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The Guardian
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
And Just Like That ... The Sex and the City spin-off's surprising take on race
Are any of the writers on And Just Like That (AJLT) reading this? Because I have several helpful suggestions to bring the current series of your Sex and the City reboot into 2025: Charlotte's husband, the hitherto harmless Harry, could start pressuring her into an open marriage, involving whatever passes for wild sex parties on the Upper East Side. Miranda could soon enter her Chappell-Roan-power-ballad era by hooking up with a sexually captivating, but emotionally unavailable, decades-younger woman. And what about a big reveal involving Aidan, who has been draining Carrie's bank accounts all along (because he's secretly a Reddit-radicalised, misogynist crypto bro now). I'd also suggest we see and hear a lot less from the children. The existence of Brady, Brock, Tilly and Twerp should only ever be referenced occasionally and obliquely, for form's sake. Y'know, like how people of colour were treated all the way through the original Sex and the City series? Ironically, racial politics is the one area in which AJLT is doing just fine, even without my help. This is not the consensus view, I'm aware. Many fans entered a state of full-body cringe during the first season, when Miranda wondered aloud if she was having 'a white saviour moment' when fighting off a mugger attacking her Black friend, and are yet to regain full use of their sphincter muscles. But the fact is, AJLT understands the specific whiteness of wealthy white women, in a way that not only vastly improves on the original show's run, but which could also teach other contemporary TV shows a thing or two about 'diversity' and 'representation'. Principally, this show gets things right by allowing its characters to get things wrong. The Mirandas of this world – and I can say this, because I am such a Miranda – often get to ride the righteous train all the way to Smug Town without so much as a ticket inspection. But the truth is, even the well-intentioned – especially the well-intentioned – have blind spots, and most of us could do with some practice at keeping our cool when those are brought to the fore. AJLT leans into the cringe and, as such, acts as a kind of anti-racist exposure therapy for its middle-aged, white, liberal core audience. The secondhand embarrassment it generates is healthy, productive and funny. Because imagine the alternative: this show could have remade its central trio as ever-elegant, socially confident 'sheroes'. Girl bosses who get it. Women who never miss a beat and are always at one with the sensibilities of the age. It could have shielded them from ever looking uncool or out-of-touch, or jaw-droppingly oblivious, in the way that Carrie does in the episode where her new Indian-American friend, Seema (Sarita Choudhury), takes her sari shopping in preparation for the Patel family's Diwali party. Upon entering the shop, Carrie's eyes widen in wonderment. 'OK …' she says, 'These clothes … This holiday … I need to know everything about it!' Thus revealing that she is a fiftysomething woman, who has spent her entire adult life living in one of the most diverse cities in the world and yet – somehow – has never heard of Diwali, a festival celebrated annually by around a billion Indian and South Asian-descended people, worldwide. Get a clue, Carrie. When that episode aired, some commentators (mostly white women) bristled at the depiction of their carefree, curly queen. They said it wasn't plausible. It was doing Carrie dirty. But some of us (women of colour and the other white women) recognised the truth in that characterisation. It's Lana Turner in the classic 1959 film Imitation of Life, expressing surprise when Annie (Juanita Moore), her Black maid of several decades – and, essentially, her closest confidante – refers to a rich social life outside work. Annie's response? 'Miss Lora, you never asked.' Seema takes this in her stride. I suspect she too has met plenty of Carries in her time. The scene only begins to strain credulity when, moments later, Carrie follows up by asking her if she's ever considered an arranged marriage – What? Because she's Indian? – and Seema still betrays no hint of irritation. It wasn't the writing of Carrie's character that was flawed in that moment, but the writing of Seema's. It's because of moments like these that I'm glad the characters of Professor Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman) and Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) have been phased out for season three. Or, as I prefer to understand it, set free to share a chilled bottle of chablis and/or weed vape with other friends who actually get it. I'm glad for their own sakes, because no human being wants to feel like a walking BLM reading list for someone on their solipsistic journey toward belated political consciousness. It was always clear why Miranda would want to be friends with Nya, the stylish, self-assured professor on her policies and principles of humanitarian law course – if only to improve her grades. But what is Nya getting out of the arrangement? After a long day of battling the ingrained racism of Ivy League academia, tending to her needy Gen Z grad students and her own underwritten IVF storyline, why would she want to spend her evenings further exerting herself by explaining micro-aggressions to Miranda 'give me a gold star' Hobbs? How is that relaxing? Nya and Che's departures also leave more room for AJLT's other two characters-of-colour to be fully realised. Lisa Todd Wexley, played by Nicole Ari Parker, is an upper-middle-class Black woman (she would probably prefer 'African American') with a busy career in documentary film-making and her scenes in the edit offer a way for AJLT to make meta-commentary on media depictions of Blackness – worshipful references to Michelle Obama are a leitmotif, for instance. Something similar was previously attempted in season two, when Che decamped to Los Angeles to get their semi-autobiographical sitcom off the ground and the Italian-American actor Tony Danza was cast as their Mexican father. Sadly, by that point, nobody watching cared about Che's tedious travails, so nobody cared about the politics of colour-blind casting either. Lisa isn't just a working mother with an impressive collection of oversized jewellery. She is also a classic example of the bad'n'bougie princess, a trope which allows TV to explore the intersections of race, gender and class, and has a noble lineage stretching back to Lisa Turtle on Saved by the Bell, through Hilary Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Dionne Davenport in Clueless, all the way to reality star Gizelle Bryant on Real Housewives of Potomac. Here, I detect the hand of Susan Fales-Hill, proud descendent of US 'afrostocracy', creator of original bougie princess Whitley Gilbert from A Different World, and a writer on AJLT since season two. Seema's type is more obvious. She is a new Samantha, brought in to replace our dearly beloved Kim Cattrall from the original SATC, a woman with so much charisma she could almost – but not quite – get away with wearing an afro wig to a post-chemo social gathering. Seema has Samantha's confidence and fondness for animal prints, but to that she adds her own top-note of vulnerability. Being a professionally high-flying, never-married, child-free woman in your 50s is fabulous. But, in a world that likes to constantly remind women of how they've failed to please the patriarchy, an occasional wobble of self-doubt is to be expected. It's in this wider context of the third season, with more screen time and better storylines, that Seema's ethnicity can be just one aspect of her character; neither defining, nor denied. Now, when Seema's cultural heritage is referenced, it's usually on her own terms, and in her own words. As she cautions bossy date-finder Sydney Cherkov (Saturday Night Live's Cheri Oteri): 'I'm Indian, we invented matchmaking'. And just like that, through an ever-enjoyable, show-your-workings process of trial-and-error, this show has landed on what it can most usefully add to the pop culture discourse about race. And that isn't shoe-horning in badly written POC characters to offer a hastily bodged version of racial diversity and representation. Rather it's exploring the whiteness of Miranda/Charlotte/Carrie as they move through this changed and changing world, but – crucially – always with a tad more self-awareness than the characters themselves possess. Now, back to more pressing matters: Should Charlotte order specially monogrammed stationery from Tiffany's for those sex party invites? And who's telling Anthony he's been cut from the guest list?
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How Do You Build a $500 Million Coffee Chain? By Selling Matcha to Teens.
At 3:30 p.m. on the Upper East Side of New York City, Emma and Maddie, both 12 years old, are sipping matcha lattes at their usual after-school hangout: Blank Street Coffee. As the name suggests, Blank Street made its name in coffee—launching in 2020 with a Brooklyn cart, and then, with the backing of millions in venture capital, rapidly expanding with stores across the city and beyond. Coffee snobs balked at the brand: The chain's automated espresso machines and aggressive expansion plan struck them as inauthentic to cafe culture. But now the company has caught a fresh stride by leaning into sugary, colorful, caffeinated, TikTok-friendly green tea. The Biggest Companies Across America Are Cutting Their Workforces Microsoft Plans to Cut Thousands More Employees All the Hollywood Action Is Happening Everywhere But Hollywood The Fed Waits Out the Tariff Economy The Path to Record Deficits There are a variety of flavors—among them, strawberry-shortcake matcha, blueberry matcha, white-chocolate matcha. New this month are a rocky-road latte and cookies-and-cream matcha. 'At first I didn't like it, but now I do,' Emma said of her $7 iced green drink, smiling through her braces. The sixth-grader said she charged the drinks to her parents' credit card once or twice a week. 'The matcha part isn't sweet, but the part with the syrup and stuff at the bottom is good.' 'I used to walk by here and not know what it was, but I heard about it from TikTok so I stopped in,' added Maddie. 'It's become a trend. A lot of the high-schoolers order it at school.' Blank Street joins many brands, including Sephora and Stanley, that have been propelled to a broader cultural relevance because of teen customers. The craze now has teens and Gen Z customers proudly sipping matcha and posting about brightly colored drinks that measure high in sugar and even higher in clout. The company now boasts a $500 million valuation, a large number for a coffee chain that isn't Starbucks. 'I see people all the time in class with a Blank Street cup,' said Cooper, a 15-year-old ninth-grade private-school student. He said the coffee chain had invaded his New York City classrooms this past fall. He estimates he patronizes Blank Street four times a week. Blank Street co-founders Vinay Menda, 32, and Issam Freiha, 29, say they didn't set out to capture the wallets of Sephora teens. They are college friends who started the coffee chain after working together in venture capital. Freiha is originally from Lebanon and Menda from Dubai. The duo researched trendy Asian coffee chains and decided to try a similar approach in the states. (A third co-founder, Ignacio Llado, joined in 2022 to expand Blank Street to the U.K.). They realized they could hit it big with flavored matcha two years ago after a mixologist on their London team created a blueberry drink that went viral. Since then, Blank Street has been doubling down on new matcha beverages, rolling out a few every season. Matcha now accounts for approximately 50% of the business, Menda said. 'Matcha is amazing for mixology,' said Freiha from the company's Brooklyn offices one recent morning. 'It's something we can build way crazier, amazing flavors. We've barely scratched the surface.' Blank Street raised $25 million in a Series B round of funding at the end of May, bringing its total funding amount to $135 million, a spokeswoman for the company said. The company says it is profitable. It earns an estimated revenue of $149 million annually, a person familiar with the business said. It has plans to eventually expand its 90 global stores to locations such as Miami and Los Angeles. 'The influencers are all drinking it, like it's just a part of their lives, so you feel like you got to try it,' said Madison Ginsberg, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Florida. To help its marketing team think about customers it serves, global creative director Mohammad Rabaa says his team creates fake personas with character-building mood boards around each new matcha drink, to 'market it in a hyper-specific way.' Blank Street's strawberry-shortcake matcha persona is, for example, 'an East London Girl who listens to Katseye,' Rabaa, 29, said. 'The Aries latte is someone who hangs out in McCarren Park, is from Brooklyn and feels, to me, more Charli [XCX].' A new cookies-and-cream matcha drink is 'a Lower East Side Dimes Square boy.' The team hasn't decided what kind of music the character listens to yet. The company has had huge success with some flavors, like banana-bread matcha. Others haven't done as well, like a grapefruit cold-brew spritz Freiha described as 'the most rogue one we've ever done.' (The character for that one was 'a Dua Lipa listener who does summer in the Amalfi coast. Very bougie,' Rabaa said.) In other words, Blank Street is trying to sell a lifestyle. 'You're not just getting matcha, you're getting a vibe,' said Alexis Taliento, a 23-year-old Brooklyner. Taliento said she preferred Blank Street to Starbucks, whose menu she finds overwhelming. 'Blank Street is clean, new, fresh. It's super aesthetic.' Adri Thomas, a 22-year-old public-relations professional originally from Chicago, said she associated Blank Street as a hot New York spot because she had heard about it from YouTube vloggers. When she moved to New York last year, 'Blank Street was literally one of the first places I went, before I even had any of my furniture.' A Blank Street matcha drink can have 25 grams of sugar—just at the daily suggested limit for women by the American Heart Association. Maddi Klancher, 23, works in financial technology and said she bought matcha from Blank Street four to five times a week, mainly out of convenience. She has had better matcha from other places, she said, but at $7 a drink, Blank Street has lower prices. Blank Street has an invite-only membership, where baristas give customers access to pay $22 a month for up to 14 drinks a week. The program has a long wait list and has fueled online frenzy. Maddie Kane, a clean-energy researcher in New York, said she had jumped the line by gifting herself a membership through the website, a loophole that's since closed. 'I hacked my way into it,' Kane, 25, joked. Alessandro, 16, said she'd always thought matcha was 'disgusting,' but enough peer pressure from friends had convinced her to try Blank Street's. 'Strawberry shortcake tastes like a cake,' she said. 'I had a headache after.' Write to Chavie Lieber at Stablecoin Legislation Will Juice Demand for Treasurys—to a Point Fed Holds Rates Steady and Keeps Door Open to Cuts Waymo Wants to Bring Its Robotaxis to New York City QXO Proposes $5 Billion Acquisition of GMS What UnitedHealth Can Do to Revive Its Battered Stock
Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jeff Bezos's Yacht Designer Just Listed His N.Y.C. Condo for $3.5 Million
Before it became a luxury condo with a screening room, spa access, and just 65 luxury residences, the building at 140 East 63rd Street was better known as the Barbizon Hotel—a towering pink-brick refuge for young women seeking art, education, and stardom in the big city. The halls of this storied landmark have long been filled with ambition and elegance. Grace Kelly stayed here. So did Candice Bergen, Sylvia Plath, and Liza Minnelli. More on that later. Now, a particularly chic apartment in the reimagined Barbizon 63 is hitting the market for $3.5 million with Chris Kann and Jennifer Ireland at Corcoran—and it has a creative pedigree of its own. The corner unit belongs to internationally acclaimed interior designer Tino Zervudachi, whose client list ranges from Mick Jagger to the Rothschild family. He's also the design mind behind Jeff Bezos's $500 million sailing yacht Koru, and his interiors have been chronicled in glossy Rizzoli coffee table books. Naturally, his Upper East Side home is as refined as his résumé. More from Robb Report The Chevy Corvette Was America's Sports Car. Now With 1,250 HP It Wants to Be America's Hypercar. California's First Certified Passive Solar House Lists for $6 Million A Purple-Pink Diamond Just Sold for a Record $13.98 Million at Auction RELATED: Valentino Cofounder Giancarlo Giammetti Just Listed His Manhattan Penthouse for $17.5 Million Perched on the 11th floor and wrapped in sunlit exposures, the two-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath condo spans 1,644 square feet and has been fully renovated and dressed to Zervudachi's exacting standards. Every room is awash in natural light and thoughtfully appointed—down to the gallery-like entry hall that sets the tone for the dramatic art and furnishings within. The 26-foot-long corner living room is a particular standout, with open views down Lexington Avenue and windows from casement windows. The kitchen is tucked away with a small dining area, sleek European fittings, and a bold black-and-white striped marble floor. The secondary bedroom is cleverly designed to double as a media lounge and offers its own corner vista and a full bath, while the south-facing primary bedroom also has an en suite bath. RELATED: You Can Rent Carmelo Anthony's Former Fifth Avenue Pad for $43,000 a Month While Zervudachi's reputation is global and the apartment exudes his classy signature style, the real intrigue may lie in the building itself. Originally opened in 1927 as a residential hotel for women, the Barbizon was a radical concept at the time—part finishing school, part fortress. Male visitors were banned from the residential floors, but residents—a curated crop of young women deemed 'the right kind of girl'—were offered a lifestyle few apartment houses could match: soundproof music rooms, a rooftop garden, a hair salon, and even afternoon tea. The Barbizon quickly became a magnet for the ambitious, glamorous, and erudite—a young Joan Didion once called it home, as did Cybill Shepherd—who came to the Big Apple to pursue their dreams. The legacy of the hotel's many amenities lives on at the Barbizon 63, where residents enjoy full-time doorman service, a private dining room and library, and access (via separate membership) to the Equinox gym and pool housed inside the of Robb Report The 10 Priciest Neighborhoods in America (And How They Got to Be That Way) In Pictures: Most Expensive Properties Click here to read the full article.
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
How Do You Build a $500 Million Coffee Chain? By Selling Matcha to Teens.
At 3:30 p.m. on the Upper East Side of New York City, Emma and Maddie, both 12 years old, are sipping matcha lattes at their usual after-school hangout: Blank Street Coffee. As the name suggests, Blank Street made its name in coffee—launching in 2020 with a Brooklyn cart, and then, with the backing of millions in venture capital, rapidly expanding with stores across the city and beyond. Coffee snobs balked at the brand: The chain's automated espresso machines and aggressive expansion plan struck them as inauthentic to cafe culture. But now the company has caught a fresh stride by leaning into sugary, colorful, caffeinated, TikTok-friendly green tea.
The Sun
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Sixties TV bombshell unrecognizable at 91 as she's spotted on rare day out in NYC – can you guess who?
A FORMER Hollywood sitcom glamour puss has been seen out and about in New York looking as chic as ever. The sultry 60s TV star - who is still turning heads aged 91 - dazzled viewers on the much-loved show in the 1960s. 6 6 Her notable comedy character was originally meant for Jayne Mansfield who declined the role. Ginger Grant actress Tina Louise is still the embodiment of glamour to this day. The iconic sitcom star played movie legend Ginger on Gilligan's Island from 1964 to 1967. Set on a deserted island, she starred on the show about a colourful group of shipwrecked tourists. The Hollywood pinup was known for her stunning figure and red hot hair. The Golden Globe -winning actress starred in the 1958 movie God's Little Acre and bagged the award for New Star Of The Year. The star has been spotted in New York City's Upper East Side and still wows with her svelte figure and chic appearance. Wearing skinny jeans, a black top and jacket, she accessorised with black trainers and dramatic dark shades. With her shoulder-length red hair still on display, the actress looked fit and healthy as she casually ran errands around Manhattan carrying a brolly and floral shopping bag. Tina, who starred alongside Russell Johnson, Dawn Wells, Bob Denver, Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer and Alan Hale, Jr, is the last surviving Gilligan's Island star. Tina Louise plays Ginger Grant on Gilligan's Island The programme ran for three seasons and went onto make the 1977 movie Rescue From Gilligan's Island and The Harlem Globetrotters On Gilligan's Island. However, Tina turned down the roles alongside her original cast members. She starred in classics including The Trap, The Hangman, Day Of The Outlaw and For Those Who Think Young. Not forgetting The Wrecking Crew, The Happy Ending, The Stepford Wives and alongside Stephen Baldwin, Burt Young, and Joseph D'Onofrio in 2017's Tapestry. The former Ginger Grant star said previously about playing the role: 'I always enjoyed my work. I left a Broadway show to do it. "The CBS casting director Ethel Winant called me at the theater, 'Do you think you could play this Lucille Ball/Marilyn Monroe-type of character?' I said yes. "I got there and the director wanted it to be a more sarcastic kind of character. And so, then I didn't even want to work on it anymore. I told him I wanted to quit. "The head of the [CBS] organization called me into his office and he said, 'We hear you want to leave.' I explained to him that I didn't want to play it and I didn't think the show would be successful, changing the original idea of the character." She continued: "You just can't go into people's homes and dress somebody up like a doll and then have her to be not nice. "So, he agreed with me and he got rid of the director after only a month, and he hired Richard Donner, who was fantastic. "He had a great sense of humor and then the writers started writing for what I was supposed to be doing and the show became a hit, and I enjoyed the part.' The actress became a tutor in 1996. She revealed in her memoir about her difficult childhood: "I didn't have hugs. I didn't have loving situations." She previously told fans: "I've been having fun doing press about my audiobook for the re-release of Sunday, my memoir written from my perspective as an 8-year-old. "It's really quite freeing and therapeutic to talk about it. The book is out now in various forms." 6 6 6
