Where are all the summer interns?
"Some of my friends go out, get flirted with by some older guy in their target industry, and their career flashes before their eyes."
Good afternoon, everyone.
Today’s newsletter includes: a movie screening tonight with Zohran Mamdani’s mom, I think about 2012 Vice as a snow globe (but the snow is cocaine), Ven. Space expands in Brooklyn, Aman needs to hire some varsity-status crisis comms, and checking in with New York City’s summer interns.
Yesterday, I posted on X that I haven’t been seeing a lot of posts about summer interns in the city. During prior summers, we saw viral tweets about fake IDs at The Spaniard or horrible sartorial decisions being made by clueless 21-year-olds. But this summer? You could hear a pin drop at Phebe’s. One person on X called it “AI’s silent summer.” Another blamed it on everyone wanting to be solo founders now. Maybe they aren’t drinking, so they blend into Equinox classes and and loops around Central Park. Perhaps it’s just a glitch in the timeline, and we’ll all be back to reporting on our young visiting neighbors next summer.
(Sincere plea to all interns — cut the vent stitches on your suits! they’re not meant to stay there.)
I got in touch with a few summer interns, and spoke to them about their experience in the Big Apple, as well as their general feelings about the job market (spoiler: bleak). Here were some of our conversations:
Anonymous intern at luxury brand, graduated NYU in 2026:
“I go to college here, so I feel a bit of a superiority complex to the interns who all flock here for the summer. I really hate going out when Intern Season starts because every bar or subway is riddled with 19-year-old boys, but it kinda inspires me to branch out of my usual area to find where the interns are not.
I was in this weird in-between where I was still interning while some of my friends were starting their full-time jobs. My company doesn’t do official return offers so it felt kind of pointless and not super productive. I also think that for someone thinking about pursuing a corporate fashion job it’s surprisingly hard to compete with FIT, LIM, and other art/fashion school kids because they all dedicate every semester to internships. On the other hand, it feels like my friends pursuing more unique, creative jobs found them through social settings / people they’ve met out or through past creative projects like helping out on shoots and film sets (might be more of an NYU niche). So it feels like in order to pursue a job in a more creative field you need to be fully immersed in the social scene of those same people, or have a nepo connection. I know a lot of people who are just kinda cool and that’s enough to get them a cool job if that makes sense. I don’t think that the majority of the creative jobs I would want to pursue are even advertised or available anywhere online or on LinkedIn.”
Hattie Bridell, intern at Lubov Gallery and On The Rag:
“Because New York attracts creatives of all backgrounds, I got to know people I would’ve never crossed paths with otherwise. I met professionals specializing in a range of mediums, including painting, photography, and fiber arts. Interactions with people are spontaneous and candid. They will share intimate details of their life with you one minute and disappear the next. Coming from rural New Mexico, this dynamic was foreign to me but I have quickly grown used to it.
The majority of people I have worked with are also Gen Z and in a similar stage in life, but I have had the privilege of learning from those older than me. Their experience and knowledge of the field helped me grow and work more confidently. Many of my peers are also interns. I feel lucky to have secured these positions, as in the city these opportunities go as quickly as they come.”
Torrey Lin, intern at The Daily Show and Morning Brew, rising junior at UNC-Chapel Hill:
“I really loved living in the city for the summer. My working and unoriginal theory on the city is that nobody lives here because it’s easy. And on a bad day, it can be way too sticky and overstimulating and it can smell really bad. But then you go to sleep and you’re really able to start over the next day. People really do seem to live here because they’re chasing something. Somehow there’s enough room for these huge dreams and goals and I loved feeling the ambition.
I have no idea how much of my anxiety about the job market is just being 20 years old and not knowing what I want to do with my life and how much of it is unprecedented paralysis and a deeply rooted fear across all careers.
I really hope that people continue to seek out real connection, and if that’s the case, I think and hope that there will be a need for human creativity. All of my friends are going into the corporate world and I am trying to resist the urge as much as I can. I really don’t want to work to be rich and that’s it. That can’t be the point. I felt really hopeful being around a lot of young and creative people. There seems to be a sense of wry acceptance about the current state of the job market. Everybody knows it’s bad but nobody wants to talk about it but it still comes up in every conversation. I think job permanence is something I’m thinking about and nervous for. You have your job until you don’t, and then what? I’m really scared of my skills and passions just being rendered not profitable and then tossed aside. But overall, it was really great to see what it’s like out there right now. I’m nervous but also extremely hopeful and excited.”
Kiran Mathew, intern at Orchestra, rising senior at NYU.
“A lot of my friends stayed in the city for the summer but couldn’t get internships (so have started with summer retail gigs or are coasting by on their parents’ money). Interestingly, a lot of the interns at my firm are postgrad or masters students. I don’t have anything insightful to say about Gen Z’s thoughts on the job market other than “so bleak.” People are applying to like hundreds of jobs and hearing nothing, even unpaid internships are a prized commodity. Some of my friends even say they go out, get flirted with by some older guy in their target industry, and their career flashes before their eyes. Many have tried but no one has turned that into an internship yet.”
ON THE CALENDAR
🎬 Mira Nair, mother of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, is introducing a screening of Mississippi Masala (which she directed) tonight at MoMA with Sarita Choudhury. There are still a few tickets left! It happens to be one of the sexiest movies of all time.
🍔 Shy’s Burgers will be cooking at The River with Stone & Skillet English muffins (I want that) on August 5th and 6th.
👖 High Sport is hosting a Fall 2026 pop-up in the Hamptons on August 5th and 6th. DM them for the address.
🎞️ Julian Schnabel is hosting a Q+A after a screening of In the Hand of Dante on August 6th at Sag Harbor Cinema.
🌭 Peter Luger and The Meat Hook are hosting a burger and brats cookout in Brooklyn on August 6th.
👕 Go say hi to Charleston legend Brooks Reitz in Amagansett this weekend for the E.M. Reitz pop-up on August 7th and 8th.
🍺 The Corner in Sag Harbor is re-opening this weekend.
💿 Alex Delany’s Elevator Books will be hosting a pop-up on August 8th and 9th at Colbo. There will be plenty of cold beer and spinning vinyl.
The White House UFC fight cost $60 million and led to $30 million in losses. On a Q2 earnings call Monday, TKO Group executive chairman and CEO, Ari Emanuel, called the UFC Freedom 250 event “a roaring success” before the company’s CFO reminded analysts and investors that they “incurred significantly higher-than-normal costs” and did not sell tickets, resulting in meaningfully-impacted margins.
“Vice was a cult. It was also one of the best business schools in modern history.” Mitchell Jackson is a publicist whose stacked comms client roster includes Candace Owens, Adam Friedland, Caroline Calloway, and Clavicular (I wonder what his client Christmas party is like.) He wrote about what it was like to be the youngest employee at Vice in 2012. Whenever I read about the Vice empire that was already peaking when I moved to New York in 2012 (when I was 18), I picture Williamsburg as a snow globe. Something Jackson does well in this essay is capture the unknowable price of putting your byline on viral stories, and how even in 2026, peoples 2010’s media reputations follow them around like shadows in New York City. “It was traumatic. I didn’t realize the price of writing online — my editors did, but they let me hang myself. Hanging myself meant traffic.”
Ven. Space, the menswear mecca of New York, is opening a second location. Ven Archive is a few blocks north on President Street, and will be open from Thursday to Sunday from noon-6. Ven Archive will have past collections and one-off samples, and based on their Instagram, perhaps some cool furniture.
The New York Times added 280,000 net digital subscribers in the second quarter of 2026. The paper’s revenue is up 11%.
Brooklyn-based bakery Winner is opening another location in Downtown Brooklyn. The 2,726-square-foot cafe will be in the new 100 Flatbush Avenue development. Winner’s baked goods and sandwiches are some of the best in the game — I would love if this one has more indoor seating/hangout space than my beloved Park Slope location, although eating your sandwich in the standing crowd on the corner has become its own charming ritual.
Travel journalist Ryan Walker (135k subscribers on YouTube) was supposed to review the new Amanvari in Mexico, but instead the hotel called the police on him upon arrival. Over the course of this 11-minute vlog, we see Ryan pull up to the ultra-luxury Aman hotel (which costs over $6k/night) after a two-hour drive, get recognized by a guard outside, and stopped at a gate outside of the hotel, before being told that his reservation was canceled. The team calls the police on him. After scrolling through his inbox, Ryan realizes that hours prior to arrival, he received an email telling him that the property was still being worked on and they had to cancel some reservations. Ryan, a highly regarded hotel reviewer, historically pays for his own hotels (safe to say he paid for this one), and reviews honestly based on: Room, Ambiance, Dining, Service, and “It-Factor”. Based on responses from Aman’s team, we can assume Amanvari wasn’t going to deliver on one or all of those categories. During the video, Ryan speaks to the camera: “If you silence independent reviews and cancel the reservation before they check in, the narrative is controlled by the corporation.” Comments on Aman’s recent post of Amanvari are turned off, and Amanvari’s Google reviews are a mess.
Compass real estate opened its first office on Shelter Island. Island’s heating up!
YIKES AMAN
Really surprising that Aman fumbled this one, given their super tight branding/comms on everything else. Also, this is why it's hard to trust most long-form hotel reviews out there.