Ace Bailey, Utah Jazz, and the Great American Export Nobody Asked For By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Mid-Atlantic The Utah Jazz—an oxymoron wrapped in a mountain-range logo—have reportedly set their sights on one Ace Bailey, the 17-year-old New Jersey phenom whose wingspan is longer than most EU parliaments manage to…
The Man Who Sold the World Twice: Dean Metropoulos and the Global Art of Buying Low, Selling High, and Never Actually Eating the Product By the time you finish this sentence, Dean Metropoulos will have bought another legacy brand, slapped a gluten-free label on it, and flipped it to a private-equity firm in Luxembourg for…
A Corpse in Tap Shoes: How Beetlejuice the Musical Became London’s Latest Exorcism of Global Anxiety By L. Marchetti, International Desk, Dave’s Locker LONDON—On a damp Tuesday night in Covent Garden, tourists queued past a souvenir shop hawking fridge magnets of Big Ben and Brexit jokes to enter the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, newly refurbished…
**Stagecoach 2026: America’s Most Patriotic Export Since Diabetes** From the dust-choked Empire Polo Club in Indio, California—where the grass is imported and the authenticity is exported—comes the latest installment of America’s most profitable cultural imperialism: the Stagecoach 2026 lineup. While the rest of the world grapples with actual problems, country music’s premier festival has assembled…
HEGSETH: A VERY AMERICAN CIRCUS TAKES THE WORLD STAGE *by our correspondent in the cheap seats, watching everyone applaud the fire* From Berlin to Bangkok, the name Hegseth is now being pronounced with the same slow, puzzled vowels usually reserved for American cheese slices—something technically edible yet culturally baffling. Pete Hegseth, the Fox News weekend…
In Singapore, where efficiency is a national sport, citizens can now board a flight, vote, and buy durian at 3 a.m. using nothing more than a QR code and a stoic expression. Half a planet away, Estonia—population 1.3 million, mood perennially Nordic—has turned its entire population into de facto e-residents, allowing anyone with a passport…
Afghan Asylum Seeker Holiday: The New Global Tourism Niche Nobody Ordered By Cassandra Vex, Senior Correspondent for Dave’s Locker Bonn, May 2024 – While most Europeans were booking budget flights to whatever Mediterranean beach still had sand and no active wildfire evacuation, a quieter migration flow was reversing direction: Afghan asylum seekers heading home for…
**The Great Caffeine Retreat: Starbucks Closures Signal the End of an Empire Built on Misspelled Names and Middle-Class Aspirations** The green mermaid is swimming away from her empire. Starbucks announced another wave of store closures across North America this week, adding to the 400 locations already shuttered since 2020. While corporate spokespeople blame “changing consumer…
Russian Planes Keep Buzzing Alaska, Because Apparently the Cold War Needed a Sequel Nobody Asked For By Dmitri Volkov, Senior Correspondent for Dave’s Locker The Bering Strait has never been what you’d call “warm.” Yet every few months, the sky above it heats up with the low growl of turboprops and the occasional sonic boom—Russia’s…
Raul Malo’s Chords Are Louder Than Your Passport: A Dispatch from the Borderless Republic of Melancholy By “Border” we mean the imaginary line your streaming algorithm draws between “Americana” and “Bolero,” a line as flimsy as wet Kleenex in a Category-5 tweetstorm. If you’ve never heard of Raúl Francisco Martínez-Malo Jr.—the Cuban-American baritone who fronts…
Breeze Airways: The Boutique Airline That Turns Jet Lag Into a Morality Play By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Somewhere Between Existential Dread and Gate C7 The planet’s newest boutique carrier, Breeze Airways, began life in 2021 with all the innocence of a freshly stamped passport. Founder David Neeleman—serial aviation midwife behind JetBlue, Azul,…
Racketeers Without Borders: How America’s Favorite Acronym Became the World’s Favorite Weapon The letters R-I-C-O sound like a Caribbean resort chain. In reality, they’re the legal equivalent of a drone strike: once the indictment launches, collateral damage is just the cost of doing business. Originally cooked up by the U.S. Congress in 1970 to kneecap…
