On my way to work (where my job is making taste public) I read Nicolaia Rips’ thoughts on why taste should stay private.

She gave me my new favorite word: perspention (perspective & intention), and the language for something I didn’t know I thought about often. Personal taste is what you love for reasons you can’t articulate and don’t need to. Public taste is what you love because it says something legible about you to other people.

This distinction explains what I feel watching intimacy turned into strategy - like Architectural Digest’s Open Door series: tours through homes with carefully placed limes, James Turrells, and messy desks that are beautifully obvious performances of authenticity. It also names a tension I feel when I curate public events for Partiful’s Discover. How do you make something legible without flattening it? How do you translate taste without killing it?

Very rarely are the “culturistas” and recommendation engines where I actually build my personal taste. Instead, they’re the cultural infrastructure where raw material is surfaced. The people who truly shape my taste - who help me piece it together with gum and tape and glue - are the ones who would never share their preferences legibly. They’re the off-centered Instagram story where I have to decode which street corner they found that drink on. They refuse to explain, and that refusal is generative. Reading Keith McNally’s memoir sends me looking up the places and names and things he mentions - not because he tells you to, but because you feel culturally obligated to.

So, in the spirit of developing taste (and after learning that most who read this live in LA) I present a curation of upcoming events, with the tragic inevitability of making taste public, but the necessity of context:

micah’s market

back in june 2024, micah bachrach (he keeps everything lowercase, so i seek to respect his eve babitz–like stylistic choice) issued a vision for a community he wanted to build, accompanied by a photo of his backyard. he drew inspiration from farmers markets - which he describes as art exhibits of produce where you’re allowed to carry a coffee and leave with everything you need - from live music that becomes part of the environment (jazz clubs, street performers, musicians in restaurants playing “background noise,” all the things barely noticed when present but deeply missed when gone) - and what he calls “european cafe culture,” or casual third spaces where people share smoke and flames and words and stories and names.

now his backyard fills with hundreds of people hanging out, running into friends, new or old, drinking, eating, and listening to jazz. the events include morning markets (chatting, matcha, pastries, and jazz), night markets (matcha becomes wine, pastries become finger food, jazz and conversation remain), and they just launched journal live sessions - live music, reading, and journaling. there’s one on monday, january 27th, but if you can’t make it, i’d recommend one of the markets.

Blood Barn

This is in February but I’m putting it here while there are still tickets. Lumière Cinema in Beverly Hills is premiering “Blood Barn,” a “low-budget, campy comedy horror” filmed at Longview Farms - the dairy farm turned recording studio that was home to the Rolling Stones for a brief second in the early ‘80s. There’s a pre-show red carpet and after-party, and it was written and directed by Gabriel Bernini and Alexandra Jade. Everyone involved is uniquely cool and creative and interesting - Euphoria‘s Chloe Cherry, actor/cartoonist Felipe Di Poi, Pierce Campion, artist Bambina - and I have a deep desire to eavesdrop on their conversations and talk about {adult swim}.

Paul’s Dolls in LA

Paul’s Dolls is on the road!!! Paul’s Dolls is what I’d call a Princess Diana party - universally beloved but particularly by the girls and gays - hosted by an entirely trans staff and still going strong since 2022. Three whole clubs with Thursday night residencies in NYC have bloomed and died since Paul’s Dolls started at Baby Grand, so if you’re still around you must be magical or at least necessary. I’ve been to their parties in New York at Paul’s Casablanca and Baby Grand (they even recently did a holiday toy drive on Spring Street) and every single time I’ve had the night I hoped I would have. If anyone can make LA finally dance it’s @im_linux and this episode is also being co-hosted with RuPaul’s Drag Race‘s @tsmadison.

LA ESSENTIALS at Superchief Gallery

Superchief Gallery has been doing some really good programming lately and one of their first events this year is LA ESSENTIALS on January 17 (4 PM - midnight). It’s going to be a massive collective and a collaboration with 2 Live and Die in LA “curated through a consciously working-class lens,” with street photographers Merrick Morton and Frankie Orozco (whom I really love), graffiti artists, lowriders, musicians, and local food vendors. It’s unclear but I think you can also get a tattoo if you are so inclined.

Vinyl Night at La Sabina Wine Bar

For the certain subset of people who are obsessed with Spotify Wrapped I think you might enjoy this vinyl night in Culver City. Every Tuesday at 6pm La Sabina Wine Bar and @dusty_records_la invite guests to bring a record and listen to it be played in a room - whatever you bring the DJ will play, you can then stay for a glass of wine, and hear what everyone else brought. (I imagine this could sometimes become the equivalent of a man reading Emily Ratajkowski’s Body in a sunny park but nonetheless there is something about it that feels perfect to me.)

If you happen to be in NYC I am equally intrigued by this “book club” but for records:

6:30: Doors

7:00: Needle Drop

7:40: Lecture and Discussion

8:00: Hang

For their first installment it seems they will be dissecting Al Green’s 1971 “Al Green Gets Next To You.”

I am very excited about this return of communal music and hope there is also a renaissance of physical mixtapes.

Nico’s Two-Year Anniversary Party

Nico’s is turning two and they are throwing themselves a birthday party. Below Nico’s wine shop there’s a basement bar that somewhat reminds me of the club they filmed in for American Gangster complete with lounges and beaded curtains. They often host trivia nights, comedy shows, live music but this time they promise the following laundry list:

• ice luge scruffy vermouth shots

• live mural painting

• so much champagne

• cake

• yummy yummy food by spina

• porron pours

• pies by chainsaw

• pyramid scheme dance party

• parking lot picnic tables

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