Pour Me A Story, Vol. 57

it's the Inaugural Mailbag Edition!

greetings pals, and welcome back to Pour Me A Story.

since the original catalyst of this very newsletter was “celebrating wins, no matter how small or large,” let’s start with an unexpected success, shall we? yesterday my friend Mike, who featured in these very pages 18 or so months ago, sent me a screenshot of an alert he received about a six-hour schedule change for a flight he had booked in May.

I was initially bummed for him, because who wants to have a trip delayed, even by a few hours? it dawned on me shortly after that this was also a “me” problem, because I was booked on the same flight but had received no such notification.

I logged in to the Frontier website to find that our mid-morning departure to Memphis had been changed to a late-afternoon flight which wouldn’t get us in until after 7:30pm. this just wouldn’t do, since the occasion is “my bachelor party weekend” and I didn’t want to be the last person to arrive. a little selfish? perhaps!

as with many minor grievances in my daily life, I griped about it on Twitter and another Pour Me A Story alumnus, Grace from Vol. 19, told me that I was likely eligible for compensation given the length of the time difference between the flight I booked and the flight I was going to be taking.

initially all I could find was Frontier’s cancelation policy, which was ultimately “we skim $100 off your refund, then give you the rest in credit for the airline that just screwed you,” which seems like a bunch of bullshit. but after skimming through the well-buried, dust-covered Frontier legal website, I learned that I was in fact eligible for a full refund. I submitted the form, laughed at the idea that they might not ever get back to me, and went about my day.

less than four hours later, I received an email from Frontier saying my itinerary had been canceled outright. it was quickly followed by a customer service email apologizing for the inconvenience and telling me they’d processed my refund. that was…not the expected outcome!

so now I’m booked on another mid-morning flight out, arriving in Memphis in the early afternoon for three nights with nine or 10 of my best pals. I haven’t been to Memphis since my very first visit to the U.S. back in 2008 as a wide-eyed and incredibly sweaty 22-year-old. our group visited Graceland (wild), Gladys’s Diner across from Graceland (featuring the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich), the Lorraine Motel (somber, as can be expected), a Redbirds MiLB game (pictured below; Birds won) and approximately 50,000 beers. I imagine it’ll be similar this time.

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Anyway, We Have…Mail?

as you may have seen in your inboxes earlier this week, I decided to shake things up a little. if you didn’t catch that brief update, here’s the important part.

almost a decade ago, when I first moved out here and was writing blog posts three or four times a week (!), I dabbled with a mailbag-type format where friends and family could ask me questions they had about my experiences as an immigrant, including everything from “what’s your favorite foodstuff that we didn’t have back home” to “how do I get a green card?”

it was fun to consider my new living situation from other people’s perspectives, and it also saved me from coming up with a new topic a handful of times, which was definitely a welcome occurrence.

… I interview someone else every week, so now I figure it’s your turn to ask questions of me. what a switch!

I fielded a whopping six submissions, so I’m gonna answer two of them and save the rest for other issues, because why work hard when you can work smart?

Question: Long time listener, first time caller here: biggest difference in attending pro sporting events back home, and new home? — Jake Martinez (Vol. 14)

I think it’s gotta be tailgating. obviously I’ll start with the caveat that it’s been a decade since I attended anything sports-related back home, so this may have changed, but tailgating is an incredibly American concept. this becomes a more broad discussion than just sports, but I’m struggling to think of a professional sporting venue I’ve been to in Australia that even has a parking lot the size of arenas here?

all of Brisbane’s major venues are in inner-city locations not conducive to driving and parking easily, but car culture is so much more prevalent here and god forbid anyone ride public transit to the game!

but I digress. booze is heavily taxed and thus extremely expensive back home, so the move before going to a game was to have “pre-drinks” at someone’s house or cheap neighborhood pub before heading to the stadium. in saying that, I feel like the tailgating tradition is about more than just “getting a good buzz on before having to pay $15 for a beer inside.”

the first two places I tailgated out here were the University of Florida on opening weekend in 2012 and the University of Nebraska a few weeks later. at the latter we pulled up in my buddy David’s Jeep, threw a frisbee around and drank a 30-rack of Natty Light then had lunch at a bar before the game. the Gainesville experience was a little more put-together — I was with an old study-abroad friend and his wife and we visited a bunch of people’s tents throughout the lots, and they were the nice ones with generators running TVs, grills cooking hot dogs and burgers, and coolers everywhere that we were welcome to help ourselves from.

it’s been years since I last went to a tailgate (maybe a Buccaneers game in 2016?). but my good Twitter pal Dylan has made a name for himself as the “Meat Maestro of M Lot” for feeding the masses with smoked meats like wagyu brisket and handmade sausages at Eagles tailgates on game day in Philly, and I’m really hoping to get out there for a weekend next season to soak it all in.

Question: Sneaker culture branches in so many directions: art, fashion, culture, sports, to name just a small few. Where do you find the most joy in this world we find ourselves in? Do you buy to wear? Do you buy for the story behind the shoe? Do you buy to use for the specific function? Do you just like pretty colors?

oh man this is a tough one. I would say my sneaker collection has greatly accelerated over the past five or so years for a handful of reasons, but I’ve been fascinated by kicks at large since I first saw the Reebok Shaqnosis in the mid-1990s. my parents were (rightly) hesitant to fork out big money for fancy sneakers that I would soon be too big for, so big-name shoes were few and far between until my growth slowed.

of course, moving to the U.S. necessitated that I cull the collection I had as an adult in Australia, and only a few pairs made the cut when it came to packing my bags in 2013. come 2018, when I started working for a major sneaker retail chain and enjoying a healthy discount, I bought absolutely fuckin’ everything I could get my hands on for a year or so, as if to make up for lost time.

four and a bit years later, I’m a little more discerning with my sneaker spending, for a number of reasons (namely parenthood and trying to save for a future). but the pairs that do make their way into the stack these days are usually ones that catch my eye due to a collaboration between brand and designer that has a strong narrative behind it. a great example is the series that the boutique A Ma Maniére has put together with Jordan Brand, and I’ve been lucky enough to snag the Air Jordan 1s and 2s from that collection.

others, like the Concepts x Nike SB Dunk Low Orange Lobsters, are personally meaningful. I mean, I run a seafood festival in New England. I had to get a pair of lobster Dunks made in collaboration with a Boston boutique.

overall though, I definitely buy to wear. this made more sense when I had a job I had to leave the house for five days a week, because now I work from home and might only wear two pairs in the span of seven days. but shoes aren’t meant to be treasured and hidden away from the world, they’re meant to be worn and enjoyed. where’s the fun in looking at them indoors?

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Worthy Consumables

guys I don’t know if you subscribe to Showtime, but have you SEEN Yellowjackets? Alex told me a couple weeks ago that season two was coming soon and that we should do a free Showtime trial and watch season one. I’d seen some buzz (no pun intended) online about it but had no idea what it was about, so I was agreeable.

the basic premise is this: a New Jersey state champion high school girls’ soccer team is flying across the country to attend nationals, but the plane crash lands in some dense forest and the team and its coach are stranded. the show flashes back and forth between 1996 and modern day, where we meet some of the students in adult form. it’s equal parts dramatic and absolutely bugshit insane with more than a sprinkling of eerie supernatural stuff going on. I don’t even know how to describe it any better than that, but it’s definitely worth the watch.

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Parting Note

this is a tremendous cop-out and lacks creativity, but damned if it ain’t a banger. in true asshole-tourist fashion, I sang this at karaoke at Alfred’s on Beale in Memphis in 2008 and did a terrible job. there will not be a repeat performance 15 (!!) years later.

thanks as always for spending some of your Friday or weekend or Monday afternoon or whatever with me! until next time, my friends.

— adrian ✌🏻