Snippets – Week of Jan 27, 2025

Okay let's try this again (after 67 weeks off!) – Hopscotch, podcasts, skiing w/ snowshoes, sauna, Oscars, ADHD.

📸 = Saturday 7am from the summit of Mount Snow, VT

Okay! It’s been exactly 67 weeks since I sent one of these out, so this project is going great! 🤦🏻‍♂️ But we are going to resurrect it! I’m gonna shoot to do this 2x/month (!!) which is ambitious, but I wrote it down as a goal in that little notebook I carry around (Field Notes, bro) so I trust I can make it happen. (my trick this time around is gonna be “timebox it to no more than 1 hour”)

Why resurrect? I’m working on some cool stuff! And I like the “build in public” stuff!

UPDATES ON WHAT I’M WORKING ON

Hopscotch Labs (my new full-time job, Co-Founder/CEO) – Started a new company. Raised some money. Hired some people. We have a team of 5.5 people working on an app called BeeBot which we pitch as a “Marauders Map for AirPods, emcee'd by an AI Dj whenever you're wearing headphones”. If you want to take it for a test drive, sign up for the VIP Beta (if you read this substack, you’re VIP IMHO) and join the Discord. (there’s <150 people testing it right now).

Stockade FC (Hudson Valley D4 semi-pro soccer team) – Our 9th season kicks off in May, and we’re (finally) gonna be back in Kingston this year after playing two seasons in Poughkeepsie while our stadium was being renovated. We switched leagues… actually we helped to start a new league (!!) called The League for Clubs. Long story (old league was toxic with bad management/leadership). I’ll write a blog post on it sometime soon. Oh, one of our guys got drafted to play in MLS for NYCFC (that’s a big f’ing deal for a small club!)

Street FC (“building the biggest football club on the planet) – Street FC is still grinding away. I’m not involved day-to-day any more, but am Co-Chair of BoD and working with CEO (Stephen Francis) regularly (Stephen is A++ btw). We’ve played more than 10,000 games across 12 cities and I think we’ve done $1M+ in just *gameplay* revenue at this point. This is def a fun biz / cool asset to be involved in as we get closer to World Cup in USA in 2026,

Foursquare –  Foursquare is still doing its thing. I haven’t been involved day-to-day since June 2021 (3.5 years! I stepped away a month before Sammy was born) but I’m still co-chair of the BoD. Someday I will write a book (ha!) or at least a lengthy blog post about how hard it is to watch the company do it’s thing from the outside. TBH, one of the reasons I wanted to resurrect this Substack is because my buddy Robbie fwd’ed me something *I wrote* back in 2023 and I found it valuable (cathartic?) when he re-shared it with me (so thx Robbie!)

“When a founder leaves company, it’s like someone’s soul leaving their body” — overhead in a conversation w/ another founder

btw, I can’t tell you how much I struggle daily with that fact that Foursquare is still “Foursquare being Foursquare” (ambiguity is intentional). At ~15 years it’s like 32% of my life, which has been an equal share of blessing vs. curse on my mental well being. IMHO, it’s very challenging to be a founder of something and lack closure.

<btw, I’m at 27 minutes already… and I told myself I’d cap it at 60>

QUOTES OF THE WEEK

“We need internet-free communal spaces” - Anne Lembke on a NYT podcast on “digital drugs” (aka: phones, social media) and how do we actually disconnect from these things. “When the ability to choose is removed [er, to choose whether to look at your phone vs engage IRL], it changes the state of craving”. I keep seeing this theme come up over and over and over again –– whether it’s Zach Klein musing on Bluesky (whoa, really cool that I just copy and pasted this link in)…

… or Robbie (same buddy I quoted above btw) talking about Bathhouses (sauna / cold plunge) being a place where people can find something spiritual (outside of religion) in an environment that is non-alcohol / non-digital. FWIW, Robbie ran an amazing “Culture of Bathing” event a few weeks ago in NYC which brought me and Chelsa to the Othership bathhouse in NYC and their 75-person dance-party sauna with a DJ (!!). Sidenote: I’m really into sauna right now.

“New ideas need old buildings” – This is an old Jane Jacobs quote I heard on this fantastic fantastic fantastic podcast called “The War on Cars” and specifically the episode about Cities + Fashion. (ps: I listened to this episode 2x it was so good/rich) There’s a whole section in this podcast about how when small shops (watch makers, shoe repair places, bodegas) move out, the spaces often get consolidated/combined into bigger spaces that only bigger businesses (banks, Target, H&M, etc) can afford. Same for when new construction goes up – when a big new apt building goes up, there’s not 6 new storefronts built on street level, there’s one (and one that’s so big, in terms of sqft, that it can only be filled by a big tenent, like a bank, Target, H&M etc)

SNIPPETS WEEK OF JAN 27, 2025

<in the interest of time… I only have 14 mins left! … I’m gonna skip this part>

PERSONAL STUFF / PARENTING

• We have 3 kids. Our youngest is 3.5 and she is knee deep in the “terrible 3s” or “threenager” stage or whatever you want to call it and it is HARD. Not just dealing with her, but dealing with how her tiny little brand of CRAZY affects our 7yo and our 8yo. It’s a lot for us, and them, and the whole household.

• On the other hand she said this at breakfast and it made me smile all morning…

• It is January, and that means we are knee deep in ski season. We go to Mount Snow, VT *every weekend* as both our 7yo ad 8yo are in the Ski Development Program (aka: “Devo”). Via (8yo) has turned into a SICK skier – she skis with confidence and style and swagger and it makes me so proud. Mars (7yo) went from “never wanting to ski” to skiing like 15 days so far this season. His turns look good, he can ski in control. I grew up skiing every weekend w/ my parents and my brother and sister (Black Mountain, New Hampshire). It bring me so much joy to do the same with my kids (and we all stay in a family house w/ my sister and her kids, and my brother and his kids). It’s a grind (commuting the 4 hours to VT and back every wkd) but it’s awesome.

• Inspired by a dad-buddy of mine, I hiked up the mountain (Mount Snow, VT) this weekend at dawn (6am!) and rode down. It was a 45 minute hike up (in the dark, with a headlamp) and a 5 minute ride down (on the smoothest just-groomed corduroy I’ve ever seen in VT) and I am now a convert of this “skin up, ski down”, even tho I was snowshoe’ing up and snowskate’ing down. (btw, I have 20 days on the snowskate this year vs. 1 day on my snowboard — will write more about this sometime)

  • Will definitely be hiking up this weekend too. Gonna try to bring Chelsa too. Stay tuned. (I’d love to get Via to hike w/ her snowboard before the end of the season too!)

CONSUMING

• 📺 Silo. Me & C went from hating this show to not being able to consume enough of it. We’re all caught up.

• 🎥 Conclave. Watched it because my mom loves “pope stuff”, but loved it.

• 🎥 Substance. Demi Moore should win the Oscar, but this shit gets weird once her character disappears.

• 🎥 Babygirl. So cringe we could barely watch.

• 🎥 A Real Pain. It was hard to watch as Kieran Culkin’s character was such a dick, but he was great.

• 📻 This Doechii song is a banger. She won a Grammy last night. I only first heard this song in… November? Reminded me of mid-90s hip hop (like Tribe, DeLa style banter). Speaking of which…

• 📻 De La Soul. All of it. Mars got a record player for Xmas and I gave him a copy of Three Feet High and Rising on vinyl and just hearing it again made me realize how much I loved De La Soul. Bulhoone Mindstate is one of my fav albums of all time.

• 📖 Darkest White (51% thru) — Story of Craig Kelly (GOAT backcountry snowboarder who died in avalanche). I’ve had this on my bookshelf for like 6 months — trying to finish this before I go on a backcountry ski trip in late Feb (!!). Grew up with photos of this guy on my wall, and I have one of his boards hanging in VT. Got to visit his memorial deep in Canada a bunch of years ago (click to read caption):

  dens

  

  A post shared by @dens

  Since my last update, um, 67 weeks ago!)

• 📖 Ministry of Future — finally finished this!

• 📖 How to Blow up a Pipeline — didn’t finish it, but I get the point.

  
  … not to get to all dark / dystopian, but the USA is such a shitshow right now (Trump) that after reading these it is hard NOT to see how we avoid the style of violence / terrorism that pops up in these books.

NOTES ON WORKFLOW

• Okay, I kept this to just about 60 minutes. Feels good to bang one out. Cathartic to share things I’ve been thinking about (and to create a digital artifact – this newsletter! – about it)

• Btw, realized recently* that I probably have some form of ADHD, and my notebook has been a stable/reliable way for me to “quiet my head” when it’s racing (aka: I write things down so I can deal with them later). I think the need/desire to write this newsletter is another form of that “quieting my head” so, hey, thx for being along for the ride on my crazy train.

  • * “realized recently” = We got Mars a neuropsych when he was struggling in school and it really opened my eyes to how his brain <> my brain are prob similar. Neurodiversity FTW!

• Hey if you have feedback on this – format, content, whatever… send me a note! @dens.nyc on Bluesky.

• … actually if you made it this far, send me a note. Wondering if anyone even reads these! ✌🏼

  • ps: it feels good to write something again!

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