Love, Hate and What I Ate in February 2024
In this post, I go to Sweden, finish a song, subscribe to a podcast, and do a thing. Multiple things, even! Here's a list of stuff I loved, hated, and ate in February!
Love
Nothing But Thieves in concert! In Sweden! Ever since NBT started teasing their current album with an alternate reality game, I’ve become slightly obsessed. Not obsessed enough to buy tickets to any of their two Amsterdam concerts on time, apparently, so if I were to catch them on this tour, I had to go somewhere else. For the uninitiated, their album "Dead Club City" is anchored around an eponymous fictional place. The songs cover several storylines happening in or around it. A counterpart to Nothing But Thieves is an in-universe band called The Zzzeros that has a couple of songs on the record, and before the concert starts, you listen to Dead Club Radio. This tour is highly acclaimed so I won't waste the space gushing about the concert - so let's address Sweden: I could've bought tickets for the Berlin concert, but who wants to go to Berlin in February? Stockholm is, however, always a good idea.
My new website! For a while now, I wanted a personal landing page that I could actually use. I’m always doing too many things - I produce podcasts and videos, co-host a podcast, dabble in making music and some people still know me as a photographer. In order to gather all of it in one place, I wanted something more complex and customizable than a Linktree. Then Bento showed up and I almost pointed my domain there, but then Linktree bought it and it was rumored they we going to sunset it. So in the end, I made it using Carrd. If you need a static web page, Carrd is probably the best bang for the buck. What do you think?
Mizuno - Wave Mujin TL GTX. I'm grateful for the current trend of wearing outerwear as streetwear (it's called gorpcore, look it up)! Finally, I can wear hiking and running shoes to alleviate my lower back pain without feeling out of place talking to a client. Thanks to this trend, outerwear also started looking better. The choices that would've made you look like somebody's dad going fishing fifteen years ago now make you look younger. Or at least that's what I tell myself because I'm old. Anyway! I needed waterproof shoes for Sweden, and I'm in love with my non-waterproof Mizuno Contenders, so after realizing that I hate Timbaland boots, this was the logical next step. GTX stands for GoreTex - these sneakers are waterproof. The Michelin rubber sole, apart from looking extremely cool, is made for trail running. Unfortunately, these shoes aren't stable on ice - but they excel in mud or on any other kind of mixed terrain. I was also lucky to find a last season's colorway (Mojave Desert / Snow White / Peach Melba) at a discounted price. If you're looking to buy these, please note that Mizuno runs small - their size chart says I should be wearing EU 43, but I wear EU 44.5.
Never Post. Never Post is a podcast about the internet, hosted by Mike Rugnetta and produced by Charts and Leisure, that launched in February. You might know Rugnetta from the time he hosted the PBS Idea Channel on YouTube, or if you're an audio nerd like me, you might have listened to his sadly-no-longer-updated podcast called Reasonably Sound. He also hosts and produces a cyberpunk RPG podcast called Fun City. I'd been looking for a podcast about the internet ever since "Reply All" folded, but hardly any could fill that void (Endless Thread did get close, though). Never Post sounds like a show produced by people with a background in radio and podcasting, and I mean that in a good way. The show is divided into different segments produced by different people and has so far covered the way influencers speak, creators leaving YouTube, what happens on social networks after their users die, the epidemic of posting disease, and the disappearance of tween fashion. Each show starts with a newsy segment covering what happened in tech and creator spaces between two episodes. If you're a paid subscriber (like me!) you get access to numerous extras, including a podcast where an AI model of Rugnetta's voice reads you Wikipedia to put you to sleep. The podcast aims to be self-sustainable, through paid subscriptions and ad spots which is a hot (and smart) new thing after the podcasting bubble backed by billion-dollar companies finally burst.
I did a thing! And now I have photos! Okay so, I finally finished producing a song I wrote last year in spring. After getting it mastered, I realized I wanted to promote it better than my previous releases. However, I haven't really worked on my artist persona so far - I never considered myself as good of a musician or as successful of a songwriter. I realized I needed photos for my social media content, used that as an excuse to buy a smoke machine (I'm totally going to use it more than once, right?), gathered a couple of props, and then called up my photographer friends Eniko and Andor. Being on the other side of the lens felt weird but I'm happy with the results! To witness my attempt at a music career, follow me on Instagram.
Hate
Genocide.
And what I ate
Swedish food! Okay, many love to hate on it saying that it's basic. It may be basic but it's done extremely well. From a store-bought jar of pickled herring with carrots and allspice we ate in one sitting, all the buns and baked goods, fried fish at Storstugan Hellasgården, to a dinner at Freyja, a rooftop restaurant and cocktail bar I'd been looking forward since I discovered it existed. Freyja did not disappoint, with big portions of its contemporary take on Swedish food: we had lumpfish roe with buckwheat crackers, beef tartare with smoked juniper mayonnaise, potato dumplings with mushrooms and roasted cabbage broth, squid with grilled cucumber and salt-boiled potatoes, and shared a cold milky dessert with warm and sweet cloudberries. Cloudberries are one of my favorite fruits in both savory and sweet dishes, so of course I had to have a cocktail that contains them, too - Stockholm Syndrome is made of cloudberries, gin, apples, Campari, and dry vermouth.
Another special shoutout goes to Omnipollos Hatt - a craft brewery with amazing yet quirky pizzas - my favorite so far contains tomatoes, provolone, pancetta, chilli flakes and VANILLA-MARINATED APRICOTS. Thank me later.
February in Sweden is also a month of semla, a yeasted, cardamom-flavored bun filled with almond paste and whipped cream, originally only eaten on Fat Tuesday before Lent. Nowadays, cafes and bakeries make it even more decadent, amping it up with nut-praline and a zhuzhed up cream. And they also make it for weeks! Which I thought was great, but then I realized you can't possibly eat it too often. That didn't really stop me, though. Now I'm good until next year!
Literally everything in Station Bergweg. Station Bergweg is a new food court in Rotterdam, housed in a disused train station in Rotterdam Noord. It's hip but everything is so good. From pintxos and cheap cider to a wine bar with oysters, a brewery, the best French-style pastries I've had since Paris (which have already appeared on my socials way back when they were in their old location), and a burger place that smokes its own pastrami for lunch sandwiches (as well as a meatless pastrami alternative made of celeriac)! Plus they have pinball machines. What used to be the elevated railroad track on top of this railroad station is set to become a park, akin to New York's High Line.
Until the next monthly roundup, take care, be well, eat your greens and make something cool.