seller Satisfaction Rating (10/10) - This was my first rep purchase so I had nothing to compare it to, but I would say it was a very smooth and successful first order. Emily was nice, responsive, answered questions, delivered what was asked, had fast shipping and nothing was seized! I mean what else do you want!?
CPR [Cost Performance Ratio] (8/10) ok so I don’t actually know this yet, but instincts are telling me this is not a performance-heavy bag and it needs to be used gentler to avoid scuffs, tears, chips and other regular life dings (but this may be true for authentic as well). I also am scoring the bag a touch lower because my assumption is the “jingle” from the charms has cheap tones to it (please see the game above to rate the sound). But with all that said I do feel this is a great quality rep and that wouldn’t be an absolute callout to the average person. But I will update if I am educated in the comments that my assessment is widely inaccurate :)
The Wrap-Up (7/10) Overall I am very happy and really like the bag. I am actually looking at getting a few more in different colors and sizes. Would you wear this bag to the brand's store? Um no probably not, but mostly because I don’t enough about the bag or the brand that I wouldn’t be able to pull off the air of confidence necessary. As a result I would not be comfortable with the SA handling it either or wearing it around known expert social circles. I would wear and have worn it around friends and family with confidence.
I hope this was helpful, but please let me know of any corrections or perspectives because I do want more! so if I missed something please don’t let me walk around thinking this good when all the while it's terrible lol :)

I think most people can agree that the newest revamp of the apartment system was, well, pretty disappointing. The potential these had honestly feels like they went down the drain, especially with a lackluster vault that only paid out 5k and virtually no other real features. However, I think a few simple changes however, could make them really good and actually viable in game.
Vaults The vault system in my opinion in itself is pretty good, but I think a larger payout is what the game needs for them to be viable. However, I don't think that the vaults should all be buffed across all the apartments. For example, the desert house would still give 5k, the beach house and modern house would give 10k, while the penthouses would give upwards of 20k. I think this simple change makes each apartment more viable and the reasoning for buying more expensive ones bigger than just their size. A very simple change that would already increase the viability of them by a significant amount.
GunShop UI As it stands, we only have 3 racks that have to have an item manually put into them. I think replacing them with a purchasable and placable gunshop UI would benefit the apartments greatly as well, maybe costing 200-500k as a result of how good it can be. This would definitely make having an apartment much better and being able to grab weaponry right at your spawn point is a great buff that similarly would apartments be just that more good.
Glider and Doghouse UI Similarly to the Donut and Energy Drink vending machines, I think a glider store where you could take a glider from would be pretty awesome. It would definitely make sense and would be in a similar vein to the other 2, and considering those exist I don't see why this one can't either. As for the Doghouse, being able to grab either or would be pretty cool. It would definitely make getting a dog easier and also doesn't require you to go all the way to the Dog Shop to get one, making apartments that much more viable to go to. The glider shop would probably cost similarly to the Donut and Energy Drink vending machines, while the Dog House could be pricier, sitting at around 300-600k, or even more depending on balancing.
Other Miscellaneous Changes (Not as important or in my opinion needed) - A usable garage in certain homes, maybe a helipad on the penthouses. (This may be a broken change considering it does neglect the use of mobile garage at the start of your session or after dying, but it could be a neat addition.)- More defense options, different types of turrets maybe.- Maybe some sort of support for items being able to be placed on shelves or tables.
Conclusion The current houses have a ton of potential and have had a lot of good changes, but as of now, they're still not as viable as they could be. I believe these changes could be beneficial to them and further their usability for players, because as of right now I don't believe they're worth it. If you have any other suggestions let me know, if I like them I'll definitely add them to this post. Regardless, thank you for reading. Stay safe.