Welcome to Open Tab, a weekly roundup of the news, gossip, and stories that have stayed open in my tabs all week. Last time we covered price creep and luxurymaxxing.
I think we—and by “we” I mean all of us in the northeast—can agree: Fall is here. There’s a chill in the air. I can feel a great yearning for chili growing somewhere in the pits of my soul. This week, I went to Floradora where I received an order of largest mozzarella sticks I have ever encountered. They were the size of a gold bar, and they were delicious. I mean, I think they were; that amount of cheese made me black out.
In other news, this week was Nigella Lawson’s first as a judge on The Great British Baking Show where she replaced Prue Leith. Lawson brings a distinctly different vibe to the show. If Leith was the quirky, chunky-necklaced grandmother of GBBS, Lawson is the stylish, intimidating aunt. Perhaps she’ll also bring fewer unintended innuendos. Only time will tell.
In addition to opening her upcoming NYC brick-and-mortar storefront, Allison Roman has ventured into footwear. The chef and writer partnered with Margaux to release a line of shoes, one of which looks suspiciously like it could be a heeled cousin of the ever-cheffy Dansko. You can take the chef out of the kitchen…
Also in the week’s Open Tab: The unmasking drama that caused a lesbian bar meltdown, Doordash pays out an historic settlement to delivery workers, how trade wars affect your whiskey, and the iced coffee-job interview debate that divided the internet.
A lesbian bar implosion over masking
The best kind of drama is the kind that has no bearing on your life whatsoever. Perhaps that’s what made the Boston Globe’s story of a lesbian bar meltdown in western Massachusetts go so viral this week.
The long and short of it is this: a small, lesbian bar and arts venue called Last Ditch in Greenfield, Massachusetts was not doing well. In an effort to entice more customers, the operator of the bar announced via Instagram that Saturday nights would be mask-optional—until then the bar had been strictly adhering to COVID-concious masking policies seven nights a week.
The reaction was…intense. “I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ablists [sic],” one commenter wrote. What followed were Zoom-inclusive mediation meetings, the revelation of tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and something about clown school. It’s a barnburner. And, it’s turned into a bit of a punching bag moment for some conservative outlets.
Last Ditch is hardly the first queer space to fall apart like this. Philadelphia queer cafe Mina’s World had a similarly convoluted meltdown; a lesbian bar in Portland, Doc Marie’s closed after a single day of service due to what can only be described as more gay drama.
Obviously we all want to dismantle systems of oppression and root them out from our own communities, but one has to wonder: Is tearing down queer spaces, which are closing at record pace, the best way to use our energy?
Doordash admits its mistake
This week, delivery platform Doordash agreed to pay $131.5 million in a record settlement. “We screwed up,” the company wrote in a statement. Doordash will pay $12.3 million to the workers who were underpaid or paid late and more than $83 million to workers who spent time on the app between deliveries—approximately 264,000 delivery workers altogether—with $16.7 million in civil penalties.
According to the statement, that amounts to a median payment of $48, but, according to the New York Times, “city officials said about 700 workers are owed more than $10,000 each; more than 27,000 workers are owed more than $1,000; and more than 4,000 workers are owed more than $5,000.” The mayor’s office said in a statement the settlement is the largest workers have received in the history of the city.
Make whiskey not trade wars
America is in the midst of a trade war with Canada. Last year, Canadian provinces issued a ban on American whiskey, which drove the Trump administration to enact a 50% tariff on Canadian whisky. The war heated up quickly, and now the US has banned it completely.
The ban goes into effect early next week, with loopholes: Whisky brought into the US in bulk and bottled in the country will not be subject to the ban or the tariff. But as we’ve seen in the past, tariffs can be declared and revoked on a moment's notice—your Canadian whisky is safe for now, but who knows what’ll happen next month.
Should you bring an iced coffee to a job interview?
I mean, no, obviously—right? Perhaps it’s not so obvious. A single TikTok video sparked a debate (tale as old as time) about job interview etiquette, and commenters across the internet argued the pros, cons, and myriad implications of bringing an iced coffee to a job interview. To get to the bottom of it all, I asked an expert for her opinion. Read on to find out her take.