Laura Reilly's Black Friday debrief.
Plus a Vanity Fair alumni joins beehiiv and Greenpoint gets a new comedy club.
Good morning everyone. And happy first day of Advent for those of you who observe the anticipation of Jesus’s birth, or who participate so hard in treat culture that you want 24 new travel-sized products over the course of a month — for $135. I like making my own advent calendars because I’m nostalgic for the feeling of opening tiny doors.
Today’s letter includes: Why Susan Alexandra opened a store on the Upper East Side,
told me how her long-awaited Black Friday newsletter went, ’s London Thanksgiving dispatch, where Satya Nadella allegedly got dinner in New York this weekend, and why Richard is writing on beehiiv instead of Substack.Have a question for Olivia Nuzzi about her upcoming memoir, American Canto? Ask it in the Feed Me chat. We’ll include her answers in tomorrow’s newsletter.
On Saturday, I had a whirlwind of a night with my friend all over the city. I recommend the itinerary to any of you with a taste for indulgence and free time. It went like this:
Two martinis and steak au poivre at Orsay. I liked that the butter came in one of those small, cold ceramic dishes with the piece of wax paper on top. There was a group upstairs having a small wedding in the restaurant’s party room. I went up their grand staircase to check it out and got angry for about three minutes that I didn’t know about this venue option when I got married.
One glass of red wine and half an Ashton cigar at Club Macanudo’s bar (recommended by Alex Vadukul in his recent Feed Me contribution). The bartender gave us a free pineapple-colored cocktail which he kept calling “tequila base.” There was a table nearby that looked like an AI-generated image of Zuck, Andrew Yang, and Tucker Carlson when they were all 30. We asked to sit with them for ten minutes and they said they had guests coming in 12 minutes. We walked out speechless.
Subway down to Broadway-Lafayette for another glass of red wine, toffee pudding, and profiteroles at Balthazar. Keith McNally was holding court in the corner and started blasting Taylor Swift around midnight. After two free glasses of champagne and deleting both desserts, we said hello to Keith’s son George (featured in Feed Me on Friday) who was working the bar. The restaurant really transforms after-hours, in a Midnight in Paris way: hair styles (not blowouts but styles) and French manicures everywhere.
Walked to The Marlton. I asked a man at the bar what his hat was all about (it was from The Angler’s Club of New York). He asked me if I knew what fly fishing was, and I said “Do I know what fly fishing is?” We resolved this, and I told him to subscribe to Feed Me.
Walked to People’s. Felt like a boring house party, left after ten minutes.
We’re almost done, I promise.
Used a made up name to get into Nightmoves. Drank a Ghia while we tried to decipher the scene. It was sort of Interns Night Out: cheap suits, cute young men. Maybe it was the after party for an office event.
Went home and made 2am pasta and watched TikToks about skincare.
📱 Have a story you think we should look into? Text the anonymous Feed Me Tip Line: (646) 494-3916
From the Feed Me Tip Line: On Saturday night around 8pm, I received the following message. “Spotted Satya Nadella outside GupShup in Gramercy with quite the crowd waiting outside to meet him.”
I caught up with last night to hear how her viral Black Friday newsletter performed. Remember, before Laura was one of the most innovative shopping writers on Substack, she was a seasoned market editor – she’s not new to this game.
“I was surprised by how tidy the rollout was this season. OG Black Friday season, or the way that we thought about it like 10 years ago, was: Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Biz Sat, and Cyber Monday (maybe some other minor “holidays” tucked into that paradigm). Now brands have organized sale season into: Private Sale Week (around week of the 10th), Black Friday extended sales (week of the 16th through end of this week, Jan 5, I predict), and Black Friday flash sales, which happened Thanksgiving night and over the weekend. Most people did their biggest shopping at the very beginning. This model was weirdly true across many levels of brands/stores, which self-categorized nicely, i.e. the smallest brands did the shortest sales, the largest did the longest.
The discounts were pretty soft, but I expect they’ll get good around Christmas. There’s an expectation that people will shop BF regardless of the % off (re-upping on staples and planned purchases, mostly), so they can double-dip by banking on that habit and then getting people to come back for seconds with what they’d consider to be actually compelling discounts (finally).”
Sag Harbor Cinema emailed customers that 2025 was great for business – popcorn sales were up 21% this year. I have a proposition for them. Since Jack’s is closing its location across from the Jitney stop, I think the movie theater should open early and serve coffee to people waiting for the Jitney on weekday mornings.
Whit Stillman is hosting a Q+A after a screening of Metropolitan later this month at Metrograph.
Martha Stewart opened her first standalone store. In Dubai. Those 12 equine residents aren’t going to pay for themselves!
Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair’s former film critic, launched a newsletter called Premiere Party. I asked him why he decided to publish on beehiiv instead of Substack, and he said, “Beehiiv has already been incredibly supportive and I like that it’s so customizable. Really feel like I can adapt and grow with them.” Lawson was part of Mark Guiducci’s layoffs at Vanity Fair in September.
Greenpoint is getting a comedy club. Jeremy Pinsly, the owner of the club, told me that he quit his marketing job in 2011 to move to New York and do standup. “I ran shows at bars, clubs, speakeasies, and even a woman’s brownstone in cobble hill (@bubbescomedyhour),” he said. “I also started a show production business in Nashville (@musiccitylaughs). And after getting married two months ago, I realized we needed a brick and mortar location and Greenpoint was perfect.”
Cami spent Thanksgiving in London, where she was surprised to find out that it’s almost as big a holiday there as it is in the United States. Her dispatch:
“Thanksgiving week in central London is kind of like the fall edition of Spring Break for American visitors and excited Americanophiles, who celebrate the holiday like it’s a blood sport. I guess that sort of makes sense since British people love a Sunday roast and something called “the harvest.” I heard American accents echoing from corners of the vintage stores on Portobello Road, from within the Ralph Lauren holiday pop-up in Sloane Square, and while waiting in line for the Thanksgiving menu at Ottolenghi on Pavilion Road. Apparently, members clubs like 5 Hertford Street, the Twenty Two, and KX (£615-per-month wellness club where Jude Law, Hugh Grant, and Prince Harry have been members) all offered some form of a Thanksgiving menu. I didn’t try any of those, but I did attend a number of boozy Thanksgiving parties Wednesday through Sunday night. I also paid a visit to The Fat Badger, the scene-y Notting Hill “gastropub” that everyone there has been talking about. It smelled like olive oil and expensive perfume, everyone inside was gorgeous, and they played The Rolling Stones and Dire Straits in the bar room. British pubs used to smell like pee and never played music, back when I lived there. A few more observations: Lots of glamorous women wearing sparkly new costume jewelry from Chemena Kamali’s Chloé. I also noticed that some Londoners are wearing sunglasses indoors at night (“Very New York,” one British friend told me), and I’m hearing rumblings of the onset of tipping culture at London pubs and in black cabs. Does anyone know what that’s all about?”
But WHEN will Metrograph screen Last days of Disco - superior Whit Stillman nightlife classic!
Generating an alias on the fly to get in the door; that’s a lost art, very nice