People at the Core
From The Greenpoint Palace bar in Brooklyn, New York writers and bartenders, Rita and Marisa, have intimate conversations with an eclectic mix of people from all walks of life about their passions, paranoia and perspectives. Featured guests could be artists or authors, exterminators or private investigators, or the person sitting next to you at the bar.
People at the Core
Ready With a Go Bag: Writer Tyler Wetherall on the Notion of Radical Possibilities, a Life of Travel and Finding Home Anywhere
What does "home" mean when you've spent your childhood on the run? Tyler Weatherall, author of the memoir "No Way From Home," brings us into her fascinating journey from being the daughter of an international pot smuggler to becoming a respected journalist, author, and community builder in New York's literary scene.
Tyler shares how growing up with a father evading the FBI shaped her relationship with stability—living in 13 houses across 5 countries by age 10. Rather than craving permanence, she found herself unconsciously replicating patterns of movement in adulthood, arriving in New York with just "one red suitcase, a bed in a bag, and books in my backpack." This nomadic spirit initially served her well as a travel and beverage writer, but eventually led to a deeper question: what happens when you finally stop trying to leave?
The conversation explores the delicate balance between creative freedom and financial stability that most writers face. Tyler speaks candidly about how her relationship with New York transformed when she finally committed to staying, and how finding steady work actually created more mental space for creative pursuits. For anyone questioning traditional career paths or searching for community outside institutional structures, her journey offers valuable perspective.
What emerges is a thoughtful meditation on creating your own definition of normal when society's roadmap doesn't apply. Through hosting Sunday dinners, building a newsletter that connects literary events throughout the city, and embracing what she calls "radical possibility," Tyler shows how the very adaptability that was once forced upon her became her greatest strength. Her story reminds us that sometimes our most unusual experiences become the foundation for our most authentic lives.
No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run
Follow us on Instagram! People at the Core Podcast
Email us! peopleatthecorepodcast@gmail.com
From the Greenpoint Palace Bar in Brooklyn, new York, writers and bartenders Rita and Marissa have intimate conversations with an eclectic mix of people from all walks of life about their passions, paranoia and perspectives. Featured guests could be artists or authors, exterminators or private investigators, or the person sitting next to you at the bar. This is People at the Core.
Speaker 2:Okay, we are live and running, running, mama, that's exciting. Yeah, am I still doing the terry? I am doing the terry gross voice yeah, she does this, terry.
Speaker 3:This is a new thing for you. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1:I don't know you're whispering, it's soothing it is soothing, that's for sure, I agree and yeah, I know, okay, once we get moving, I will shift gears.
Speaker 2:I will be less self-conscious.
Speaker 3:Maybe it's because you have your headphones on. Maybe it's the headphones oh yeah, they'll do it, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I'm really in my head and in the mic Literally, yeah, yeah. Literally in my head, I'm speaking. Yeah, there's a level of consciousness or self-consciousness. I think that I didn't get before, when I wasn't wearing the headphones. Yeah, but here we are. Here we are, let's get rolling.
Speaker 3:All right, I'm ready, I'm excited Me too.
Speaker 2:It's a fucking gorgeous day out and we're in the nice, cool back room of the palace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's lovely and gorgeous day out and we're in a nice cool back room of the palace. Yeah, lovely to be here. Yeah, so happy to have you. This lovely voice that you hear is our guest for today, tyler Weatherall, who is a journalist and an author. We're going to talk about some of her books and whatnot. She's also an editor for 750 Daily, which is a drinks beverage magazine Some pretty cool stuff. I actually was introduced to Tyler through her newsletter Reading the City. As a producer of a reading series, she puts together this awesome newsletter that announces all the like literary events in New York and we'll talk about that because it's a fuck ton of work and I'm super impressed by that and appreciative. Thank you, um, so yeah, so let's let's say hi to Tyler hi, hi, thank you.
Speaker 3:So you want to whisper too, because she's whispering. Don't do it. Don't do it okay.
Speaker 2:Don't do it, please. Okay, we're normal, we're normal. I know I'm infectious, right or contagious.
Speaker 3:Contagious. Well, both Same thing.
Speaker 2:Adorable. Hey, yeah, so okay, we're just going to jump in here. We usually start out, so our podcast is people at the core, so, so, like the core of the person but also the core of the apple. Uh, we have a lot of guests who aren't originally from New York and we love to ask, like, their origin story and how they got to New York. And you have a particularly interesting origin story, uh, which you wrote about in your memoir no Way From Home, a memoir of a life on the run, and I know you've talked extensively about this memoir. But to just let our listeners kind of get a little synopsis of how you ended up in.
Speaker 3:New York.
Speaker 4:Basically, yeah, how you ended up in New York basically, well, ok, so those are like two separate, slightly separate things. I guess this like the sort of brief of the memoirs. My dad was an international pot smuggler and I grew up on the run from the FBI, and that's the story of the memoir. And he's a New Yorker.
Speaker 2:Oh, he is yeah.
Speaker 4:Okay, not living here any longer, but that's where he started his business. He actually started out on Wall Street. So he's like New York Jewish, like started out on Wall Street and then got really distracted by the way, more fun but still business oriented pop business and he ended up in California, which is where I was born. So, like the where are you from question is always quite complicated because I clearly don't sound like I'm from California.
Speaker 2:I was going to say the accent belies a different story.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's tricky, but like I am actually American. Then my mom was English and we ended up being raised in the UK. But like, how I ended up in New York was like I mean, I've been here now 11 years, so I ended up here really from like hearing my mom and dad's stories. They met in New York. My mom came over here when she was 16 as a model with Ford's Models.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 4:And she had married a 40-year-old film director who was American, who'd like picked her up from when she was still in school and they'd like eloped and got married and he'd got her into modeling. She'd ended up in New York modeling here and then she met my dad, um, so they were like at the sort of epicenter of 60s New York and just like their stories were so incredible of all the people they met.
Speaker 4:You know, my mom lived for a while in the Chelsea Hotel, uh, they were just like meeting everybody who was coming through, because my dad was in the pot business. Everyone wanted to get pot and they would turn up and come to him.
Speaker 4:So like you know, and Marley came through. They're like who are you going to meet? Are you going to meet my dad? So, like he has all these crazy stories and I grew up with them and I had this idea of this is where you come and find your people, and idea of this is where you come and find your people. Um, and from the youngest of ages, I wanted to come here and it just took me a little while to figure out how and when. And I actually came and looked around schools. When I finished was doing my undergraduate to do a master's here and didn't understand how anyone could afford it. As soon as I found out the fees where I was like I don't like, does not compute, does not compute yeah.
Speaker 4:I yeah, and that seemed like impossible. Um, and then, eventually, that that little itch, you know it doesn't go away when you feel it yeah, and I was working as a journalist in London.
Speaker 4:I had this memoir that I was trying to work on at the time I called it a novel because it was all still secret, um, and I was finding I wasn't making, I wasn't making any headway in in London and I don't, you know, I don't have connections, I don't know anybody. I didn't you know I had gone to an ordinary university. It's not like I had met people who worked in publishing and stuff. I I just felt like I kept knocking on a closed door. And I came out to New York for three months to do an amazing commission which was to sort of review a list of 200 bars wow three months to find a team and like get all these bar reviews together for this bar guide.
Speaker 4:Um, and some of them we didn't have to. You had to like figure out which of these bars was worthy of a review for this bar guide and, uh, just fell in love. I was like I can't. I tried to go back to London and it felt so provincial and so small, which isn't.
Speaker 4:London is my hometown and I love it yeah but at the time, like I was living in Bushwick and Aloft and like had never experienced like Brooklyn and I just couldn't go back and within six months I dumped my boyfriend, left my apartment and moved back out. I was like, yeah, I don't know what I'm gonna do for money. I don't know how I'm gonna make this work, and so much of the decision was based on on writing community.
Speaker 4:I found this like dream of a writer space called the Oracle Club, which sadly is no longer in Long Island City, and I'd stumbled upon it accidentally and had met real life novelists for the first time. I was like, oh my God, and everyone was so nice and I just I wanted to be there. I knew that was a place I needed to be and definitely was a huge part of the decision. That was a really long answer.
Speaker 3:No, I love it. It's a beautiful answer. I mean, I could agree with you on so many levels of that, and I think a lot of our listeners could as well. Just you know having that pull that you can't even really describe, that you're willing to leave everything just to come to New York.
Speaker 3:you know, and then, wow, bushwick. I mean, when I first moved here, I stayed with on a friend's couch in Bushwick and I was like it's been 11, 12 years and and I was like I've made a horrible decision. Until I came to Greenpoint and was like, oh, there are people my age that are writers and producers and you know doing all these things, but are you still so? Where are you now? Are you still in Bushwick?
Speaker 4:no, no, no. I think in my first, like few years in New York, I lived in I don't know like a dozen different places.
Speaker 4:I was always doing listings, projects finding short-term leases, not even on leases just here, for sometimes a few weeks, sometimes a few months, and I was traveling a lot because I was working then as a travel writer as well as a booze writer, so I was on the road in between, working then as a travel writer as well as a booze writer, so I was on the road in between. I basically had one red suitcase, a bed in a bag that I got from like whatever department store and I would have them, my like books, in my backpack.
Speaker 4:And that was me. And every time I moved I'd like tidy up my bed, put it back in the bag, get my red suitcase and like go to the next place. Years of that I love, I mean your childhood kind of trained you for this prepared you to be ready to move.
Speaker 2:I mean, we were just talking about you haven't committed to a couch, but you have a go bag.
Speaker 4:It's so. I find it like curious that it's so ingrained, because when I was a kid and on the move, and you know so I lived in 13 houses by the time I was 10 years old, in five countries. I never lived anywhere longer than a couple of years Often it was weeks or months, as my dad was on the run. Two different periods of being fugitives under different names. I hated it. Every time we moved, I didn't want to move.
Speaker 4:I catented my legs, I tried like tantrums. None of that worked. Obviously we were going to move and I, each time I found making new friends really difficult. And what? The fact that I became part of my identity. You'd think I'd be like settling down. Now I don't have to do that anymore, but it's something, the little tug of it's time to go.
Speaker 3:It's almost ingrained in you. Yeah, right. And I'm good at it now yeah, like you made me a travel writer.
Speaker 4:You can drop me anywhere in the world and I can figure out where to sleep and what to you know like I can find. A little community, I can make it work. Yeah, community, I can make it work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, that's amazing. Yeah, I mean I'm a little jealous in a weird way. You know like I in my life have pulled myself out of that unchanging start and that constant community of a small town where then people stayed and had kids and lived, you know, different versions of their parents' lives for generations and it always felt foreign to me, even though that was my only familiar and I knew that there was something else out there, a different way of living, and I felt disconnected and I felt like a weirdo that everyone no one thought it was weird, no one thought it was. I felt uncomfortable.
Speaker 4:I think that's almost harder, though, to be like here's normative life and everyone else is acting like this is just what is going to happen, and and then to still feel like you described that discomfort, the feeling like this isn't right for me. Why am I the only one? I think that's. That's much harder than to like. I grew up with a sense of like, radical possibility. Because my parents made radical decisions and, yes, there's downsides to that, but it does mean you feel like anything is possible.
Speaker 4:I think coming from you, had to develop that all for yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and I think maybe that kind of fostered the writer in me is like I'm constantly watching people, I'm like you think this is normal and I need to like, watch you to like maybe like understand that, and then the creative part, imagining the other worlds and the other possibilities that I only learned about through books.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and also imagining your yeah, imagining your own story, because so much of it is if we can imagine what we want. Next, of course, there's an enormous privilege to think in this way as well, and I recognize that, but oftentimes the first step is imagining how it could be better and then figuring out what steps you have to take to get there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that changing and evolving constantly, right, you know the will and the drive to make that. And the want to make that happen.
Speaker 2:You know your wants change with every experience, and the more you build and the more you know, you shift in the desires and it was like trying out, for example, like trying out careers. It's like they're not failures. It's learning what I don't want to do what I can't do? I can't sit in an office I can't be in fluorescent lights, okay, well, that means I have to check that one off the list.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I love that. That's such an. I feel like why did no one talk to us? When they talked to us about careers advice, like what environment do you want to be in? Like right, it was sort of all this like what are you good at? Yeah, you're right, not necessarily like how do you want to spend your days? Do you want to be alone? Do you want to be with a team?
Speaker 2:how does it make you feel yeah, do you when you walk into a room?
Speaker 4:in regularity or do you prefer like lots of different things happening and it's you know these questions?
Speaker 3:yeah, but you know, I think that we ask ourselves that out of unhappiness in their careers and their families and not really ever giving the chance to change it.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean because, as also as you get stuck society and and and Americanized culture, you are picking a path, you are picking a road and you do the things to follow that road, and if that road is not right for you, we're ingrained with fear of veering off of creating new pathways.
Speaker 3:Or failure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's called failure to veer off the path where it's not. It's just taking a different route and there's not a roadmap. We've talked about this a lot Like for our generation generation. There aren't really a lot of examples of how we're living without classic careers and 401ks right?
Speaker 4:well, my, my husband and I just recently made the decision not to have, that we don't want to have kids and we want to be proactive about it.
Speaker 4:We wanted to really consider it and not just kind of slip into it just to make a choice. And now, faced with the very exciting what does life look like if we're not going to follow this? Still not easy, but something of a roadmap of having children and then you have those early years and then they go to school. There is something of a stages you pass in moments to mark um and traditionally raising children traditionally raising children.
Speaker 2:Thank you of stages you pass and moments to mark in memories To traditionally raising children. To traditionally raising children, thank you for.
Speaker 4:Yes, exactly, and I feel like now it's up to us to figure out what those markers are for us personally rather than ones that we're going to adopt socially, or from the culture that says you now need to do this and this and this and this Okay, we've thrown that out the window.
Speaker 4:What does it look like? Instead? And I think something you said before I really liked, in line with the sense of failure, is you try something out for a while. It doesn't work, that's not a failure. I feel like that is such an important thing to take on board. Same with relationships. If it's a three-year relationship, then you break up at the end of it. That Like same with relationships If it's a three-year relationship, then you break up at the end of it. That was a successful three-year relationship.
Speaker 2:I mean hopefully if it all has been kind and gracious. You learned what you want, what you don't want, what your triggers are, what things you're willing to compromise on and what you're not willing to compromise on, and it just gives you more information and tools to move forward. You know it's a process, it's not a destination to move forward. You know it's a process, it's not a destination Life Right.
Speaker 3:Well, you know what's the Dan Savage quote to you, like what the relationship thing is like? You just always leave your partner better than they started. Exactly, and that's a very beautiful thing because hopefully they've left you in the same boat, exactly, you know. So I think they all are. You know, I think of all my, for the most part, failures are successes in the sense of I've accomplished something, I succeeded in doing something. Maybe it didn't end the way I wanted it to, but that's okay, you know.
Speaker 2:Because life is not linear, yeah, and we're like so fucked up, like beaten into this with at least I mean mean I don't, you didn't have our americanized education system, but that was kind of just wrote of how you go right, of it's just progression steps, it's a ladder and it's a forward and it's accumulation to of titles, of credentials of benchmarks rather than a gathering of a basket of all of these different experiences and knowledge.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or maybe that's just us telling us that to make ourselves feel better. It's totally possible. Touche so back to you. Living in New York, though. So you said 11 years. Is this the longest that you've been in one place, then?
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So how does that feel?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and especially in the apartment, because I've still, like, spent months at a time in Europe and on the road during that time, but I've been in my apartment now for seven years. And that's the longest I've ever lived anywhere, and I, my, my husband, used to um panic every time the contract came up to be renewed. Uh, because he knew that I would be like, well, we can't possibly sign that.
Speaker 2:But you committed to him as a person.
Speaker 4:I committed to him as a person. But he was like where do you want to go? Like, yeah, I'm willing to go wherever you want to go, but where do you want to go? Like I'm willing to go wherever you want to go, but where do you want to go? And I think, because at various points you're going to move back to England. I really wanted to be on the road for a while as well and, you know, at some point I realized that actually staying still for a minute, and especially in a city like this, where the more you give, the more it gives back.
Speaker 2:Agreed.
Speaker 4:And the more you give, the more it gives back. And I think a lot of the time that I was here, as much as I fell in love with the city and it's been incredibly good to me and I've made some amazing friends, I always sort of had one foot in, one foot out and during those years I found it much harder and the point where I realized I had to stop trying to leave without an idea of what to do next and actually maybe staying still for a minute would be quite nourishing and just sort of settled into living in this great apartment in Flatbush right on the corner of the park. It's gorgeous, tons of lights on the six-story.
Speaker 2:It's a corner apartment.
Speaker 1:It's a great apartment Walk up.
Speaker 4:Now we have a lift Nice.
Speaker 2:Laundry in the building. It really exists. It's an absolute gem.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the point where I settled in and stopped trying to leave and stopped having one foot in, one foot out like New York just felt like it opened up to me. And this was only like a couple years ago of my time here and I felt like my relationship to the city changed, my relationship to the people here, my community changed.
Speaker 3:I just had to like commit to it.
Speaker 2:And now again I'm like ooh, maybe it's time to you know, but I think New York is a place that has so much movement where it doesn't feel still and stagnant like other cities can Part of. Like a constant movement of people. It's very transient. And then you know reed and I love greenpoint because we have our core stability in our community, but we walk 10 minutes in any direction and there's like a whole nother world, yeah it's a different beast and like we ground ourselves in our little neighborhood and then we go out in the world or we're trying to go out more in the world.
Speaker 4:I would. I would have been part of your neighborhood. One of my many houses here was 110.
Speaker 2:North Henry. Oh, right on the corner.
Speaker 4:Yeah, loved it, here it's yeah, it, it.
Speaker 2:It nourishes me and and gives me that, that stability I need, and I think that you choosing New York one, you can move around and have all of this like inspiration and and uh stimuli, but you can go and you can come back and then you can have this like landing base, that that feels grounding enough to nourish you to then fly out and travel and do all of your wanderings and and investigations yes, it's much easier to I've found to leave when you know you've got something to come back for.
Speaker 4:It stops the very floaty, floaty feeling of what am I doing here which I've definitely experienced at many points in different places around the world of like, okay, hang on a minute, what? What am I doing exactly? Yeah, which is why I became a travel writer is because it was an answer to that question.
Speaker 2:If places around the world of like, okay, hang on a minute, what, what am I?
Speaker 4:doing exactly, yeah, um, which is why I became a travel writer is because it was an answer to that question. If, anywhere I was, I could justify it more or less by well, I'm gonna write about it, maybe it has a purpose, it has a direction.
Speaker 2:Purpose yeah, right, which I I think is, I think is key, for, yeah, I, I've been looking for that. When we talk about, um, having a little social anxiety, I'm like, oh, I can go out and seek opportunities and networking if I have an activity, if I have a purpose, if I'm a bartender, I can be social because I have one, literally a barrier, but also I have a purpose and activity and then I can talk to all sorts of random people. I can go to a networking event if I'm putting it on me.
Speaker 4:Showing up as a guest just like random gives me such anxiety yeah, yeah, right, um, I mean, I've definitely felt that with um doing the newsletter, which was a way I've met so many people, yourself included through doing and I don't know if I could have made those you know, met as many people, made those connections, grown community in a really beautiful way if it hadn't been through this, you know, service that is just a weekly thing that I put together and anyone could do it.
Speaker 4:That is just a weekly thing that I put together and anyone could do it, and it somehow makes it easier to have a reason to talk.
Speaker 4:Absolutely and then you get to. You know, like Crystal, who you had on the show last time, and I've met her through doing it and she's brilliant Like I might not have met her otherwise. She had me to read, but I think she found out about my books through the newsletter. I'm not entirely sure she had me to read, but I think she found out about my books through the newsletter. I'm not entirely sure. And yeah, it feels like a conduit to be able to open up a conversation in a really natural way without there being like Hi, I'm a writer too. Would you like to be my friend?
Speaker 2:Right, hi, I have a podcast. Would you like to be on? Yeah, but I was just going to say with the newsletter.
Speaker 3:It sounds to me, just listening to you talk about it, it's like your own personal garden, right, your way of planting yourself in the community by saying not only am I going to be a part of this community, but I'm going to help water it and flourish it. Do you know what I mean? Instead, of just stepping in. To me it sounds like you're grounding yourself in it.
Speaker 4:Like you know, participating yeah, I love that because it's something I thought about a lot is how I was here for many years as a writer and I first moved here when I. That first time I moved here was also because I'd just signed to a literary agent here and I felt like, oh, this is where the momentum is for me. But there were many years where I was before the book got published and then years in between and I never did an MFA. So I arrived knowing three people in the city and then, through the writing community and at the Oracle Club, I met some more people. Then, through the writing community and at the Oracle Club, I met some more people. But I very much felt like an outsider and there were many years of going to literary events and standing there in my cup of plastic wine plastic cup of wine rather and wanting to have a literary community and not being entirely sure how to find that and I'd never done workshops, I'd never done any of those things.
Speaker 4:I took classes. I'd never done workshops. I'd never done any of those things. I took classes, but I always felt like I was on the outside and I didn't know what I contributed. And I oddly enough, didn't start the newsletter to make me feel like to change that. It really was because I had a list on my phone and I didn't understand why it didn't exist. Organize it and.
Speaker 2:I may as well share this.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was like, well, I kept looking for on websites someone must list events going on in New York in the book world and it didn't exist. So at some point I was like, okay, well, I guess I'll just put this on sub stack and maybe some people would will find it helpful. I didn't anticipate the ways it would do what you just described of, of ground me in the community here in a way that's just been so meaningful for me and, and I I hope, useful for other people as well. Um, it's been lovely absolutely I.
Speaker 2:I mean, we started the reading series in part to hold ourselves, I think, a little bit accountable, but also to connect, because neither of us have MFAs, we don't have that traditional community and you know, taking workshops, you know, okay, like we're not putting money out there I don't have a disposable income to do that type of work and I want to meet people and I want to be inspired and that was one of our motivations and it's given us so much more than we had anticipated. And yeah, and, and your newsletter, having producing this reading series, I know how much work you put into just doing that newsletter and I don't I, I don't know if the like the lay person understands all the work you do between research and you're tagging people, you're doing hyperlinks.
Speaker 2:We'll put it in the show notes, y'all um check this out because it's it's really amazing and you're so humble about it. Um, yeah, and, and as somebody who is doing that, we really appreciate getting it out, because it's not just for, like, selling money or selling drinks at the bar which, yes, we need to do but it's creating a bigger audience for our authors who are sharing their work, like one of the motivations as establishing writers is creating your platform, creating your fan base and getting people interested and having conversations. And we're not running workshops, but we're creating a space that strangers will come in and ask our authors about their work, and that's so awesome, and then they get excited, they feel pumped and amped to create more and to share more.
Speaker 4:It's just like yeah, and also like I mean all of, and then I think about how hard it is to be a writer, like the odds are really stacked against us and the rewards are, you know, a hugely inspiring way to spend your time and being involved in the world of readers and books and literature, and there's so many rewards that are intangible.
Speaker 4:But it's hard, especially if you're looking to make it a career, like it's. It's a very difficult undertaking and I just think how do we make it as nice as like nourishing a place to hang out, like if we're all going to be doing this and we're all who knows what levels of success and there's the connection between success and and and like tenacity and skill isn't direct, like so many people working so hard and it just takes this like magic combination of great work at the right time and enough tenacity and enough luck and and all these things to line up perfectly for you to break through in some way. That's significant, and so the rest of us are just making the work and sharing the work where we can.
Speaker 4:So let's make this as good and nourishing a place to hang out as you possibly can, because we don't know what else we're going to get from it yeah, and in that way, then let's have really wonderful reading series that bring together writers and for us to talk about each other's work, and let's support what the other ones are doing as much as possible, because that that's it like yeah this is probably where we're going to be, rather than you know, we all can hope that the book will write a book and the book will break out and it might make things a bit easier, but most likely, where we're, what we're doing is more or less what we're going to be doing yeah, I mean, you're totally right.
Speaker 3:I, you know, I've seen, I've been here about 11, 12 years now, moved here directly from school to become a writer to to become a famous New York writer.
Speaker 3:I mean I remember my parents' faces looking at me and being like, yes, you're going to be this huge, successful New York writer and now I own a bar. You know and like, and that's okay. I still write and I and I and I get to experience all these things with other writers and and I have this community that I never thought I could have. But you are, you are right. I mean, when it comes down to it, there is this little bit of that voice saying this this is where we're at. Yeah, you know, I'm not getting any younger and my writing's not getting any better and and I and I like it and I have people that like it.
Speaker 3:But it's just interesting how the dream sort of adapts and changes and I think that's a good thing me too.
Speaker 4:I certainly. When my first book came out and I I I knew so little about the industry and I was in such a hurry because I really did think it was going to change something more tangible. And it does it. It definitely does change things. It makes a lot of things easier as a writer, like pursuing freelance work and it's and it and also the work changes you and the process of being edited and, um, the process of publication and working with an editor, like all of that is brilliant. But it's not what I had imagined in my head as, like a naive young writer of this book of, like you know, when this comes out and it's going to do all the and actually that in some ways was harder than I guess, difficult. So you've got to also be ambitious and you've got to go for it.
Speaker 4:But having these outsized ideas of what it is made those other more craft-based pleasures less real, whereas I think, if we can be like you know, I'm going to put all my effort into publicizing this book and I'm going to do everything I can and that I'm going to enjoy all of that process, because I don't know if it's going to impact sales at the end of it right because you can't, you don't, I'm rambling no you're doing great.
Speaker 3:No, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:You know you can't control that bit and I think almost it's easier now once I'm like oh no, if this is the pleasures I'm going to make the most of it. Right, I'm so much less of a hurry to write the next book when do you think you're gonna be done? I'm like, oh, I don't know, like five years yeah, it's about the journey baby yeah yeah, it's not the book.
Speaker 2:At the end, yeah, oh, how fun. Uh put your your bread and butter or your consistent thing. You are an editor at uh 750, right yes, how did you get involved? I mean, rita and I are in the beverage world um how did you get involved in that?
Speaker 4:yeah, um, so I was doing travel writing um full-time and one of my gigs actually the one who sent me to New York to do the bar guide. Well, I'm sorry, beg your pardon, it was before that. One of my gigs was doing city guides and I was doing city guides around the world and the company had a whole.
Speaker 4:This ages me they were the first app-based travel guide, and so they had all this funding to make this app, this travel app. But no one knew what they were doing and they were sending me to all these places to do these city guides. It was great, it was such a good gig and I was doing all the travel writing on this site and this company, the one that sent me to New York, approached me and said could you do the same thing for bars? I was like I know nothing about the beverage industry, but sure I mean, mean you don't say no? And what year was this? How long ago was this?
Speaker 4:I guess this would have been about 2013 okay, so you, you were having a lot happening in the booze world around. Then you kind of were yes, you know the the kind of cocktail renaissance had been happening since I guess 2007 was PDT and this big shift was going on in the drinks world and a lot of people were taking notice and there was a lot of work as a journalist available during that time if you were tapped into it. So I ended up making that transition to booze writing, largely because there was more work than travel writing.
Speaker 4:And it was kind of adjacent. I've never been a person who does tasty notes. I don't have a very good palate. I was more writing about the kind of cultural intersection of drinks, so how the drinks industry impacts the world around it. So, like an early piece I wrote was about closed loop cocktails and how you could have a more sustainable bar and how that was lying, that we're trying to reduce waste in the bar industry. It's like those sort of pieces. So I wasn't like you know, I don't know anything about how things taste.
Speaker 2:Got you. So it came from like culture and research and all of that.
Speaker 3:Fake it till you, make it baby, you're like as long as you're not sober, then you'd still. That's fine too. Too, though, I mean, now there's a surge in mock cocktails, you know, like sobriety is so.
Speaker 2:yeah, I started my restaurant bar in 2013.
Speaker 1:Right, yes.
Speaker 2:So I was doing, in preparation, lots of research, making connections, investigating spirits and all of that.
Speaker 4:So yes, I'm very familiar with it was a very good time to be in that world. It was really exciting. There was a lot going on and and and then seeing. Because it was my it was always adjacent travel, so I was going to these cities that were just developing their cocktail industry yeah, and everyone was really excited excited, and it's also kind of a democratization about it as well because, unlike so much with the wine industry, where there was expectations for a certain degree of scholarship behind it, often with cocktail culture and with spirits culture, enough passion, you could really work your way into it from that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it was a wild blast a bit and it was a beautiful time where the bartenders are starting to become famous bartenders right you could be a famous bartender, like it was kind of right after that transition of famous chefs right these rock star chefs. And then we start to get like I mean what? Who was the the rescue show?
Speaker 2:our rescue job, our rescue, but.
Speaker 3:But you know what I mean like we're starting to get these rock star famous bartenders. So at the time it was very exciting.
Speaker 2:I mean I remember working on the boat at that time. Milk and Honey, pdt, dead Rabbit, all of these they're writing books, they're setting the stage and they're setting standard and precedents that are guides for the rest of, honestly, the world, which was pretty cool, and to be here in New York, kind of at the epicenter and well, at the periphery of it myself, not at the epicenter.
Speaker 4:But I mean London, picked up from New York, certainly but there was this amazing cross sort of communication and collaboration going on and osmosis of trends, and I think what was interesting about that time as well was there was social media, but it wasn't where we are now, so trends moved a little bit slower.
Speaker 4:And that was quite nice because you'd see something happening. You know, someone had this innovation in a bar in New York and then it'd come to London, and then at some point you'd go to Athens and there you know, whereas now things just move around the world so quickly that it's even hard to report on trends, because almost as soon as they happen they fizzle out again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely it was. Yeah, more organic and more traveled by actual humans. Yes, actual palates sharing conversations at the bar hey, have you been to do? You know what they're doing there? And then the irl of it.
Speaker 4:yeah, I mean, so many of my stories when I was working freelance were based on whatever story I'd just written and the bartender interviewed to be like, do you know about so and so doingso? Doing this, I'm like, oh no, I don't, and that would be my next story.
Speaker 4:So it was always being seeded by bartenders and people in the industry who are such advocates for other people in the industry, and so they would wax lyrical about this other person doing this other thing who's actually in competition with them, but they're so excited they don't mind. It was a nice place to be like. I spent years as a celebrity reporter and I I found that a little bit less of a. That wasn't as nice a place to hang out or people were like championing each other and being really supportive of what the other one is doing, and then I moved over into like booze and travels like, ah, this is better.
Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I think, don't't you think that it's a little in the, not in the in the developing literary world where you really supporting and promoting their neighbors who they, they think are doing parallel or even better work as far as sustainability and production or quality of product, or have generations and are, like, really excited about the story of the family and the producers and all of that?
Speaker 4:I think that those are some parallels between the literary world yeah, I love that I hadn't thought of that, but you're right and spending time in spaces where people are excited enough about what's being made, whether it be a book or a really beautiful artisanal tequila. I'll take that. That's that. Those are places I want to be. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:I'm super jealous.
Speaker 3:Are you?
Speaker 2:I am. I'm like fangirling and a little jealous I'm like can we do a day in the life of, or like maybe a month in the life of, a summer, summer in the life a little Prince and popper? Can we trade spaces for a?
Speaker 4:minute. Well, I mean, if, if someone can just help me out with the amount of. I get sent booze samples, but I don't drink a huge amount myself, so I I end up with my my office I am right, looks like a bar girl.
Speaker 2:I got you.
Speaker 4:I got you we'll need to do one of these.
Speaker 3:We do sessions yeah absolutely that's fine, I you know I have a friend in l. He was from new york. Well, we're from minnesota but moved to new york, got an mfa, moved to la. I haven't thought about this in years, but that's what he did. He ended up writing about bars and drinks and cocktails and when I went to visit him the whole apartment was just filled. And you know, we're in our 40s now. It's like we can't live that bakowski lifestyle anymore. It's just not becoming or like I can't survive it. You know there is such a thing as a two-day hangover.
Speaker 2:Oh, my god, yes, right I just like I I take a little sip and I'm like, I'm like I can't eat, I'm sick to my stomach I'm like I know gross like it's not even headaches I, I mean actually the sipping.
Speaker 4:Sipping tequila or sipping mascarade for me is the most sustainable way to drink same me like and some people just don't understand that at all. But like I can do that and not get a hangover yeah but if I have two glasses of wine, I mean, if it's really nice wine, I'm normally okay, but like that will give me a hangover and so like just pure spirits, without any sugar, without anything else liquor of the gods, we're talking like mama, you're preaching yeah, exactly my little side of bubble water.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, stay hydrated.
Speaker 4:It's really nice to hear like to have this conversation also because there's part of me you know my author life that feels like because I'm not spending every day in the literary world that you know.
Speaker 4:Writer peers are teachers and they or they're writing full time, or they're working for a journal or they're doing. I've often felt like and I think that's part of the outsider headspace is, I'm in this one world as a journalist and I'm also an author and I found it. Sometimes I feel like, oh, it doesn't count because I'm not doing it full time.
Speaker 4:Right and so it's really nice to have this conversation where I'm like, oh, it all counts, it's all part of it yeah. And it feeds into it, and it feeds into it, and there's correlations that you've raised that I hadn't really thought about.
Speaker 4:And it helps make peace a bit with having not chosen to pursue a full-time literary career and I was freelance for years, so I was teaching previously and trying to make it work with a sort of portfolio career and I might end up going back to that at some point, but right now it does feel possible to do both.
Speaker 4:And for years and years and years because I didn't want to take a full-time job, because I didn't want to give up that writing time and that freedom. And at some point during the pandemic I ended up just so broke and I'd lost all my writing clients freelance clients as a travel journalist because everyone had shut out their magazines, all the in-flight magazines had gone, all my copywriting gigs for travel companies had gone and suddenly I had no work yeah and I was tired too.
Speaker 4:I've been freelance for 15 years. I was like I'm exhausted. And I was freelancing for this company, 750 daily and they're an amazing team and my boss there, the editor-in-chief, is fantastic and and she, there was a job coming up there and I went for it and it the alleviation of stress of how I was going to pay my bills, which had been like a constant through the entirety of my time in New York.
Speaker 4:That is the thing of being a New Yorker is you're just constantly thinking about money and sitting at my desk crying and like the times, like when I knew I had paid for it. I'd worked really hard to buy myself time to work on whatever book I was working on at that time, but I couldn't focus because I didn't know where next month's rent was going to come from, so I'd suddenly start pitching ideas to try and make some money to get by, and actually having a job in some ways has helped me.
Speaker 4:Every morning I do a couple hours writing, and in the afternoons, when I finish work, I do a couple hours, and I have to tell my brain that this is not work, this is play, so I don't feel like I'm just at my desk forever but it has removing the stress has created more time yeah than. I lost previously from just like anxiety.
Speaker 3:I, that's lovely to hear, I mean to hear you say that is also very inspiring as well, because you know, I think about that all the time. Which career path well, what if I just did a little bit? All right, just enough to this keeps me sane in this category, which leads me to have more time in this category, which that's beautiful finding that balance is and it and, like we said before, like it it also will change yeah, yeah like it's moments of equilibrium yeah, yeah
Speaker 2:and it all changes and just to be present and express gratitude. It's chill for a minute. You're like. I know this is temporary and I think that is part of the thing too that gives us that skill set that maybe our previous generation didn't have to handle instability, or to handle change, or to handle like left field moves and like all of that, that we just live in a constant state of recalibration.
Speaker 3:Well, I was just gonna say, I mean to go full circle here and then we'll do some questions is celebration well? I was just gonna say I mean to go full circle here and then we'll do some questions, is to just be prepared to have your metaphorical go bag yeah mentally, physically right I mean, that's what we're doing garden shit and the metaphorical go bag you were I'm not even high. It's weird. I love it.
Speaker 2:I'm usually pretty high coming in with some bangers, babe all right, let's um what do you guys think how you feeling random?
Speaker 4:questions. I'm in, let's go a few questions and thank you so much, though. That was so lovely I mean, just this is such a nice way to spend time very inspiring too.
Speaker 3:I must say thank you um, we got a no-go.
Speaker 4:It didn't feel appropriate I'm glad there's an uh that we can yeah we can veto do you want to hear this one?
Speaker 2:okay, okay. What skills does the ideal host or hostess have? Are we hosts, hostess? I feel like that's a good one for you too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I mean that's kind of okay so then I guess we can bounce this off of you. I think a host hostess needs to anticipate all of the things that could go wrong. I think host, host, okay, of an event or a podcast or a reading series, all the things that could go wrong and try and like preemptively prevent them, which is impossible, but to make people feel comfortable and special.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's sweet. I think I was going to say I think the number one for me is just to like shut the fuck up and listen and have that person be seen and um just absorb.
Speaker 3:If there are moments where um a guest and I'm talking about at the bar too- a guest on the podcast or a bar to let them feel safe and comfortable, and and if they're struggling, as I'm struggling right now with my words, to have someone be able to help pull it out. Absolutely, you know, and that's about it. I've been shut the fuck up.
Speaker 2:I've been working, I just had a moment of like a little build me up. So I've been back to bartending and I have a new thing and like struggling with doing some late nights and 21 year old kids, and so I've been trying to approach it more like as an anthropologist of like how do they dress, how do they dance, how do they drink, all of these things. But when I do the daytime shifts is with a quote, unquote real people, real conversations. And I just had like a little like you know, build me up moment where I'm like I'm really good at this.
Speaker 2:I'm a good bartender because I see people and they tell me these stories. I create a space as a host to make them feel comfortable and try and anticipate their needs and be an ear and pick up whatever specific things that I think that they're trying to convey or what they might need. And when I'm able to do that and get that positive response like that for me is so fulfilling. And a lot of times as a writer, I'm not fulfilled. I don't get feedback or I don't get exception, or I don't have anything and it's very solitary. And so to have those little wins of like hey, my experience, my life story, my ability to read you and your story and bounce something off being the older bartender that the 20-somethings can't do. I can come back with something relative to you and like that builds me up.
Speaker 3:I think, as a host, that was a terrible question, okay.
Speaker 4:That's my honest opinion. I mean, I loved your answers.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, tyler, Tyler, this is this is this is the card that we meant. Okay, here we go. Where does your model of a normal home life come from?
Speaker 4:Oh, wow. I mean from I know, for all the wildness of my childhood. Growing up, my mom created a incredibly like, loving and beautiful home for us. I think it's something that people sometimes get the wrong idea about what our childhood was like. My dad was incredibly loving and is a wonderful man and a wonderful father. He just chose a profession that put us all in danger, but he it's the clickbait.
Speaker 2:It's a clickbait title of your childhood.
Speaker 4:Totally, and my mom who raised us. They divorced when I was four, so really every sense of home comes from her and we had big family meals together. She was a wonderful cook. We'd all help out in the kitchen. We laughed a huge amount and all the time and I that was home and so, for all the craziness that might be happening on the periphery, in many ways my, my upbringing to me felt often there were. There were some difficult moments, for sure, and and certainly dad's incarceration was really hard, um, but the actual day-to-day home life was beautiful and so I think, when I think about like my model for what home looks like.
Speaker 4:When I came to New York, certainly, and I didn't know anyone and, um, I lived in this loft space in Williamsburg for a minute and it was a huge space, it was gorgeous, and we would throw Sunday dinner parties and what do I know how to do? I know how to cook a Sunday meal um, english like Sunday roast and so I'd cook for whoever would come. I'd invite my three friends that I knew and tell them all to bring one other person, and then every week I'd like come back again and bring someone else, and so these dinners would grow and then eventually I met a good friend who became one of my lifelong dearest best friends and she and I would host together and they became the way that we would create a sort of family space and people would turn up like where did you buy this chicken? I'm like I roasted this chicken.
Speaker 4:I think a lot of people in New York don't have enough space to cook.
Speaker 2:Or oven because they're illegal apartments.
Speaker 4:Totally yeah, exactly so this was like replicating a mealtime around the dinner and no one starts. Everyone sat down and you know it definitely made it feel like home for me here.
Speaker 3:Yeah so it's people.
Speaker 4:It's people and shared experiences.
Speaker 3:Marie TV, tv, tv TV well, I just mean in the sense of like what I modeled in my mind of what normalcy was so it is fabricated. Scripted is what you think normal is no, I mean no, I'm just thinking in my head of like just being a young child and not really understanding Normal. Normal, you know, I'm a preacher's daughter, you know. Yeah, weird things happened, and so what I thought was normal not that I'm saying it was, because it wasn't was the TV families, all of them, I guess.
Speaker 2:You know 90210,10, I guess, was a big one or Full House or any of those I mean. I mean Brendan and Brendan and Brenda, like their parents, like they were pretty normal, they're from.
Speaker 3:Minnesota and they moved to Beverly Hills and I, I guess what I'm saying. I'm. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the question. For me, the question is you can interpret it, however, you want. What did you find normal in family? And for me it was. I didn't so therefore, what I saw, I thought was normal. You know what I mean.
Speaker 4:Well, there's the experience of normal, like there were definitely things that I knew was unusual about my family. I mean, namely, you know the big thing, yeah, um, but also that you know, as a single parent family, my mom had spent from 16 until 35 living in the us, so we were culturally american, even if we were you know, she was british so we had, you know, american style pancakes and we didn't do a lot of the kind of she hadn't watched the English TV shows or things that were like culturally informal as a British person necessarily.
Speaker 4:So like there are things that set me apart and I'd go to other people's houses and they, you know, growing up the era that we did, there were some parents, some kids of single parents, but not as many, and so most often it'd be two parents and they would have a much more formal kind of dinner experience or the kids would eat separately to the parents and there would be, and I would see, other families and I'd be like I see that we're not like that but, what we're doing looks like way more fun right.
Speaker 4:I'm okay with that and I'm gonna like adopt this model instead of whatever that is because I really like I'm like felt that sense of like what's happening around me, feels like that's not me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly Exactly how about you dear.
Speaker 2:I guess home for me was always my grandparents home which was the most like consistent, stable people. Feeling smells food Like in my people. Feeling smells food Like in my subconscious heart. Head home is my abuelos, like I grew up with them. It was also the most consistent place I had. Yeah, that makes sense, and so yeah, home and normal, that was my example.
Speaker 3:It's beautiful. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, well, now my home is here we are recording in my home, you know. This definitely feels. I feel like I never had children, but my employees are my children and you know I come here every day with my dog.
Speaker 2:Your extended family are the customers.
Speaker 3:The customers and yeah, so I've kind of made my own weird, non-normal home.
Speaker 4:I do think like I don't know if you guys would agree, but I do think there's something great about our 40s which I hadn't anticipated. I was really worried about turning 40, because I felt like you're over, kind of the other side of the thing, but things like that where you're like, oh no, I get to choose now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a choice. Yeah, being in charge and not having to achieve someone else's I don't know goals or or.
Speaker 3:checklist Expectations.
Speaker 2:Expectations, and in some ways it's a little daunting to ourselves because now we're beholden to create our own fucking destiny.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, right, exactly.
Speaker 4:This is going to be a little over fucking momming.
Speaker 2:The existential malaise has been hitting hard lately. But, yeah, choosing, choosing our community, choosing our home, choosing our friends, choosing our work. I'm doing things that I was like is this taking or is this giving? And I'm not independently wealthy, and sometimes it comes at a monetary cross and sometimes it comes at a monetary like cross. But my emotional, my mental state, which then affects my chosen family, my husband, my dog, is more important to me. Right then, all of the should, ofs and could ofs and things and yeah. I love it yeah all right, how's everyone feel?
Speaker 4:great, excellent, thank you this is a lovely way to spend a Sunday. I know, I thought that was a beautiful way to end it, absolutely yeah we'll just here, we are all right.
Speaker 3:All right. Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate it and taking the time and coming out here well, thank you for.
Speaker 2:Of course I'm so excited this worked out. I've been wanting to know more of your story and chat with you and just share this space and conversation. I appreciate that, thank you. I got my Terry Gross voice.
Speaker 3:I know you did. She's ending with her Terry Gross voice. I heard myself shift. There could be worse. There could be worse voices. Okay, all right.
