Photos by Eliot Hess, April, 2019

See E.L. James on The View

https://youtu.be/gGvGN772AAw

I never read any of E.L. James’ books. I had absolutely no desire to do so even though she sold over 125 million copies worldwide, 35 million in the United States. They are classified as erotic romances.

The following trilogies that James is so well-known for are: Fifty Shades Of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed. Her latest book is The Mister.

When I heard that James was going to be interviewed by Mitch Kaplan of Books & Books at the Adrienne Arsht Performing Arts Center in Miami last week, I knew I had to attend. I wanted to meet the woman who was considered to have one of the sexiest minds in the world.

I looked around the room. Approximately 200 women and three men showed up for the event. Many of the women I spoke to were huge fans. They spoke of James like they personally knew her. They wait patiently for every new book. There was no question in my mind, after I saw most of the audience line up to get their books autographed, that many women today still have an active fantasy life. It doesn’t matter what their circumstances are.

I am amused by the pseudo intellects who say James is a terrible writer. She doesn’t claim to be Harper Lee or Jane Austen. She knows exactly who she is, a happy wife and mother who knows how to entertain other women who love to dream.

The strangest thing is going to happen to Facebook in the next 50 years. The Oxford Internet Institute says “the dead will outnumber the living” on the social media site.

It’s very possible that one to five billion Facebook users will have died by 2100.

That means the number of dead Facebook accounts will surpass the number of live accounts by 2070.

Digital lives exist forever.

“People can continue to interact with a person’s digital remains long after their physical remains have decayed.”

The OOI thinks that folks will start asking if their social posts should continue online after they’ve passed? “Who will make sure their accounts will be closed upon death?”

The OOI believes there might even be a “Facebook for the Dead.”

This is a partial list of what I read today. I wanted to share it with you. I’m sorry for the mixed (fonts) type. I spent hours trying to fix it. It’s a WordPress problem.

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WeWork Files for I.P.O., Joining Wave of Cash-Burning Start-Ups in Going Public – The New York Times

At record-breaking 220 Central Park South, a unit just closed at $6,400 a foot

https://therealdeal.com/2019/04/29/at-record-breaking-220-central-park-south-a-unit-just-closed-at-6400-a-foot/

Airbnb, RXR are converting a portion of Rockefeller Center

https://therealdeal.com/2019/04/29/airbnb-rxr-are-converting-a-portion-of-rockefeller-center

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How many people visited the Wynwood Walls in March?

https://therealdeal.com/miami/2019/04/18/how-many-people-visited-the-wynwood-walls-in-march

I met a person the other day who never ordered a thing from Amazon. Most people I know order everything from Amazon. They haven’t been inside a traditional store for years.

Here is a special treat for all Amazon lovers. You can now use a special Amazon tool to see everything you’ve ever ordered.

How scary is that?

Amazon just announced that “you can see what you paid for an item, when you ordered it, the vendor you purchased from and what payment method you used. You can also see returns and refunds by running a similar report.”

Instructions from Amazon!

Click here to read a CNBC story that gives you more details.

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I’m curious about your reaction to this news. I’m not so sure I like the idea of hundreds of drones flying around my neighborhood delivering packages. I feel like my environment is cluttered enough. Now the skies are going to be filled with all kinds of flying objects.

In case you haven’t heard, the Federal Aviation Administration, gave (Google) Alphabet’s Wing Aviation, permission to start using drones to deliver packages. The first city, which will be an experiment for the unmanned aircrafts, is Blacksburg, Virginia.

The drones are expected to deliver food, medicine, and small consumer products. Wing plans to reach out to the local community before getting started in order to get a sense of its needs.

Get ready for all kinds of photos when this starts to take place. It’s going to be very difficult to distinguish between a bird and a drone.

Please watch the above video for more details.

Ruth Reichl, one of the most famous food writers in America, debuted her new book, “Save Me The Plums,” at Books & Books in Bal Harbour this last Tuesday. The minute I heard about the event, Eliot and I signed up because we wanted to meet the legend.

It was definitely a good decision, at least for me. Reichl chronicled her career before she spoke about her book. While she is famous and I am not, her experiences were so similar to mine. I felt like we had the same long satisfying career. It had nothing to do with how much money she made over the years, and who gave her accolades. It was all about the journey and the experience she brought to her readers.

She never wanted to be a typical restaurant or food critic. Telling readers that a certain dish at a restaurant was too salty, or the waiters were rude, never appealed to her. She wanted to report on interesting new twists that young chefs were trying out, or what new foods were being discovered in local farmer’s markets.

That angle caught the attention of the LA Times when she was a food writer for small periodicals in Berkeley, CA. At the time she was living on a commune. She started her full time food career at the LA Times and then moved on to the New York Times to replace Bryan Miller. It was years later that SI Newhouse, of Condé Nast, asked her to be editor of Gourmet Magazine.

After repeatedly turning him down, Newhouse chased her with a big raise from the $84,000 she was making at the Times. He also gave her a car and driver, several club memberships, and a complete new wardrobe. The first task the Condé Nast PR department had on Reichl’s first day, was to get her a new hairdo and makeup. She remembers bumping into Anna Wintour in the elevator. Wintour looked at her with disdain. Reichl never got the hang of being a fashionista.

Reichl’s new Book is a memoir of how she transformed Gourmet from a stuffy relic of the old guard into a publication that embraced a new culinary era. It was also a time when “woman were taking on new challenges, pushing boundaries, and hanging onto the sense of wonder.”

Reichl wanted to be treated like an average customer. She disguised herself when visiting restaurants. She claims most restaurants had her photo posted in the kitchen with the words “WANTED” across the top. Anyone who spotted her, and then warned the restaurant management, got a $2,000 reward. Everyone wanted to be on their best behavior when Reichl was around.

These days Reichl lives with her husband in the Berkshires. She writes books and constantly cooks. A member of the Books & Books audience asked her what she thinks of people critiquing restaurants on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter? She claims she “loves it. You have to know how to decipher what people write. “If you can filter the comments, you will find some very unique comments that are very honest and important.”

Reichl has always enjoyed change. She predicts that more social media folks will focus on the experience of dining when they post, rather than the food itself. “It will be like theater. How did they feel about the adventure? Did it bring people together? Did they learn something new?”

Food shopping, food preparation and food dining over the years will be going through major transformations. The best is yet to come.