Welcome to the Sugary Scoop, my free weekly newsletter where I help you see and experience the magic of NYC that I love so much through curated events, experiences, artists, and community stories.

What’s new this week?

I think by now, all of you know that one of the central tenets of the Sugary community is to support the ability for other communities to flourish.

Whether that means collaborating with them on one off events or perhaps a series of activations or even on the rarest occasions…taking communities into the Sugary fold and in essence incubating their growth and development with day-to-day involvement.

As many of you know, one such rare occasion occurred with the Unsent Letter Mailbox (ULM).

When I had been first introduced to Sofia Kavlin, I was intrigued by her idea to utilize anonymous storytelling to help heal our social fracturing through the power of shared experiences through the lens of unique perspectives as only lived moments can offer.

Following my instinct, I instantly took a liking to the project and at Sofia‘s invitation, the Sugary community offered both insight and investment of time and tangible resources to help the initiative flourish.

And flourish it did.

Our constant presence in public spaces, particularly parks across the city drew attention from both passerbys and press alike, eventually leading to coverage by SecretNYC, NBC Nightly News the Kelly Clarkson show and most recently the grey lady herself, the New York Times.

Through Sofia’s initiative, we even managed to secure a $10,000 grant from Hinge specifically to utilize on ULM's work which was deigned, “a service towards building a stronger sense of community” in the city.

In the year or so leading up to this moment I worked tirelessly through our Sugary Community along with personal time and effort spent to support the growth of ULM.

It was a personal honor when Sofia asked me to serve as Co-Founder to the project in recognition of the contributions made by DK and I along with the Sugary community. 

Which I was happy to accept.

Beyond sustaining our growth I created and championed creative initiatives such as Dine and Dissert and a one of a kind theatrical concept exploring the entire spectrum of human emotion while expanding on the existing Write to Read series with a breakout group model to encourage deeper discourse as well as an ambitious music program to complement the salons and was responsible for the lion’s share of new attendees that came to our doors.

Why am I sharing all this?

Because I have made a difficult decision to step away from ULM.

It’s not an easy decision but a necessary one.

I do this because things are only ramping up with my own Community’s projects (I.e. podcast, newsletter, NYC Community week, monthly events, social media content, Fine Folk, In Good Company and SO much more...).  

Meanwhile, ULM is looking towards expanding beyond NYC and Sofia has ideas of additional supplementary initiatives for the ULM umbrella that I won’t have the bandwidth to support.

But to help steward what was a university project, see it’s potential, nurture and uplift the concept into something worthy of the New York Times…well…that’s something.

At this juncture, I suppose it’s just as well, mildly poetic even.

But I gotta say, I’m just so proud of my community contributing to the promise of supporting young communities with a brilliant premise and ACTUALLY taking it to the next level.

There may be many more levels to ascend, but I celebrate this moment as a success in every measure of the word.

So…I urge you all to continue supporting ULM…it is now as it was then, a brilliant concept on its way towards becoming a global community…and born and raised in the concrete jungle where dreams are made of…

There are many unsent letters submitted on any given day...  

This one at least arrived at its intended destination.

And I’m thrilled that you know where this letter came from 😉…

Sugary 🍬 (never anonymous…)

Let’s get into the scoop!

Time Traveler

Bill Keane is famous for once saying, 

“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”

This would later be paraphrased to much greater effect by Master Oogway in Kung Fu Panda, a key source of divine wisdom for the huddled masses in front of screens across the world.

Well, this past week or so I took a trip to LA and San Francisco to see family and friends. 

For me it was the first time I’d taken a trip with that reason as the main priority for a long long time.

Among the highlights my time in LA yielded the following moments:

As far as SF:

In taking it all in, something occurred to me.

I’d been here before…

I don’t mean in the geographical sense but rather the intersection of making a choice like this.  I’ve been here before…over and over again in fact…

…and in these moments I rarely ever chose to prioritize visiting those I cared about as a main focus.  It was always a supplemental add-on to most of my trips which were far and few between.

But the waxing and waning between remnants of our past, and wisps of our futures will always hang in the balance of the present.

“You’re exactly where you were meant to be” isn’t merely a nice catch phrase, it alludes to a clear line of decision making amidst a sea of choices constantly coming our way.

Why did I make the choices that I did?

I suspect that the answer lies somewhere in the realm of taking my family and friends unintentionally for granted thinking I had all the time in the world and that eventually “I’d get around to it”.

That they were far away, gave me all the excuse I needed from a financial and geographical perspective to relegate them into the category of a “luxury” not worth investing in beyond an occasional message.

That doesn’t really seem to comport with my professed ideology of investing in my friends and family now does it...? 

And then it made me think of my parents who I just got back from visiting…  

I did this to them for countless years and now I have to face a sobering reality…

If I keep my current trajectory of visiting them once per year, my chances to see them…

…are now down to single digits.

That’s not hyperbole, that’s the brutality of time which waits for no one, and it is agnostic of geography or lifestyle.

Since my health scare I’ve been able to reevaluate what’s important especially within the context of limited time.  It's a rare privilege earned through pain and consequence that few get to see until they have some sort of similar life-threatening experience.

So now I’m starting to make different choices…

It almost caught me by surprise how a shift in my priorities made all the difference and so quickly. 

It’s crazy to think about but just based on going out to fewer events and abstaining from drinking, I was able to save enough to make this trip happen in a few months time.

Imagine what a year of this could do my God… 

What did I learn from this?

The only way to honor your past and/or invest in your future is to claim it in the here and now.

You can do things right now to rekindle old relationships, renew faded memories and literally turn back the dials of time to the “best of times”.

On the flip side you can press on forward and do things that leapfrog you into your new era, new experiences and adventures while sharing these moments with the people you love.

Either way, isn’t it funny that it all happens to be two sides of the same coin at the end of the day?

Don’t let a lack of agency towards what matters most to you fester into regret.

We literally need to push through the fabric of time with intention to claim what will be our future memories and moments…

Think about what I’ve just written…

…but best not to dwell on the subject too long.

…because I assure you that time will not.

Tick tock…

Sugary 🍬

He Built This City

For several decades, Joe Macken has been working on a project.  

The truck driver from Clifton Park New York was a big fan of miniature replicas fashioned out of balsa wood and one day decided to try his hand at re-creating the RCA building in New York City’s Rockefeller Center.

And after that, he decided to try his hand at building all of Rockefeller Center, then all of Midtown, then all of Manhattan…and by the time several decades rolled by in true Gumpian fashion, Joe had built out all of New York City’s five boroughs  in all its glory.

The model became so big that it would no longer fit into his basement and had to be rehoused into a much larger storage facility. (each one of the squares that make up his entire model represents 1 square mile of New York City with the entire model comprising over 1 million independently crafted structures).

But the “Little Apple” seems to be just a tip of the iceberg as Joe plans to continue adding to the structure until he constructs all of New York State… and then what happens after that, one can only imagine…

I went to go see this exhibition shortly after its opening at the Museum of the City of New York and I didn’t say it’s pretty impressive the amount of detail and minutia that exists in the model.  All along the perimeter, mini binoculars are provided so that you can look deeper and further into the model.  

Due to its sizing and placement it does not allow for a 360° walk around which probably ends up being my only gripe.

Access is only available to the southern +  bottom halves of the eastern and western borders.

But other than that, I certainly think that this obsessive achievement is worth checking out if only just to witness how massive this undertaking has been and to appreciate this unexpected love letter to the greatest city in the world.

It is after all “New York…balsa jungle where dreams are made of…”

🍬 Sugary

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Thank you for taking the time to read to the end!

I hope you found something inspiring and meaningful in my content and until next time, explore the possibilities of NYC.

-Sugary

🍰🍭🍩🍦🍫🍪🍨🧁

PS. Don’t be shy and hit reply and tell me how you’re doing!