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why being a regular is the best
the benefits of continuous patronage, my favourite socks and some good links to wash down with your coffee this morning
Kia ora koutou, nau mai ki clipboard, a weekly newsletter about Tāmaki Makaurau and culture by me, Reilly Hodson. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram, and listen to soundboard, the soundtrack to clipboard, on Apple Music.
11 reasons to become a regular
I had a couple of different dining out experiences, one at a place where I go fairly often and know the waiter, and one where I had only been once before and was far less familiar to me. Today on clipboard, I make the argument that the former experience is much better, and why you should try to gain regular status at your local spot instead of chasing the latest new opening or Instagram clout-iest place. If you go over and over to the same place, and aren’t a dick to the staff, these benefits can be yours, too.
You’ll never get asked “have you dined with us before?” again (please, let’s dispense with this greeting, most people understand shared small plates at this point).
Your barista will know your order, and, if they’re attentive, make it when you walk through the door.
Your waiter will remember what you’ve had before, and recommend you things to try next.
You can eat your way through the whole menu, and enjoy the B-sides as well as the greatest hits.
No waiter will admit to this, but they’ll probably give you a better table if they like you already.
Hospo people are often very interesting, so you’ll get a nice conversation for free with your meal or beverage.
There are plenty of meals worth a journey, but if you have a good place in walking distance, you won’t be stuck looking for a car park or waiting for a bus, which is an easy way to kill the vibe of a night before it has begun.
Relatedly, if you aren’t paying for an uber in each direction, you’ll have more money to put into the hospitality joint you actually want to support.
Sometimes, you might get something for free (but never expect it - regulars that expect special treatment are the worst).
No more awkward “where should we go for coffee/dinner/a drink” conversations, because you have a default answer.
Genuinely, food and drink taste better when you know (and like) the people you’re financially supporting.
None of this is to say you shouldn’t also go out of your comfort zone, or try that fancy place everyone is going to on your feed: trying new things is also great! But, often the best days and nights out are the ones with the people you know, support the places you love, and without the friction that comes with going somewhere for the first time.
clips
This week was te wiki o te reo Māori, and there were some great initiatives put in place by local brands and organisations to promote our original language. My favourites came from Checks (a great example of being better at Instagram), Leonie Hayden’s examination of which parties walk the talk on supporting tangata whenua and te reo, and Stuff’s decision to use te reo in all of its section names on its (very popular) homepage. Hopefully everyone’s talk about te reo this week will translate to ongoing action (and maybe using their vote to acknowledge and address the structural inequities affecting our indigenous population? Just a thought).
A great read about the impact of gangster movies, a genre I went deep on a couples of weeks back. Goodfellas is on Netflix at the moment, if you also feel a need to watch it after reading.
New Zealand’s economic fallout has been very different to that in the US, but our hospitality industry faces many of the same issues described in this piece (namely, an underpaid workforce, slim margins, a customer base used to paying as little as possible).
“Yes, public health is important. But surely not as important as rugby.” A contender for most New Zealand headline ever.
I absolutely do not need this new iPad Air, but I really want it, and it comes in colours!
Neither of the major parties are really talking about the people who live in this country in their election discussion, this piece gets into why they should talk about the people who are worst off, instead of “the economy” or “managing the virus.”
A really interesting, nuanced take on “conscious” consumerism in the age of capitalism, and whether cool things would last under socialism.
favourites #2: the best socks
The best socks you can buy are ribbed, colourful, and comfortable. There are two options that I really love, the Uniqlo crew sock, which is unattainable in New Zealand and probably not worth the hoops you have to jump through to get them here in the middle of a pandemic, and the ones I can properly recommend, which are the Korean socks which Jiho Yun sources for her store. They come in enough colours that you could replace all of your socks with them, and they are just great socks, so long as you don’t have particularly big feet (I wear a size 9, which is probably the upper limit of fitting into these). To everyone else, buy some of these socks, and pick up one of these donut candle holders while you’re at it because they are beautiful.