The Sunday Digest 035
Let your life proceed by its own design.
Welcome to The Sunday Digest — a free Sunday newsletter featuring long (and some short) reads, original columns, things I’ve saved over the last week, relaxing playlists, episodes releases, exclusive product drops, and more. Yes, you can reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you. Or, if podcasts are more your speed on Sundays, we’ve got that too.
Sunday Read: How Online Ceramics Keeps Its Cool
by Max Berlinger for New York Times Style
If you’ve been a recent listener of Retail Therapy on The Sunday Scaries Podcast feed, you know that Dead & Company has been top-of-mind for the last year or so. Well, at least for me. Since spending days on end binging live Grateful Dead recordings throughout lockdown, the rise of Dead & Company in my listening rotation only seemed natural.
What also seemed natural was a pivot in style to something more Dead-y. Or, maybe more John Mayer-y. I’m not going to overthink it because I don’t think Jerry Garcia would’ve wanted me to. But in that change of style, I found a brand that’s been at the tip of everyone’s tongue lately: Online Ceramics. And what they’ve done as of late gave them a very justified write-up in this week’s New York Times.
Here’s an except:
Shortly after John Mayer started performing with Dead & Company, the current iteration of the rock band the Grateful Dead that features some of its surviving members, fans began sending him T-shirts. “These really thoughtful packages,” he recalled recently, “like welcoming me to the neighborhood.”
The Grateful Dead has a rich history of bootleg merchandise made and sold by its obsessive followers. But one shirt among the gifts sent to Mr. Mayer stuck out from the rest. It featured a blooming rose and bones and came from two designers based in Los Angeles named Elijah Funk and Alix Ross, who ran a small business called Online Ceramics, which trafficked not in clay vessels but T-shirts and accessories.
“Before I could even attribute what I was looking at to Online Ceramics, I was reacting to it in a way that was like, ‘Oh, this is too smart to be dumb,’” Mr. Mayer said.
Despite its name, Online Ceramics does not, in fact, sell clay objects. The name is a red herring of sorts, creating an “if you know, you know” status for the brand from the jump.
Read in full here.
The Sunday Haiku
Rain, windows open,
A gloomy Sunday to watch
some Harry Potter.
New Episode: The Adult Friend Break-Up Letter & The Post-Brunch Meditation
This week's shortened episode (sorry, was under the weather all week!) features a letter you can send to those adult friends who just don't seem to be working out, and a meditation for anyone who might have overindulged at brunch.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts are found.
Things I Saved This Week
This Week’s Playlist: Retro
Something about the fall season makes me want to listen to ‘80s music more than other seasons. It’s probably the bass lines from every New Order song if I’m being honest. But when “Dance Hall Days” hits the shuffle while you’re driving to pick up a sandwich from the bakery down the street? Chef’s kiss.
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