The Daily Valet. - 2/26/21, Friday

✔️ Clubhouse Expands Fast

Friday, February 26th Edition

Cory Ohlendorf, Editor in Chief of Valet.

So ... what are we streaming this weekend?

Cory Ohlendorf , Editor ⋯ @coryohlendorf

Today’s Big Story

Clubhouse Is Growing Fast

And a wave of startups and tools have sprung up around the popular audio app

Have you checked out Clubhouse yet? Are you as addicted as everyone else? Forgive the semi-cringey question, as I know the app is only offered by invitation and currently only available on iPhones. I was fortunate to score an invite from a reader of this very newsletter (thanks Jay!) and have been enjoying it for the past few weeks.

The 11-month-old app’s popularity—invitations are now being sold on eBay—has set off a mad dash among investors, and spawned competition from Twitter and Facebook, which are experimenting with similar products.

The intimacy of Clubhouse’s format, a cross between a conference panel discussion and a radio call-in show, has proven incredibly appealing. According to The Conversation, they’ve tapped into the age-old appeal of the human voice. You can drop in on a room where celebrities, influencers and thought-leaders speak freely about what they’re into at the moment. You can join a theme room, like the jazzy speakeasy where users change their avatars to black-and-white portraits.

Kevin Roose, the New York Times’ technology columnist, says that the app is speeding through the usual life cycle seen with social media apps. You know the one where it goes from addicting, to mass adoption to a cesspool you feel you need to escape. But he hopes the platform survives, “if only because it could create a more thoughtful, less outrage-driven alternative to the social networks we’ve been typing into for the last decade and a half.”

Earlier this week, co-founder Paul Davison said the service reached 10 million weekly active users, meaning its user base has blossomed fivefold in a month. And the analytics research firm App Annie reports Clubhouse reached No. 1 at Apple Inc.’s App Store in more than 30 countries, meaning it is now a more popular download than Instagram, TikTok, Zoom or WhatsApp across cultures, be it South Korea and Japan or Germany and Italy.

According to WIRED, new users are arriving on the platform with ideas about how to make it better, or how to maximize functionality with existing features. And now a wave of startups, features, and tools have sprung up to create an ecosystem about Clubhouse. We should probably start a room and talk about this.

↦ Beware: “We’re naturally more persuadable by hearing somebody talk to us than reading something,” says a benevolent Clubhouse user who helps people avoid scams.

$15 Minimum Wage Hike Dies in the Senate

It’s the first Biden policy to get blocked in the Senate, but it won’t be the last

President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill may wind up a little lighter as a result of a Senate parliamentarian ruling Thursday evening that an increase to the minimum wage can't be part of the legislation that also includes the $1,400 stimulus checks.

Here's what that means: The House of Representatives plans to vote on the package Friday or Saturday, and it will include the pay hike, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted Thursday. However, when the legislation reaches the Senate, it will need to be removed to follow certain rules because of the way the bill is set up to pass.

While the Democrats are in control of the Senate, they don't have the necessary 60 votes needed to pass the package as is, so instead they have made use of budget reconciliation—a parliamentary tool Congress can use to pass legislation with a simple majority as long as it affects the federal budget. But Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough (a nonpartisan official who decides what legislation is eligible to be included in a reconciliation bill) just ruled that it cannot be included.

This is Biden's first major policy defeat. And a reminder of the difficulty he'll have passing his agenda through the Senate, where on most votes he will need to win over at least 10 Republicans. Not a single Republican backed his push to gradually raise the federal minimum wage, which has been set at $7.25 since 2009, to $15 by 2025.

↦ FYI: Washington state has the highest local minimum wage in the country at $13.69 an hour, and in January Seattle became the city with the top minimum wage of $16.69 for most workers.

Japan Is Building a 175-Acre Smart City

It will be a testing ground for technologies like robotics, smart homes and AI

Just before the coronavirus pandemic hit, at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show, Toyota announced an ambitious plan to build an entire city in Japan called “Woven City” as a showcase for futuristic tech. Despite everything that's happened since that announcement, they just broke ground.

Built from the ground up on 175 acres of land at the base of Japan's Mt. Fuji, the modern city will have three classes of streets: one for automated driving, another for pedestrians and a third for users of personal mobility devices. A fourth type, for autonomous delivery vehicles, will run underground.

Toyota has commissioned Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, who designed the 2 World Trade Center in New York City and Google's headquarters in California, to plan the layout of the city. According to the Japan Times, it will be a “living laboratory” where it will test autonomous vehicles, personal mobility, robots, smart homes and artificial intelligence in a real-world environment.

The residents, who are expected to move into the Woven City within five years, will live in smart homes with in-home robotics systems to assist with daily living and sensor-based artificial intelligence to monitor health and take care of other basic needs. But despite the high-tech homes, planners say that promoting human connection (via parks and a large central plaza) will be essential to the city.

↦ Dig Deeper: Get a closer look at the city's plans for a glimpse of what the Woven City will look like.

Dunkin’ Now Sells Avocado Toast

A moment of silence for the once trendy breakfast

If you like avocado toast, get it. Enjoy it. Heck, share a picture of it. But don't get it from the chain formerly known as Dunkin’ Donuts.

The breakfast food spot, which dropped the word “Donuts” from its name two years ago as part of a bougie glow-up strategy, has recently added avocado toast to its Spring 2021 menu. The move, which, as Insider notes, arrives at least five years after the dish's mid-2010s peak, serves as yet another sign that millennial culture is on death’s doorstep.

According to InsideHook, the once-glamorous avocado toast has fallen from its trendy perch. But maybe that's natural. We're no longer eating out and enjoying leisurely non-masked brunches. We're not Instagramming perfectly-staged highlights from our lives.

We've now lived through a global pandemic. We've seen things. And this sad excuse for a luxurious breakfast just isn't cutting it. Good avocado toast, with it's luxe plating and sprinkling of micro greens could never cost three bucks. So this simply won't be good.

In Other News

Other Things We’re Talking About Today

What you bought in February

Building a watch collection

This eulogy for Fry’s Electronics

Your Weekend Pairing

The United States Vs. Billie Holiday + a Stinger Cocktail

Andra Day, the Grammy-nominated singer, took a gutsy turn in Lee Daniels’s biopic of Billie Holiday, and Vulture says it could easily nab her an Oscar nomination. That's likely because she immersed herself not only in an emotional and mental education on Holiday’s life (lapping up every video, recording, book, and interview), but a physical one, too. She took up drinking for the first time—a lot of gin and bourbon—and started smoking cigarettes.

After all, that's what this movie, now streaming on Hulu, is all about. It's a chronicle of the persecution visited on the peerless jazz vocalist in the 1940s by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and its commissioner, Harry Anslinger (played by Garrett Hedlund). The thrust of the film is valid, and horrifying even now—perhaps especially now, when we’ve gained a deeper understanding of America’s racial history. But some critics have said that the film is a bit too long, and can skew a tad melodramatic. But I'm going to check it out for the music and the style.

↦ Your Pairing:Why not drink like Billie? The Stinger is a legendary pre-Prohibition cocktail—an unlikely combo of white crème de menthe and cognac shaken and served up—that was a favorite among high society. And Billie Holiday was known to toss them back regularly.

What We’re Buying

Todd Snyder's Champion collaboration is popular for many reasons. The fit and fabrics have been upgraded, but the construction is done the old fashioned way—built to last and always comfortable. Now's the time to treat yourself because the designer just slashed nearly 30% off the ultra-soft hoodies, sweatshirts, sweatpants and tees. You won't regret saving on a classic staple like this.

↦ Get It $138 / $99 by Todd Snyder + Champion