Field Notes: Issue 001
A few things I have been paying attention to recently.
1. A New Data Point in Sports Media
The Ringer quietly shifted some of its coverage toward women’s basketball and youth sports. That might sound like a small editorial adjustment, but it is evidence that the participation layer of sports culture is becoming more valuable than the highlight layer. Highlights are commodities. Participation scales story and identity. I expect more media companies to follow.
2. Fashion Finds a New Engine
New Balance continues to outperform its own historical brand equity by treating collaboration as cultural partnership rather than hype drops. Teddy Santis and Salehe Bembury are not guest creatives. They are cultural translators. They understand where taste is coming from and where it’s going.
3. Oakley and the Return of Tech Aesthetics
Oakley has found a way to modernize early 2000s tech performance design without falling into parody. The brand feels like it is participating in lifestyle rather than retro collecting. The crossover with Formula One was the unlock. Tech performance, luxury, and engineering are finally on the same creative timeline.
4. A Platform Shift in Player Storytelling
More young athletes are skipping traditional press narratives and using direct to camera platforms to tell their own stories. Press conferences are control systems. TikTok, YouTube, and Reels are authorship systems. Whoever controls the authorship controls the mythology.
5. Brands I Think Are Interesting Right Now
WNBA
NWSL
New Balance
Oakley
Jordan
Formula One
La Liga
All for different reasons, but all for the same root cause. They are operating with cultural fluency rather than cultural aspiration.
6. Book on My Desk
Started collecting the Dune books last year. Going to read God Emperor of Dune next. Part Three of the Denis Villeneuve film comes out later this year and it reminded me how much I like sci-fi world-building.
7. Food Signal
Ecuadorian culture is starting to surface in New York in ways I never saw growing up. TikTok keeps pushing coffee shop tours in Ridgewood. Ridgewood keeps showing up on lists of the best neighborhoods to live in. Will Smith was just in Ecuador filming a documentary. Travel creators are posting about Guayaquil and the beaches up north. And on the food side, people are beginning to learn that ceviche is not a single template. Brothy ceviche with warm rice and plantains hits different. It feels like a small cultural wave forming before the city has the language for it.
8. Music Rotation
My music rotation has been split between new artists and the music I grew up on. Olivia Dean and Raye are recent discoveries. I like their tone and the way they write. But I always end up back in the 90s with Mobb Deep, Dr. Dre, Eminem, and Nas. No song sets a scene like “It’s Mine.” The Scarface theme, the opening bars, and that first Nas line, “Silk shirts and my chest show what a flirt…” It still feels like Queens.
9. Thought for Creatives
The best designers trust their first instinct and then iterate. The worst thing you can do is pause the work to analyze it from every angle. That is how you end up in paralysis by analysis. Creativity needs short loops, not long meetings.