Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms.
This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast.
It is Flex and Rooms on Cats. I went to LA.
I think you should call it Los Angeles. La sounds like your head's up your ears?
Respectfully, who says Los Angeles?
And I sounded about LA.
I've been people in the room who said and adamant no free.
Say I was in Los Angeles? What city of Angels?
If I said I was in California, you'd be like, who is this girl?
I'm being serious.
Well, I was in the city of Angels and I went to the most expensive grocery store. It's a chain. It's called air one, which is an anagram of nowhere, very very very LA. Now you might not know the name of this chain, but you might recall the viral Belahadide smoothie. It was nineteen dollars or Bury and some other miscellaneous ingredients and superfoods. It popped off. I didn't want to tell you how much it would cost the conversion,
roughly forty Australian dollars. It's ridiculous. So when it was time to go to Air one, I was like, you know, I'm not even gonna deal with it because up until that point I already spent I couldn't even tell you how much money spent a Coachella just on nonsense food. Twelve dollars fifty hot dogs. That's twenty bucks for a
common hot dog. I was done spending money. So my best friend's go into Air one, and, as you can imagine, it just feels like a bougie Coals with overpriced everything forty dollars sushi, twenty dollars Asaii, all of the whatever. My friend rolls up to the checkout. She's like, really stoked to get this tote bag, right, I'm like, okay, cool, Like we love a souvenir. She picks one up. Yeah,
maybe it's like a durable cotton twill, nothing special. But when it gets ringed up at the checkout, it's one hundred and fifty US dollars. She's stunned.
Creepers.
The checkout guy is stunned. He's looking at her, she's looking at him. Will she buy it? Won't she? Obviously she doesn't know what. He says. The shadiest thing ever, we have a cheaper one. Oh okay, that's the cheaper one. Pulls out this generic navy blue tote that says air One in collegiate font, not embroidered, just a little direct to garment print, nothing special or autodestone. Eighty dollars eighty
US dollars? Can you believe that? And it led me to do some research because I'm like, okay, I can understand a bit of a gag. A gag store. You know, you buy some premium novelty you call a day whatever. No, it's not a gag to locals. They derive their personalities and their social status from how frequently they go to Air One and how much money they spend. But I
think it's a social experiment of some point. We all know what makes capitalism as a system work is the illusion that things are worth a lot of money, right, branding, marketing, all of this stuff. Things are worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. So when you open up a generic soupmuket and you say, hey, we're gonna do tote bags branded tote bags, but charge one hundred and fifty dollars, most people will say that's ridiculous. But a percentage, like you know what, that's sick, I'll
buy it. They're making bank off your stupidity. I did some research and by that I went onto Wikipedia.
Hmmm.
I thought it was necessary because I want to figureut where the name came from. Why is it called nowhere backwards? What does that mean? Anyway? Apparently it's derived from the eighteen seventy two satirical novel Air One by Samuel Butler. In the novel, air One is a utopia in which individuals are responsible for their own health. It is a sham, Babes. It's a sham selling you back the illusion of health and wealth at an extreme price so you can feel
like you're healthy. Meanwhile, your hips are calcified, your bones are rotting, your liver doesn't work, and your lungs are blackened.
So it's giving scientology adjacent food. I went there in twenty seventeen, so before you, and when I was actually on a run, I was like doing a run content piece with Nike. First time I ever ran, okay athlete ten kilometers. Okay. Sick sent me down an interesting path from my life, but we'll get to that on another Babe. I went to Arawon and there was like special dog food that was like one hundred dollars for a pellet of dog food. There was diamond activated water. I was
beside myself. Actually did a skit in Erewon early Adopter Eli Adopter, and I will say, you know what, if I had the cash, there was just something about it.
But I think that's the point. The average person does not have the cash. One thing about La one of the most expensive places to live. One of the first time I went, I was at a bar having one of those really strange conversations with a tech bro who was like, listen, like LA is about hustling and grinding and making it in the big city whatever. But he was like most people I know who are like aesthetically pop in have chosen to own a car instead of
having a place to live. Yeah, houseless people sleeping in their cars so they can flex on you. Frequently buying nineteen dollars smoothies in hopes of going viral on TikTok. I mean, everyone always references that two thousand dollars Chanelle
safety pin. Do you know about that? No, So when people talk about like consumerism and the value of something being attributed not to the quality but what someone is willing to pay for it, they often bring up the fact that Chanel sells a two thousand dollars safety pin or a brooch or something. It's just a safety pin, and it sells out often, and it kind of reminds me about value generally. I don't think we've been raised or socialized to understand what things are worth, because if
we knew, we wouldn't consume. And above all, more than humans, I think we're consumers are the big bad overlords. I really do like so much of this world functions because we want to buy stuff. Like let's say we decided that for every meal making food at home, no cafes or they just be coffee cuts. Right, how do you make a whole business around dining if we all hammered down on eating and cooking in.
Well, we're still going to see that happen with the inflation, babes.
I mean, do you think so? But what happened with COVID, like cozy living was still up then people had no income and splurging was happening.
You know.
I was looking at a statistic that was talking about retail e commerce sales compared to COVID and now because there was this big spike and boom, and I was like, how is this possible where people getting money from. So online sales made up fifteen percent of all retail sales. I'm pretty sure in Australia because Rag Trader said it in twenty twenty and now it's thirty five percent. So people are spend ding.
That's me. I'm doing my Mecca orders a bort A, Mason, pears and brush share today.
Yeah. And there's something about when times are tough, quarter of.
One thousand dollars, I'm returning it because what's that.
The fact that we said a quarter of one thousand, it's not even closed to one thousand. Just say to fifty. She knew what she was doing with that on she knew that. Being said this idea of you know, when things are going well, I think that's when we do that little like silly purchases like small make it like the avocado because it's like it's an extra five bucks on the side. But then when times are tough, people start doing luxury. You know what I bought the other day,
insane behavior. I keep making the mistake of traveling, spending a bag, then moving house and then spending a bag.
Crazy.
It's not looking good bras.
Anyway, you know what I think is a heart of luxury.
No, we're not doing that yet. I haven't finished anyway. Point is times are tough, all right. You know what? I saw piece of art from Ebity Russell. Who's that amazing art? Seramecist. She just did a show I was away. I told myself, if her things would be on sale, I'd buy it. Nineteen hundred, I said, I gotta do it.
Is she the one that makes the religious figures?
Yeah?
True?
What does she bring out this time? Oh no, no, no, you're talking about my childe? Yeah no, anyway, I'll show you later. The point is people will spend and like if we could deprogram, I wouldn't because it's nice to be a hot girl. But it'd be interesting to see what we would deem worthy to spend our money on if we deprogrammed our understanding of what is considered worthy of spending money on. Because why discretionary spending? Why do I need to buy a sweet little treat when I leave the house?
Lord me going to chemistry house buying three different types of deodorantce just to feel something. I got the cucumber dove, Oh, the pink pearl dull.
I think if you're a natural deodoran bybe.
Serious natural deodorant. I hate people who were natural denent. Sorry controversial, Stop it just be smelly. Now you smell like smelly and eucalypts.
It stinks. I have never seen the stadi. It stinks. You've been listening to The Flex and Froom's daily podcast. For more, tune in Deicater on DAB or stream it on iHeartRadio