I choose the Bean

From coffee beans to Chicago's bean.

Welcome to Quality Sheet, a weekly assortment of outside-the-box news, events, trends and offbeat oddities to indulge your curiosity. Subscribe for a midweek treat each Wednesday that'll make you hummm with intrigue and amusement.

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Nearly six weeks into life in the U.S., the unimaginable is happening: I am rapidly running out of the Marks and Spencer Masala Chai teabags I brought over from the U.K. There seems to be no equivalent to M&S in New York, but this is my only gastronomic gripe. If you have a recommendation for masala teabags stateside, please advise. Otherwise, I’ll take it as a sign it’s time to switch to coffee as my default hot drink. Culturally, it would make sense.

Also, it’s nice to be back. I spent last week at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago, which you will know was eventful.

Anywho, welcome to Quality Sheet! Let’s jump in.

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If I ever win the lottery, I won’t tell anyone. But! There. Will. Be. Signs. Seriously, I would buy the Alexander McQueen hoof boots many times over. I’ll aim to get my money up in time for them to release these shoes in red, if they ever do.

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In Victorian-era London, society’s fascination with the legend of the upper class “pig-faced lady” represented “​​tensions between who we want to be—say, a refined, highly socialized upper-class person—and worries about our more animalistic nature,” Sarah Crocker writes in Atlas Obscura. written about in newspapers and by Charles Dickens, the likely mythical character also represented misogynistic values upheld at the time.

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“[Walz] résumé…has the potential to play to both sides, with an under-branded logo that still manages to hint at the historic nature of Harris’s candidacy,” Hunter Schwarz writes in Fast Company, about the simple logo that underpins the Harris-Walz ticket. Click to read about the historical provenance of the campaign’s branding. 

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Here’s how social media is spreading misinformation that’s fueling far-right riots in the U.K. right now.

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Broadway is enlisting the help of influencers to boost ticket sales as theatre looks for new ways to fill seats. For the current musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby,” it appears to be working. According to the New York Times, “the show has seen as much as a 21 percent increase in traffic to its website in the two weeks after an influencer collaboration, though it was also running other marketing campaigns simultaneously.”

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Thank you for reading. Share to sweeten someone’s day—and have a lovely rest of your week!

Isabel :)

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