California mode.
Trying out a new monthly West Coast edition of Feed Me.
Hello everyone. Today we’re trying something new at Feed Me, which is covering the West Coast. Last month, I was going through my newsletter analytics and learned that about 20% of my readers are based in California. I want to learn more about all of you, but more importantly, I want this letter to be of service to you.
I’ll be in San Francisco next month to do some in-person reporting and exploring, and will hold court at a bar one night so you guys can come hang out. In the meantime, feel free to shoot me an email (emily@readfeedme.com) to share scoops or give feedback on what you want from Feed Me (West Coast). I’m thinking this will be a monthly send, so share with your friends who you think might be interested, and be patient with me!
Today’s letter includes: Texting Amanda Chantal Bacon about Moon Juice’s closure, you can now sleep in a pod in SF, the TBPN guys told me their 2026 resolutions, and Bari Weiss’s platform Tevas.
📱 Have a story you think we should look into? Text the anonymous Feed Me Tip Line: (646) 494-3916
A winter dispatch from Los Angeles.
In this dispatch devoted to news and revelations concerning the City of Angels, we’ll hear from Madeleine Mogul, a New Yorker willfully trapped in Los Angeles.
Let’s get something out of the way here: Los Angeles is not New York. Sometimes I’m adding up license plate numbers and making my own morse code in a desperate attempt to stimulate a brain cell. Other times I walk past a fragrant brush of night-blooming jasmine and question how anyone could possibly live anywhere else. This is the city of images. It need not be anything in particular, not even a physical reality. But, perhaps a sense of place will emerge through this for the haters to chew on.
Today is Saturday, and I’m writing to you from a hotel pool (you know the one). To the right of me is an Irish tax lawyer for American businesses who just asked me for a cigarette. She’s here on holiday and being in America is making her aware of “how fucked up it all is.” Across the pool is a film director with a maximalism kink (you know the one). He crashed my birthday party 6 months ago and made a rousing speech about the importance of leadership (this is not a novel experience in Los Angeles). I overheard him say Oscar season is much busier for folks who aren’t nominated. He’s looking NAD+ skinny, not GLP-1 skinny. Speaking of treatment, I’m hearing that Hollywood is microdosing a lot of Accutane at the moment. I’ll never emotionally recover from the purging phase of the treatment, so consider me uninterested. Then again, my inner chopped teen was particularly moved to hear Lorde thinks acne is hot.
Here are a few other things I’ve been noticing lately:
The people of Los Angeles are still having a collective crashout over HBO’s I Love LA
Back when it debuted in October, film critic Alison Herman wrote it made her “want to stare at a wall for several hours in numbed-out despair.” A screenwriter friend said it made her want to switch careers. Film bros can’t believe they switched the aspect ratio for a beach montage. My dry-cleaner Hamlet doesn’t know what the fuck I Love LA is (I love you, Hamlet).
Here’s what I think: It’s a show that proves you can do drugs and still be boring. Los Angeles has a lot of trouble playing itself. If you haven’t seen the movie Los Angeles Plays Itself, I will give you my Mubi password. I think I Love LA would’ve made a better reality TV show. LA plays itself in the hyperreal very well.
New Los Feliz restaurant Wilde’s has a line out the door every night.
It’s worth waiting for. I went the other night and had a memorable meal in great company. I guess there’s a kind of dignity in how simple British pub food is, though it’s usually a bit brown-white-beige for my taste. But chef Natasha Price really makes me love it. The Eton mess looked like the marble quarry in the Brutalist, do not miss it. And I can’t stop thinking about the crunchy pink peppercorns on the steelhead crudo. This place is sexy and deeply considered. It is not LA trying to be New York and failing, unlike so many others. Also, co-founder and wine director Tatiana Ettensberger dates Andy Schwartz, the co-owner of the NYT’s favorite Los Angeles restaurant Baby Bistro. We haven’t seen many girlfriend-boyfriend restaurant duos here in Los Angeles, but hot people making excellent food is totally a part of our terroir.
The livestreamers have invaded.
The night of the Netflix-Warner Bros. merger announcement, I was having dinner at Horses. It’s the perfect place to dine on the eve of a cultural collapse. On this occasion, a group of livestreamers with body cameras and iPhones sauntered into the restaurant. No reservation, and they wanted a booth in the back. When confronting a livestreamer in Los Angeles, it’s hard to know if you’re engaging with a real person or whether you’re merely a prop in the video they’re producing. The streamers filmed the entire process of the Horses staff trying to delicately and self-consciously escort them out. For everyone else, it was live performance watching live performance. The bar was vibrating with speculation, and everyone was so obviously aware of themselves. Some people were concerned about the staff, while others kept asking, “what is this for?” Orville Peck rounded the corner, without his mask, to see what the commotion was about. The staff said it was a first, but wouldn’t be a last.
This concludes Madeleine Mogul’s dispatch from the City of Angels.
Moon Juice is closing their last store in Los Angeles.
I had a group of friends who worked at Moon Juice post-college (2016, peak Moon Juice), and spending time with them felt unlike anything I’d experienced in New York — they were witchy, a little elitist, and so smart. They were experts on mushrooms and tinctures and the order in which you consumed different smoothies and tonics. I loved it.
Amanda Chantal Bacon, founder of Moon Juice, posted on Instagram a few days ago that Moon Juice would be closing their last standalone store (in Venice). The top comment reads, “This store was the first store I became a fan of as if it was a band or artist… You guys were vanguards to a movement that now defines Los Angeles and it was awesome to be so close to it IRL. Big magic.” Another reads, “We used to get so high on just almond milk, that’s how real it was.” Amanda wasn’t just a figure in my life because of my friends who worked at Moon Juice, but also because of her recurring appearances on the homepage of The Cut, where I worked in 2016.
In retrospect, Amanda and Moon Juice were ahead of their time. They now serve chia pudding and green juice in most airports. I’ve seen cordyceps on cocktail menus in New York. In 2023, Erewhon’s founder told The Hollywood Reporter that their sales in each store were almost $1mm/week. We can assume that number is higher today.
I texted Amanda last night to hear how she’s feeling about the store closure and the responses she’s been receiving. Our exchange:
Substack hosted a debate about San Francisco in the city last week. 500 people apparently attended the event, which was held in a 94-year-old nightclub. Writer Sam Kriss spent most of the debate bashing the city. “Spending any amount of time in San Francisco is — I’m sorry — a crushing and miserable experience, because this city actively militates against everything that’s good in ordinary human life,” he said, according to The San Francisco Standard. Per Jasmine Sun, everyone went out drinking until 2am afterwards (it was a Wednesday night).
Charlotte Klein’s new profile of Bari Weiss for New York Magazine talks about how moving to LA paved the way for Bari’s rise. “She kind of became this party trick for wealthy Westside executives who wanted to have a certain kind of conversation that they thought they couldn’t have in public,” one media exec told Klein. The amount of boldface names in this piece is impressive. Bari’s schmoozing circuit included salons at Brian Grazer’s house with Kim Kardashian, Lauren Sánchez and Katy Perry, and private parties at Dan Loeb’s place in Bel Air attended by Chris Pine and Bob Iger. “Pledging to support the Free Press, whether or not they actually read it, became a statement in and of itself for erstwhile liberals in California dismayed by what they saw emanating from the woke centers of New York and Washington, D.C,” writes Klein. I want to know more about the platform Tevas Bari wears to parties.
Scoop: The TBPN guys told me what their 2026 resolutions are:
“Our 2026 resolution is to lock in. We had a great 2025, and it opened up a lot of amazing and fun opportunities. But the most contrarian thing we think we can do next year is simply double down on the core show itself.
That means having to say no to anything that doesn’t improve the show directly: no fund, no products, no world tour. Just 3 hours of talking about tech and business at 11am every weekday.”
A Bay Area-based “sleeping pod” startup called Brownstone Shared Housing bought a building in downtown San Francisco that will hold up to 400 pods. The photos on their site remind me of steerage on the Titanic.
Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House in the Hollywood Hills has been listed for $25mm. The house, which is regarded as one of the most impressive American structures by the American Institute of Architects, has been in the same family for over six decades. If you’ve never been to a brand event or clocked the house from influencer Instagram stories, you’ve probably seen it in the Equinox campaign shot by Terry Richardson in 2013, or in Galaxy Quest (1999), or in the season premiere of The Simpsons in 2009.
The Sunset Tower’s gift shop is famously in-person only. I love that you can’t buy Tower Bar sundae menu t-shirts unless you’re in the Tower Bar. The hotel launched a new shirt this week, featuring Tower Bar’s maître d’ Dimitri Dimitrov (who has also been spotted holding court at San Vicente Bungalows in New York). I texted the hotel’s owner Jeff Klein about the shirt. “Dimitri has been setting the tone at Sunset tower for decades,” he told me. “He’s an icon, the martini glass is just the frame.”
League of Legends video game developer Riot Games bought a new office in West LA in a $231mm deal.
Eater launched a West Coast dining newsletter, written by Matthew Kang. “Consider this the place to get the scoop from your most voracious and curious friend, someone who will help you cut through the noise of influencers and hype. There will be lots of articles, maps, and videos, both by me and my colleagues here at Eater, that underscore the influential dining trends from the West Coast, too. Kang Town is a true insider’s take on the West Coast’s most noteworthy meals and why they matter.”
Los Angeles is getting three new restaurants, imported from New York:
SUSHISAMBA is opening in West Hollywood’s Design District in January. The rooftop restaurant will have sweeping views of the Hollywood Hills. From the photos I’ve seen so far, it’s very Sex and the City S3E13.
Lucky’s Steakhouse (which started in Montecito, and then opened in New York and East Hampton) is opening in the Arts District.
And Bad Roman is expanding their Columbus Circle Italian restaurant to Beverly Hills in March. GRT Architects (whose portfolio includes Don Angie and Bourke Street Bakery) will be working on the project.
I’ve been curious about the vibe at The Bank, a new SF members club, since we wrote about it a few weeks ago. Someone who recently visited posted on Reddit: “I went there with a friend (he had a referral invite). These things always have a lot of wannabes/ perpetually unemployed influencers. People at this place had Home Shopping Network watches (Bulova) or fashion watches. If you are going to pretend to be somebody, have a real watch.” To which I’d ask this person, what is a real watch?
A reader told me that people call San Francisco’s Marina District grocery store Safeway “Dateway” because people go there to be seen. Marina Green Walkway is kind of our West Side Highway in that sense, and the Safeway there is right at one end of it.” So it makes sense that a new plan to turn the 66-year-old grocery store into colossal 25-story apartment complex is ruffling some feathers.
Love this new LA thing. Especially as I can’t be bothered to go there.
Can confirm that Pilates to Jumbos with a stop at Sapp for lunch is the perfect LA day