Como vs Genoa: A Provincial Derby That Explains Why the World Is Still a Mess by “Il Professore” – Dave’s Locker’s Balkan bureau chief, currently on sabbatical in a lakeside bar tabacchi Lake Como’s Sunday residents—Russian oligarchs in floating villas, German tax exiles in electric speedboats, and a solitary Swiss banker who still thinks fax…
Krispy Kreme’s Autumnal Glaze: How a Deep-Fried Circle Became a Geopolitical Rorschach Test By Dave’s Locker International Desk From the neon-lit sprawl of Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing to the increasingly ironic food-courts of Dubai’s climate-controlled malls, the Krispy Kreme “Fall Fair Doughnuts” have landed like a sugar-coated drone strike on the global waistline. Six limited-edition rings—pumpkin-spice,…
Verona FC: A Provincial Opera with a Global Libretto by Dave’s Locker, International Desk If you stand at the intersection of Via Leoncino and the 21st-century attention economy, you’ll find Hellas Verona FC—an Italian football club whose greatest export is not goals but exquisite, slow-motion tragedy. The world now watches via dodgy streams, half-cut on…
Chase Edmonds and the Global Cargo Cult of the NFL’s Disposable Heroes By Our Correspondent in a Time Zone You’ve Probably Never Heard Of On the surface, Chase Edmonds is merely a 28-year-old running back who recently packed his playbook and signed a one-year deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers—hardly the stuff of midnight UN…
Dave Portnoy: The Pizza-Slinging Barstool Prophet of Late-Stage Capitalism By Our Correspondent in the Global Panic Room When the history of the early twenty-first century is written—probably in disappearing ink on a melting glacier—historians will need a shorthand for the exact moment the American id learned to monetize itself. They could do worse than a…
Kelly Services: The Global Temp Agency That Makes Capitalism Feel Like a Waiting Room With Fluorescent Lighting By Our Correspondent Somewhere Between Shanghai and São Paulo Kelly Services began life in 1946 as a Detroit stenographer-for-hire outfit charmingly named “Russell Kelly Office Service.” Seventy-eight years later it has metastasized into a multinational H.R. vending machine,…
Geneva’s Palexpo Arena, 5:47 p.m. local time: the 60-metre hurdles have just ended and the stadium screen flashes “Mujinga Kambundji – 7.02” in retina-scorching LED. Half the crowd erupts in the polite Swiss roar that sounds like suppressed yodeling; the other half Googles “kambundji” between sips of overpriced Aperol. In that moment, a sprinter from…
Tinley Park, Illinois—Population 55,971, median age 39.4, median household income $86,000, and, according to the village’s own tourism bureau, the proud owner of “the largest outdoor concert venue in Chicagoland.” To the average Dane scrolling through Reddit at 2 a.m. in Aarhus, that bio reads like a haiku of late-stage capitalism: small town, big shed,…
Auckland, New Zealand – Somewhere between the lycra-clad chaos of a global athletics circuit and the slow-motion apocalypse we politely call “the news cycle,” a 27-year-old Kiwi with the improbable name Geordie Beamish just reminded the planet that footraces can still deliver plot twists more satisfying than any streaming-service finale. Last month in Glasgow, Beamish—who…
Lois Boisson: The Global Thirst Nobody Asked For PARIS—Every morning, somewhere between the Place de la République and the Boulevard Périphérique, a refrigerated tanker the color of a bruised sky rumbles past the homeless encampments and the €9 flat-white brigade. Inside is the newest French export that absolutely no one requested: Lois Boisson, a sparkling,…
**The Global Ripple Effect of a Sheen: How One Teenager’s OnlyFans Became a Mirror for the World’s Weirdest Values** *By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from Civilization* PARIS—In the grand amphitheater of geopolitics—where nuclear doctrines are drafted, supply chains are weaponized, and the Arctic melts faster than a gelato in August—the entry of one 19-year-old Sami…
Austin Metcalf and the Great American Talent Vacuum By our Special Correspondent in Existential Airports Somewhere between the duty-free Toblerone and the third watered-down espresso at Gate C12, a name flashed across the departure board: “Austin Metcalf.” Not the man himself—he’s still safely marooned in whichever mid-tier U.S. city currently markets itself as “the next…
