This Warriors Crisis Is Real, And Change Is Coming

By Jay Torres

Ann Killion in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Though Bob Myers won’t admit it, this is exactly why he was ready to leave last year. He could see the unraveling coming, the painful dismantling and uncomfortable choices that lay ahead.

I was talking to a colleague who is also an NBA fan. He and I agree: Bob Myers saw something that not necessarily everyone else did. The 2022 championship was an unexpected surprise and the chances of getting another one with the current roster was not likely. So he planned his exit. Smart man.

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Scott Galloway on Elon Musk

By Jay Torres

Scott Galloway on the Pivot podcast on the lack of governance at Elon Musk’s companies:

I think the key issue here and what I would describe as the learning or the takeaway for young people, and that is the most important thing you can have in your life is people who love you and serve as guardrails. And to have people idolize you is different than having people who love you. And I think the guy has a lot of the former and not a lot of the latter, and as someone who has participated in interventions, they don’t invite powerful, important people to those interventions. They invite people who love you, and this is turning into a cautionary tale along the lines of Tony Hsieh, because you have a guy who, as far as I can tell, is living alone, doesn’t have a close relationship with a romantic partner or his children, and is, quite frankly, just fucking off the rails, and if, at the age of 52, You don’t have people in your life who can sit you down and you listen to, cause you know that it’s not that they got rich because of you. It’s not because they think you’re just so fucking awesome and can land rockets on two surfboards. It’s because they just full stop care about you. If you don’t have that, especially men, you literally can lose it all.

I’d keep an eye out for this Musk guy.

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A Cultural Critique of the Tesla Cybertruck

By Jay Torres

Victoria Scott for Road and Track:

From all of these eras, certain models—from the exotic to the every day—seem to be perfect windows into our country’s ego and id; they show what it values, and what it fears, at the moment of its release. The ‘57 Chevy, with its vast expanses of gleaming chrome—and its ads full of perfectly-trad-beautiful gleaming white smiles and white faces—became shorthand for the rock n’ roll Fifties; the stainless-steel Delorean DMC-12 and the unreliability underneath its gleaming sci-fi exterior came to represent the hollow futurism of the Reagan Eighties.

Which neatly brings us to the Tesla Cybertruck and the fraught present.

Such a sharp piece on how we ended up with a car like the Cybertruck being an actual vehicle.

We saw one for the first time the other day. It is a big vehicle.

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The Choice Is Yours

By Jay Torres

San Diego Padres owner Peter Seidler died this past Tuesday. From Joe Sheehan’s newsletter contrasting Seidler and Oakland A’s owner John Fisher.

Peter Seidler and John Fisher were both born on third base. One decided to steal home, and the other decided to just steal.

I don’t follow the Padres as close as the Chargers or the Warriors, but I admired what Seidler tried to do in San Diego.

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Laguna Beach 92651

By Jay Torres

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I’ve always loved driving, especially along Pacific Coast Highway. I took the above picture back in 2004 (on my Powershot A40) once I discovered this amazing stretch of highway between Newport Coast and Laguna Beach. I’d go on this drive often, usually for fun or to clear my mind.

Thanks in no small part to shows like The OC and MTV’s Laguna Beach reality show, I became fascinated with the thought of living here. The storylines and staged or not staged drama of the shows were just entertainment, but it was fun to hear and see the characters go to various spots in Orange County. Ones that my roommates and I often sought out. Heck, I even bought a skimboard after watching the kids do it on the show.

Back in March, we closed escrow on a townhome in Laguna Beach. Now almost 20 years after this picture was taken, it is almost unbelievable that I get to call this place home.

My wife and I are homeowners in Laguna Beach. If you would have told me that I’d be married with two kids, a corgi, and a home in Laguna Beach, the married with two kids and a dog are completely plausible. I would not have believed the Laguna Beach part.

It’s been almost 7 months since we closed and moved in and it still feels unreal whenver we drive into Downtown or drive that same stretch of highway to Trader Joe’s or the kids’ schools.

Who would’ve thought? Not me that’s for sure but here we are now.

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New York’s Best (Fake) Steak House Opens Up

By Jay Torres

A week after the listing was posted in March 2022, Mr. Jalali, now 21, said, “A couple walked in like, ‘We’re here for the steak.’” The roommates turned them away, but their listed phone number rang off the hook. The friends toyed with the idea of opening a real restaurant, and Mr. Walz, also 21, built a website with a waiting list.

This sounds like something I would’ve done in my mid-twenties.

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