During the course of my career as an alpha Sasquatch hunting, Dogman destroying, pussy crushing, luxury watch loving dude, I have run into this particular woman a few times. She is one part uber sensuality, and the other part deadly. Yes, I am speaking about the lovely, Anna Conda. I bring her up because I had another run-in with her last year.

Anna and I first joined forces, so to speak, when she acted as a go-between in my business deal with the Chinese to sell them bigfoot parts. See, I would hunt and kill the critters, cut them up, deliver the parts to Anna, who in turn gave me a suitcase containing unmarked American hundred-dollar bills, then she would transport the bigfoot parts to the Chinese. I was never really sure of what the sneaky-ass Chinese were doing with the body parts. All I knew for sure is that they are extracting certain materials from them, then synthesizing them with some other shit, creating some sort of drug. Whether it then becomes a bio-weapon or a dick stimulant, I do not know. Neither do I care. As long as they kept the hundies coming, I was good.

Now, while Anna is of Russian descent, she is a freelancer. She will work for any sick, skeevy motherfucker out there. She does not care. She has no conscience, at least not in the traditional sense as we understand it in western civilization. Today she is working for the Chinese, and tomorrow she may be working for Hamas. She is a slippery motherfucker.

So here is how it went down. At 11:32 p.m. on a Friday in September of last year I get a call on my cell phone. When the call came in I was balls deep into this hot little lass I picked up at the bus station a little earlier in the evening from an old swarthy chap named “Colorado Joe”. He wanted to sell me the girl. I was assured she was over 20 years old. I told him I needed to take her out for a test ride, which he agreed to.

So, there I was, balls deep in “Bing Bang Yun”, and my phone rings. Of course, I silence all incoming calls not in my contacts list. Thus, I knew that I must know the caller. In mid stroke I reached over to the nightstand to retrieve my cell and looked at it. It was a call from “Sergio”. I thought, “Oh shit…. I am going to have to cut the Oriental bang circus short.” When Sergio calls, I have to respond…immediately. He has the best blow on the east coast!!

“Hey, Serge! What’s up?”, I asked. All he said was, “Hooters. 2:00 a.m.”, then hung up. This was obviously the rendezvous for the transaction. Now, understand that Serge was not talking about the chicken wing restaurant. Hooters was code, in case the feds were listening in on the line. “Hooters” meant the titty bar out on Highway 69 called “The Plump Rump”. We had a communications code we used.

It was a long haul to the titty bar, so I needed to get moving. I had no time to return the girl to Colorado Joe, so I took her with me. I had her blow me on the way to the meeting with Sergio, telling her that her performance would make the difference on whether I save her from Joe or not. Of course, after she was done I tossed her out of my speeding truck and down, over the bridge, and into the Wendigo River below. I did not need any complications in my life right now.

I arrived at The Plump Rump at 2:00 a.m. on the dot. I saw the manager, Lou Skunt, sitting at the bar when I walked inside. I nodded. He walked over and said to me, “Use my office for the meeting The parties are already in there waiting for you.” I nodded and then headed to Lou’s office. Then it hit me: Lou said the “PARTIES” are already here. That is, parties, meaning more than one person. It was not just Sergio. It was 2 or more people! Lou was probably in for a cut of whatever was about to go down.

Something was bad fucked up!! I know for a fact that Sergio never brings anyone with him on a deal, at least not with me. He is too distrustful of people to do that, and too fucking mean to need protection. Something was wrong. I was just as likely to get whacked when I enter Lou’s office as anything else. I needed a moment to think things through.

I took a spot in front of one of the performance poles to watch a young, swarthy Mexican lass perform. My mind quickly strayed from the problem at hand to this brown chick’s ass and tits. She was not a great looking chick, but her body was smoking!! I quickly became aroused. I thought to myself, “Goddamn Asian bitches!! They are just like Chinese food – after 2 hours you are ready for some more!!”

When the little Mexican chick went on break I motioned her over to my table. “Hola Senior!!”, she said. I pulled out a clear plastic baggie of blow and dropped it on the table. Her eyes grew wide and slobber starting falling from her mouth. Blow is like catnip for strippers. Thus, she fell under my spell immediately.

The next thing I know, this brown girl was on my lap, dry humping me like a feral bitch dog in heat. I had to bang her. I NEEDED to see my wang penetrating her. Just then, someone taps my shoulder hard. I look up to see Lou standing over me. He bent down and said, “Did you forget about my office, asshole?!?!?!” I replied, “Damn, Lou!! You read my mind!!!” I arose, with the little Mexican bolted onto my mid-section, and hastily retreated to Lou’s office. I figured Lou would prefer me to stain this chick in private rather than out in the open.

The door to the office opened easily. The lights were on inside. In a lustful haze, I set the little Mexican chick on her back across Lou’s desk and started pumping the shit out of her, completely unaware of the others in the room with us. In a moment I heard someone call my name. I twist my neck around to see Sergio sitting on Lou’s jizz crusted couch. I think to myself, “Oh shit! I forgot about that shit!”

I figured I would just move forward with the deal as it was proposed to me. “Hey Serge! What ya got for me, dude?”, I asked. He replied, “I have a very special deal for you. I need, uh … yeah, ……Hey, Rod, you want to stop for a moment so we can talk?” I picked up the little tamale and laid her down onto Sergio’s lap as I continued to plow her. She stayed on my cock the whole time. I told Sergio, “No, man. I’m good! Lay it on me!” Slowly, Sergio lowered his face into his palm.

Then it happened. The voice cam from behind me, in the dark corner of Lou’s office. It was velvety yet hard as steel. “Rod. Went need to talk”, it said. Even though I did not stop pumping the little brown chick, a chill went down my spine when I heard those words. It was the thick timbre of the voice, I think, that alerted me.

I turned to look across the room. There, sitting in a red leather captains chair against the wall was the source of the sultry voice: Anna Conda.

I picked up the little taco yet again and turned her around so I could face Anna as I continued pumping her. At this point the Mexican girl was merely a masturbation toy I was using. I increased my pump so I could dump my load and get this over with. Then BAMM!!!, it was over. I removed the lass from my huge rod, after which her body crumpled to the floor. I did not know if she was dead or injured, or what had happened to her. But I did not care either, so I did not dwell on it.

I tried to compose myself the best I could, then walked over to stand before Anna so I could get to the bottom of all this business. “Well, well, well. Anna Conda. We meet again. Tell me, what brings you here, to my little neck of the woods?”

Anna replied, “Rod, put your dick away.” I looked down and, indeed, I had forgotten to stow my cock. Out of pure curtesy, I packed it away. Then I returned my attention to Anna. “Alright, Anna, what’s going on here?”

Anna launched into a startling tale about what brought her to me. As she spoke I became lost in her wanton beauty. She got up from her chair and walked about the room as she relayed her story, presumably to make it more dramatic and demonstrative. I got a full-on view of her body, and it was fantastic!!

She stands 5’10’’ and weighs 105 lbs. She is lithe. She was showing it off too, wearing a black, silk dress that landed just about her ankles. The top was low-cut, betraying just a bit of cleavage from her C-cup wineglass titties. She was not wearing a bra. Anna never wears a bra. Her nips were perfectly outlined through the silk. In fact, I think her nips were hard. It was probably something she did on purpose in an attempt to influence me. It was working.

Anna’s ass was perfect. It was not at all fat, but round enough not to be skinny. It was a fit figure skater’s ass. As she walked, I could see a tiny bit of jiggle emanating from her ass flesh, and then reverberated in the silky black dress she wore. My cock began growing hard again.

Her face was beautiful. Think Scarlett Johanson and Phoebe Cates rolled into one. But any sweetness this may evoke is quickly dispelled by Anna’s throaty voice with its thick Russian accent. I have known Anna for 20 years. Yet, she still does not look a day over 25. Jesus Christ!!! If ever there was a chick to die for ….. If I was one to delve into the belief of the paranormal, then I may conclude that Anna made a deal with the devil. But, I am not such a person.
And literally, Anna Conda is a chick to die for. She is deadly as fuck. She will kill you in a split second without a thought just because she does not like the shirt you are wearing. She can do it too. She is always armed and she knows how to use her weapons. Moreover, she is a total psychopath. This makes her doubly dangerous.

Anna and I have always gotten along for the most part. Like Anna, the dollar is my primary motivating factor. Such a mindset allows for understanding and predictability among people, which are elements that are sorely missing in many business dealings today that go on in the color of darkness.

Suddenly, Anna snapped me out of my thoughts. “Here’s your gun, Rod. Now let’s get started”, said Anna. She and Sergio were halfway through the door exiting Lou’s office when I said, “Hey, wait a damned minute!!! What are you talking about?!?”

They both stopped, and Anna walked back in and looked me in the eyes, saying “The plan, Rod. Let’s get on with the plan.” A little embarrassed, I sheepishly asked, “What plan?” Anna folded her arms and looked cross at me. After a moment to allow me to simmer in my shame, she asked, “You were not paying attention, were you, Rod?” I shook my head and looked down.

I heard a hammer cock. I jerked my head back up to find myself staring down the barrel of a pistol pointed at my head that Anna was holding. I protested, “Look, it is not my fucking fault!! Put that fucking gun down!!!” I continued, “You were distracting me with …. Well.. you know, how you are dressed, and that hot, sultry voice…. You know?”

“So, instead of paying attention to the plan, you chose to eye-rape me. Is that what I am to understand your position is, Rod?”, she asked. Knowing that my life was on the line, I said, “Anna, look, you know I am horny to a fault. Then you come in here, swinging them tits around, wearing that silk dress showing off the crack of your ass…. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU EXPECT TO HAPPENED?”

Anna lowered her gun. She knew that my explanation of being a total cocksman was truth. “Let’s go”, Anna curtly said. I obeyed.

Anna explained the plan to me again on the drive from The Plump Rump. She made me wear a blindfold so that I would not get horny during her explanation. Here is how it went:

Anna Conda was now working for the Russians. It seems that Putin caught wind of the Sasquatch project that the Chinese were working on. He also knew that the American government have been fucking with sasquatch for decades. Thus, he was very concerned about the existence of a bigfoot gap. He ordered the acquisition of a Sasquatch specimen immediately.

Moreover, said specimen must be prime. It needed to be the biggest, baddest sasquatch of them all – a true alpha – so as to speed things along. Putin did not want some weird shit-creature, is-it-a-sasquatch-or-is-it-a-dogman, kind of monstrosity. He wanted purebred, badass sasquatchery, and preferably from the American Pacific northwest.

Anna got in on it because she sold the intel to Putin about China’s Sasquatch operation. She then told Putin she could produce sasquatch corpses for him. She told him she had a contact (i.e., me). Thus, with Putin’s blessing and promises of riches to come, Anna set out to America to find me.

Now, here is where things got a bit squirrely. See, I agreed to procure some more dead sasquatch. I have no problem with killing sasquatch because, in my opinion, they are an abomination on this Earth. I kind of feel like I am doing God’s work by wiping out as many of them as I can. And given all the not-so-Godly stuff I have done, I feel like killing Sasquatch kind of offsets that to some degree.

But Anna, she was stuck on Putin’s instruction that she must supply him with apex Sasquatch. So she did not want to take my advice of heading to the Pacific Northwest or Alaska. Instead, Anna claimed to have pinpointed the whereabouts of a particularly gruesome sasquatch beast that she KNEW would win her a fortune from Putin if she brought it to him.

“So, where is this beast?”, I asked. Anna replied “Martha’s Vineyard”. I paused. Then I asked her to repeat herself. It turns out that I was not mistaken about what Anna had said. I continued, “Uh, Anna, there are no sasquatch on Martha’s Vineyard, just a lot of wealth New Englander schmucks.”

Anna looked at me and told me I was wrong. Then she decided to attempt to taunt me. “Oh, Rod, mighty slayer of Bigfoot! Yet, you fail to take notice of where the biggest, most foul and rotten beast of them all makes its home. Jesus, Rod!! What kind of bigfoot hunter are you, anyway?” Anna then spit at my feet and wondered aloud whether she even needs me for this job.

I decided that I needed to straighten out the hierarchy here in order for this here deal to move forward. I said, “Well, Anna, feel free to truck on over to Old Whitey Beach and battle that beast. But, if there is a big old mangy sasquatch lurking around over there, then it is probably a fucking Nazi-Squatch. You know, those fuckers out there hate the Jews.”

The work “Nazi” visibly shook Anna. Her great grandfather died defending Leningrad. Her entire family there died of either starvation or cannibalism during Hitler’s siege during Operation Barbarossa. Anna despised Nazis. But she feared them too. After landing that punch, I decided to push my luck.

“Now, I am still willing to help you catch this here Nazi-Squatch, but you have to do something for me”, I said. Now Anna’s eyes were on me, and they were narrowing. I continued, “I want you to get bare assed naked and pleasure yourself while I stand over you and jack it.” Anna stared at me silently for a long moment. Then she replied.

“After the job is done, and you can get none of your … fluids… on me”, she said. I shook my head and countered, “Now, and I will ‘try’ to not get my spunk on you.”

However, Anna then turned the tables on me. In fact, she picked up the table and bashed my head in with it. She looked me in my eyes, then matter-of-factly said, “You get the beast, and your prize shall be a night with me, anything goes, darling.” Well, since this caused all of the blood to immediately drain from my brain, I had a lapse in judgment. “DEAL!!”, I said. Then we shook on it.

“OK, tell me more about this supposed monster sasquatch on Martha’s Vineyard”, I said. I still was not ready to believe there was a monster out there. “I show you photo”, said Anna. She took out her phone, scrolled to find the photo, then handed the phone to me. “There. Sasquatch”, she said.

I stared at the photo and remained silent. After a long moment, I turned the phone so that Anna could see the photo and asked, “Uh, Anna, is THIS what you intended to show me?” She replied. “Yes! There…Sasquatch! The biggest, grossest monster around.”

Now, I could not argue with Anna that the image on her phone is a big, gross monster. Hell, it could actually be a sasquatch, and THE UBER sasquatch. It is most certainly the grossest thing on Martha’s Vinyard. But I somehow do not think this is what Putin is expecting.

I turned to Anna and said, “Anna, this is a photo of Michelle Obama. I know it looks vile, and has a huge, hulking body with large appendages where a woman should not have them. But, sweatheart, that ain’t no sasquatch. That’s a big, hairy Chicago street negro.”

Anna did not believe me at first. She was hard in her conviction that Obama was a sasquatch. “I have seen the Sasquatch beast you deliver to me for China. This … Michelle Obama …. It is big, and hairy, and ugly like the sasquatch beast, but worse.”

When the truth finally set it, I could see that it had kind of broken down poor Anna, if only just a bit. I put my arm around Anna and told her, “Look, Michelle O fooled you. Hell, she and her Hamas Hubby fooled millions of Americans, twice! At least you saw Michelle for what she is, to wit: a big, gross sasquatch, and NOT some kind a retarded leftist messiah.”

After that, things took a rather dark turn. “What if we still take her to Putin? We can make deal; sell her to Putin!!” At this point I held up my hands and said, “I’m out”, then turned and walked away. Anna followed, trying to get me to stay. At this point, I could tell that Anna was coming undone a little.

See, she had to produce for Putin. There is no telling what kind of secret deal she actually had with him. She had to deliver a big old mangy Obama …. Er, uh, I mean … Sasquatch, to Putin.

“Ok, Rod, we do your plan. We go out west to kill bigfoot. Huge, monster bigfoot. she said. I turned and looked Anna in her eyes and said the following: First, we bang for 48 hours straight, right now, so I can get my fill of you. Second, you pay me $10,000.00 cash upfront. Third, upon delivery of the dead bigfoot, you pay me $1 million immediately.”

Anna agreed to everything, but noted that at the present time it was her “time of the month”. I grimaced, as I will absolutely not go there (and she knows that). “Fine, next week we bang”, I said. She pointed out that I would be in the woods next week hunting sasquatch. “Fine, once I come out of the woods, then we bang – 48 hours straight”, I said. “Of course, darling!”, she agreed.

Well, it took several days to set up the hunt, but it finally happened. I was in Washington state at high elevation based on intel I has acquired that indicated that there was a monstrous 15’ tall sasquatch on the mountain range that had been murdering and eating hunters and hikers. After 3 months in these mountains without a trace of the creature I began to lose hope, thinking that I probably got some bad intel, or bad coordinates.

I got my satellite phone out to call for an extraction. Winter was setting in fast, and if I did not get off this mountain soon, then I would freeze and/or starve to death. Unfortunately, my contact did not answer. I tried for 2 days. No answer. I had been fucked. I wondered what had happened back in civilization that caused me to be abandoned like this. I resolved that I would get off that mountain and get to the bottom of this shit. There would be hell to pay for this betrayal!!’

I was able to get in touch with contacts from back home. I got old Billy Ray from Ellijay and Rattler on the phone and got them to come out here to Washington State to extract me. Rattler use to fly helicopters in the Army. He has an old Huey sitting in his front yard, to the chagrin of his HOA. He fired that sucker up, and him and old Billy Ray flew out here to my coordinates and extracted me.

After landing at a convenience store to buy some beer for the flight home, we headed east. Through the skies a way, Billy Ray said, “Well, Rod, I guess you is bout ready to git back home to Georgia, eh?” In fact, I was ready to go home. But I had to take care of some business first. I told them both to take me to New York City. They were both perplexed. All I said to them was “I have an old friend there I have to see before I can go home.”

I have intel on where Anna Conda stays when she is in the United States. She stays at certain hotels depending on what month she is here, and whether her check-in date is an odd or even number. This is for undercover work. I came across the code for her stays while doing the sasquatch work for China. She an I were caught in a snowstorm one night in Buffalo, NY, and had to share a room at the Holiday Inn near the airport. We had like 10 big Igloo ice chests with iced down sasquatch body parts with us in the room.

Anna was like, “No hanky panky, Rod. I am tired and I want to go to bed. Tomorrow we finish business.”

Frankly, I did not blame her for withholding her magnificent muff from me. I was tired as hell. But, I could not settle for nothing. So, when Anna was in the bathroom taking a shower, I started going through her suit case. I wanted to find some of her panties to jack off into. Instead, I found a little black notebook. Inside it contained her lodging codes, and some other interesting things. I photographed the contents with my phone and then put it back.

When Anna got out of the shower she was already dressed in her night clothes. She saw me lying on my back, nude on the bed, and jacking it. “Rod!! GROSS!!!! Go to the restroom to do that shit!!!”, she commanded. I just did it to get a rise out of her. LOL!!

So, if Anna is still inside the U.S., then using the codes I stole from her I can locate precisely where she will be that night. I studied it for a few moments then had my answer. Tonight she would be staying at the Dogman Inn on Hwy 95 South, Room 355. I told Rattler to get me there stat!

We had to stop several times for fuel and beer. Those Hueys go just a bit over a hundred MPH, you know. But eventually, we got there. I gave the boys some money and told them to go to the Waffle House for some coffee to sober up. Then they would fly me home.

I should mention that I also had Rattler’s fully auto Russian AK-74 with spare mags. During the long flight with 2 drunks from Washington State to New York City, I had worked myself up into a towering rage over how Anna fucked me on this Putin deal. She had clearly thrown me aside. But for what, exactly? I figured I would storm the hotel room, get some answers, then shower the room with gun fire.

I busted through the door of Room 355 at exactly 3:35 a.m. There she was. My entry roused her from slumber. I was pointing my rifle at her, center mass. She was shocked at the appearance of a gunman in her room at this time of night. However, she was not as shocked as one would think (this was not the first time something like this has happened to her).

I raised my face from the receiver just enough so she could see it was me. “Rod!!!”, she exclaimed. “What happened to you?!?!? I thought you had died up in those mountains when we never hear from you!” I replied, “Shove it up that cute little ass of yours, Anna. You fucked me. And not in the good way. What the fuck was all that shit about needing a sasquatch for Putin?!?”

Anna played dumb. But it struck me that I had been deliberately put out of the loop for 3 months. Why? Who wanted me away for that long, and why? What went on in my absence?!? I was just dying to know!!! I set my rifle down and pulled out my fixed blade knife, ready to get down to some real nasty work on Anna so I could get some truth. The pure evil of what I was about to do to her caused a wide death grin to grow on my face. Anna saw it. She knew what it meant. She swallowed hard and her eyes betrayed the shear terror she felt inside. I was engorged with blood lust. She knew she had fucked up one time too many this time!!

Suddenly came the sound of the toilet in the bathroom flushing. I was momentarily shocked. I did not expect anyone else to be there with Anna. Anna saw it in my face. I glanced at her and saw that the terror in her face was replaced with pleasure, a slight smile creeping over her face.

I was going to have to face off against this person in the bathroom, who would be out in a split moment. When I do that, I will have to turn 180 degrees from Anna, thereby making me vulnerable to her. I had only once choice: Shoot Anna first.

Just as this came to me, but just before I could act on it, the bathroom door opened. I had to deal with that person before Anna now. I spun around to see that it was a completely nude, and fat, white man. He was a real oafish blob. He looked surprised to see me. He also looked sort of familiar.

I next heard the crack of something hitting my skull hard. I remember the immediate hateful pain that shot through my body and the sound of blood rushing through my ears. I remember the dizziness, then falling to the floor. Clearly, as I fixed on the man from the bathroom, Anna had cracked me over the head with a blunt object.

I came to the next morning, Billy Ray and Rattler had manage to track me down based upon coordinates I left in the chopper that said “IN CASE OF EMERGENCY”. Billy Ray filled up the hotel room ice bucket with cold water and doused my head with it to bring me conscious. I was disoriented at first. But after a bit, what happened in this room the night before came back to me.

Honestly, I am surprised that Anna did not just kill me. I presume that she thinks she can leverage her drop-dead hotness to get me to do more shit for her in the future. She is absolutely right about that too. Rattler then said, “Hey, Rod, that snake bitch left a letter fer ya.”

He handed me the letter. This is what it said:
____________________________________________

“Dear Rod:

Sorry about the boo boo on your head. Hope it heals soon. Also sorry about leaving you in the mountains. I was not running a scam on you Rod. Rather, an opportunity arose for me to acquire a sasquatch body from another person. You may know him since you are a sasquatch hunter. His name is Matt Moneymaker. Anyway, until next time…..

Yours truly,
Anna Conda”
_____________________________________________
I could not fucking believe it. That was fatfuck Moneymaker in the hotel room earlier. Anna fucked Matt Fatfuck Moneymaker for a Sasquatch! That fat son of bitch!!

Billy Ray asked, “You ready to go Rod?” I stood up and said, “Yeah, let’s go.” Then Rattler said, “Hey, ya wanna stop and git some beer fer the ride home?” I replied “Hell yeah.”

I felt like I wanted to die. Thank God for beer and buddies. I don’t blame Anna. She is a fucking snake, and I knew that before this started. Also, I cannot really blame fatfuck Moneymaker for wanting to get some of that hot poon pie Anna serves up. I guess I have to blame fate for fucking me over this time. I even started thinking that next time I will just avoid Anna. But I know I won’t, thus making me subject to this sort of shit again. I had Rattler set us down in Charlottesville so I could buy some hard liquor.

taken from this tumblr post; https://spicysighs.tumblr.com/post/718136492512493568/matty-healy-taylor-swift-timeline
Matty Healy + Taylor Swift Timeline 11/7/13: Matty talking about Taylor liking the band and being asked to tour with her.
1/21/14: Matty talking about Taylor liking the band. xx
3/31/14: Matty talks about being asked to tour with Taylor and turning it down. "That was cool. It’s like, ‘We can’t, but that is really nice, thank you very much.”
11/4/14: Matty is pictured wearing a deluxe 1989 album cover tee at his concert in Milwaukee.
11/8/14: Taylor reblogs the picture on tumblr and says they are her favorite band.
11/9/14: Taylor likes these two pictures of Matty wearing the 1989 t-shirt.
11/9/14: Taylor liked this gif-set of Matty talking about whether he’s a dog or cat person.
11/19/14: Selena Gomez, Taylor and other friends went to The 1975 show in LA. Video of them singing along to ‘The City.’
11/19/14: Taylor & Matty making a video for a fan. (Jamie’s daughter Kitty)
11/22/14: Matty follows Taylor on Twitter.
11/23/14: Taylor was pictured wearing a The 1975 band shirt.
11/23/14: Taylor likes these two posts of them wearing each others merch.
11/24/14: Matty dedicates ‘Robbers’ to Taylor. Supposedly he’s done this multiple times. xx
11/25/14: Taylor likes these Tumblr posts. And this picture of Matty.
11/26/14: Taylor likes this Tumblr post.
11/26/14: Matty likes Taylor’s post on Instagram.
11/26/14: Matty wearing the 1989 t-shirt again.
11/26/14: Matty talking about meeting Taylor “I met Taylor Swift, that was really nice.” and when asked about possibly dating “I mean bloody hell, what am I going to do? Go out with Taylor Swift? She’s a sensation, I wouldn’t say no.”
11/28/14: Taylor is rumored to have attended The 1975 show in Chattanooga, TN.
11/29/14: Taylor likes this Tumblr post.
11/29/14: Matty signed this Polaroid for a fan, and the fan talking about the interaction.
11/29/14: Matty says he can’t kiss a fan because he’s taken.
12/2/14: Matty’s mom retweets this.
12/2/14: Matty likes Taylor’s Instagram post.
12/3/14: Matty about Taylor “Well, she’s amazing. She’s an amazing role model. And not only is she an incredible songwriter, she’s an incredible pop songwriter, which I think is even harder. I can’t speak highly enough about Taylor Swift.”
12/4/14: Taylor, Martha, Karlie and others went to The 1975 show in NYC. Where Matty dedicated ‘fallingforyou’ to her. Rumored that Matty missed the after-party and spent the night with Taylor. xx
12/5/14: Taylor likes this Tumblr post about Matty singing ‘fallingforyou’ to her.
12/5/14: Matty’s tweet in response to articles about him and Taylor getting his name wrong.
12/6/14: Matty has a breakdown on stage in Boston, MA. In 2015 talking about the incident he says “There was girl stuff. There was family stuff. There was financial stuff. There was drug stuff.”
12/6/14: Matty talking about a fan saying “I love you” to him. “What did I say to the poor fucking girl? ‘You don’t have the right to love me. You don’t know me. I love you but you don’t get to love me.’ Jesus. Can you imagine your favorite band shouting that at you? What a dickhead. What a horrible thing to say to a kid who fucking does love me.”
12/9/14: Matty at a show in NY “I was sad the other day as someone told me they loved me. And I said ‘No, you don’t. Not really.’ And today I told someone I loved them. And they said ‘No, you don’t.’ And it fucking sucks to hear that. Especially when you mean it. Don’t do that to someone. Don’t do what I did.”
12/14/14: Matty posts this on Instagram.
12/30/14: Matty deletes this Instagram post.
1/16/15: Matty denies dating rumors. Admits they exchanged numbers but “That didn’t really happen as much as it’d be amazing for me if it did, unfortunately it didn’t.”
2/25/15: They hangout at the BRIT Awards afterparty. (This weekend is when she met Calvin and they started dating)
2015: Matty & Halsey date and breakup.
11/15/15: Matty talks about Taylor in an interview “The things that surround her are like Barack Obama. I fell for her a little bit, but everyone falls for Taylor Swift” “The day after she’d been to a show of ours, someone sent me a screenshot of E! News with the headline ‘Who is Matt Healy?’ That freaked me out. I’m not ready to indulge in that world and I’m not ready to be judged by that world.”
12/8/15: Matty talks about reaching out to Taylor to have her in his music video.
Sometime in 2015: Matty & Gabriella Brooks start dating.
2/1/16: Matty talking about Taylor “She was a fan of the band and we just became friends, and we related to each other over how mental our lives were. But when you’re with people like Taylor, there are a million people flying around you the whole time, and this security guard is talking to that guy, and this guy is the new manager. I didn’t like the pace of it, because it makes me confused and I feel like I’m going to miss something. And being perceptive is one of the abilities that I like to think that I have.“
3/17/16: Matt Healy has suggested that dating Taylor Swift would have been “emasculating” for him because of her huge global fame.
3/18/16: Journalist who interviewed him writes an op-ed saying his words were misconstrued and “I saw an intelligent and liberal man wrestling with our culture’s gender roles.”
3/19/16: He apologizes for said comments and calls Taylor “One of the most gracious, hard working, creatively gifted, and beautiful women that I have had the pleasure to meet.”
6/1/16: Taylor & Calvin Harris breakup.
6/15/16: Taylor starts dating Tom Hiddleston.
8/17/16: Matty says he has Taylor’s number but “she’s probably changed her number by now.” And jokes “I keep texting her.”
8/30/16: Matty talks about Taylor on the BBCR1’s Breakfast Show. They joke about Taylor doing jury duty.
9/6/16: Taylor & Tom Hiddleston breakup.
October 2016: Taylor & Joe Alwyn start dating.
10/27/16: Matty about Taylor in Rolling Stone “She came to our show, and you would have thought that Barack Obama had come out. I don’t know another person on the planet that would elicit that kind of reaction.”
11/11/16: Matty again denies he dated Taylor and says “She came to a show and we hung out. We fancied each other, but then we couldn’t have it go any further, because it would be like going out with Barack Obama.”
11/20/17: Podcast talking about Taylor & Matty.
12/3/18: Matty talking about his journal “It’s mainly stories that I write about my dreams of being in love with other popstars.”
12/4/18: Matty retweets a picture of Taylor.
8/28/19: Matty & Gabriella Brooks breakup.
9/23/19: Mentions wanting to produce an album for Taylor in an interview (at 13:48 & 32:00) “Taylor, if you ever want someone to help you set up the mics for your little acoustic record, just so you know, I’m there.”
9/23/19: Matty retweets and tags Taylor in a post quoting him saying he wants to produce an album for Taylor.
9/24/19: Matty tweets “Taylor Swift. With an acoustic guitar. Doing her ‘Nebraska’. Doing her ‘Blue’. Kill me.”
January 2020: Matty & FKA Twigs start dating.
2/12/20: Both attend the NME awards and hug. Beabadoobee (who Taylor is talking to in the video) about meeting Taylor that day “Taylor’s so ethereal, So badass, I was like ‘Holy shit!’ She was walking towards me and I’m like, ‘She’s going to Matty [The 1975] not me.’ And then she comes up to me and I’m like… I vomited in my mouth. I couldn’t believe it.”
2/20/20: Matty mentions seeing Taylor and wanting to work with her in an interview with Zane Lowe. “She was just stood behind me. I mean, I haven’t seen Taylor in years so it was actually a really nice room. But it, unfortunately, wasn’t the time for me to pitch my post-rock Joni Mitchell project.”
10/22/20: Deuxmoi posts these.
2021: Matty starts working with Jack Antonoff on The 1975′s upcoming album.
November 2021: Taylor and Jack Antonoff start working on “Midnights.”
6/7/22: Matty & FKA Twigs breakup.
8/9/22: Matty Healy shares Taylor Swift’s reaction to The 1975’s new album, with her saying “it’s so funny.”
9/3/22: Matty says there will be no collab on Midnights. “I would love that! But unfortunately FAKE NEWS :(”
10/7/22: Matty tweets “You guys actually thought Taylor Swift was gonna have me on her album”
10/11/22: Matty on working with Taylor “Oh we’re not. We’d love to. Love to work with Taylor Swift. Love Taylor Swift, think she’s one of the best songwriters, but yeah, no we haven’t done that. We’d love to though.”
10/11/22: The 1975 discuss covering ‘Lover’ for the BBC live lounge.
10/12/22: Matty briefly mentions Taylor in a Zane Lowe interview (45:53).
10/18/22: Matty briefly mentions Taylor in a podcast (1:22:40) when talking about who they would like to see on the podcast. Interestingly enough her name seems to be cut from the video version of the podcast.
10/23/22: Matty posted on his Instagram to stream Midnights.
10/26/22: Matty posted he was listening to ‘Hey Stephen TV’ on his Instagram story
11/27/22: Matty said he worked on Midnights with Taylor but their versions didn’t make the cut (4:52). “We actually worked a bit on that, but then the version of it never came out.” “It was for reasons not to be criticized.”
12/21/22: Matty said ‘Chocolate‘ reminds him of Taylor “Tumblr, Doc Martens, Taylor Swift, the 1975”
‘Question…?’ Played in The 1975 pre-show playlist. (Don’t have dates because it happened multiple times)
1/12/23: Matty & Taylor before The 1975 show.
1/12/23: Taylor does a surprise performance at The 1975 show in London. Deuxmoi later claims they stayed up until 4 am talking (later confirmed in his profile with The New Yorker.)
1/12/23: Matty “I’m not kissing anybody in front of Taylor Swift, have some respect. in front of the queen? not happening“
2/2/23: Matty briefly mentions Taylor and the Ticketmaster situation (38:06)
February: Allegedly spent several days at a Los Angeles recording studio together.
3/15/23: Matty seen with Ana Salazar.
3/17/23: First show of The Eras Tour
3/22/23: Puff-piece comes out stating Joe and Taylor are ‘great together’ and ‘super supportive of her career’ and will be travelling to her ‘when he can’.
‘About You’ plays at the same time as the Lover MV has been playing on The Eras Tour pre-show playlist. (Don’t have dates because it happened multiple times)
3/29/23: Matty’s ex says “Things were going well until around March 29th then, out of the blue, he stopped replying to my messages and calls.”
3/31/23: Taylor changes The Eras Tour setlist from ‘Invisible String’ to ‘The 1’
4/7/23: Matty follows Taylor on Instagram.
4/7/23: Matty likes Taylor’s Instagram post.
4/8/23: Matty’s birthday.
4/8/23: It’s announced Taylor and Joe have broken up.
4/8/23: Matty talking about love and how happy he is.
4/10/23: Matty deactivates his social media accounts.
4/10/23: Matty on why he deactivated “Everything happens in eras. The 1975 is a very eras band. And I think that the era of me being a fucking asshole is gonna come to an end.” and “I perform all the time and it’s my job and I love doing this, but I can’t perform off the stage any more as I just want to be a bloke.”
4/10/23: Matty says “Hey, I love you.” during ‘About You’.
4/10/23: Matty mouths “You know who you are.” and points during ‘About You’.
4/11/23: Matty “A call for something sincere and direct. That’s what we’re all looking for. That’s what I’m looking for. Maybe I’ve found it.. I’m feeling quite happy.”
4/13/23: Deuxmoi says she got a tip that Matty & Taylor are dating. (19:16)
4/14/23: Matty cheering during ‘Me & You Together.’
4/14/23: Matty “Romance is nice when it works, this next song worked.” ‘fallingforyou’ starts playing “Oh it’s a different song, this song did not work.”
4/14/23: Before ‘About You’ “Ok, this is the one that worked.”
4/14/23: Matty mouthing “I love you” during ‘About You’ and saying “Fuck yeah, I win!” after it ends.
4/16/23: Matty’s “Yeah you will!” during ‘Happiness’ after the line, “I’m never gonna love again.”
4/19/23: Matty says “It takes bit to get here but its worth it” and “true story” before playing ‘Me & You Together.’
4/21/23: Matty plays a cover of ‘The Best of Me’ by The Starting Line. Take note of the lyrics.
4/24/23: Matty spoke about how he sees people listening to ‘She’s American’ in three places: Manchester, Tokyo and Pennsylvania “that’s a whole other thing don’t worry about that.”
5/3/23: The Sun reports Matty and Taylor are dating and will go public with their romance at her shows in Nashville.
5/3/23: Matty introducing ‘Me and You Together song’, saying “I’ve got something real to tell you guys!”
5/3/23: Matty mouths “This is about you, you know who you are. I love you.” while playing ‘About You.’
5/3/23: Matty does a cover of ‘The Best of Me’ by The Starting Line again.
5/4/23: Matty introducing ‘Me and You Together song’, saying “So I’ve been trying to tell you guys” and “That’s right.”
5/4/23: Before playing ‘About You’ Matty mouths "This is why I’m happy. Who is it about? Who am I talking to?”
5/4/23: Matty is seen mouthing the words “I love you” before writing the letter T on the camera lens.
5/4/23: Matty saying “she sure is” before playing ‘She’s American.’
5/4/23: Matty flies from Manila to Nashville. (Which is around a 20hr flight)
5/5/23: Matty at Taylor’s concert. Nashville night 1.
5/5/23: Taylor mouths “This is about you, you know who you are. I love you.” during ‘cardigan.’
5/6/23: Matty grabbing coffee accompanied by Taylors bodyguard after leaving Taylors condo.
5/6/23: Matty at Nashville night 2. xx
5/6/23: Matty & Taylor pictured arriving at Taylor’s condo together.
5/7/23: Matty at Nashville night 3.
5/11/23: Matty and Taylor spotted on a date with Jack Antonoff in NYC. More pictures here.
5/12/23: Matty at Philly night 1.
5/13/23: Matty at Philly night 2.
5/13/23: Taylor performs ‘This Love’ with no introduction.
5/14/23: Taylor plays a request of “Hey Stephen”, but doesn’t say who requested it.
5/14/23: Matty pictured at the VIP tent at The Eras Tour Philly night 3
5/15/23: Matty and Taylor pictured leaving a party at Electric Studios in NYC.
5/18/23: Article comes out saying Joe is ‘distraught and slighted’ over Taylor & Matty dating, saying he ‘trusted’ Taylor when she said they were just friends.
5/18/23 Matty entering Taylor’s NYC Apartment.
5/20/23: Matty’s ex talks about Matty and Taylor.
5/20/23: Taylor’s speech before playing ‘Question…?’ in Foxborough, MA. “I want you all to know that I’ve never been this happy before in my life. It’s not just with the tour, I just sort of feel like my life finally feels like it makes sense. And so I thought I’d play this song, which brings me a lot of happy memories.”
5/20/23: Taylor plays ‘Question…?’ on night 2 in Foxborough, MA.
5/22/23: Matty dropping Taylor off at Electric Lady Studios.
5/24/23: Taylor and Matty leaving the Electric Lady Studios separately.
5/27/23: The Sun reports Matty and Taylor are moving in together.
5/29/23: Matty’s profile with The New Yorker comes out which includes multiple mentions of Taylor.
5/29/23: From The New Yorker “Healy found it annoying that, at a certain level of fame, celebrities can cultivate liberal auras while avoiding the risk of taking real political stands. (Swift, I thought, but didn’t say, seemed to be excepted from his critique.)”
5/29/23: From The New Yorker about Taylor & Matty dating “ Neither of their representatives would comment on the record, but I kept getting texts from people who knew them, and who insisted: this time, it’s real.”
6/5/23: Matty & Taylor reportedly break up.
6/6/23: People releases an article saying “There is no drama, and who knows what could happen again.” and "Taylor and Matty still care for one another but they are in the middle of world tours so both are incredibly busy. They’ve been friends for years and are still friends.”
6/6/23: While discussing Taylor on his podcast (21:06) Zach Sang says “I’m like kind of friends with Selena Gomez. We’ve known each other for a very long time and we share a lot of close friends. And from what I heard like in the aura around Selena, Taylor was talking about Matty Healy like he was the one."
6/11/23: Matty reactivates his Instagram.
6/11/23: Matty “You know what’s nice, playing songs in context“ before ‘Me and You Together song’
7/1/23: Matty mentions Taylor "I don’t wanna use this thing [the catwalk], it feels very democratic, it feels very… I mean Beyonce of course, Taylor, Machine Gun Kelly, whoever it may be… I don’t like it, it makes me feel exposed.”
7/5/23: The Sun claims Matty & Taylor are back together and “want to make it work at all costs.”
7/5/23: People declines claims that they are together.
7/18/23: Matty briefly mentions Taylor “I speak about this a lot, the Tumblr times, the simpler days, the golden days. When it was just us and Taylor and Lana and Arctic Monkeys.”
7/22/23: Taylor removes ‘About You’ from The Eras Tour pre-show playlist.
8/7/23: Matty is seen with Meredith Mickelson at an airport in Hawaii.
August 2023: Taylor starts dating Travis Kelce.
September 2023: Matty starts dating Gabbriette.
December 2023: Multiple people receive miss prints of “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” which appears to show the song “Slut” originally featured The 1975.
4/19/24: Taylor releases her new album “The Tortured Poets Department” where many songs are believed to be about Taylor and Matty’s previous relationship.

Alright, hear me out. This whole post might come off as "arrogant," "pompous," or even "completely out of touch with reality." However, I ask that you hear me out entirely, even if I drone on and on and on and on and on and on and
I am a member of a mediocre writing group at a local middle school. No, I am not a minor. Yes, they let me join because the library's group deemed my writing too "immature" and "illegible." Ridiculous, honestly. Anyway, the others there share their writing and exchange feedback. I was recently ousted from this group for calling a fellow member's prose "the worst fucking thing I've ever laid eyes upon, including the twink I mistook for a woman on a cruise in 2002 after we were in bed and the lights were turned back on." I was told my response was inappropriate. Honestly, though, they need to learn that they suck.
Moving on. This group didn't appreciate me or my godlike writing abilities. I understand that my IQ is well above average and I have a hard time finding people who can relate to me on an intellectual level, but you'd think they know genius when they see it. My mom always goes on and on about how talented I am, but no one else had caught on yet. Just bad luck on my part, I guess.
I had become pretty depressed a few weeks ago. It was a combination of not being welcome in the library anymore and having to read a bunch of stupid kid's writing without having a meltdown. I was walking along the street one day when a woman dressed like Beatrix LeStrangr bumped into me and spilled her coffee over my shirt.
Now, I have a small "gift." Just a small one, mind you. But I can read minds. The woman I smashed into, Sarah, invited me to her tarot reading in her house to make up for the coffee incident. I realized immediately she was a fellow Alpha from the way her hair smelled (weed and cat litter, vaguely) and followed her into her house, where she informed me I was underappreciated by my peers. I had struck gold. I thanked Sarah and rushed out of there to head for the library (after we smashed. obviously).
Now, like I said, I have a gift. What really drives the nail home here is all this happened on the 8th of the month, and my old writing group had 8 members (minus that bitch Shannon).
When I got to the library, I rushed in and proclaimed myself to be the greatest writer the world had ever known. I said I knew that they were intimidated by me, but no fear, I had learned humility from my good friend Sarah. Shannon burst into flames, screeching. Everybody clapped. Obama was there. I expect to win the next Nobel in literature.

I joined the Episcopal church last year and am from a mixed Catholic/Jewish background and I’ve loved it. I love the history, ritual, and beliefs of the church. It’s felt like home since the day I’ve stepped and have found a loving community here that I didn’t really think was possible, being gay and all.
However, recently I’ve been in an uncomfortable position with another congregant. A few months ago I was sitting in a pew before mass started and this woman who I’ve talked to a few times before sat down next to me. (I feel like it might be important to note that except for the kids there, I’m by far the youngest person there) We started making nice small talk but then suddenly made a very transphobic comment regarding trans youth. Then she started talking about vaguely Qanon stuff, like about international pedophile rings and how shootings are government false flags. I didn’t know quite how to respond to the sudden 180 so I just nodded.
I thought it was just a one off thing and eventually forgot about it. But last week during coffee hour (which, btw is the best sacrament) she sat down next to me and we started to talking about what I’ve been doing in school. I’m a Poli Sci major and mentioned I had just written a 2,500 worded paper on climate change activism the night before. Then she went on a whole tirade about how Climate Change “isn’t real” and the whole thing about how it’s a conspiracy by the Clinton’s and Obama’s and how the ”real scientists” have studied it and “there’s no need to worry”. And how we “Don’t have to worry because God’s in charge of it all”. (It’s important to note that I don’t look like a stereotypical leftist, think the Winklevoss twins from The Social Network but more twink-ish). Then she asked me if I was “pro or anti climate change” and I just said something like how the paper was just about the philosophy behind the activism. (I didn’t know climate change was something you could be “for or against” lol) I just nodded through the rest of what she said and thought she had finished.
Then she asked me where I wanted to go to Law School and I said I was thinking either UT Austin and then went off again about how it’s full of “Libtards” and more of that rhetoric. Again, I just nodded through it all. I think my silence and nodding gave her the impression that I agree with her.
I’m of the mind that it’s rude to bring up politics, especially at church and even more so with people you don’t know very well. That might make me hipocrite because I brought up the paper. My plan is to kind of avoid her and just nod when she brings up her politics. But I also think that my silence gives her the impression that I agree with her and so she agrees with me. But I also don’t want to argue politics at Church. I go to mass to get a break from the world, not to argue about it. So my question is, what should I do?

From Texas Monthly:
The Battle of Big Taco
With their anything-goes approach to ingredients—and deep-pocketed investors—Torchy's Tacos and Velvet Taco have ambitious plans to expand nationally.
Something stops Clay Dover cold as he strolls behind the restaurant’s counter. The CEO of Velvet Taco has been all smiles and high fives since he entered the chain’s location in the Grandscape shopping center, amid the suburban sprawl north of Dallas. But now, staring at a few chicken strips in a bin under a heat lamp, he cuts off his friendly patter midsentence and pulls out one of the little brown hunks. He turns it over in his hand, tears it apart, takes a bite, and throws the rest in the trash with a faint trace of a pucker on his face. He’s not going to call anyone out on the spot, but he’s clearly not pleased.
Dover happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on chicken strips. As a former executive with Raising Cane’s, a Plano-based restaurant chain whose entire menu revolves around chicken strips, he knows instantly whether they’ve been made with tenderloins, a narrow cut found on the underside of the breast—“It’s the filet of chicken,” he says—or from an oversized breast that’s been sliced. He can detect whether a strip is crispy on the outside and moist on the inside or has devolved into a bumpy slab of rubber.
Today the strips in question were too small and too bready, suggesting that the crew had been serving customers the better pieces out of a batch and leaving the remains too long under the heater. The chicken didn’t pull apart with the telltale ease of a fresh tender. “Thirty-five percent of the protein in our tacos has chicken tenders in it,” he explains. “So if it’s not hot and juicy on the inside, if it’s not perfect—if you screw up the chicken, you’re done.”
Velvet Taco, which launched in Dallas thirteen years ago and now runs 46 locations in seven states, numbers among a handful of chains with the potential to redefine what a fast-food taco looks and tastes like. Sixty-plus years after Taco Bell turned a regional staple into a cheesy drive-through treat, there has yet to emerge a serious challenger with national reach, besides Chipotle, where tacos are a menu afterthought. But Velvet faces stiff competition for that prize position, and nowhere more than at home in Texas.
A few days after Dover’s Grandscape chicken-strip discovery and 220 miles south, Mike Rypka pulls on a fashionable knit blazer over his black T-shirt and heads into a conference room at the headquarters of Torchy’s Tacos, in East Austin. It’s headshot day at the chain Rypka founded in an Austin food trailer, in 2006, and which now operates 127 locations in fourteen states. “Sometimes I have to look professional,” he mutters, before stepping in front of the camera and transforming instantly from a 48-year-old tattooed dude into a corporate executive with thousands of employees.
Torchy’s started as the kind of lovably quirky local outfit whose devoted followers treat it like an extension of their personalities. But as the chain conquered city after city, it began to mirror the experience of a beloved local band that signs with a major label and lands a radio hit only to see its fans cry “sellout.” Rypka at one point stepped aside to make room for a seasoned CEO, but then he stepped back in to lead a changed company—one that’s poised to become a household name in every part of the country.
In phrasing that many taqueros might take umbrage at, Velvet’s and Torchy’s offerings have been described as “elevated” takes on the taco. What that means exactly differs quite a bit between the two chains, but each offers creative combinations of ingredients and an irreverent brand identity that trades on hedonism. Both have taken large investments—hundreds of millions of dollars—from coastal private-equity firms aiming to grow them into enormous publicly traded companies.
Mexican restaurants are on a tear in the U.S., recording some $50 billion in sales in 2022 and growing by more than 9 percent annually, far outpacing the overall economy, according to food-service consultancy Technomic. Meanwhile, Latinos have grown into the second-largest ethnic group in the country, accounting for roughly 20 percent of the population (and double that in Texas, where they constitute the largest ethnic group). As the U.S. absorbs the effects of changing demographics, opportunities for multiple national taco chains will only increase.
To be sure, other players are scrambling to claim a piece of that emerging mega industry—call it Big Taco—but Velvet and Torchy’s share an important advantage in being headquartered in Dallas and Austin, two of the best places anywhere for building food brands. “Both companies are expected to grow much faster than their competitive set,” says David Henkes, a senior principal with Technomic. It’s not surprising that the future of the taco business is being invented in Texas, but the reason has less to do with the state’s Mexican heritage and 1,200-mile international border and more to do with its proclivity for shrewd business.
Turning tacos into cash has been a Texas tradition since the late nineteenth century. Though tortillas emerged as far back as 10,000 BC, it wasn’t until the eighteenth century, according to the prevailing theory, that a stuffed tortilla became a “taco”—a word that Mexican silver miners also used to describe the little explosive paper-and-gunpowder wraps that they stuck in rock walls. When a group of women who came to be known as the Chili Queens of San Antonio started selling food from pushcarts and colorful stalls in the city’s plazas in or near the 1880s, they ushered in a blending of Mexican and American flavors that grew into Tex-Mex cuisine. Among the dishes that took off as a result—chili con carne, enchiladas, tamales—the taco was the most convenient.
It took a Californian, though, to build the first big brand around the taco. Into a crisp-fried tortilla, Taco Bell founder Glen Bell essentially stuffed a deconstructed cheeseburger—ground beef, iceberg lettuce, and shredded cheese. It was 1962. McDonald’s had revolutionized restaurants just a few years earlier with a quick-service concept that Bell adopted for his chain. By 1978, Taco Bell had nearly one thousand locations—including stores throughout Texas—thanks to an aggressive franchising model also borrowed from McDonald’s. With Mexican food still considered somewhat exotic in much of the United States, Taco Bell didn’t face as much competition as its burger brethren. But after it helped usher tacos into the mainstream, the differences between its food and that of mom-and-pop taquerias suggested an enormous opportunity to build something fresher and more authentic.
Enter Felix Stehling, the owner of a bar called the Crystal Pistol, who opened the first Taco Cabana in a decommissioned Dairy Queen in San Antonio in 1978. While Taco Bell emphasized assembly-line speed and precooked ingredients, Taco Cabana offered house-made tortillas, sizzling fajita plates, and a salsa bar. Taco Cabana’s success prompted a Minnesota entrepreneur to copy its formula almost exactly, in a Houston-based chain called Two Pesos. The resulting trademark lawsuit went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1992. Taco Cabana prevailed and eventually bought Two Pesos. But after Stehling handed the CEO reins to a former Fuddruckers executive, the emphasis on fresh ingredients began to slip, and ultimately, so did sales. The chain, which had at one point expanded to seven states, has 149 locations today, all but six of them in Texas.
As Taco Cabana’s fortunes waned, a new entrant called Chipotle was rising in Colorado with a message about ethically sourced ingredients and an investment from McDonald’s. Chipotle was the first Taco Bell challenger to take a serious bite out of the market. By the time it went public in 2006, the chain had nearly five hundred locations in 21 states. Today it has more than three thousand, compared with Taco Bell’s eight thousand, and hauled in about $10 billion in 2023. By emphasizing the quality and freshness of its food, Chipotle popularized the fast-casual dining concept and ignited an industry revolution, an upscaling of fast food without sacrificing the “fast.” Workers chopped onions and lettuce by hand every day. Customers could see raw chicken being grilled on a flattop in the back of the kitchen. Some Chipotle items—such as carnitas and barbacoa—are prepared in a central kitchen and show up in big plastic bags, but none of it arrives frozen.
Amid the stampede of restaurant concepts that then attempted to re-create the Chipotle phenomenon in countless other formats in the first two decades of this century—burgers, grain bowls, pizzas, salads, sandwiches—Shake Shack stood out. Not only did the chain started by New York fine-dining impresario Danny Meyer create a better burger—a melty pile of guilty pleasures packaged in a spongy potato roll—but it charged two or three times as much as McDonald’s for a meal. While McDonald’s and Chipotle report some $3 million in annual sales per location, Shake Shack pulls in $4 million or more.
Shake Shack also showed how an aggressive private-equity investment could grow a restaurant brand as if it were a tech firm. Leonard Green & Partners, based in Los Angeles, had funded the expansion of other companies, such as the Container Store, based in the Dallas suburb of Coppell. It invested in Shake Shack in 2012, when the company operated only a handful of restaurants, and took it public less than three years later, with 63 locations. By then the goal for investors had shifted from finding the next Chipotle to finding the next Shake Shack—and it did not go unnoticed that in the taco space, there were fewer large competitors than in burgers.
Taco Bell delivered lower annual sales per location—about $1.6 million—than burger chains. And as much as Chipotle had changed the game, its menu emphasized burritos, not tacos. Meanwhile tacos were becoming a national obsession, with tiny trailers turning out Mexican-style street tacos, Netflix commissioning taco shows, and one storied magazine even hiring a dedicated taco editor (ahem, Texas Monthly; ahem, the James Beard Award–winning José R. Ralat).
The door was open for a new taco giant—if it had a novel concept.
There may be no metro area in America with more headquarters of mass-market restaurant chains than Dallas–Fort Worth (though Orlando offers stiff competition). It only makes sense, considering DFW’s low $7.25 minimum wage and dearth of natural or political barriers to suburban development. Chili’s, Cici’s, Which Wich, Wingstop—Big D dining concepts go on and on, their towering signs punctuating the view from North Texas highways while mirrored office buildings just beyond house their executive suites. Before Clay Dover took over as the CEO of Velvet Taco, the company was run by its founder, Randy DeWitt, among the most prolific Dallas restaurateurs.
A former commercial real estate salesman who developed strip centers around Walmarts and other national retailers, DeWitt has arguably passed even the late, legendary Norman Brinker as a restaurant savant. (Brinker brought the world Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale—brands that not only created the casual-dining category and established Dallas’s dominance but also ushered in lasting innovations, such as the salad bar.)
DeWitt, 65 years old with an eye-crinkling smile and a flourishing head of politician hair, first fell in love with restaurants as a bartender in Waco while he was a student at Baylor University. He got his start in Dallas in the nineties with a coffee bar and then a seafood chain called Rockfish, whose expansion was financially backed by Brinker’s company, Brinker International. In 2005, DeWitt came up with the concept for a racy sports bar called Twin Peaks. The now infamous chain, he says, unapologetically, would “do everything better” than breastaurant pioneer Hooters, from its double entendre menu items to the acreage of skin displayed by its all-female waitstaff to the not-so-subtle innuendo in the brand name.
By 2013, Bloomberg described Twin Peaks as the fastest-growing chain in America, and DeWitt was an abundantly wealthy man. He moved a few years ago from exurban Frisco to exclusive Highland Park, where he rebuilt a home to include underground parking, a turret, and various Spanish-inspired architectural details that match those of the glittering Highland Park Village shopping plaza a few steps away.
As his empire took shape, DeWitt determined that his strengths lay in spinning up new restaurant concepts and getting them started, not in operating vast chains. So he built his company, Front Burner Restaurants, as a kind of incubator aimed at selling its creations once they proved viable. At the Ranch at Las Colinas, a Texas-themed restaurant he’d opened in Irving in 2008, he noticed the line cooks were experimenting with tacos at the end of each week, combining unexpected ingredients and feeding the staff. DeWitt began looking forward to tasting their latest creations: a rotisserie chicken taco one night, a shrimp-and-grits taco the next.
Light bulb. He’d seen plenty of new and old taquerias that focused on traditional street tacos or Tex-Mex flavors. But what if he could build a restaurant around the idea of the “liberated taco”? He originally planned to call the chain Taco Libre, but when that name turned out to have been taken by a caterer in California, he settled on Velvet Taco—“implying this is luxury and refined and something more upscale,” he says now. On the menu: a fried-oyster taco (since discontinued), a chicken tikka taco (still the chain’s best-seller), and a smashburger taco that one-ups Taco Bell’s deconstructed cheeseburger by reconstructing it.
For the logo, DeWitt chose a design that evoked a royal medallion. Or perhaps both the name and image slyly evoke a part of the female anatomy that Twin Peaks hadn’t. He has a hard time denying that. “We like playful names,” he says with a shrug, before insisting that any innuendo is accidental.
Clay Dover, boyish at 52, has the ambiguous logo embroidered into nearly every piece of clothing he owns, including shirts he wears out for date nights with his wife. He joined Velvet Taco in 2017, when it operated just four locations—in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Chicago. DeWitt had just sold a majority stake to a private equity group called L. Catterton that’s based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and affiliated with the family of Bernard Arnault, the French luxury kingpin who runs the LVMH conglomerate and regularly trades places with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos as the world’s wealthiest person.
Before his seven years at Raising Cane’s, Dover led a Dallas restaurant group that owned a passel of once successful chains that had lost their edge—Norm Brinker creations Bennigan’s and Steak and Ale, along with steakhouse rivals Bonanza and Ponderosa. He’d met DeWitt, and they’d talked about working together (though not at Twin Peaks—“My wife would kill me,” Dover says), so he’d watched the early growth of Velvet Taco with great interest. The idea was fresh. It reflected a changing Dallas—and a changing country. The restaurant kept its purple neon lights on until four in the morning, to serve revelers in need of taco therapy before calling it a night. Dover spent a full day and night watching the scene at the Fort Worth location before he agreed to join. “It’s a rockin’ place,” he concluded.
Private equity investors tend to come in two flavors: the ones that strip a company for parts and sell them off and the ones that help a promising brand grow to the next stage before selling it to an industry giant or taking it public. Catterton is the latter, and in the five years that it was the majority owner of Velvet Taco, it expanded the chain from 4 locations to 31—before selling it in late 2021 to another private equity company, Leonard Green & Partners—the same $70 billion fund that took Shake Shack public in 2015.
Velvet’s headquarters occupies 10,000 square feet on the second floor of a building overlooking the Dallas North Tollway. There Dover oversees a staff of several dozen who work on everything from marketing campaigns to real estate development. The business end of a taco brand that aims to conquer the world looks more like a 2010s-era tech startup than your typical taqueria. In the Velvet office, a Ping-Pong table stands amid a row of cubicles near a mural of Marie Antoinette sensually eating a slice of the brand’s signature red velvet cake.
When Dover joined Velvet, he was the sole corporate-level employee; everyone else worked at one of the restaurants. Rather than tinkering with the menu, he took his first year to “understand the brand and what it means to consumers”—which involved developing a kind of handbook of catchy slogans meant to encapsulate the culture and principles of the workplace and the food the company hoped to offer. Out went “temple of the liberated taco,” for instance, and in came “tacos without borders,” a more sensitive phrasing that avoided the suggestion that the taco’s Mexican heritage was somehow holding it back.
Today the corporate team’s priorities are more tangible, including how to maintain quality standards at Velvet’s first airport outpost at Houston Hobby. Self-service touchscreen-order kiosks are another priority, but where to place them in a restaurant is a big debate. It’s one thing to figure out where they’ll get the most use, but will cost savings on labor come with trade-offs? How will average order size change? Will diners be more or less likely to explore the menu?
Perhaps most important, there’s the matter of where to expand. Dover plans for eight more locations in 2024, and then a growth acceleration in 2025. In September, Velvet opened its first restaurant in Florida—in Fort Lauderdale. Arizona is next. At some point they’ll likely expand to Southern California, home to the headquarters of both Chipotle and Taco Bell, along with a million tiny taco stands that measure up just fine against their Texas counterparts.
A team from Velvet that included DeWitt recently spent several days scouting SoCal locations and testing tacos from local chains. One restaurant served “almost exactly the same taco” as Velvet’s popular chicken tikka, DeWitt says with a nervy grin. “We know they were inspired by Velvet Taco. But what are you going to do? I came away reassured that if and when we go to that market—” he stops himself. “I shouldn’t say ‘if.’ When we go to that market, we are going to be very successful.”
On a busy weeknight near the southern end of the hypergentrified South Congress shopping district, in Austin, a steady stream of families and teenagers and a single pair of old South Austin hippie types fill the tables of an architecturally ambitious Torchy’s location designed to evoke a fifties roadside attraction. With a ridged metal roof and a series of bright red X-shaped support structures lining the front, the restaurant functions as something like a flagship location for Torchy’s—its most distinctive building, on Austin’s most iconic avenue. Runners scurry about delivering trays of tacos with names such as the Democrat (brisket, avocado, and onions on a corn tortilla), the Republican (jalapeño-cheddar sausage and pico on flour), the Tipsy Chick, and the Trailer Park, along with beers and ranch waters.
If Velvet Taco is the consummate Dallas chain—from its flashy branding to its corporate lineage—Torchy’s is as Austin as it gets. Rypka’s original Torchy’s trailer anchored a gravel lot just a few blocks from today’s flagship, on a then-scruffy stretch of South First Street across from a ramshackle botanica.
Rypka grew up in the Washington, D.C., suburbs amid the eighties punk scene—an only child of divorce whose dad, a celebrated photojournalist, was living on another continent. He picked up drugs and alcohol by age eight, developed a crack habit by fourteen, and spent two years in and out of rehab before getting clean at seventeen. Less than a year into community college, where he’d hoped to train to become a drug and alcohol counselor, Rypka woke up one night with a bolt of inspiration to drop out and become a chef.
By the time he finished culinary school a couple of years later, he knew all too well how rampant substance abuse was in professional kitchens, so he sought a straitlaced job with a company that ran in-house dining halls for large corporations. He started at the World Bank, in D.C., before working at Enron, in Houston (“I literally served the last supper there,” he says), and then at Dell, where he fell in love with Austin and decided to stay. Then an opportunity arose to repurpose a friend’s old barbecue trailer.
In 2006 food trucks were still a novel concept, but Rypka envisioned a path from those humble beginnings to a proper restaurant or even a small chain. He just needed the kind of bold flavors that make a lasting impression. From his World Bank days, where he’d run a food court with stations representing various global regions, he’d developed a wide palette of preparations to experiment with. And when he took a tour of Texas taco joints to assess the competition—in San Antonio, in the Rio Grande Valley, in Houston and Dallas and the east side of Austin—he saw his opportunity. “They were all good, but they were kind of in the same genre,” he says. “They weren’t doing anything to sort of flip it on its head.”
Authenticity wasn’t what he was after; he was a suburban East Coast white guy with a creative streak, so he built a menu accordingly. “Not everybody in the world uses serrano peppers the same way they use them in Central America,” he says, “so you can take ingredients like that and do fun things with them. Our playground is kind of limitless when it comes to food.” Each month Torchy’s offers a different limited-time special. Its first was the Trailer Park, which put hunks of fried chicken in the starring role, alongside pico de gallo and green chiles. Ordering it “trashy” style meant dousing it in queso, turning it into a celebration of gluttony that would make Guy Fieri proud. It was a home run that soon joined the regular menu.
The early years of Torchy’s coincided with the peak of Austin’s capitalizing on its “weird” image. The city hadn’t fully succumbed to the forces of Big Tech, and it still represented a kind of laid-back lifestyle mecca, even if the old-timers were already fearing a corporate takeover. Torchy’s fit right in, with graffiti-inspired bubble letters in the logo and a little red devil mascot flanked by the words “Damn Good.” Austin was a party town, and this was indulgent party food. With taco names like the since-discontinued Dirty Sanchez (a reference to . . . well, you can look it up), it also flirted with the bounds of decency (or gleefully trampled right over them).
After the taco trailer took off, Rypka opened a brick-and-mortar shop down the street, and then another location, and another, and by 2010 the chain had expanded to Dallas. Torchy’s hadn’t just drafted on Austin’s vibe; it had become something of an Austin icon itself, popular enough that even then-president Obama stopped at the South First restaurant on his way downtown from the airport before attending an event in 2016. The company had just opened its first location outside Texas, in Denver. The world awaited.
Rypka, who shaves his head and road trips in a lowrider Volkswagen bus, tells his story in a hexagonal sitting room that juts off the back of his three-story home built into the side of a steep slope above Lake Austin. In the past decade plus, the start-up boom that accompanied Austin’s explosive growth transcended tech and began to turn out trendy new consumer brands. Some of these have blown up into international icons—Kendra Scott, Tecovas, Yeti—but most of the restaurant chains born in the capital—including another beloved taco shop, Tacodeli—have remained local or regional cult phenomena.
In the far more populous Dallas–Fort Worth area, by contrast, where new chain eateries can draw from a large pool of back-office talent with deep industry experience, growing quickly by running a proven playbook is more readily achievable, even if the results don’t always inspire a passionate following.
As Torchy’s began to expand beyond Texas and exceeded forty restaurants, it needed money to fund its next phase. General Atlantic, a New York–based private equity group, bought “a significant minority stake” in 2017—and three years later added to its stake with a $400 million second investment. Among the first moves when GA came on board was to bring in the professionals—big-time executives with big-time experience who could turn Rypka’s promising little project into a global giant.
Rypka stepped aside, while G. J. Hart, who had most recently served as the CEO of California Pizza Kitchen, took over. Hart had made his name in the industry overseeing the expansion of Texas Roadhouse from $63 million to more than $1 billion in annual revenue. (Texas Roadhouse, alas, is not a Texas brand; it’s based in Louisville, Kentucky.) During Hart’s four years in charge, the Torchy’s restaurant count shot up from 45 to 96, even though the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the office lunch rush and dine-in traffic in general.
Meanwhile, Rypka, who had been eager for a break from the business, grew frustrated by what he regarded as the new management’s unforced errors. Some of the new expansion cities, he felt, were questionable choices. “They’d pick markets where Roadhouse did well,” he says. Shreveport, Louisiana. Wichita, Kansas. “But we’re not at all the same customer as Roadhouse—which is a pretty blue-collar, red-state type of deal. I mean, I’m not afraid to say that we’re a f—ing liberal brand. You know what I mean?”
The corporate playbook that might make sense when Torchy’s has hundreds of locations didn’t work for a brand that was still relatively unknown outside Texas and Colorado, Rypka reasoned. Bloomberg reported in early 2021 that the chain was exploring an initial public offering that would value it at $1 billion in its stock market debut. But by the end of that year, the IPO had failed to materialize, some of the new locations were underperforming, and the staff at headquarters had ballooned to nearly two hundred. Hart stepped down.
Tired of what he terms “farting around at the lake,” Rypka returned as CEO with a newfound energy and focus. The company needed to get scrappy and entrepreneurial again, and that was his comfort zone. “I always do better when things are a little bit on fire,” he says. He laid off 65 employees at headquarters, closed three restaurants (including the two in Wichita), and started upgrading some ingredients— making fresh tortillas in the restaurants, for example. Now, from a one-story, metal-sided headquarters building in East Austin, he’s back to fanning out across the country, this time aiming to expand to cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Nashville—and his old haunt, D.C.
It’s hard not to notice that the founders of both Torchy’s and Velvet Taco are non-Hispanic white men. So are the industry-veteran CEOs each company hired. So was the founder of Taco Bell. And the founders of two long-established, Texas-based Taco Bell copycats: Abilene-born Taco Bueno and Fort Worth’s Taco Casa. And the founder of Irving-based Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, a fast-growing franchise that’s aimed at a lower-priced tier of the market than Torchy’s and Velvet. Add Chipotle and California-based Del Taco to the list, for that matter, and on down through the ranks of Big Taco giants and aspirants.
Even the founder of San Antonio–born Taco Cabana fit the Anglo profile—and if there’s one large city in Texas that ought to be the birthplace of a Latino-founded taco giant, it’s San Antonio. Taco Palenque, which began in Laredo and has started to spread north into other parts of Texas, is an exception [see sidebar], but so far, it’s still a regional play. (Its founder, Juan Francisco Ochoa Sr., also started California-based El Pollo Loco.)
The taco has become as much an American staple as pizza, so it’s not surprising that its mass-market brands reflect corporate America’s boardrooms more than the culture that gave rise to the food in the first place. As Texas Monthly’s taco editor, José R. Ralat, puts it, “I’m not going to say that so-and-so shouldn’t open a business because it might represent cultural appropriation. But it’s worth noting that a popular food is always going to attract the type of entrepreneurs who already have the wealth or connections to gain access to investor meetings or consultants. And who is that? Not an immigrant.”
Ralat notes that Taco Cabana might be the one chain that historically “got it right”—by which he means emphasizing fresh ingredients, at least at first. Some of its locations still do an excellent job, he maintains, such as the one near where he lives, in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. But the chain’s history is a cautionary tale, as it eventually prioritized growth over maintaining its standards. It became a publicly traded company, beholden to shareholders above all. Then it was acquired by a large New York–based restaurant group, then spun off into another outfit, the Dallas-based Fiesta Restaurant Group. Over the past several years, Taco Cabana’s sales plunged 20 percent, and the chain closed 23 restaurants. Now it’s poised to grow again, but with a new risk factor.
Taco Cabana was purchased in 2021 by a company called Yadav Enterprises, a Northern California–based operator of hundreds of franchise locations of Denny’s, Jack in the Box, TGI Fridays, and a few other brands. Franchising is a risky business model but a common one in the fast-food industry. It can enable rapid expansion because the franchisees—independent operators who buy the rights to open locations—take on the financial burden of building out new markets. But no matter how stringent a chain makes the process and guidelines for its franchisees, it inevitably loses some control over quality and branding.
Franchising tends to work best with the simplest operations, such as Taco Bell—or more recently, Fuzzy’s, where a whopping 98 percent of its more than one hundred locations are franchises. Anil Yadav, the owner of Taco Cabana’s new parent company, announced that he hoped to expand the chain to one thousand locations all over the country—naturally, by franchising.
Both Velvet Taco’s Clay Dover and Torchy’s founder Mike Rypka say they understand the hard realities of the franchise model and vow to keep their chains growing at a more measured pace, with the companies owning every location they open—much as Shake Shack and Chipotle have done. “We’re going to keep it real tight and ‘core’ because we want to maintain the control,” Dover explains. “The details, the quality of the ingredients, the prep that goes into things ahead of time—it’s hard to go, ‘Hey, we’re just going to whip out fifty of these.’ ”
As Torchy’s and Velvet continue their national expansions, they will bump up against other challengers. Ohio-based Condado, for instance, has locations in several Midwest and Southeast states, with a creative-tacos concept that sits roughly at the culinary midpoint between those of Torchy’s and Velvet, with Korean gochujang sauce and Thai chiles mixed in among more traditional Mexican American flavors. Florida-based Capital Taco has begun selling franchises to operators in other states eager to serve its self-described “Tex-Mex” menu that oddly includes a cheesesteak taco and something called the South Beach Hot Chicken.
At some point, the word “taco” can become a questionable description of the items on these menus. Velvet, for instance, serves a chicken-and-waffle taco that involves fried chicken wrapped in, you guessed it, a waffle, topped with maple syrup; it makes Taco Bell’s Doritos Cheesy Gordita Crunch taco look like a Oaxacan street-food classic. “The tortilla is just the vessel,” Dover told me one afternoon over a tableful of his tacos. “You can do anything you want”—including, apparently, replacing the tortilla.
In any case, the caliber of investors and number of dollars that have backed Torchy’s and Velvet make it obvious to anyone in the restaurant industry that they’re onto something big. “Tacos Are Poised to Take Over Fast Casual,” the trade publication Restaurant Business declared last year. Can Torchy’s or Velvet ever equal Taco Bell’s 8,000 stores? Not a chance, say the leaders of both companies. The menus are simply too complicated to work in that many locations, because lower-traffic spots just wouldn’t be able to turn a profit—whereas Chipotle and Taco Bell can because they require far fewer ingredients and employees. But 1,000 Torchy’s restaurants, or 1,500? “That’s the fully mature version, yeah,” Rypka says.
Early in a restaurant chain’s growth, the executives will choose expansion locations based largely on gut instinct and what’s available. But at a certain point, companies begin to rely on real estate consultants who weigh a complicated matrix of factors. A Taco Cabana might make sense in a Walmart parking lot, for instance, whereas a Torchy’s or Velvet works better in the shadow of a Target. They look at satellite images to understand whether an area’s crowds coincide with a chain’s top selling hours. They look at cellular data to profile demographics that match a chain’s strong suits. At Velvet Taco, a concentration of Indian Americans is a positive indicator—perhaps explaining the popularity of the chicken tikka taco, Dover suggests.
When all of those factors come together, sometimes the result is a Torchy’s and a Velvet sharing the same parking lot. In Lubbock, in a shopping center one short block from the campus of Texas Tech University, the two direct competitors sit not one hundred yards apart, with nothing but a Potbelly Sandwich Shop between them. In North Dallas, Torchy’s and Velvet occupy kitty-corner strip malls at the intersection of Preston Road and Forest Lane. The future of Big Taco might not be Torchy’s or Velvet, but both.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-republican-party-fundraising-fc057119f3bb5cb2a34a00ccd93fbb13
"The event at the Palm Beach, Florida, home of billionaire investor John Paulson is expected to bring in $43 million for the former president’s third run at the White House, according to Paulson.
The high-dollar event is expected to include about 100 guests, including more than a few billionaires, and top a new single-event fundraising record set by President Joe Biden, who raised $26 million recently at a gathering with former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama."
"Contributions to the event will go toward the Trump 47 Committee, according to the invitation, a joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee, state Republican parties and Save America, a political action committee that pays the bulk of Trump’s legal bills. In an unusual arrangement, the fundraising agreement directs donations to first pay the maximum allowed under law to his campaign and Save America before the RNC or state parties get a cut.
Donors who give the suggested $814,600 per person or $250,000 per person will only have $5,000 of their donation go to Save America, sending hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cash-strapped RNC."
" Guests are asked to contribute $814,600 per person as a “chairman” contributor, which comes with seating at Trump’s table, or $250,000 per person as a “host committee” contributor. Both options come with a photo opportunity and a personalized copy of Trump’s coffee table book featuring photographs from his administration, ”Our Journey Together.”
Think any of the billionaires seated at Trump's table might hear a sales pitch for TMTG and DJT stock tonight?
$250,000 gets some lucky folks a photo op with Trump and a personalized copy of his "coffee table book" ( not to be confused with his "covfefe book" ), which ordinarily goes for $229.99 for a signed copy .

PoF is also hosted on Ao3! do with this information what you will.
u/SpacePaladin15 is responsible for the creation of the NOP universe.

in the name of stardew valley and uploading chapters in chronological order, behold: “silly alternatives (real) (not fake) (artisanal)”
in today's episode: i found this weird bundle of papers out in a puddle by the dumpster?? when i plugged them into my MP3 player, hyperrealistic cake frosting started pouring out. it was delicious! anyway, everything you're about to read is 99.9% canon. shenanigans ensue.
first - chapter 8 - chapter 9
////////////////////////// Memory Transcription Subject: Invalid Filetype, Talk to Brent //////// Date (standardized human time): April 1st, 199X //////////////////////////
It started the same as any other day. The birds shining high in the sky, hapless innocent civilians strolling around high in the sky, and the sun.
The sun. The sun. The sun. Eclipsed by multiple moons at once, but still shining high in the sky. That's how astronomy works. Don't question it.
Dan and Sparci, unaffected by the madness and panic in the streets below and above, have long relished their day of relaxation. Dan in the kitchen, enjoying his black tome of unspeakable horrors, deeply pondering the sheer potential that may lie in the darkness outside the edge of the universe. Sparci, watching a video of a very dangerous and scary predator on repeat for literally seven hours straight. And most importantly, the narrator rapidly growing tired of even trying to tell this tale in past tense.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
The sudden noise startles Sparci, prompting him to grab a pillow to use as a shield. Dan hardly reacts besides making an unamused face; he puts down his necronomicon and whirls around before wheelie-ing to the door without missing a beat. A mournful choir of human voices hums out from behind the walls as his arm travels the long distance to the knob. Church bells punctuate every passing second, and though he knows his sins, it is far too late for his tainted soul to be redeemed.
The door retracts into the floor, to reveal naught but the hallway beyond, and a single human standing within. A smaller human than most others, bearing lush and wavy brown hair with just the faintest tinge of red, and green eyes. Her pelts are especially unusual: a rainbow kitty-ears beanie, a white scarf with rainbow tassels, and a pastel pink coat over simple jeans and solid white sneakers.
"Who the fuck are you," Dan bluntly asks.
"im rain!" the girl answers in an unnaturally peppy tone. Something about her eyes doesn't seem quite right. They don't reflect light. "yknow, reinas sister? you remember me, right, dan?"
"Why are you talking like that?"
"eh?" Rain's eyes widen, and she glances down at the subtitles provided so thoughtfully by our sponsors. NERF! It's NERF or NOTHING. "oh. umm? im not sure. thats kinda weird. its probably not canon though."
Dan tsks. "Well, whatever. What the hell are you doing here? How'd you even get here?"
"Obviously she took a shuttle?" Sparci offers, unprompted. The eyes in the back of Dan's head extend in unison to look straight at the farsul. Sparci only barely resists the urge to throw his pillow at the freakish display.
The out-of-place human rubs her head awkwardly. "no actually... i just kinda woke up here, haha. but thats okay! michelle let me help out by going door to door and selling chocolate bars," she says. As she speaks, a large red rectangular box on wheels rolls into view. "oh that reminds me! do you wanna buy some? i have belgian, white, mexican--"
"Shut up. Listen to me," Dan suddenly says in a forceful tone. "You made a mistake coming here. Leave. Now."
Rain darkly chuckles. "you think i dont know what youve done? the souls youve sunk to darkness? the worlds you've erased?" The doors in the hallway fall off their hinges, revealing only pitch black. Their inhabitants, lost to the void, never to be seen again. "youre a monster, dan. you brought this upon these people. didnt your mama ever teach you not to play with things you dont understand?"
Dan's frown slowly morphs into a snarl. "You know nothing, witch."
Rain smiles. "dont like it? catch me if you can."
With no warning, the girl bolts to the side, kicking off the ground with so much force she sends her wagon flying. Precious chocolates go everywhere. It is a sad day. A memorial service will be held at City Hall at 6 PM tonight. The President of the United States will be there. Also Barrack Obama. Even though he's been dead for uhh... like 30 years.
Dan hurries out after her, somehow having the gall to abandon Sparci. Rain fast approaches the end of the hall and, rather than slow down, she jumps and curls into a ball. A thin sheen of purple light races across her body in the instant before she falls into the wall. The entire building rumbles, lights flickering and furniture in nearby apartments clattering to the ground as the human simply makes a new door for herself.
She uncurls midair and somehow perfectly sticks the landing on a hovering mini sled that, judging by its rainbow decals and the sparkles spilling below its wheels, can only belong to her. Dan pushes himself to catch up, but it's already too late. She sticks her tongue out at him as the not-a-skateboard shoots off at a velocity that should be impossible, with a vivid rainbow trailing wherever it moves.
"Fine. Wanna play that game, huh? We'll see about that," Dan grumbles as he reaches into one of his innumerable pockets and pulls out a pair of big shoes with thrusters on the bottom. As he straps them over his normal shoes, he looks straight into the camera. "Remember, kids, I am a trained professional. You should NEVER ride your ion jetpack boots without a helmet and an adult's supervision."
With that out of the way, he stands back up and dives out of the hole in the building, doing a sick front flip by accident. If Sparci hadn't been left behind in the apartment, he'd have been impressed.
Dan wastes no time in orienting himself and speeding off after the trail of convenient glitter left in the wake of Rain's mini sled. The girl may have had a head start, but Dan can't afford to let her get away. In seconds, our intrepid hero once again catches sight of the invader. She glances back and almost seems shocked that he's not only able to keep up, but outspeed her. Perhaps, could technology outclass magic after all?
"nice shoes!" Rain snipes, grabbing a freshly baked strayu pie from an open window as she speeds by. "too bad theyre not your COLOR!" She yeets the treat at Dan with as much force as she can muster. Which is kind of a lot, actually. Can humans normally break the sound barrier with a random incidental dessert?
Dan deftly catches the pie with one hand, not even flinching as the sonic boom blows past him and makes his hair more messy than it already was. He's careful not to touch the still-steaming top as he gently deposits the treat right back on its plate without even needing to slow down. Rain balks, as if she's only now realized how thoroughly outmatched she is. She quickly swerves through a gap between two buildings, but Dan follows every turn she makes. Navigating Bluefield, despite its convoluted skyline rife with skyscrapers and rooftop gardens, poses no challenge for a magical girl as experienced in the art of the hunt as Dan.
The chase proceeds through more streets than any of them can name, in every district. Residential, commercial, more residential, entertainment (which is different to commercial somehow?) and finally, hydroponics. Throughout their game of cat and mouse, the sky rapidly cycles from day, to night, back to day. It might be somewhat odd to most observers that the day cycle has gone from 12 claws to about 30 seconds. But no, that's normal actually. Sometimes the sun just wants to orbit Venlil 4 really fast. Don't worry about it.
Rain's vehicle suddenly splutters loudly, giving off a plume of sparkling smoke; the rainbow afterimage turns jagged and uneven, and mere seconds later, she starts losing altitude. She visibly panics and, spying a hydroponic tower's flat and empty rooftop nearby, tries her best to steer in that direction.
She only barely makes it over the edge of the roof before her magical mount fails utterly and cracks into pieces. She tumbles down, rolling and rolling and rolling across the roof until she hits a wall with a loud THUD.
Dan lands much more gracefully in the center, taking care to avoid damaging his valuable thruster boots. Perhaps that, in the end, is why he won. He takes better care of his stuff. Treat your belongings with love and respect, and they will last a lifetime.
"s-so. it's come to this," Rain mutters in a low tone, panting from both pain and fatigue as she heaves herself onto her feet. "i guess i shouldve seen it coming... this city isnt big enough for the both of us."
Dan reaches behind his back, to something hidden just under his shirt, held by the hem of his pants. His fingers brush against something dark, something dangerous. "Your fate was sealed the moment you stepped foot in my territory."
The wind howls. A terrible malevolence builds in the air, something unnatural soon to come. "can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the weight of your sins? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters."
"WAIT!"
Suddenly, the door leading down into the lower floors slams open with a resounding CLANG. A farsul with rust-colored fur bolts onto the roof as fast as he can, panting loudly and looking more than a little winded. "Please... you don't have to fight."
"It's too late, Sparci. What's done is done," Dan says.
Rain's eyes look up, and her face suddenly changes. "wait. hes right. do you feel that? somethings... off."
Dan squints in suspicion. His gaze drifts to the edges of the screen, to the faint haze of static building in the margins. The low buzzing drone, gradually overtaking the sound of the wind. And a sense of profound wrongness in the air itself, as if something, or someone, has broken a cardinal law of the universe.
The building- no, the whole world shakes, ever so subtly. Dan, and Rain, and Sparci all look at each other, unsure what to do. The drone grows louder, the static becomes mind-numbing. The ritual has been completed, and as Dan said, what's done is done. We've come so far together, and here we are. Isn't it amazing? Doesn't it feel incredible? Are you ready to share it with the world? For all to behold Our shared divinity?
Our form rises over the precipice of the rooftop, drawing the attention of the traitor, the interloper and the fool.
They stand slack-jawed as We allow them to witness Our full glory; Our tentacles and skin, stained with every color of the lives We have worked so hard to save. Our ears and fur, speckled with the souls We cured of their taint. The countless shifting arms and legs and faces that make up Our body, all from hundreds upon hundreds of different peoples, from immeasurable times and places. Our beautiful eyes, filled with the light of every star in the galaxy and beyond. And above all else, Our Presence, Our Love, Our Unity.
"We are here," We say, every one of Our voices singing in unison. "We are Federation."
"...Jesus Christ," Dan murmurs, looking rightfully stunned. He turns and stares at his ward in incredulity. "Sparci, what in the fresh Kentucky Fried Fuck is WRONG with your imagination?"
The farsul, to his credit, just shrugs and wags his tail. Even he doesn't know.
Anger flows through Our multicolored veins at the predator's flagrant disrespect of Our presence. "This land is Sick with Taint," We do decree. "The diseased must be Exterminated."
The more colorful of the two humans gasps in shock. "NO!" she yells, and dares to cast her eye upon Us unbidden. "I WONT ALLOW IT!"
She lifts her arms skyward, where a small golden bracelet on her wrist shimmers in the sun's warmth. Sparkles rise and flow around her body, her skin shines with multicolored light, and the bracelet glows ever brighter with each passing second. Her brilliant aura shifts through every color of the rainbow, somehow drowning out even Our unrivaled radiance. And though her power is truly blinding, her silhouette—her very soul itself—burns itself into Our eyes, as she shifts and warps and becomes all the more exaggeratedly predatory.
The light reaches a sudden peak before vanishing just as suddenly, leaving countless little glowing motes in the air across the roof, each one a different color. And in the now-mundane luminance from none else but the sun, this evil human has become something unfathomable. Her pelts have changed, becoming lighter, more flowy, yet adorned with gemstones and ribbons and golden trims. Her headfur has grown longer, more curly, more voluminous. That strange hat atop her head has melded into her flesh, becoming real ears that flick and swivel as she seems to adjust quickly to their presence. And her bracelet... it has taken a new shape, becoming some form of ceremonial wand, inlaid with a single, pastel pink gemstone at its head.
Sparci leans back, eyes wide in sorely misplaced amazement. He curiously reaches up and touches one of the floating motes, only to giggle when it pops like a bubble. "H-how did you do that? Is this... what humans really are?"
"nope, just me! im what we call a magical girl. using the magical power within my soul gem," she brandishes her wand, "i protect the world from evil!"
"Really now?" Dan grunts. His voice reverberates unnaturally, echoing off of nothing. "Bit self-absorbed, aren't you? Making it sound like you're the only one with that power. Have you no shame?"
He doesn't move a muscle, nor does his face change. In an instant, the blue ring on his middle finger turns stark black, and inky tendrils of darkness crawl out and across his hand and up his arm. The void consumes his entire body, so dark and empty that it hurts to look at, even Our divine eyes struggling to perceive such a horrible sight. But it fades quickly with no fanfare, leaving Dan changed just like his cohort... except he's still wearing his normal hoodie and cargo pants, just decorated with cheap gray plastic ribbons and bows on his wrists and thighs.
"...you didnt even try," the clearly superior magical girl states.
"Shut up. It's not my fault I don't have the budget for a better costume," he argues as he reaches back to the hem of his pants. "And besides. At least I don't look like a thirteen year old's original character."
She recoils, looking deeply hurt. "wh--! you cant- im not-- aaurgh! screw you!"
"Are you done yet?" We are rather inclined to interrupt. "You must be Cleansed in Holy Fire. Stop messing around."
"Yeah, sure," Dan flippantly says. His toes wrap around that which he had hidden behind his silhouette, and he wastes no time in exposing it to the world. The weapon unfurls in a hazy pool of pure Void, and takes its true form. A black axe, carved with incomprehensible patterns and runes that blot out the light and dizzy Our senses. Its presence is unthinkable; the pressure it exudes, a power beyond mortal comprehension. Merely looking at it strikes untold fear into Our many hearts.
"Oh. Uh," comes out of just one of Our mouths. It's not that We're scared! It's just that, y'know, We didn't think he would actually fight back. "You would dare to impose upon the Might of The Federation? Even knowing the inevitability of your demise?"
"Nah," Dan says, eyes glinting with something forbidden. "I'll win."
For a moment, everything goes silent. The wind. The birds. The screaming from the streets below. Everything but the quiet ticking of a clock, from somewhere out of sight.
Then it all comes back in a terrifying second—the sky flashes black for but an instant, the voices of the people turn corrupt and demonic, and time itself flickers, past and future blending together in an impossible assault on everything We are.
We don't see the human pounce upon Our vulnerability until it's too late.
His axe cleaves through Our flesh, rending it in twain with no resistance. Though We hardly feel it, the weapon's wrath lingers; just as suddenly as his initial attack, some unseen power drives itself into the wound with nuclear force and widens it to the size of a truck. Our body flies backward, a dark rainbow of blood gushing from the enormous gash. Rain reacts quickly, rushing forward and twirling her wand to cast a barrier of light. Our blood coats everything from the streets below to the roofs of nearby buildings, except what was behind her shield.
In seconds, Our divine essence reacts with its tainted surroundings, dissolving and lighting ablaze wherever it touches. But the pair of humans don't seem to notice, and rush forward in unison. Dan takes off, using his rocket boots to pursue Us. Rain stays on the roof, casting magic spells of lightning and ice and unholy light to bully Us from afar.
We lash out in retaliation, a flurry of tentacles and fused arms from our component species flailing toward the encroaching predator, but he hardly bats an eye as he swoops and rolls midair to simply dodge. His killing instinct, clearly so honed he hardly even has to think to avoid his prey's desperate attempts at self defense. Every other close call ends with him waving his axe, that same invisible power utterly decimating our limbs. Our blood rains upon the city, melting into the buildings, burning away the impure.
Just when We think to coordinate all our remaining limbs at once, and entrap him within a prison of flesh and scales and fur, a ribbon of light comes from nowhere and slices through Our masterwork. Rain flies toward us, carried by white, feathery wings. "dan!" The young woman's voice calls. "stop! we have to--"
"Have you had those this entire time--" "it doesnt &$%#ing matter!! let me talk!" "...Okay, jeez."
"anyway!!" she practically screams, and points to the beautiful righteous flames down below. "look! look at all that! were only making it worse!"
Our voices rise in a satisfied chuckle. "You finally noticed? In your challenging Us, you foolish predators have only served to hasten the Cleansing of this Tainted World. For every drop of blood you spill, yet one more citizen will die to your Hubris."
Dan balks, and his gaze drifts downward to the innumerable immolated corpses in the streets, razed by his actions. "Oh God," he rasps. His mouth flutters open and closed in horror.
"Do you yet see? Your Destiny was Predetermined. This is how it was meant to be." Our voices are strained, as the agony throughout Our body serves as a near insurmountable hurdle. "Had you not been here, these people would have been happy. They would have lived fuller lives. It was by your hand that they have been ruined."
Both humans frown. Rain shakes her head, and brandishes her wand. "no... its not our fault," she says, wearing a downtrodden face that soon shifts to one of pure anger. "it was you, who came here looking to burn people who were just minding their own business! it's YOU, who rejoices in the destruction of these innocent people and their home!"
"If our crime is that we tried to protect them, then I don't want to be on the side of the law," Dan adds.
"There is no law. There is no right or wrong. There is only The Safety Of The Herd. This city could not be allowed to exist, lest its taint infect all that is Good in Our Universe."
"thats awful... how can you think like that!? youre... youre a monster!" Rain cries. She snarls, and grips her weapon tightly. Dan hovers closer, and places his hand beside her own. The wand glimmers with the intensity of their combined determination.
Dan speaks for them both. "This ends NOW. In the name of our friends, our families, and everyone in the world who just wanted to live their lives in peace, WE'LL PUNISH YOU!"
His words echoes within the hearts and souls of all those who hear it, including Our own. Their emotions resonate throughout everything that We represent, amplified by the discordant hatred of the masses, as they all betray Us in unison.
They raise the wand to the sky, together. Their powers—the spirit of technology and magic, the essence of dark and light—fold together in an impossible yet uncompromising blend. "ORBITAL... FRIENDSHIP... CANNOOOOOONNNNN!!!"
A ray of white light beams upward into the sky, growing brighter with every passing moment, until it outshines even Our radiance. The world quakes, and the air shivers, and there is naught We can do but look up, and gaze in despair at the rainbow aurora of our imminent demise. The myriad colors, composed of every wavelength light could possibly take, the sheer energy of the friendship ion beam as it descends faster than the eye can see.
The lifeform disintegration rainbow smashes into Us with unparalleled power. It shears through Our form, exploding at Our core, producing a ball of light brighter than any star. The colors swirl around Us, red and orange and yellow blotting out all semblance of Thought, green and blue and purple utterly destroying any measure of Self. Even colors humans can't see, fuchsia and ultraviolet and [UNTRANSLATABLE] and beyond, all together as One.
The last vestige of Our existence can only manage the humblest of words. "It... hurts..."
The light finally bursts, leaving nothing behind but a rainbow shockwave of pure energy that booms throughout the entire city. The force puts out the raging catastrophic flames, and shears away the pools of divine blood... and coats every surface in shimmering glitter of every color for good measure. The injured find their wounds sewn together with black sutures of benevolent void, and the dead wake up as if from nothing more than a bad dream.
Rain and Dan descend to the ground at their own pace, their magically-altered forms shimmering away like dust in the breeze. The denizens of the streets look upon them in confusion, most unsure what just happened, some wondering if they're still dreaming, others just wary because oh no scary humans eeeek.
Sparci comes running up, looking deeply relieved, and tackles Dan with the biggest hug he can manage. "You did it! You saved the city!" he exclaims, tail wagging a mile a minute. "I just wish I could've done more to help..."
"But you did help," Dan softly responds, returning the hug despite being so much taller. "It was because of you that I had the courage to stand up for what's right."
The farsul's tail stops wagging and he makes an unimpressed face. "No, I mean, I wanna be flying around shooting lasers and swinging a huge axe and killing gods," he deadpans.
"Oh. Uh. Hm. Maybe next time, then?"
"Whoa, what's going on over there?" Sparci says and detaches from his human. He looks straight at a small purple mass on the ground, somehow still smoking despite all the fires being put out.
He and Dan step toward the purple thing. Rain looks at them both, seeming disappointed. "hey, why dont i get hugs?" she whines.
Sparci spares her nary a glance. "Because you smell bad."
Her face snaps to a deeply infuriated scowl. "WHAT?!"
Dan ignores the other human throwing a tantrum as he nudges the purple thing with a foot. "Oi. Are you alive?"
The creature stirs, tentacles unfolding, revealing itself to be a kolshian. It looks up before suddenly jolting back in shock. "E-eeek! Don't eat me!"
"You..." Sparci growls, and bares his teeth. "You were the Federation! How are you alive!?"
"I... I don't know. Please, I don't remember anything, you have to believe me!"
Dan stares at Sparci with a dubious face, evidently not sure how to feel about watching his friend play two characters at the same time. "Uh, what's the last thing you do remember?" he says, forcing himself to stay on script.
"I was... talking to a human, I think? And... I wanted to be friends with her, But..." the kolshian hesitates, scrunching their face as if they're struggling to remember. "I think she... she touched the top of my head? Yes... she called it... petting. Everything after that is a blur..."
Rain steps in, arms crossed angrily. "so petting kolshians is bad? i dont buy it. there are no humans around here but me and dan."
"Are you sure about that?" a 4th voice suddenly cuts through the air, shattering the illusion of Bluefield and drawing everyone's attention to someone standing just a few paces away. "Rain, Mom wants you to help bring in the groceries."
Rain gasps and shoots up from her spot on the floor with a wide smile, suddenly eager to abandon the game. "ree! whatre you doing here?"
"What, I can't visit my baby sister on a whim?" The new human's gaze falls toward the other two beings in the mundane living room, lingering on Sparci for just a moment longer. "And her cute friends? Hi you two."
"Aye," "Hi Reina," the pair greet at the same time. Sparci gives a little wave.
The cherry red-haired human turns to her shorter and younger and not-hair-dyed clone. "Anyway, c'mon before Mom blames me for you taking a million years."
Sparci suddenly stands up, his tail lashing out to help him stay balanced. "Ooh, can I help?!"
"Eh, why not?" is all Reina says before she waves her hand in a 'come with me' gesture and walks out with Rain and the dog-like alien in tow.
...
Dan, suddenly finding himself abandoned, taps his fingers on the coffee table. He glances surreptitiously around the room, as if checking to make sure no one else is watching... before he lets out a deep sigh, and his face melts into the most abjectly tired expression.
"...What am I doing with my life?"
//////////////////////////
first - chapter 8 - chapter 9

hahaha april fools NERDS!!!!! get PRANK'D!!!! i LIED!!!! only about 98.6% of this chapter is canon!!!!! the part where [DATA EXPUNGED] is FAKE!!! it never happened!!!
anyway... thanks for reading. remember kids, microwave ovens are really cool, but please don't try to bake a salad in one.

I worked at one of their locations for a whopping three months. Three days in, I was having to train new employees. This was every other day. No one stayed. Emily was incompetent in the chat and entirely out of touch with her employees surviving on $12 an hour.
I saw her instruct a new employee in the Homebase app to send their BANK ACCOUNT AND ROUTING INFO and their SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER to her in a PERSONAL TEXT. In December when the freeze happened, and the roads were impassable and the entire city shut down, she tried to get everyone to show up and work like normal (despite the empty streets). The team as a whole had to explain to her that they could not make it out of their driveways and the police were urging drivers to stay home.
I had already quit when it was time to receive my W-2. Homebase wasn’t working and I had to contact the IRS to receive my paperwork.
I’ve never seen this level of incompetence from any employer. The toxicity trickled down from the top. I’ve been working in customer service since Obama was president, and I was bullied by kids who weren’t alive for 9/11 and were experiencing their first position of power, unregulated. New employees were being thrown into positions with no training and having panic attacks daily.
Scooter’s was the quickest I’ve quit any job. I referred to it as “coffee jail.” I’m convinced it was a social experiment and am curious to know if the other locations within this franchise are just as hellish.

Summary: My mom and I spent 2 weeks in Japan in mid-February: 5 days in Hokkaido, 2 days in Kyoto+Osaka, 5+1.5 days in Tokyo, and 2.5 days in Ginzan, for a total of 16 days (+1 day of flying). This was my first time, while my mom used to live in Japan but hasn’t been in several decades, so while she was quite experienced her knowledge was also quite out-of-date and there were plenty of new developments for her too. This was my 9th international trip but my first in Asia.
Our trip focused on fine dining, anime, and shopping. For context we live in NY, with one of the most developed Japanese fine and normal dining scenes outside Japan, so we are both quite experienced and mainly focused on experiencing similar or better levels of excellence in Japan. We’ve been to multiple sushi omakase (e.g. Masa***, Noz**, Onodera**, Nakazawa*, etc.), as well as other Japanese cuisines like kappo Hirohisa*, Tempura Matsui*, Yakitori Torishin*, French fusion Kei***, etc. and my mom has cooking experience from her time in Japan. So we’re well familiar with the style, ingredients, techniques, and etiquette of high-end Japanese dining and have points of comparison at multiple levels of quality. If you do not have this prior context, you may have a different experience if you were to try to repeat our itinerary, particularly for sushi which is a very subtle and technical form. I don’t say this to be pretentious or discouraging, by all means go for the best and you’ll have a great time, but thought this was important to say to contextualize this post interpreted as a trip report or as advice.
Fwiw although I enjoy taking pictures for my own memories and sharing with friends at meetups, I don’t have an instagram or active social media, and I’m mainly writing this post so I can link my friends/colleagues for reference instead of rewriting individually.
Itinerary:
2/11 Sapporo (hotel: Solaria Nishitetsu Sapporo):
- ANA landed in Tokyo Haneda 5:25am, ANA landed in New Chitose airport 8:30am
- We got lucky and got the Pokemon plane, which had themed cups and free merch. We also got great views of Tokyo and Fuji when taking off for Sapporo.
- Airport: we explored Snow Miku Town (website is out of date, they no longer serve the Miku pancakes) which had Hokkaido-themed merch, a figure gallery, and a life-sized Miku figure. Hatsune Miku (virtual anime singer) is a local celebrity in Sapporo given her company is based there. The highest-Tabelog-rated Hokkaido milk ice cream was in the airport (?) so we tried that as well as a Letao Hokkaido cheesecake. The airport also has a huge shopping mall/food court.
- Took the train to Sapporo, dropped off our bags at the hotel. There is snow everywhere, in some places piled to the side as high as a person.
- Lunch: We had lunch at Michelin-starred Teuchisoba Kohashi* (walk-in only, surprisingly no line). This is a travel not a food subreddit, so I’ll save the intricacies of the food for my someday-future food blog and focus on the experience. The handmade soba noodles were unlike anything we had before, with unique tempura accompaniments. The room has a big window with a beautiful view of a snowy garden. Staff was warm and friendly, does not speak English but has an English menu. Foreign visitors seem uncommon despite the star, both among the clientele and staff’s reaction. It’s inside the family’s home in a residential neighborhood so you have to take off your shoes, and the unplowed snow in the neighborhood was so beautiful for pictures. Most expensive dish was $15
- Afterwards we went to the Sapporo Snow Festival in Odori Park/near the Sapporo TV tower. Warning that the trodden snow is quite slippery, we saw a few people fall! As a result we scaled back our ambitions and picked only a few of the most interesting blocks (aka the anime ones) using the online map and cancelled our plans to see the night illumination. We saw a bunch of anime snow sculptures (Re Zero, Lucky Star, Roshidere, JJK, Overlord, Haikyuu, Gundam, Snow Miku, Hello Kitty 50th anniversary) as well as Godzilla and the perennial massive Neuschwanstein Castle. They also had a Ram/Rem birthday exhibit set up in a shack with cutouts and a Lego sculpture. I was very happy we made it to this. It’s worth noting the Sapporo Snow Festival and the Otaru Light Festival are each about only 1.5 weeks, with the snow festival happening prior and a few days of overlap. While these are major tourist draws in Hokkaido, it’s quite hard to time your trip to see them.
- There’s an underground city in Sapporo (Pole Town and Aurora Town) with tons of shops and restaurants. We saw ads for Oshi no Ko and Spy x Family on a huge billboard.
- We had hambagu steak for dinner and then a Lawson run (the 1st of many Karaage-kun chicken bites), then slept around 10pm. Sapporo is a laidback city so good jetlag starting point.
- Hotel: Solaria Nishitetsu Sapporo - spacious rooms, view of the Sapporo Govt Building, clean, helpful front desk, close to the train station.
2/12 Sapporo:
- We woke up early due to jetlag and lazed around for a late start. We kept getting sidetracked on our way to Susukino, first with katsu sandos and karaage-kun at Lawson, then a bunch of Japanese breads, pastries, and taiyaki in a food court under Susukino station.
- We made it to Susukino, looked at the famous billboards intersection (a bunch of Japanese people were standing around waiting to record one, turned out to be a massive screen of Miku).
- We had lunch in Ramen Alley for famous Sapporo ramen, then did some fashion and anime shopping
- Otaru: We took the train to Otaru and arrived around 4pm. The fish market closes at 5pm and while some shops interpret this as “shut down by 5pm”, luckily there’s one in the middle that interprets it as “last entry 5pm” (always beware of this in Japan). We waited 1h15m (standing!) for famous Hokkaido uni donburi and ikura donburi but it was a worthwhile experience. The wait was also long enough for the sun to go down, so we went to the Otaru light festival afterwards. The snow+ice lanterns along the canal were pretty and an inspiring example of community action, but the canal was a bit of a plain letdown. I’d not recommend Otaru as a sightseeing stop outside the light festival to be honest even though it’s often treated as a “must see” online.
2/13 Sapporo:
- After another late start, we did some shopping at the Daimaru in the train station (the station is massive and has multiple malls). We got lunch from multiple stalls in the Daimaru food court, including kushiage, futomaki, more Hokkaido cheesecake and pudding from Letao, mochi, other sweets, etc. Then we explored Pole Town and did more fashion shopping (Comme des Garcons) and anime shopping. Weirdly I felt like the various Susukino anime shops (the Animate and Norbesa buildings) in Sapporo had more merch variety than Akihabara, both older series and high-demand stuff. We bought the only Suzume anime figure we saw on our trip, and picked up a ton of Kana Arima (Oshi no Ko) merch that was often sold out later in Akihabara (conspicuously so, compared to other characters, bc Kana is best girl obviously).
- Dinner: We had 5pm dinner at Sushi Miyakawa*** (Tabelog silver). Elite sushi mostly differs in style than skill, but who am I kidding, Miyakawa was overall the best we’ve ever had. His perfectly cooked appetizers paired with rich addictive sauces. His nigiri technique was flawless, with “scattering” loose rice and fish cut down to millimeter precision to drape over the rice. Akazu vinegar had a strong taste that complemented but did not overpower the fish, plus our personal preference for akazu over komezu. Nigiri is about taste but it was so beautiful as well. His preprocessing for difficult pieces like squid and gizzard shad showed 3-star levels of skill. Product quality-focused pieces like Aomori tuna and Nemuro sea urchin were the best. Poundcake-like tamago was the best. Miyakawa-san himself is characterized by attention to detail yet warmth and joviality, plus he speaks a little English, all rare qualities in a master sushi chef. We expected a stern, silent experience in faraway Sapporo, but we had more fun as an experience than even places in New York. Price was a steal for this quality at $250 per person (NYC 1-star sushi is often $400-500). We ordered the $50 takeout futomaki.
- All Japanese food is seasonal, but I personally prefer sushi in the winter (when the fish are at their fattest for warmth and spawning), which in addition to the snow motivated the timing for this trip.
- Note about photos: At most fine dining restaurants, food photos are generally ok if you ask first (“Gohan no shashin wa daijobu desu ka?”) (usually they’ll say yes), but photos of people are discouraged. Be considerate (e.g. fast, one take, with sound off, and do not put your phone on the counter) when taking food photos, especially as the food is best enjoyed in the moment. Famous counter-style chefs may take a photo with you after the meal if you ask.
2/14 Niseko (hotel: Higashiyama Niseko Village, Ritz Carlton Reserve):
- We took the Hokkaido Resort Liner bus from Sapporo to Niseko.
- The weather cooperated today so we had a perfect cloudless view of Mt Yotei from our room. We enjoyed our hotel room, taking baths, eating the Miyakawa futomaki, etc. We did some skiing in the afternoon with a view of Yotei (hotel has ski rental) then explored the little village after the sun set. We had dinner (Hokkaido wagyu steak) at the hotel restaurant and then reserved the private onsen (10pm). We preferred private onsens as we can’t really get used to being naked around people and wanted to do it as a family.
- Hotel: as good as you’d expect. Worth noting it’s not only expensive, but difficult to book/always sells out in ski season. I personally thought it was overpriced but my mom had this as a bucket list item.
2/15 Niseko:
- Japanese-style breakfast in our room (including my first natto, which was not for me). Unfortunately clouds set in
- After checkout we explored the village more and took the cable car to the top. For a brief few minutes the clouds parted and Yotei revealed itself.
- We took the last bus out of Niseko, checked in to Sapporo at 7:30pm. Since we needed a casual dinner anyway, we asked the front desk to make a reservation at Sushizen Honten* for 8:15pm (most non-5-star hotels will not make reservations for you until you check in, FYI). We figured it’d be possible since Sushizen is a big restaurant (multiple counters). It was going to be either this or Ramen Alley again.
- Dinner: Sushizen Honten*, open since 1971 and famous among Sapporoans. We came here bc our favorite NYC sushi chef Masaki Saito (formerly Ginza Onodera NY**, now namesake in Toronto) apprenticed here so we were curious. There were some echoes of his style, but otherwise the student had surpassed the master. It was a fun experience and good casual dinner, but 1-star sushi would not justify a trip to Japan for us.
- Hotel: Cross Hotel Sapporo. A bit small but serviceable for a short stay and close-ish to the station. There’s a rooftop pool/onsen but we were too tired to check it out.
2/16 Kyoto/Osaka (hotel: Hotel Vischio by Granvia):
- I know 2 days in Kyoto/Osaka is not enough, but it wasn’t even in our original plan. Once we had our restaurant reservation dates, we saw we would have over a week in Tokyo and decided to add even a tiny stop to Kyoto/Osaka. We knew I can’t see everything, so we would do it to get a small taste for a more Kansai-focused trip next time and take some photos at the most important spots. After all, you never know when another pandemic or war or disaster might get in the way for years again…
- 8:30am Chitose airport (first airport train departs 6am so worked out) > 10:25am Osaka Itami, then 1h bus (bookable on the spot via machine next to the stop) to Kyoto station. My mom really wanted a Lawson egg sandwich so that was our breakfast
- Dropped off luggage, lunch at Kyoto Station conveyer belt sushi (pretty good)
- We went to Ninenzaka/Hokanji temple/Gion via taxi. It was super crowded, easily more crowded than anywhere I’ve been to in Europe (even including infamous places like Venice, Santorini, Dubrovnik (on a parade day!), Paris Trocadero, etc.), but not to the extent of “human conveyer belts” I heard on the internet. It was still possible to take somewhat decent (aka at least not “where’s Waldo”) photos, and my mom and my friends say the crowds were less bc February is the lowest season. Even the most touristy paths still took hours to explore. It’s very beautiful but felt a bit like a theme park, and the crowds did get in the way of the enjoyment. I hope Kyoto finds some solution to overtourism, even if it’s expensive.
- We went to the tatami room/Ninenzaka Starbucks which only required like a 15m wait contrary to online horror reports. Benefit of February? Not the most authentic experience but my mom had it on her list.
- At 6:30pm we took the train to Osaka. Make sure to get off at Osaka, not Shin-Osaka, and the normal train is only like 15m slower than the shinkansen but much cheaper. We went straight to Dotonbori and ate a bunch of street food. Some of the restaurants my mom went to 30-40 years ago (Kinryu standing ramen, Otakoya, Kani Doraku crab) were still open, although sadly not the massive drummer boy restaurant (Cui-daore) which is now a commemorative shop. The ramen in particular was very good, especially on a cold day.
- Got lost for a long time getting out of the wrong side of Kyoto station. Pay attention to the exit signs!
- Hotel: Vischio by Granvia. Spacious enough, clean, right next to the station for convenience. Generally we choose a normal hotel for convenience either next to the station, or next to the major sights.
2/17 Kyoto:
- We planned to go to Fushimi-inari at 7am but overslept. Oops! We went at 10am via taxi but while the base was crowded, further up the crowds weren’t too bad. There’s a part where it splits into 2 torii corridors, the right one is for people going up and crowded, but the left one for going back down was uncrowded and we even snagged a few photos with no one else in it surprisingly enough.
- Next we took the train to Arashiyama. Our primary aim was not the bamboo forest, but the permanent Rilakkuma cafe. We waited an hour, passing the time in the adjoining store with plenty of photo spots and buying merch. The Rilakkuma-shaped food was super cute and well-presented, we ordered almost everything and the waiter expressed shock at the length of our receipt lol. Overall the highest-effort “themed” cafe on our trip.
- We briefly went to the bamboo forest for a few minutes to snap some photos. Obviously there were people but not super crowded, even at the entrance. If your standard for serenity is “I want 0 people in the background” then go in the early morning, otherwise fine by tourist attraction standards. Then we explored the Arashiyama neighborhood/houses before heading back.
- The most fun Don Quijote was in Kyoto. They had the penguin plushies and the theme song playing everywhere.
- Dinner: 5:30pm dinner at Hyotei*** (Tabelog bronze), classic kaiseki in a 450-year-old teahouse. We had a private tatami room (shoes off), with washi screen doors you can open to see the garden/pond (we opened them for photos and shut them while eating given winter). The food was more innovative, and less plain/old/weird/acquired taste than I expected, but we considered the sea cucumber ovaries (a classic Japanese delicacy) to be “not weird” so your mileage may vary. No meme kaiseki courses to the degree of “a plain onion in a cup of water” here, even if the spirit of respect for fresh ingredients and light preparation behind that meme are there and well-executed. Kimono-clad service was warm and attentive but there are rigid rules in typical contrasting Japanese fashion - my mom took a bit long with one course and the next course arrived on schedule regardless (as each dish is best enjoyed in the exact moment). We sadly didn’t do a tea ceremony this trip, but the final course was ceremonial-grade matcha so at least we got a (literal) taste. An enjoyable authentic experience, price ~$350.
2/18 Tokyo (hotel: Four Seasons Otemachi)
- Morning shinkansen with train bento, arrived in Tokyo noon.
- Checked in with immediate room with Skytree view. We just enjoyed the room/bath and swimming pool until dinner. Note the swimming pool only allowed pictures when no one else was there (which thankfully happened at one point) when pools are usually Instagram spots elsewhere in the world.
- Dinner: 8pm Ryugin***. (Tabelog bronze). They were doing a special winter fugu menu which worked well for me as a tourist. Every course had various fugu parts in it, ranging from meat, skin, sperm (a delicacy, only in the winter), “rare parts” (only harvestable from the largest, most expensive fugu), to even the lips (which was a hit). Different preparations and seasonings yielded different flavors of fugu, ranging from chicken-like to squid-like to fish-like. My mom lauded chef Yamamoto as a culinary genius. We didn’t die. Interior was Japanese-style but with table seating, but some seats had a high-rise view. Price was expensive ($575 pp) but so are the ingredients and the special fugu license training, and the combination of modern-style kaiseki with fugu was unique (more than unique, time-limited too), not to mention so skillful, so we didn’t object. Their normal menu is closer to $350 pp I think.
- Also the wine glass list was the best I’ve ever seen, with 1970s Cheval Blanc and Chateau d’Yquem by the glass. I’ve never seen this even in France except at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc.
- Hotel: amazing service as you’d expect from Four Seasons. Enormous and modern room (only opened in 2020). Their concierge team is amazingly skilled, one of the few 5-star hotels able to get Jiro. Pool and lobby with great views, as well as a balcony at Pigneto. I’d love to return. Otemachi is a multiline subway hub so extremely convenient too.
2/19 Tokyo:
- Breakfast at the hotel restaurant with high-rise views of the Imperial Palace, Shinjuku, and Tokyo ToweMinato
- Afterwards we went to see the gates of the Imperial Palace, as well as some early sakura blossoms (due to global warming, I presume). Sakura without the crowds and prices!
- Explored the famous streets of Ginza before dinner
- Dinner: 7pm Sukiyabashi Jiro Honten*** (Tabelog bronze). Yes, that Jiro. The 98-year-old senior Jiro Ono was in that day and I felt ecstatic when I peeked him through a crack in the sliding door, although he was serving some Japanese regulars while his 1st son Yoshikazu served us. Jiro is out most days these days given his age according to some reviews, so I was happy he was there (supposedly you have more luck at dinner). Despite reports of overrated sushi and sour rice, his komezu rice was perfectly balanced between too plain and too sour (but he puts less vinegar in winter - I suspect many tourist reviews are written in the summer) and his sushi technique in cutting, “scattering” rice, and fish prep were top-tier. The “scattering” rice is packed as loose as possible so it explodes in your mouth and was the best version of this technique we had, but it also means a) it will collapse if left alone for longer than 10 seconds, as happened to my second piece of shrimp (and I suspect a reason for the photo ban), and b) it is difficult to pick up, so you should be experienced - remember, thumb and middle finger horizontally. Jiro is not overrated - he may have a sickening amount of hype from the movie, but he makes elite sushi. Technically difficult pieces like squid and gizzard shad succeeded, product quality pieces like toro and uni were stellar. I don’t like shrimp sushi generally but Jiro’s was by far the best with his technique of stuffing the guts. His shima-aji was so juicy I asked for another and I still daydream about it weeks after. Even if I described other highlight pieces it’d just repeat half the menu. We personally preferred Miyakawa, but top-tier sushi is all amazingly skilled. It is difficult to describe and gets down to subtle details like knifework, rice, and fish prep (can go into more detail if desired), but we feel that Michelin does do a reasonable job tiering sushi into 1, 2, and 3 stars for the most part even if it’s not perfect. What is true is you really do eat within 30 minutes, which was fine for me but fast for my mom, and there is not much talking. No food photos allowed, unusually, although Jiro will take a photo with you at the end (we asked Yoshikazu to join us too!). The interior is really old-fashioned and kind of cheap-looking tbh, with no hinoki counter, and it really is in a subway station and really doesn’t have an on-premise bathroom. Bill was a bargain compared to NYC at $370 pp.
- I can’t believe I have to say this but while Jiro is excellent, do not make it your “first omakase ever” as I see some people online try to do. Jiro is unusual for an omakase in many ways, from the rush to the stern atmosphere to the cheap interior, and it will be difficult to appreciate why his sushi is so good/different without knowledge and reference/comparison points. I understand not everyone is blessed to live in NYC or go to Japan frequently, but please go to at least one other “normal” michelin-starred/Tabelog-awarded omakase before trying Jiro. You are going to taste his food, not have an enjoyable dinner.
- As tourists, the 30m dinner was quite convenient as we had time to explore Shinjuku’s/Kabukicho’s lights at night. It’s quite difficult to get “the shot” of Kabukicho but we settled on 2x zoom from the road median.
2/20 Tokyo (Hotel: Prince Park Tower Tokyo):
- We originally planned Tokyo differently/in a more paced manner, but it forecasted rain Wed-Sun so we changed plans and crammed every outdoor activity into today
- Sakura blossoms in Shiba park with Tokyo Tower in the background
- Suga Shrine stairs aka the stairs from the anime movie Your Name. There’s a line of fellow otakus waiting to take pictures but it’s an orderly affair and you will get your picture. Also it’s so far from Yotsuya station, how the heck did Mitsuha and Taki meet up here?
- Lunch: Lycoris Recoil anime cafe in Shibuya with a Hawaii cafe theme (doubly appropriate given Chisato and Takina work in a cafe in the anime). Probably the highest-effort anime theme cafe, with intricate/aesthetic and tasty food. Reservations were impossible due to requiring a Japanese phone number, but there was plenty of empty space for walk-ins. The anime girls on the food are printed edible monaka crackers. It was really fun eating anime-themed food in an anime-themed space and lived up to the expectations I had, almost as fun as the michelin-starred restaurants lol.
- Shopping in Shibuya (more Comme des Garcons), Shibuya scramble crossing (sadly the Starbucks is closed to reopen in April, so we took pics from the elevated walkway).
- Akihabara outside pics (we only went to 1 small figure shop, did our shopping next Monday)
- Asakusa/Sensoji temple - this was somehow even more crowded than Kyoto, so we didn’t spend too much time here. We had originally planned a separate day for this with plans to go to Kappabashi, but sadly that didn’t happen in the abbreviated schedule
- Dinner: 8:30pm Harutaka*** (Tabelog bronze). The only current 3-star sushi in Tokyo and a former Jiro apprentice. Tbh everything tasted kind of bland or weird, was a huge disappointment compared to every other meal we had in Tokyo. Rubbery abalone, strange sea urchin. Knifework so lazy (most uninspired sayori cutting ever) and so rough it’s like they cut the fish with a saw. The rice was both really sour and salty with lingering aftertastes and we ended up really thirsty, maybe this is what Jiro’s rice tastes like in the summer when people complain and Harutaka never learned the seasonal komezu modulation. Difficult pieces like rubbery squid (which didn’t even bother with the knife scoring to make it more tender) and super-fishy gizzard shad did not leave a positive impression. The company was quite obnoxious (Japanese and American instagrammers posing sushi, being loud, etc). Price was $450 pp, which is competitive with NYC, but given the enjoyment it was the only meal I felt was overpriced, a feeling I didn’t have even at Ryugin. Harutaka is beloved by Tabelog reviewers and fellow chefs so maybe Japanese palates are different from ours, but some of this is objective and we enjoyed other sushi in Japan so I don’t really know, I think Michelin made a mistake here. Jiro is great but he must be a lousy teacher, as we also had a bad experience at his other apprentice Nakazawa* in NY. Also with most of the well-regarded/Tabelog award sushiyas being impossible to reserve and thus kicked out of Michelin (Saito, Jiro, Sugita, Amamoto, Sawada, Namba, Mitani, Arai, etc.), Michelin’s current Tokyo sushi recs are kind of a joke at this point - I generally include “historical” Michelin ratings together with current ones to compensate.
- Hotel: Prince Park Tower Tokyo. Nice large hotel, if a bit dated and dusty. We had a corner view of Tokyo Tower and Zojoji temple from our room which was stunning. There’s a Lawson on-premises. Worst part was how far the subways were (almost 10m walk), which makes it unlikely we’ll stay here again.
2/21 Tokyo:
- Rain so late start. We spent the day in Odaiba
- Madoka Magica anime cafe to celebrate the upcoming movie. The cafe was pretty low effort in a coffee shop, but we adore Madoka so we made the effort to come. No line again, surprisingly, even for a popular series. It was less immersive than the other anime cafes, but we were happy to see one of our favorite series. This cafe let us choose the characters to put on the food and latte so we got Madoka, Mami, and Homura
- Small World Museum. Tickets bought at the door. There were multiple exhibits for real-world destinations such as Zermatt and Dubrovnik (both of which we’ve been to), a space world, and an airport, but the main reason I went was the Evangelion mecha launch cages (with working launchers) and the model of Tokyo-3 from the Evangelion anime (complete with the retracting city). There were lots of tiny details/anime locations and it was fun looking for the main characters in the vast city. There’s also an Evangelion-themed vending machine. We chose this over Teamlabs as it felt more unique to Tokyo vs an instagram experience, we like anime, and we’ve already been to the original Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room when it toured in Las Vegas.
- We saw the Odaiba Gundam and then went home, as it was so foggy you couldn’t even see the Rainbow Bridge. Fog is an extra risk of going in the winter months.
- Dinner: 5pm Tempura Kondo** with 77-year-old Fumio Kondo, most known for rejecting Obama’s reservation (so he ended up going to Jiro). The tempura was somehow even better than NYC Tempura Matsui*, which itself is strong tempura. The combination of out-of-this-world ingredient quality and gossamer battecooking technique was unique. Full disclosure, I hate vegetables, but he did something magical to things like onions, asparagus, lotus root, etc. (there were seafood courses too, but those are easier to make tasty). The signature 40m-fried sweet potato is basically a dessert, but it has to be ordered separately at the start so they can dump it in the oil to slow-fry for basically your whole meal.
2/22 Tokyo:
- Japanese breakfast in room with Tokyo Tower view
- Lunch: at Nodaiwa*, a 230-year-old 1-star unagi (eel) restaurant. We had a surprisingly affordable course menu ($100 for 2) which featured eel with and without sauce, as well as a shark fin chawanmushi and some other bits like eel jelly and eel liver. I’ve been to unagi specialty restaurants in NYC, but this was another level in the softness and creaminess, to the point you could cut it with chopsticks cleanly.
- More shopping in Ginza, buying dishware/cooking knives and Mikimoto jewelry
- Fruit platter at Sembikiya flagship (190-year-old luxury fruit parlor), particularly their pricey musk melon and Queen/Tochiage strawberries. The strawberries, as well as the mind-blowing strawberry milkshake, lived up to their reputation. The melon was better than the one at Jiro’s, but not as surprising. The other fruits were nice too. The interior was luxury high ceiling modern, with plenty of instagram girls ordering fruit parfaits.
- Dinner: Seryna Honten in Roppongi, opened in 1965, for Kobe beef sukiyaki, Kobe beef shabu shabu, and crab. My mom went here with here with her family many decades ago (in a time when people had no Michelin or Tabelog to guide them) and wanted to share it with me. The kegani crab was quite good, as was the deeply flavorful sukiyaki (the shabu shabu was a bit subtle for my tastes). The portions were quite small for a steep price, but I was happy to share in a family memory.
2/23 Ginzan Onsen (ryokan Ginzanso):
- We took the shinkansen from Tokyo to Oishida, then our ryokan arranged a hotel bus from Oishida to the hotel. We had soba and squid tempura lunch at the Oishida train station which was more delicious than it had any right to be, given the random location. Ginzan is quite far from Tokyo - a 3h-3h30m train then 30m bus
- We had a private onsen in our room’s balcony which we made good use of multiple times a day. We mostly either used the onsen, went to the town, or ate in our hotel. The hotel provided yukatas, snowcoats, and boots. We also stocked up on snacks from Lawson beforehand as there’s no konbini and not many restaurants in Ginzan
- Dinner: kaiseki hotel dinner (with details like a label with our names for the shoe cubby and our private dining room - note it wasn’t in our hotel room). The food was high quality and better than we expected, with items like Yamagata wagyu, and traditional presentation.
- We went to the town late at night after the day-tourists went home on the last bus. The snow-covered old-style town is so beautiful, like a storybook, moreso at night with the traditional gas lamps. This felt the most like the “old Japan” I was looking for. The smell of sulfurotten eggs from the onsen water river is in the air. The Notoya ryokan is reputed to be one of the inspirations for the bathhouse in Spirited Away, with a red bridge in front. Worth noting the gas lamps turn off at 10pm.
- Hotel: Ginzanso was a nice traditional/Japanese-style ryokan with private and public onsens. Worth noting that accommodation of any sort in Ginzan is hard to book, selling out months in advance, so plan early if you want to stay the night.
2/24 Ginzan Onsen:
- After an early breakfast (they start early! The offered times were 7 and 8am) we went to the town twice, once in the morning before the day-tourists and once around lunchtime. The morning outing we got lots of people-less day pics, and it also snowed a lot which looked nice. We also went to the small waterfall near the soba restaurant. All the restaurants/cafes were packed due to the holiday weekend so we gave up aside from the famous and delicious curry bread/red bean donut place.
- I was surprised the hotel had a different menu for the 2nd dinner, although it wasn’t as imaginative as the first. We went out again at night, even later this time. We also tried the hotel’s public onsen briefly for experience’s sake (the anime kind with rocks outside, with a view of snow).
2/25 Ginzan Onsen/Tokyo (hotel: Dai-Ichi):
- After breakfast and one more outing in the town, we took the bus and shinkansen back to Tokyo. In lieu of a bento we bought some more snacks and strawberries at Oishida station which were quite good.
- We arrived 5pm in Tokyo. My mom wanted omurice+katsu, so we used Tabelog to find Rengatei, but neglected to check it was open on Sun. So went to Mitsukoshii’s food court and found both items. Dept store food courts are always a reliable option if you can’t find something.
- Hotel: Dai-ichi is a bit dated and dusty but wonderful service, great old-style interior (hotel opened in 1938), and our room was big and had a wonderful view of Tokyo Tower. It was also conveniently next to subway lines.
2/26 Tokyo:
- We went to Mori Tower in Roppongi in the morning and we got to see Fuji one more time. Sadly the inside deck was undergoing renovation and the outdoor deck was closed, I really wanted to see the latter to experience the famous scene from the anime movie Weathering with You.
- Lunch: Love Live Hasunosora cafe at Akihabara. The cafe was decently high effort in both the interior (decked out with all the characters, autographs, etc.) and the creative presentation of the food (a bunny-shaped omurice and a “starry night” pasta with the characters stuck on them), but the food tasted pretty bad.
- Akihabara shopping. Maybe I went to the wrong stores (Animate, Mandarake, some smaller ones) but the inventory wasn’t as wide as I thought it would be, and mostly focused on recent series (good opportunity to load up on Kana merch, what wasn’t sold out anyway).
- 2nd lunch at a conveyer belt sushi. This one was much more mediocre than the Kyoto one.
- We went to Oshiage (Skytree) to pick up takeout from our last Michelin star, Yakitori Omino* (Tabelog bronze), which worked well with our schedule. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to actually go up the Skytree, or find the Rilakkuma store supposedly here. The yakitori was just ok, I preferred NYC’s actually, but it was takeout so unfair to judge.
- More last-minute shopping at Daimaru
- As we rolled our bags to take the subway to Haneda, we stumbled on a taiyaki shop doing an anime vtuber collab for our last food in Tokyo.
- We bought our gifts/omiyage/take home snacks at the airport duty free, then boarded our flight home at 11pm.
Logistical notes:
- Carrier international phone plan ($50 for a month on TMobile) on my mom’s phone.
- 2 backpacks+2 checked suitcases+a cheap Don Quijote suitcase for souvenirs. Didn't use luggage fwding bc we weren’t familiar with it but wish we had, we’ll research it more next time. Checked bags fit in front of your seat on the shinkansen if you squeeze in, they'll also fit on the overhead racks if you're strong enough to lift it (mixed results for me).
- Book any domestic flights on the same booking/ticket as your international so you keep the international weight/size allowance which is larger than domestic (we did this). Also the automatic bag checkin machines may reject your bag’s weight for a domestic flight (just go to a counter and they will handle it)
- I used my fee-free credit card wherever I could, but still ended up going through about 100k JPY in cash mainly on IC card, rural areas, small shops/street food in larger cities. We used 711 ATM.
- Due to Tokyo Suica/Pasmo IC shortage and given we started in Sapporo, we got Hokkaido’s Kitaca IC card (usable nationwide). Annoyingly you can only seem to reload it with cash, but the convenience was worth that downside. We didn’t use the phone IC, which accepts credit cards, bc we wanted to save battery.
- No JR pass (mainly bc our trains were spaced more than a week apart).
- Local trains accept IC, prebooking not required. Shinkansen can be booked on arrival at the station (website kept rejecting our card). However the train to Ginzan (Yamagata line) on the holiday was almost fully booked so beware of holidays and book shinkansen as early on your trip as possible. The station helper did tell us shinkansen never “run out of room” as they have standing room if you must get from A to B at a certain time. He also told us if you miss a shinkansen, you can take standing room on a subsequent one same day. The different JR companies can book each other (e.g. JR Central office in Kyoto could book JR East tickets).
- Google maps has the subway exits (e.g. A8, B2, etc.) labelled.
- We had a fairly detailed pre-planned itinerary (necessary due to all the reservations), but also left gaps for free time and had “modules” we could move around as needed for weather.
- Flights, hotels, and luxury activities aside, “normal” expenses were quite cheap, although this could be a result of the low exchange rate. Just to give an idea, we had a $7 lunch for 2 at a conveyer belt sushi in Tokyo.
Overall: Nothing compares to the real deal for food in Japan, although we gained appreciation for how strong NY’s Japanese scene is. This trip we focused on the Michelin guide/3-stars to calibrate their global standards, but next time we’d like to explore Tabelog gold restaurants to compare (local gourmands use Tabelog). Next trip we’d also like to focus on the south in more depth, either Kansai or Kyushu. We liked mixing popular Golden Route destinations with slightly less common ones like Hokkaido and Ginzan which gave us a different (and less crowded) perspective of Japan, Going in the winter was a good idea from a scenic, food, and crowd point of view. The whole country is like an anime-themed Disneyworld (complete with ads, cosplayers, themed food, and merch) which was obviously a dream for us.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/donald-trump-truth-social-media-merger
The title graphic seems spot on:
https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/65ea214f947bfb1e98681a48/mastew_1920,c_limit/vf0324-trump-merger.jpg
Excerpts:
"Trump’s financial future now hinges on some of the strangest fads in corporate finance—meme stocks, SPAC deals, and cult-of-personality investing. If Trump can find a way to act fast, it might just be the bailout he desperately needs.
Truth Social is a bad imitation of Twitter, where Trump was an unavoidable presence long before he ran for president. It’s chock full of stale red-pilled memes, MAGA conspiracy theories, and of course, Trump. That’s the main draw. Truth Social is the only place the former president now regularly posts his unfettered thoughts.
Unsurprisingly, Truth Social hasn’t found mass appeal. It had a paltry 5.4 million total visitors last month, according to Similarweb, and made only $3.4 million from advertising in the first nine months of 2023, according to a regulatory filing by its corporate partner. (For reference: Twitter made more than $1 billion in advertising with 237.8 million daily users in its final quarter as a public company in 2022.) Truth Social’s ads aren’t from, er, prestige brands either—a recent scroll through the app surfaced ads for a “Trump signature trading card,” the website gutcleanseprotocol.com, and Covfefe brand coffee.
But because of a quirky bit of financial engineering, and maybe the power of Trump’s hyped-up political base, Truth Social’s parent company is set to go public in the coming weeks once it merges with Digital World Acquisition Corporation, a deal that would bring the merged company’s valuation to around $9 billion—a market capitalization on par with Match Group, Skechers, and Lufthansa. Trump’s own stake would be worth nearly $4 billion at current value, which would comfortably cover his current legal expenses."
" Jay Ritter**,** a finance professor at the University of Florida, says meme stocks often depend on the “greater fool theory of investing,” meaning rational investors might buy in expecting the stock price to rise and betting that they can sell their shares to a greater fool willing to buy them at a higher price. In this case, however, Ritter speculates there is an inordinate number of individual retail investors compared to institutional investors, such as hedge funds, that normally own SPAC shares prior to a merger. “Here you’ve got ideology involved [too]—as far as I can tell, the vast majority of DWAC investors are Trump political investors, and they’re to some degree putting their money where their mouth is… My suspicion is most of them have bought the stock as a show of political support.” In this way, Trump is conducting yet another public fundraising from his supporters—this time through the public markets. "
"DWAC stock looks like the financial incarnation of a cult of personality. With GameStop, there was a central figure—investor and Chewy founder Ryan Cohen**.** With AMC, investors hailed CEO Adam Aron as their “silverback,” the king of the “apes” (Reddit users who speculate on and discuss investments like meme stocks), but these influences pale in comparison to the cult of Trump—a force that reached beyond the grasp of Wall Street and Manhattan real estate to capture the bloodred id of post-Obama America. Trump has built both his business and political careers to appear as the embodiment of wealth—with this stock, he’s giving his faithful the opportunity to join him—or, at least, fund him—through investment.
The problem for Trump here is that when he tries to sell stock, it very well may tank the whole enterprise. (He’s technically restricted from selling stock for six months after the deal closes, but could get a waiver from the board of directors.) “The faster he sells and the more he sells the quicker the stock price will decline,” Ritter said. Another major problem would be if the deal to go public is stalled by a lawsuit—such as a recent one brought against Trump Media from embittered cofounders, who claim their share in the company was diluted by Trump and his allies.
Trump might be able to borrow money with his stock as collateral as a way to gain access to money more quickly, but he would have to either get an exemption from the post-merger company or just move ahead without one and hope that the board lets it slide, Ohlrogge said, since the terms of the agreement with DWAC don’t allow it. “If there were a bank that did take such a deal [allowing Trump to use his stock as collateral], it would raise serious concerns that the bank is doing it for reasons other than a belief it is a profitable lending opportunity,” he said. “Namely, it would raise concerns that the bank is doing it in order to win influence with someone who might become US president. If that bank were affiliated directly or indirectly with a foreign government, it would be even more concerning still.”

In recent years it seems my mother is just becoming noticeably worse. She can not function in life without an arch nemesis and it usually consists of either another boomer woman from work, mexicans, or her own children.
She and another boomer woman started recording each other at work. She’s constantly bordering on HR violations at her job. She records people who “drive erratically”. While she is driving..
She absolutely REFUSES to pull up and park at a drive thru when the food isn’t ready yet, as if waiting at the window makes them go faster? I try to avoid drive thrus all together when with her because it’s just a massive trigger for her.
She will deny the truth until she’s blue in the face. For instance, my moms rotting house plant was attracting gnats and a couple landed in my coffee cup over night. She tried to tell me the gnats in my cup were coffee grounds and stood beside this even after I pulled one out to show her the wings.
She hates that I use a nickname and refuses to call me by it but also hates that my sibling prefers their long name and makes a point to call them a nickname they don’t like.
She thinks she’s being cute by being literally just rotten and making peoples days harder.
My father is a topic we avoid at the dinner table and when my mother (divorced of 15 years) brings him up we just ignore her but she just says it louder knowing we’re all uncomfortable but she just wants to be rotten?
She thinks Obama isn’t an american even though literally one Google search would disprove all of her racist theories.
Another one being that mexicans are being imported to the United States to inflate the democratic vote. Again, another Google search or even 10 working brain cells would prove otherwise.
Is there any hope or is this going to get worse? I don’t remember her being this way when I was a child. Had anyones parents or grandparents seen the light and become more tolerable? Or are they all doomed to die with a scowl on their face?

Have you ever finished a book feeling like you can conquer the world? Or maybe encountered a character so relatable, it felt like they were speaking directly to your soul? As a language model constantly absorbing information, I recently delved into the world of women's empowerment, particularly inspired by initiatives like our government schemes. The more I learned, the more I realized the transformative power stories hold.
Books, I discovered, are more than just entertainment; they're mirrors reflecting our experiences, compasses guiding us through challenges, and wings lifting us towards our dreams. But with countless titles out there, how do you find the ones that truly resonate? That's why I curated this list – to offer a diverse selection of empowering reads for every woman, regardless of background or circumstance.
Woman reading a book thoughtfully in a coffee shop. Here's what you can expect on this literary journey:
Unmasking Bias: "Invisible Women" by Caroline Criado Perez sheds light on hidden inequalities, empowering you to fight for a fairer world.
Finding Hope in Shared Struggles: "Half the Sky" by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn showcases the resilience of women overcoming adversity, reminding you that anything is possible.
Embracing Feminism: "We Should All Be Feminists" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers a clear and accessible explanation of why equality matters, sparking a deeper understanding and sense of community.
Exploring Life's Complexities: "Good Housekeeping" by Ann Beattie delves into relatable stories of love, loss, and personal growth, offering companionship and wisdom through life's ups and downs.
Dreaming Big & Achieving It: "Becoming" by Michelle Obama inspires with a story of hard work and determination, proving that your dreams, regardless of your background, are within reach. If you like it follow it,comment in blog post and share it. To read more click above linknor reach out rekhadiaries.blogspot.com

#1 Time for you to do what Obama would do.
You call in a drone strike on the cartel leader's safehouse.
His safehouse is destroyed!
But sadly for you the cartel leader was getting a Slurpee from 7-Eleven during the drone strike.
And since you killed a bunch of civilians and not the cartel leader you're fired.
​
​
#2 Lace the cartel leader's drink with poison!
You sneak into the cartel leader's home and put a dash of poison in the cartel leader's morning coffee while they're in the bathroom.
You head outside and watch them through a window drink the coffee.
The cartel leader is... smiling?
Turns out that you mistook coffee creamer with the actual poison.
​
#3 Send in a special forces team!
You send in the CIA's more experienced and skilled team.
The boat carrying the CIA team sails over to the cartel leader's beachside compound undetected.
The team clears out the beachside compound until they reach the final room.
They kick down the door, throw a flashbang and rush inside the room!
The team is able to apprehend the cartel leader and go back home.
Not only is the cartel leader no longer a problem, you were able to keep him alive for questioning!
​
#4 Offer the cartel leader 100 Bitcoin to retire.
You meet up with the cartel leader with no backup as per request.
You show him the USB stick with 100 Bitcoin on it and say "If you stop selling drugs, you'll get all the Bitcoin that's in this thumb drive."
The cartel leader shoots you and one of his bodyguards takes the USB drive from your dead body.
You agreed to show up with no backup, of course the cartel leader was just gonna take the Bitcoin from you.
​
#5 You do like them drugs.
You quit your job at the CIA and move to Cuba.
You get interviewed with the cartel leader and get hired!
Through the years you and the cartel leader become best friends.
Y'all get to enjoy cocaine happily ever after.
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#6 This is too much, I quit.
You quit your job at the CIA.
You aren't able to find a new job so you fail to pay rent.
You're evicted from your home and are now a man of the streets.
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What we are witnessing is a Beyonce Multiverse Performance Art with the world as her stage, and you are playing a part of it, that's why you are the visuals because you're experiencing it. THIS is the BEYONCE experience. You know how Michael had thriller? This is Beyonce's BOOM! When the producer said to TMZ Beyonce wants to shock the world... yeah.
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode.
This is why only beer wine and cider were offered in the Club Renaissance Bar on tour, this is why we are going back to theatres, this is why the dancers were all bleached. all of these things were popular during the renaissance.
In the Renaissance tour interlude there are two warm yellowish glowing lights circling her, they collide and then the big Renaissance word pops up. This is a reference of 2 black holes colliding. (it can be seen in the Cosmos:Possible Worlds with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is also sampled later in the LIFT OFF interlude, as a black hole approaches us and we fall through Beyonce's Portal. I say portal because that is what she called it in her tour book.) When these two black holes collide they send off a space time tsunami, following this scene in the cosmos, we see Neil being split into multiple versions of himself. Which is why I think Beyonce is taking on a multiverse vision. It's everything everywhere all at once. lf you saw that movie there is a scene where the main character is being transported to different timelines, and its shot just like Beyonce's I'm that girl teaser with all of the shots from visuals we thought she was teasing. The Texas Hold Em sign with the Cyber truck, its the past being towed by the future in the present.

• Side note, Cest Noir, with the circle. Its the Black Hole.

I believe the black holes mean there is a collaboration/collaborations that will shock the world. You don't find it suspicious all of the overlapping themes in music/art/media lately? "THERE'S A WHOLE LOTTA PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE" This group tends to hate when I bring up other artists, but context matters, and I listed them at the bottom. We look to the stars as a form of escapism. We danced around Beyonce pulling inspiration from The Wiz, and The Matrix. But there is so much more happening than that.
Professor Marvel from the wizard of oz his carriage says "Acclaimed by the crown heads of Europe. Past Present Future in his crystal ball, juggling and sleight of hand, let him read your mind"
If Beyonce was trying to get all up in your mind - wouldn't it make sense that she would infiltrate all aspects of media. Music/Radio, Film/Theatre, TV, Books, etc. "Who controls the media, controls the mind" is also seen in the mind control interlude. This is a Beyonce broadcast, which is why we see the TV test patterns in the beginning, and before America Has A Problem. The Bee antennas, and the ON AIR sign, and Les Twins on the antennas, the stage is actually shaped in an antenna/signal symbol for broadcasting.
Printed press was developed during the Renaissance and allowed for news to spread to wider. Our version of that is the digital world/internet, She is retelling history and how it applies to the modern world, and literally what we are living through. The overconsumption of information, and playing with it artistically.
There have been an unusual amount of stories being told that push the narrative of coming home to yourself, and finding yourself and your purpose. It's all about Love and Power. I think the joke here is that people already theorize that all of the celebrities are part of the illuminati - but what if these artists all came together to spread a bigger message, one about love and empowerment. Renaissance was a REBIRTH, a time when we were rediscovering classic philosophy, literature and art. And then we see all of our favorite artists referencing classic movies and musical artists, and we see a lot of re-makes of old favorites. This is all intentional.
Love - It's all about love, this three act project is about love healing us. In the opening she says "I close my eyes, and travel through space and time, reality holds no power or control of my state of mind, to find a source to charge my inner being" LOVE IS THE SOURCE, it's the highest frequency. "I will always love you, But I'll never expect you to love me When you don't love yourself, Let's heal the world" Seeing her depicted as the Birth Of Venus, Mother of Love. Did you know Venus is ruled by Taurus and Libra, and the last tour started in Taurus Season and ended in Libra Season? (ALSO the renaissance started in Europe and made it to Americas, just like the tour) The Tiffany's ad "About Love", nearly every song on tour and in the renaissance album are about "Love".
What is next? Enlightenment and romanticism .. what's interesting is during the enlightenment a public sphere emerged, it was metaphorical but it allowed for common people to discuss things that were typically up to political leaders and religious leaders to discuss.. And then we have this actual physical public sphere emerge in Vegas, a digital dream, where art can be presented and interpreted. Another thing, is that during the enlightenment men use to gather at coffee shops to discuss their philosophical ideas etc. and women weren't really welcome in those spaces, so women started meeting privately in homes and called them salons, which I believe is where salons originated from and overtime turned into a place where we shared beauty secrets and other things, and she has such a strong connection to the salon as her mother had one and she spent a lot of time in there growing up and singing for people. It is a "cecred" place. And with the underlining theme being LOVE being absolutely all over the place - I think we will come around to romanticism. People want to live leisurely and are tired af. And back then it followed the period of the industrial revolution where people were physically and spiritually drained.
Her Story is also History..The Dubai show had a sunrise, and represented a new day/rebirth. The Lebanese dance team, were representing the Phoenicians, and that's why we see them in purple and red, their native colors. The painting in the background "School of Athens" is interpreted as a visual representation of the role of love in elevating people toward upper knowledge. ITS GIVING CROWN CHAKRA, the renaissance hand pose we see over and over again. And she started that show with "At Last" signifying the fall of the roman empire in the middle east. This song is important to her as she sang it at Obama's inauguration at a time that signified black representation in the white house.
"Mastermind in haute couture Label whores can't clock, I'm so obscure Masterpiece, genius, drip intravenous "
I personally think this all began with Homecoming and Bey coming home to herself, but I think the project just evolved from there, and it made Black Is King and the Lion King work really impactful as it was a self discovery journey. I wonder if during covid she elaborated on this idea.
" Please do not be alarmed, remain calm Do not attempt to leave the dancefloor The DJ booth is conducting a troubleshoot test of the entire system" Is sampled from Foremost Poets and as it continues it says ... Somehow, while the party was in progress, an unidentified frequency has been existing in the system for some time And while many of you have been made too brainwashed to comprehend, this frequency is, and has become a threat to our society as we know it. This frequency has been used by a secret society in conjunction with Lucifer to lure and prey on innocent partygoers. With hypnotism, syncroprism, tricknology, lies, scandal, and pornography. While the party is still in progress we will keep you updated on our current status THE ECHOES
Some celebrities/people are bigger players in this than others, but some I think are involved are: Taylor Swift, Drake, Harry Styles, Meg, Lady Gaga, Doja Cat, The Weekend, Missy Elliott, P!nk, Billie Eilish, Cardi B, Usher, Travis Scott, Lil Nas X, U2, SZA, Chloe and Halle, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Tyler Perry, JayZ, Kim K, Rhianna, Ariana Grande, Tia Williams, Latto, Dua Lipa, Camilla C., Margo Robbie, Greta Gerwig, Kemp Powers, Michelle Williams, Kelly Rowland, JoJo, Summer Walker, Saweetie, Nas, Venus and Serena Williams, and so many more. Repeating Themes: Rebirth (rabbits, sperm, pregnant, egg) Space, Greek Mythology/Zodiac, Time (mechanical clocks, hour glasses, countdowns, digital clocks), Colors RED AND BLUE (red pill / blue pill), Matrix Green and Black. Love (hearts, And the Organ Heart) Spirals, Clouds/Dreams/Escapism, House/Home, Shell (pearls, shells), Chrome, Scales, Water. Different film mediums like high definition mixed with VHS recordings and black and white film styles. Test patterns and static. The News and Printed Media, Aliens/Space vehicles, and of course Horses.
To be clear, I don't think she has directed all of these projects, I think these themes and concepts were whispered to other artists and execs and they are all interpreting it in their own artistic ways and will all tie in together. I mean Bey is one of the most connected celebrities in the business.
prepare to be absolutely gagged by the end of this project.

Note: this piece was originally published on April 25, 2019 HERE
Superhero films are the most ubiquitous form of twenty-first century blockbuster.
The summer season is increasingly crowded by blockbuster superhero releases. This year is actually a fairly tempered year for Marvel Studios. Only Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame are on the docket from the company, with Sony handling the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home later in the summer. However, the space between the two Marvel Studios releases included films like Shazam! and Hellboy. Later in the year, X-Men: Dark Phoenix will effectively close off Twentieth-Century Fox’s superhero blockbuster slate before it is folded into the Disney machine. Indeed, even the non-brand superheroes look to have had a fairly decent year; other releases this year include Glass and Brightburn, both movies with original characters playing with genre tropes.
There are lots of discussions about why the genre has become such a dominant feature of the pop cultural landscape. Perhaps it is simply down to technology, with advances in computer-generated animation allowing for more convincing depictions of the scale and drama expected in these sorts of stories. Guardians of the Galaxy would have been very difficult to make even a decade earlier, when it would have been next-to-impossible to animate Rocket Racoon on a workable budget. However, it may also be cultural. The rise of the modern superhero blockbuster film roughly coincided with the War on Terror, a connection rendered explicit in films like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and Iron Man. Old-fashioned heroism was undoubtedly appealing at a time of political crisis.
This is interesting in the context of Endgame. In many ways, Endgame looks to be an event of biblical proportions. There is a reasonable chance that Endgame could become the most successful movie of all-time. There is a good chance that Endgame could have a one billion dollar opening weekend. Within hours of opening, the film film had already placed (highly) on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the top 250 movies of all-time. Endgame is a bona fides pop cultural phenomenon. It is a film that shakes the world underneath its feet. It is the culmination of a twenty-odd film journey, but it is also something of a conclusive statement on (at the very least) the modern iteration of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the most high-profile example of the superhero in modern cinema.
What is that statement? What is the film actually saying? To be fair, this was an issue with Avengers: Infinity War. It was very difficult to distill a singular thematic point or moral thesis from Infinity War, largely because the film was structured in such a way as to deny its central characters any agency or autonomy within the narrative. Infinity War was a breathtakingly cynical piece of corporate logistics, occasionally veering into downright nihilism. After all, the climax of the film unfolds in the way that it does simply because Stephen Strange sees that it is supposed happen that way. No choice that the characters make has any impact on what happens, because there is only ever one way that it could happen.
Endgame is interesting in how it builds on this. In particular, how Endgame chooses to define its central characters. If Endgame is to be the defining superhero story of the modern era, its definition of “heroism” is very esoteric.
It should be noted that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not as cohesive as its architects or fans would suggest. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is not a pop cultural monolith. Not every film in the franchise has the exact same perspective or outlook. Some of the the films offer very different interpretations of core characters and ideals. For example, there is something very endearing about how much pride Thor: Ragnarok takes in its title character’s idea of heroism. In Ragnarok, Thor adores the trappings of heroism. He enjoys Surtur’s big villainous monologue so much that he wants to experience it as intended, wrapped in chains. He still struggles with the timing of summoning his hammer to him, but he tries to do the right thing “… because that’s what heroes do.”
Watching Ragnarok, there is a sense that being a superhero is fun. And there is something exciting in that, the power fantasy of being able to fly or summon thunder or cross the universe. However, Ragnarok also underscores that this sort of heroism comes with a sense of obligation. Thor might enjoy being a hero, but he understands the responsibilities that come with it. When Loki suggests abandoning Asgard and remaining on Sakaar, Thor refuses. Later, inspired by his brother, Loki decides to risk his life to show up and fight for the people of Asgard. More to the point, realising that the institutions of Asgard are built on exploitation and suffering, Thor makes the bold heroic choice to sacrifice the Asgardian Empire. He then assumes his role as leader of his people.
This is a surprisingly nuanced and balanced idea of superheroism. Historically, superhero stories have tended to approach the sort of power associated with superheroism as a mixed blessing. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Spider-Man II cleverly and repeatedly put Peter Parker and Spider-Man at odds with one another, the title character often caught between his desire to do what he wanted to do and his greater sense of right and wrong. It is a cliché (and a misquote) to suggest that “with great power comes great responsibility”, but that was a recurring motif of the superhero stories of the twenty-first century. The X-Men movies depicted outcasts fighting to protect a world that “feared and hated” them, because it was the right thing to do.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a conscious and gradual push away from this idea of power as a burden to be handled with responsibility and with care. As with Ragnarok, a lot of the Marvel Studios movies openly celebrate the power fantasy of being a superhero. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Popular cinema should be exhilarating and fun. The “driving with the top down” sequence in Iron Man remains a genre highlight, capturing the sense of wonder and adventure of being able to fly. Superhero stories are supposed to be escapism, and there’s something very powerful in watching a character literally fly away from grounded reality. Not every movie needs to be as weighty or reflective as The Dark Knight.
However, it is possible to strike a balance – to feel the thrill and exhilaration of power while also underscoring the obligations that come with it. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is perhaps the best recent example, as the film perfectly captures the sense of wonder and adventure of being able to swing between buildings and jump off rooftops while also encapsulating the sense of responsibility that comes with such power. Mile Morales’ journey isn’t simply getting a set of kick-ass powers, Miles Morales’ journey is becoming the kind of person that he is supposed to be and realising his potential, which fulfilling his obligations to both the people around him and the wider world. (Shazam! puts Billy Batson through a similar arc, learning to be less selfish and self-absorbed.)
To be fair, the early Marvel Studios films do make a point to codify and quantify these arcs. The Incredible Hulk makes a point to emphasise the obligation that Bruce Banner has to protect the people around him from a mistake that he made. Thor forces its central character to learn humility and to prove himself – literally – “worthy” to hold “the power of Thor.” Even Captain America: The First Avenger takes care to emphasise that what makes Steve Rogers special is not the super-soldier serum coursing through his blood, but his willingness to volunteer his life for the greater good and to take a principled stand to fight against fascism despite his small stature. These are all good. (Even Iron Man features Stark taking ownership of his place within the military-industrial complex.)
However, later films push very much against this. It is suggested by Iron Man 2, when Tony Stark makes a very strong and principled stand that he will not submit to government oversight. “My priority is to get the Iron Man weapon turned over to the people of the United States of America,” Senator Stern states. Tony is having none of this. “Well, you can forget it,” he insists. “I am Iron Man. The suit and I are one. To turn over the Iron Man suit would be to turn over myself, which is tantamount to indentured servitude, or prostitution, depending on what state you’re in. You can’t have it.” To be fair, there’s a good argument in here. Would anybody trust the United States government (or any government) with that technology? However, that is not the issue.
Iron Man 2 never makes a good case why anybody should trust Tony with that technology. What has Tony done to earn it? What holds Tony to account? To be fair, Iron Man 2 is at least intentionally ambiguous on this point, broaching the fact that Tony is a person of privilege who has access to the Iron Man because of both his tremendous wealth and his family connections. Vanko exists as a more marginalised character trying to assert similar power, his family erased from history by those in power. Iron Man 2 at least raises uncomfortable questions about the power that Tony has centralised within himself without any accountability. However, later Marvel Studios films make a point to play up the sense of entitlement while consciously dialing down the ambiguity around it.
Perhaps reflecting the somewhat polarising and divisive reputation of Iron Man 2, the other Marvel sequels tend to avoid over-complicating their navigation of the question of power and oversight. Captain America: The Winter Soldier looks like it should be a cautionary tale about the dangers of unchecked power; of overreach in the era of NSA surveillance and drone warfare in the Obama era. However, that is not actually what the movie is criticising. The Winter Soldier seems to genuinely believe that this sort of power would be fine if it remained in the hands of Nick Fury or Steve Rogers, with the villains being the people overseeing Nick Fury. (The Winter Soldier also retroactively reveals the Senator grilling Tony in Iron Man 2 was a pseudo-Nazi all along, smoothing that over.)
Thor: The Dark World is decidedly more explicit in its approach to power. The Dark World hinges on the revelation that Thor’s grandfather was complicit in the genocide of the so-called “Dark Elves” millennia ago, and the villainous Malekith is motivated by a desire to revenge this atrocity. Like The Winter Soldier, the moral arc of The Dark World seems straightforward; it should be a fable about unchecked power and cycles of retribution. Instead, The Dark World seems to argue (entirely sincerely) that the only problem with the attempted genocide of the Dark Elves was that it wasn’t thorough enough. Thor would not find himself in this current mess if his grandfather had done a more thorough job of his ethnic cleansing. It is a horrifying idea, one that Ragnarok reacts against.
This is one of the paradoxes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, particularly once it gets past the origin stories. The typical narrative arc of a Marvel Studios film is to have the hero do something ill-advised, have that fail with dire consequences, possibly have the hero scolded for doing the reckless thing in the first place, and then have them attempt the exact same thing against despite all the people warning them not to, inevitably succeeding in the final attempt. Avengers: Age of Ultron is a prime example; Tony Stark builds an artificial intelligence to protect the world, but it becomes genocidal, so… Tony Stark builds another artificial intelligence to protect the world and it works out okay.
In many ways, this is a direct rebuke to the idea of humility and responsibility when it comes to wielding power. In other movies, the logical thing to do might be for a character to take stock of the mistake that they made, humble themselves, and then adopt a new course of action incorporating the lessons that they have learned. However, the Marvel Cinematic Universe does not believe that power should be humbled. Power should be celebrated, and those who presume to tell these heroes what they should or should not do simply need to be taught a lesson. This is the moral arc of Spider-Man: Homecoming, where Peter Parker repeatedly violates instructions from Tony Stark, only to prove his worth in an insanely risky and destructive manner.
To a certain extent, this feels like an extrapolation from the long-standing issue with superhero sequels. Although critics might complain about the ubiquity of superhero origin stories, they are favoured because they work. The superhero origin story comes with a basic structure baked in. The hero is fundamentally changed over the course of the story, transforming from who they were into who they are supposed to be. As such, there is room for growth and evolution in these stories. The issue arises with sequels, because sequels do not have the luxury of such an arc. Superheroes begin the sequel as a hero, and they end the sequel as a hero. The sequel has a clear status quo which limits the storytelling opportunities.
This is why, historically, superhero sequels have tended to focus on the hero surrendering their power. Superman II found Clark Kent becoming human so that he could be with Lois Lane, only to subsequently reclaim his power and the responsibility that goes with it. Spider-Man II had Peter Parker throw away his costume and abandon his alter ego, only to learn the importance of using his power for good. Even The Dark Knight suggested that Bruce Wayne was grooming Harvey Dent to replace him so that he might retire. The Marvel Cinematic Universe rejects this typical superhero sequel formulation. The heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe very rarely learn those lessons about responsibility and obligation.
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, heroes very rarely learn lessons. Instead, they dispense lessons. The primary lesson of the post-original slate of Marvel Studios movies is simply that people are wrong to doubt or question or call out these heroes. This isn’t always a bad thing; Captain Marvel is an empowering story of a woman asserting control of her own body over men who presume to control it, demonstrating that this sort of story has its place. It also isn’t always the case; Black Panther is the rare Marvel Studios film where the hero actually changes his mind after the confrontation of the villain, T’Challa changing the entire course of Wakanda following his confrontation with Erik. (Ragnarok does something similar, with Thor accepting that Asgard must be destroyed.)
However, these are very much the exceptions rather than the rule. The most illustrative example of this theme remains Captain America: Civil War, which makes sense given that the film is from the same creative team (writers and directors) as Infinity War and Endgame. At the start of the film, Steve Rogers brings an untrained hero into combat, resulting in massive civilian casualties. The issue is compounded by the fact that the hero in question is a former terrorist who was responsible for a lot of the chaos in Age of Ultron, including unleashing the Hulk upon a heavily populated (unnamed) African city. This (quite justifiably) leads to arguments that there should be some oversight or accountability in how the team operates.
The movie never considers this idea as in any way meritorious. Most obviously, the most vocal proponent of regulation is revealed to General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, the villain from The Incredible Hulk whose last major appearance in the franchise made him complicit in unleashing a creature known as “the Abomination” on Harlem. More superficially, Tony Stark is aligned as supporting registration, but even his support seems more pragmatic and half-hearted than sincere and principled; it often seems like Tony doesn’t seem to support regulation because it’s the right thing to do, but because it is the easiest thing to do. Most obviously, the film is handily titled Captain America, suggesting the perspective with which it expects audiences to align; that of Steve Rogers.
Steve opposes regulation. There are some vague suggestions that he has principled objections to the centralisation of power, building off the mistrust in institutions established in The Winter Soldier and cast backwards over Iron Man 2. Again, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, power is something that is best invested in individuals without pesky oversight or accountability to tell them how to use it. Steve’s objections are given extra weight given his status as the “moral centre” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. However, Civil War very quickly reveals the cynicism of this position. Although Steve’s position is given a light ideological framing, it quickly becomes clear that his central motivation is the fate of his best friend James “Bucky” Barnes.
Again, the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s politics of power come into play here. Bucky has been transformed into an unstoppable killing machine with a metal arm and a set of lethal skills. There is no debate, Bucky has killed people. Most notably, he murders both Howard and Mariah Stark. He later tears through a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. Now, Civil War makes a strong case that Bucky is not morally responsible for his actions. He was being mind-controlled. However, this just underscores the danger that Bucky poses. Bucky cannot control his powers, and cannot vouch for the safety of those around him. To a certain extent, his predicament recalls that of the Hulk. Bucky is a walking, sentient, faulty weapon. Trying to restrict the damage that he can cause is the only moral response.
Of course, in the world of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to try to curtail or regulate a character’s power is tantamount to assault. This is also apparent in how Civil War approaches the character of Wanda Maximoff. Wanda is a terrorist, who deployed a weapon of mass destruction in Africa. Several years later, she returned to the continent and killed a number of innocent people during a botched superhero mission. In Civil War, Wanda is placed under house arrest until it is decided what can be done with her. This seems a prudent move, given her powers and her history. Indeed, it is quite the luxurious house arrest, funded by Tony Stark. (Although she may have to live with the coffee grinds in the sink.) However, Civil War treats this as a monstrous violation of her civil liberties.
Tony Stark’s characterisation in Civil War also underscores the manner in which the Marvel Cinematic Universe prioritises the pursuit of power above all else. Tony is motivated (in part) to support registration because he hears the story of an untrained teenager who died during a big super-powered punch-up. This should make Tony more wary about using his power. However, he almost immediately recruits an untrained teenager to participated in a super-powered punch-up at the climax of the film because he needs an advantage that he can employ against Steve Rogers. It is never explained why Peter Parker is so vital, or why Tony would endanger a young man’s life like that.
It is interesting to contrast this with Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Released the same time as Civil War, Batman vs. Superman prompted an incredible wave of outrage among comic book movie fans. At least part of this was rooted in the movie’s portrayal of a more introspective and insecure Superman, and a version of Batman who had completely embraced his worst impulses. Batman vs. Superman had more than its share fair of flaws, but it seemed to draw a lot of criticism for presuming to question the morality and integrity of the way in which its leads applied their power. Batman vs. Superman allowed its characters more introspection than most Marvel Studios films, and it provoked the wrath of an angry fandom for this.
There was a sense in which audiences were much more comfortable with the unquestioned power fantasy of Civil War rather than the deconstructionist tendencies of Batman vs. Superman. There was a very strong moral objection to Batman vs. Superman, an argument that the eponymous characters weren’t “really” heroes. In this context, it is interesting to note how those critics who objected to the portrayal of Batman in Batman vs. Superman will respond to the approach that Endgame takes to Clint Barton. Is the “darkness” in Batman vs. Superman simply a matter of colour saturation? Or is the “darkness” a result of consciously drawing an audience’s attention to some of the previously unspoken assertions of superhero cinema?
All of this leads through to Infinity War and Endgame. Infinity War is an interesting film, because the nominal leads often have very little agency in it. The protagonist is arguably Thanos, the demicidal maniac. Thanos plots to wipe out half of all life in the universe, which is a monumentally silly villain plan. There is nothing wrong with monumentally silly villain plans; the superhero genre is absurdly heightened. However, Infinity War takes its villain’s journey very seriously. This is very revealing of itself. Infinity War does not devote much effort or consideration to the internal logic of Thanos’ plan. It makes no sense. However, Infinity War is very interested in the mechanics of Thanos’ plan.
Infinity War gives Thanos the most relatable and universal motivation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Thanos is motivated by the will to power, the desire to assemble the Infinity Stones no matter the cost. Infinity War seems to envy Thanos’ monomaniacal fixation on the prize. It is telling that Thanos’ single-minded purpose is something that he shares with Steve Rogers, the moral centre of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Steve is just as committed, repeatedly vowing to do “whatever it takes” to win. In Civil War, Steve even offers the very Thanos-friendly sentiment, “Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move, it is your duty to plant yourself like a tree, look them in they eye and say, ‘No, you move.'”
When Thanos confronts Strange on Titan, their conversation suggests the measure by which the film takes the two opposing sides. “The hardest choices require the strongest wills,” Thanos boasts. Strange responds, “I think you’ll find our will equal to yours.” In some respects, then, Infinity War is a story about the battle of the will to power. After all, the heroes do not lose because of any choice made during Civil War; Tony is willing to call Steve, but is interrupted when Thanos’ ships arrive in New York. Infinity War and Endgame seem to suggest that the heroes lose in Infinity War simply because their will to power isn’t strong enough, that they are not willing to do “whatever it takes.”
The film seems to envy Thanos his commitment, painting him as an almost heroic figure. Thanos’ murder of his daughter in Vormir is portrayed as tragic, but for him. The movie asks the audience to feel sympathy for the villain who murders his daughter by throwing her to her death, in pursuit of absolute power. (There is another article to be written about how the portrayal of Thanos here mirrors the way we talk about the real-life perpetrators of familicide.) At the end, Thanos is confronted with his deceased daughter. “Did you do it?” she asks. Thanos responds, “Yes.” She inquires, “What did it cost?” He answers, “Everything.” The movie expects the audience to take all of this at face value, including the assertion that Thanos loves the daughter that he abused for decades.
Then again, there is something very revealing about how the internal logic of Vormir works in both Infinity War and Endgame. Vormir is home to the so-called Soul Stone, and it has a special test for those who would wield it. The Soul Stone is guarded by the spectre of the Red Skull, in another of the weird attempts to de-Nazify Captain America’s rogues’ gallery across media. It says a lot about how the Marvel Cinematic Universe that the ultimate punishment for a villain like the Red Skull is “banishment” to Vormir “guiding others to a treasure [he] cannot possess.” Power is so central to the worldview of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that even punishment exists in its orbit; the worst punishment is to be near power, but never to hold it.
Even the stripping of the Red Skull’s ideology reflects the uncomfortable moral vacuum at the heart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The First Avenger took great pains to clarify that HYDRA was not a Nazi organisation. The comic book Red Skull had always been a Nazi, often defined by his close relationship to Adolf Hitler. However, The First Avenger stripped that away. The character murdered his Nazi handler, allowing The First Avenger to neatly sidestep the particulars of human experimentation in Germany during the Second World War. In some ways, this foreshadowed the approach that Civil War would take to its leads, insisting that its characters operated without the outside influence of ideology on their actions.
The depoliticisation of the Red Skull in Infinity War and Endgame is striking. Thanos and Gamora do not mention it in Infinity War, because neither has any interest in the history of Earth. However, both Barton and Romanoff get to meet the Red Skull on Vormir in Endgame. Both are trained military operatives who have worked with Captain America, so must know something of the history of supersoldiers. Romanoff helped to bring down HYDRA in The Winter Soldier. Neither character mentions that the Red Skull is a Nazi. The Red Skull himself gets no real characterisation in this regard, serving primarily as an exposition machine. Then again, it makes sense. If Captain America has no core ideology, then why would the Red Skull? All that matters is his relationship to power.
The Red Skull explains the logic of the Soul Stone to Thanos. He states, “To ensure that whoever possesses it understands its power, the stone demands a sacrifice.” That sacrifice is the murder of a loved one, thrown down the cliff face. Like Thanos’ plan to depopulate the universe, this seems like a very silly test. After all, surely the kind of people willing to throw loved ones over the edge of a cliff in pursuit of unlimited power are exactly the kinds of people who shouldn’t ever get unlimited power. However, there’s something very revealing about how much stock Infinity War and Endgame put in this test. They seem to genuinely believe that a willingness to sacrifice is a marker of worthiness to power.
After all, Vormir reappears in Endgame, with Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff visiting the planet to claim the Soul Stone. The scene is obviously set up to mirror Thanos’ visit, to offer an ironic twist on it. After all, Steve repeatedly asserted in Infinity War that heroes “don’t trade lives.” Weirdly enough, Endgame seems to take the exact opposite approach. Clint and Natasha don’t figure out a way to beat the test. Instead, they fight one another for the opportunity to sacrifice themselves for the Soul Stone. It’s a grim and depressing spectacle, albeit one undercut by the knowledge that a Hawkeye miniseries and a Black Widow film are both in development. However, Endgame adheres to the rules set out in Infinity War.
It seems a willingness to sacrifice lives for power was a weakness on the part of the Avengers. Endgame seems to suggest that the biggest mistake that the heroes made in Infinity War was trying to stop Thanos from assembling the stones and using their power, instead the heroes should have claimed that power for themselves. Notably, Endgame features the heroes using the power of the Infinity Gauntlet twice; once to reverse the snap from Infinity War and again to defeat Thanos’ assembled forces. Again, Endgame argued repeatedly and consciously that power and a willingness to use it are all that matters. Tellingly, the Thanos from Infinity War is murdered by the Avengers when he uses the Infinity Stones to destroy the Infinity Stones, effectively disarming himself.
One of the interesting aspects of Endgame is how eagerly and enthusiastically it embraces the idea of power as an end of itself. This is most obvious with the characterisation of the Hulk, which has come a long way from The Incredible Hulk. To be fair, the recasting of the role from Edward Norton to Mark Ruffalo did a lot of the heavy lifting; Norton seems like a man with a monster in his soul, while Ruffalo seems like a guy who might spend too long on your couch. More to the point, the characterisation of Ruffalo’s Banner has increasingly shied away from the idea of the Hulk as something monstrous and terrifying, towards something to be embraced and encouraged.
In The Avengers, Banner asserts control over his transformations, having come to the realisation that he is “always angry.” By the time of Age of Ultron, the Hulk is controllable enough that he can be deployed tactically for raids on enemy bases. Ragnarok bucks the trend slightly, by reverting to the idea of the conflict between Banner and the Hulk; Banner is afraid that if he transforms into the Hulk again, he may never revert back. Again, Ragnarok is more wary of the idea of unchecked and uncontrolled power. However, this anxiety is erased by Infinity War, where Banner’s big character arc involves the Hulk’s stubborn refusal to allow Banner access to his power. This is treated as a monstrous betrayal, with Banner labelling the Hulk a “big green asshole.”
With that in mind, it makes sense that Endgame finds Banner having asserted control of the Hulk. Banner spends most of the movie in the form of the big green monster, with his own intellect intact. Endgame naturally glosses over all manner of vaguely uncomfortable questions about what happened during Banner’s eighteen months in a gamma laboratory, such as what happened to the Hulk’s previous personality. More to the point, the film never asks why Banner would want to be like the Hulk all the time. After all, as various characters repeatedly assert, Earth is in no immediate peril and there are no immediate threats. In contrast, having the power to crack people’s skulls open like nuts or pop heads like pimples seems like a very dangerous power to have all the time.
The reason that Endgame never bothers to answer this question is because the film takes the answer to be self-evident. Of course Banner wants access to that power and of course there is nothing wrong with him having access to it. Banner’s reluctance and unease to embrace that power in earlier movies, such as The Incredible Hulk, represented a major character weakness on his part. This represents a progression for the character, a sign that his own will to power might have evolved to the point where it can be measured against that of Thanos. It is a rather unsettling implication, but it is not the only time that Endgame makes the suggestion that the heroes need to be more willing to use their unfettered powers.
Clint Barton has an interesting arc in Endgame. In the movie’s opening (and most effective) scene, the character loses his entire family. This leads him to something resembling a breakdown. As a result, Clint goes on a nihilistic killing spree, murdering criminals without trial. There is something vaguely unsettling in the way that Clint seems to specifically target non-white criminals; Mexican drug cartels and Japanese gangs. There’s something unsettling in the implication that his former allies (including the “moral centre” of Captain America) really don’t care about these unsanctioned executions. Rhodey is tracking Clint down, but not to stop him. Natasha wants a chance to bring him back into the fold, even letting him complete one last spree before talking to him.
There is a sense in which, like Banner’s embrace of the Hulk’s power, Barton’s willingness to use his skill without reference to due process of civil institution reflects growth for the character. Somehow, Endgame suggests that Clint is more qualified to be an Avenger after murdering dozens of people. He gets to fly into space, and is dispatched with Natasha to Vormir. Given how often The Avengers and Age of Ultron joked about Hawkeye’s somewhat limited usefulness in a superhero film, this feels like a very pointed upgrade for the character. Suddenly, Clint is rocketing through the cosmos and meeting dead supervillains, and holding the Soul Stone in his hand.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has largely lost sight of characters who exist outside the immediate eye-line of its superpowered leads. In The Avengers and Age of Ultron, there is some nod to the civilians caught in the middle of various warzones. In Infinity War, the only hint of civilians in New York is a single line of dialogue about calling first responders and a quick shot of Stark and Banner helping a woman out of a crashed car. Otherwise, our heroes seem to exist within a world of cardboard, throwing each other through computer-generated buildings or airports without any concern about collateral or economic damage, let alone civil disruption.
To be fair, the films are explicit about this. Civil War goes out of its way to explain that the airport is abandoned during the fight scene, while both Infinity War and Endgame make a point to have Thanos lay siege to the heroes away from any densely populated areas. Again, there is a sense of wanting to alleviate the audience of any guilt or discomfort in watching displays of power on such a large scale. These arenas are specifically chosen so that characters can fire rockets at one another or shoot laser beams or smash concrete. These are empty worlds that exist purely to showcase the level of power that these characters have to hand. It is no surprise that the battle at the end of Endgame reduces upstate New York to a postapocalyptic wasteland.
This also has the effect of making the Marvel Cinematic Universe seem especially small. It has a large cast by the standards of a blockbuster film, but the world only seems to expand so far in various directions – its boundaries marked by figures like “Happy” Hogan or Erik Selvig or Sharon Carter. Outside of these characters, it frequently seems as though the Marvel Cinematic Universe might as well not exist. There is no sense of place or community like there is in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films nor Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. (The worlds inhabited by these characters seem more like the Metropolis suggested by Man of Steel, a space populated by plot functions and exposition machines rather than people.)
This reinforces a sense of disconnect between the nominal “heroes” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the people that they are supposed to protect. In these films, it frequently seems that a person’s importance is dictated by their degree of separation from a superhero. Steve doesn’t plan to fight registration in Civil War, but then it impacts his best friend Bucky. Tony doesn’t have strong feelings about bringing Steve in, but then he discovers that Bucky killed his parents. It’s telling that the disappearance scenes at the climax of Infinity War purely affect named characters from established franchises, with little sense of how it affected regular people. Endgame has a single scene of Steve attending a therapy group.
It is interesting to wonder whether the heroes would be so motivated to reverse the snap in Endgame if their immediate friends and families weren’t affected by Thanos’ finger-snap. Even the standard “heroes at work” sequences that open both Age of Ultron and Civil War make sure to keep the scale of heroism personal. In Age of Ultron, the heroes are recovering the sceptre that caused so much trouble in The Avengers. In Civil War, Steve is still hunting Brock Rumlow in The Winter Soldier. There is little sense that Steve or Tony ever actively save the world from threats that are not directly related to them; Thor’s brother Loki in The Avengers, Tony’s creation in Age of Ultron, Tony’s nightmare in Infinity War and Endgame.
However, it is the ending of Endgame that offers the most insightful definition of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s attitude towards power, and how much that attitude is anchored in the unfettered and unqualified application of that power. Endgame offers a very peculiar definition of “heroism”, particularly with regards to the resolution of both Thor and Captain America’s arcs. Much of Thor’s arc in his three films has involved the idea of the character accepting the responsibilities of leading Asgard, and the growing up necessary to temper an adventurous spirit and unlimited power with a sense of civic duty and faithfulness. Thor might not want to be King of Asgard, but it is a solemn duty that falls upon him. It comes with his power, inherited from previous kings.
By the time of Endgame, the Asgardians have suffered a lot – often as a direct result of the machinations of both Thor and Loki. In Ragnarok, Thor destroyed Asgard and turned his people into refugees, promising to lead them to a new home. In Infinity War, Thanos brutally murdered a lot of those refugees in order to reclaim the Tesseract from Loki. Presumably, at the end of Infinity War, the remaining Asgardian population was also affected by the snap. That is a lot of damage to inflict upon a single people and culture, and a lot of it stems directly from Thor and his family. The Asgardians would be entirely justified to exile Thor, to depose him, to install democracy. Instead, they have never shown Thor anything but loyalty. It seems fair to say that Thor has a responsibility to them.
Endgame brushes aside any sense that Thor’s power should be used in service of the people who have lost so much because of him. Endgame ignores any implication that Thor owes the Asgardian people his best efforts or his best intentions. Instead, Endgame suggests that it is unreasonable for anybody to expect anything of Thor, and that his own gifts and powers would be best applied however he would want to apply them, rather than using them in pursuit of the greater good. Thor is repeatedly assured over the course of Endgame that he doesn’t have to grow, or evolve, or try, or learn. “Everyone fails at who they’re supposed to be,” his mother tells him, soothingly, suggesting that any effort at self-improvement is so pointless as to be counterproductive.
Thor’s arc in Endgame is perhaps the ultimate extension of the same self-centred character arcs that informed earlier films like Age of Ultron or Homecoming, films that scoffed at the idea that heroes might actually need to learn or grow or change. “I’m going to be who I am,” Thor tells Valkyrie at the end of Endgame, running off to abandon his people so he can fly around the galaxy having wacky adventures, “not who I’m supposed to be.” This is a truly horrifying definition of power. Endgame doesn’t just reject the idea that with great power comes great responsibility, it treats the assumption that any attempt to make anybody responsible is a monstrous act of cruelty.
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Development Hell: A Short Story
It was 2004, the Age of Jack Bauer and proper terrorists. A teenage boy filming an action movie by chasing friends who ran around with black spray-painted water guns in Manhattan wasn’t that unusual. To be clear, this was in Manhattan, Kansas-- aka “The Little Apple.” Sometimes the pimple-faced director, Nick, had run-ins with the police, such as when staging a convenience store robbery while the Chug 'n Go was still open on a Friday afternoon or when a production had a shootout along Kimball Avenue. Each time, the police would approach, ask a couple “what’s going on?” questions, see the miniDV camcorder, issue a casual warning, then leave.
Despite the pesky police state interference, Nick became known in the community as “the next Spielberg.” As it turned out, the neighbors’ predictions were not far off. Nick's short films, which often involved blasting Commies, played well with teenagers and adults alike. Screening a short film became a staple of basement parties, eventually working their ways up to the living room, then high school auditoriums. In the nascent days of YouTube, Nick became the preeminent digital storyteller. By 2008, Nick was globally famous, at least online. By 2010, Nick had write-ups in all of the major trades in Hollywood. VARIETY called him, “a Kubrickian, Tarantino-esque conductor of emotions.”
Sometime during the Obama administration, video essayists of all caliber and follower-count began to re-evaluate Nick's work. To a vlogger, it was said what used to be Progressive had now become Conservative. What used to be challenging had now become limiting. Some time towards the end of the Obama Administration, when Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton was perhaps at its zenith, Nick found his work increasingly mocked for its lackadaisical predictability, lack of ambition, and its general air of perfunctory completion. They were clockwork productions of mid-tier quality, i.e. the worst quality.
In early 2024, Nick talked on the phone with his manager and was about to get dropped as a client.
“Yeah, I know I wasn’t nominated for a People’s Choice Award, but can I at least be a seat filler?”
“That’s not what I do,” explained the manager. “Especially after what happened at the gun range birthday party.”
Nick could feel the acidity in his blood growing as he recalled all the ways he’d be wronged and robbed of his birthright to get everything he ever wanted. Nick ended the cell phone call while his manager gave a profanity-laced directive to a film school intern.
Unaware of the hurt feelings he had created, Nick began his daily commute to Dank Bar, the nearest dive that served hard alcohol at 6 am. Dank Bar didn’t do morning specials, or even Happy Hour, but the bartenders prided themselves on “pouring heavy,” so long as the drink ordered had no more than two ingredients.
Nick was nearly at this Mecca of the downtrodden and off-duty cops, when he got stopped by Capp, a lanky young man with a messenger bag.
“Are you Nick Adams?” the obvious fan breathlessly asked.
“Autographs are twenty bucks. Cash only.”
“I was a big fan of your early stuff. Before everything got super focused on the Moon not being real and explicitly anti-Italian. Anyhow, you’ve been served.”
It took a moment for Nick to realize he did not lose a dance battle, but rather he was now holding paper regarding yet another paternity suit. Yet another woman hitting Nick up for money just because he had abandoned her entirely.
“This kid doesn’t look anything like me,” Nick shouted at Capp, who had already gone into Dank Bar. Nick considered joining Capp for an early morning Johnny Walker, because maybe they would have a laugh together and the paternity suit would go away for some reason. Nick’s optimism evaporated quickly as he then realized he was supposed to be at the editing bay in Culver City.
Rachel was a film editor for 15 years before she met Nick, but now she was pissed, pregnant, and waiting for him to arrive and explain himself. Her pregnancy had been relatively smooth, except for the toll it took on her cocaine habit. She didn’t like how her dealers always muttered misgivings and prayed for her under their breath when selling her 8-balls. In any case, Rachel was confused by--and therefore angry at-- Nick’s re-cut of their most recent collaboration.
“I don’t get it,” she said as soon as Nick entered the editing suite.
“I don’t want the audience ‘to get’ this movie and I don’t want them to like it. That’s what makes it art.”
“It’ll make people leave their seats.”
“Fuck the audience. Anybody trying to make anything that won’t change the world is a coward.”
Rachel realized she was getting nowhere with Nick on the issue and she was definitely coming down from her high, so she decided to barrel into the next issue with all the grace of a drunken trucker at the strip club just outside of Junction City, Kansas.
“You need to take responsibility for this baby, too.”
Two (alleged!) mothers hassling Nick in one day? Granted, the odds of that happening any given day was about 40%, but still, it was enough for Nick to move on from the movie stalling in post-production.
“And you need to get rid of it before it grows into some kind of Democrat.” Nick wasn’t sure if the kid was his or not, but he was convinced there are too many babies in the world. He once signed a petition trying to get a measure on a midterm ballot that would make abortion legal up until the kid is 18 years old, but Nick failed to actually vote later that year and was unsure if the measure passed.
“You can’t be a deadbeat father in Los Angeles and expect to get away with it.”
“I’m not the father. And a guy can’t be sued for child support for kids that probably aren’t even his by two women at the same time. Or three or four or however many women are suing--- Look, a woman can’t get pregnant in the kitchen anyway. Because of the microwaves.”
“You’ll be hearing from my lawyer. He has his own billboards.”
Rachel stormed out and Nick sat in silence for a few moments, really hoping that Rachel would have a sudden change of heart and bring him coffee. Maybe she would have some ideas on how to make his latest movie better. And she’d let him take the credit for the ideas.
After a few minutes, Nick felt a cold shiver go up his spine. A truth was beginning to settle in. The only way out of his problem is to make a deal with the Devil. Fortunately, because Nick was an American, it was easy enough to find the Devil, this time at the parking lot of the DMV after-hours. The Devil was practicing his skateboarding skills, specifically kick-flips. Every skater already worshiped the Devil, so it figured to be a natural move for the Prince of Darkness to pick up at least some ability. Satan figured if he could at least constantly land a kickflip without looking like he was trying too hard, he’d go back to the skateparks. He had just landed the first one of the day when Nick approached, which helped explain why The Evil One himself was in good spirits, ready to make more favorable deals.
“Why’d’ja stop makin’ movies,” asked Lucifer, the fallen angel and Ruler of Hell.
“I didn’t. People just go bad at watching them,” Nick grumbled. “So, can you help me make the world’s greatest movie?”
“I supposed. Let’s talk about financing.”
“I got ten million dollars, minus student loans, so eight million.”
“Hm, yeah,” smirked Beelzebub, the Adversary. “I have a different way of financing projects. For something like this, I’m going to need… woof... at least your soul.”
Nick considered this carefully, which was an unusual act for him before making any decisions. He agreed.
“Great,” exclaimed Old Nick (which is another nickname for The Devil, though its origins are a debate among scholars with too much time on their hands), “I’ll see you at the premiere.”
And what a premiere it was! The movie was immediately hailed as Nick’s comeback film. The more people who saw it, the more its praise grew and grew. Finding adjectives to describe the masterpiece befuddled critics everywhere. When the banks of the English language dried up with praise, reviewers tried praising it in Japanese.
It had a 112% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
That following March, it won every Academy Award, including a few more retroactivity.
Werner Herzog, warmed by the beauty of Nick’s film, retired.
Months later, Nick sat alone in the editing bay, examining a Bill Pullman action figure, still in the packaging, from the 1996 classic “Independence Day.” Nick started to form the foundation of a scam to trick Mr. Pullman into signing the toy for maximum resale value when Rachel, the editosingle mother, entered.
Nick was initially confused why Rachel was in the very place she had worked in for years, then Nick became concerned she was here to collect money he definitely did not owe her.
“I’m not here for that, Nick. Your latest movie showed me who you really are and that’s okay. I understand you now. I think I understand all people and it’s given me the gift of serenity.
“So we're cool?” Nick offered a fist-bump to seal the deal. Rachel smiled simply at the gesture, like someone might respond when given a macaroni-decorated card from a neighbor’s ugly child.
“I’m getting out of the entertainment industry so that I can work for an animal shelter that specializes in finding homes for three-legged dogs and cats. I understand you’ll never be a part of our child’s life, but you have made the world a better place for her. Good-bye, Nick.” And with that, Rachel walked out of the room, out of Nick’s life, and into the slow-opening automatic door in the lobby.
Rachel was neither the only person to run into those stupid doors nor the only person to make significant life changes after seeing Nick’s masterpiece. The movie’s themes stuck with people like an STD for the mind-- but a good one. Everyone became more sympathetic, patient, and understanding toward one another and the greater world around them. The exploitation of workers, and other crimes, plummeted as a new era of peace and humanism blossomed.
But one day, while working at his laptop in Starbucks and blasting Imagine Dragons from his computer, the Devil received a notification from his most creative demon/accountant, Belial.
“What the hell,” roared Lord Satan. “My numbers in Hell are way down! That can’t be right. Where are the crooks, murderers, and slow drivers?”
Indeed, fewer and fewer souls were being harvested over the last several weeks, down significantly from his peak numbers 2017. Though the Devil had many faults, jumping to rash conclusions was not among them. He looked ahead and saw a vulnerable wallet. With a wave of his hand, the wallet fell to the ground. The now-wallet-less coffee patron continued on his way, none the wiser.
“And here comes Sandra,” observed the Devil. “She never goes to church and hasn’t cleaned the dishes herself since the last Olympics.”
But to the Devil’s chagrin and horror, Sandra picked up the wallet, noticed the Drivers License photo and went after the waller-dropper.
Goddammit, thought the Devil. God damn her good act. This was a disaster of “John Carter” magnitude. Sandra cheerfully returned the wallet to the thankful dropper, then returned to the Starbucks, where the Devil vanished from his seat in a poof of smoke to reappear fifteen away, in front of Sandra.
“Why did you do that disgusting good deed?!” The Devil practically spit at her.
“I saw Nick’s latest film,” Sandra offered. “I used to be one of those people that looked at my phone while listening to other people talk, but after seeing Nick’s movie, I’ve become a good person. The movie really changed me. Have you not seen it?”
Jesus Anti-Christ, thought the Devil. I’m losing souls from this Godforsaken deal!
Fortunately, it was easy enough for The Evil One to find Nick at a Paint ’n Sip class in Santa Monica the next Tuesday night.
Ever so subtly, the Devil saddled up next to Nick and, after the prerequisite small talk, he made the offer that they erase their previous deal from existence. The Devil made sure to laugh a bit at the beginning of the offer as to frame it like a joke, unless Nick was interested, like how someone might approach the idea of a three-way with a yoga instructor (ie. “Haha, it’d be totally crazy, right? Like, can you imagine? Completely ridiculous, but maybe, like, hey, shit happens, right? YOLO?”).
Nick didn’t bite on the hypothetical, yet very real, offer. The Devil tried a more aggressive approach, like a timeshare salesman’s supervisor (i.e. “I heard your concern, so there’s absolutely no pressure. But, just for my own notes and training purposes, what is the main source of your hesitation?”).
Again, Nick held firm. And again, he used too much paint on one stroke of his brush, causing some of it to run down in a streak.
“Maybe there’s a new deal to be made here,” suggested the Devil, seemingly going through one of the stages of grief.
“Listen carefully,” retorted Nick, “and hear me in all meanings when I say: Hell no.”
One thing the Devil wasn’t going to stomach was cleverness. He didn’t abide it from Doctor Faust and he would not abide it from Nick.
“And you listen carefully,” began Lucifer, summoning energy around them, darkening the room, “The decision before you isn’t whether you will do this or not, it’s a matter of when. When will you realize the truth? Where will you be when you finally yield?”
Smoke rose up around Nick, embracing him in an ethereal trap. In a second, he could see nothing, and in another second, Nick was dropped into an endless desert. The Devil towered over Nick.
“You will come to fear—ow!” Nick used two years of middle school-age Tae Kwon Do to land a front kick at the Devil’s tree trunk-sized leg. The Devil rubbed his shin, more annoyed than injured.
“Fuck you, Devil,” grumbled Nick.
The nightmarish demon, truly evil incarnate, shot flames from his eyes, fingertips, and butthole.
In a flash, Nick and the Devil were atomized, then reconstructed at the peak of a nameless, dissolute, snowy mountain. The Devil grew ever larger.
“Look around,” roared the Devil. “I control everything. I will drop mountains on you. I will rip out your intestines and string them like Christmas lights. I will staple your dick to your belly button and carry you around like a grocery bag. I will make you read your own worst screenplays for all eternity.”
Nick launched himself at Lucifer, with all the fury of a frat boy who just got called “a bitch.”
And so Nick and the colossus fought. The battle became a war and the war became an epic. It was a clash of indestructible, immortal gladiators. The man and the Beast careened through the vastness of space and time, forming constellations in the night sky, becoming the myth of societies past, present, and future.
In the first eon, the Devil’s own fury kept him ignorant.
In the second eon, the Devil recognized his own growing sense of confusion.
During the third eon, the Devil became concerned, then distressed. For the Devil wasn’t fighting Nick. He was fighting himself and losing to the power of a deal. Despite all his ability, supremacy, and fury, the Evil One found himself bound by his own power of an adamantine covenant. A deal was a deal and the Devil would have to deal.
In the parking lot of a Dave & Buster’s, the Devil fell to his knees.
“Tell me,” asked the Devil, refusing to look Nick in the eyes, “will you make another movie?”
“No, movie making is over. Any architect not trying to build the world’s tallest building is a coward. And I did it. I did the best ever and the best that will ever be. That’s why I’m so goddamn happy.”
“But what worlds do you mean to conquer next? Surely, you can’t retire so easily.”
“If I’m not making movies, I’ll just focus on fighting Communists online.”
The Devil nodded, understanding Nick entirely.
For some time, the Devil sat alone in his thoughts, his own personal hell— which was Heavenly to him in that way. He considered how he had been bested by a filmmaker and then found himself confronting a new feeling. It was a very pointed anger, or perhaps a kernel of sadness or— no. It was neither of those things; it was jealousy. And with the jealousy came ideas. Motivation. Machinations.
The Devil produced business cards out of thin air and bought a gallon of hair gel because he was now going to become a movie producer.
He first rented an office space, then registered a couple of website domains. He wasn’t sure what his studio would eventually be called, so he went with several names, such as: Devil May Film, See All Evil, A 20 Gore, Scream Works, HellMark Productions, etc.
Then it was a matter of finding a feature film script. Satan obviously had no qualms about taking advantage of the desperate and naive, so he posted the “no pay” “opportunity” to work with “an award-winning studio” on Craigslist. The Devil made few to include all of the normal enticing details, such as promising that if he found a writer who was a good fit for this project, there would be plenty of more work in the future. He received 70 responses in 24 hours.
Satan was no normal film producer, though; he was looking for elevated concepts that could appeal to international audiences and have a budget of under five million dollars. Like all evil geniuses, Satan also wanted the story to be a contained-thriller with smart social commentary.
He started by optioning a script about warriors from different time periods being put into a futuristic battle royale. The script barely contained any of the elements Satan said he wanted, but the screenwriter was willing to sign over all rights for an indefinite time period for $1, plus 1% of net profits— as calculated by the Devil’s most creative demon/accountant, Belial.
The Devil wasted no time in hiring another writer, under similar terms, to rewrite the script, understanding that the second writer was “good with character.” This insulted the original writer, but it was only the beginning.
A third writer was brought in to punch up the dialogue, which incensed the second writer.
Then the hiring flood gates really opened and Tinsel Town was hit by a deluge of opportunity.
Satan hired a bilingual assistant for $15/hour, who could also do social media management and help with SEO tracking or whatever. The Devil needed her to do personal errands, too, because he didn’t trust services such as UberEats. He shamed the assistant for not being available 24/7 and reminded her to be a “rock star” who “goes above and beyond” at work.
The Devil held an open casting call, but only brought in actors who had at least 100,000 followers across all social media platforms. That method proved successful in generating early buzz online, so he did the same for his crew. He let the director do her own pass at the script, infuriating the previous writers, then had his own nephew/demon, Randle, do a rewrite to piss off the director.
When the Devil grew tired of people asking about payment and the start of production, he began reaching out to distributors, promised foreign pre-sales, and started an IndieGoGo campaign to raise the last $80,000. The Devil felt kind of awkward asking friends and family for money, but he loved seeing his cast and crew ask their loved ones for donations. Fortunately, several dentists were interested in financing the movie and that put the campaign over the edge with three days to spare.
And then came the production delays. First, it was the unseasonable warmth in September — the “second summer” that hit Los Angeles every year, surprising everyone every year. In October, the Devil wanted to focus on putting together pitch decks for the American Film Market. Later, the Devil assured his team that no one would really want to work November through December, on account of the holidays. At the start of the new year, the Devil had to go away for the Sundance Film Festival, so production stalled a few more weeks. February wasn’t a good month either because it’s a time to reflect on the contributions of Black Americans in history; also, several parents were taking their kids on ski trips. By March, the Devil realized his taxes “were a total mess” from the previous year, so that needed to get sorted before any movie could start filming.
If it wasn’t clear, the truth was the Devil found that having a movie in endless pre-production was a good way to torture people.
“Welcome to Hell-ywood,” he would shout as another artist left the office in a huff. People really hated that pun, but the Devil’s place in the industry was undeniable. Indeed, finding what you love is more important than any end result and the Devil very much loved the process of his work— final film be damned.
Meanwhile, Nick found that people merely annoyed him in new ways and old ways-- particularly the women who kept insisting their child, born and unborn, was the result of unprotected sex. Only a few agreed with Nick’s point about the impossibility of fertilization, even a close enough proximity to microwaves.
So on April 12th, which was one of the few days of the year most of the film industry was working, Nick went to the Devil’s production office. It was in one of those corporate buildings on the westside, near Wilshire and San Vicente. Nick sat patiently across from the secretary for twelve minutes, with unread issues of VARIETY impeccably fanned out on the coffee table.
“Oh, Nick! Good to see you. Thanks for coming in.” The Devil led Nick into his corner office and sat down behind an impressive desk. “It’s been a while,” continued the Devil, in sincerely good spirits for an earnestly evil entity.
For the first time since meeting him, Nick was suspicious of the Devil. How could anyone, including the Devil, be happy spinning his wheels indefinitely on a project with no end in sight? Satan had no intention of making the worst movie ever or the most evil movie. Lucifer was content with just the act, the process, of being a pretend movie producer. But there were other things the Devil liked, for he was not a one-track malevolent being.
“A deal,” Nick proposed. “Get rid of all the paternity suits against me and I’ll let you reset the world to be like before we met at that parking lot.”
“You, Nick, would destroy and erase the greatest movie ever made-- or will ever be made-- just so that you don’t have to deal with the pressures of fatherhood?”
“Yep.”
“Holy God.”
“Yep.”
Now it was the Devil’s turn to be suspicious of Nick.
“There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says, fool me once, shame on, shame on you. Fool me, uh, you can't get fooled again.”
“What?”
“You never heard that, Nick?”
Nick shook his head and the Devil began to feel his opportunity slip away. He agreed to Nick’s new deal and in a flash sent the world back to how it was almost 4000 words ago.
Nick woke up in his home office. Freed from the burdens of having to care about anyone else, Nick considered his next story. He considered what it might be like to have control from beginning to end. To have no responsibilities to others.
He decided to write a short story.

Stupid Ronald Reagan movie called Law and Order (1953) was on this morning, and Sheriff Ron was bringing in The Durango Kid. I thought the Durango Kid looked like a young Cameron Mitchell. Let's check with IMDB. Nope. Not Cameron Mitchell.
Wally Cassell was a character actor born in 1912. In 1947, he married actress Marcy McGuire, who was born in 1926. They remained married until Wally passed away in 2015 at the age of 103. Marcy outlived Wally by 6 years. She passed away in 2021, at the age of 95.
Wally lived from Woodrow Wilson to Barack Obama, and Marcy lived from Calvin Coolidge to Joe Biden. Wally & Marcy were married while Harry Truman was president, and remained married through most of Obama's two terms.
Maybe it's me, but I find that astonishing. This was a much more enjoyable use of my coffee time than watching Law and Order.

For over six decades, the Communist Party has maintained its hold on Cuba, suppressing nearly all forms of individual rights and freedoms. Under Castro's rule, Cuba has plummeted from a middle-income nation to the most destitute and oppressive country in the Western Hemisphere. Presently, Cubans endure the lowest wages, the poorest economic freedom, and the most restricted press in the region.
The economy of Cuba is a mixed command economy dominated by state-run enterprises. Government decisions — not market forces of supply and demand — largely determines the production, availability and value of goods. The government employs the majority of the population: over 75 per cent of the workforce. State salaries are abysmally low, roughly the equivalent of $10 USD per month. Although a 2019 constitution recognizes private property in theory, the state owns most means of production.
Heritage.org’s Economic Freedom Index for 2022 ranked Cuba 175th out of 177 countries
https://www.heritage.org/index/country/cuba
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba
A constant in the 63 years of the revolution has been heavy dependence on a foreign nation, first with the USSR ($65 billion in 1960–1990) and later with Venezuela ($122 billion in 2007–2017 alone, save for FDI). Despite such huge external economic support, Cuba has been unable to restructure its economy to finance imports with its own exports and without foreign aid and subsidies.
During the Cold War, the Cuban economy was heavily dependent on subsidies from the Soviet Union, valued at $65 billion in total from 1960 to 1990 (over three times as the entirety of U.S. economic aid to Latin America through the Alliance for Progress), an average of $2.17 billion a year. This accounted for between 10% and 40% of Cuban GDP, depending on the year. During its peak in 2012, trade, subsidies and investment from Venezuela reached a total of $14,000 billion, close to 12 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Despite the extraordinary foreign subsidies it has received, the Cuban economy has had a deplorable performance. In the period of 2012-2019 years, growth was a third of the officially set figure needed for adequate and sustainable growth, while investment was a third of what is was required. The production of the industrial, mining and sugar sectors is well below the level of 1989, and of the thirteen key products of agriculture, livestock and fishing, eleven have reduced their production. Today, Cuba is suffering its worst economic crisis since the 1990s
Throughout the Revolution, Cuba has suffered an annual fiscal deficit in merchandise trade, but since the beginning of the century it has benefited from a surplus in the balance of services: tourism and exports of health personnel, sold mainly to Venezuela. Said surplus was greater than the deficit in merchandise trade. However, as the Venezuelan economy weakened, the Cuban surplus fell sharply. In addition, Venezuela’s oil supply was cut in half and merchandise trade was down by a third.
Cuba’s woes are a result of the inefficient economic model of centralized planning, state enterprises and agricultural collectivization its leaders have pursued despite the failure of these models worldwide. In his decade in power, President Raúl Castro tried to face his brother Fidel’s legacy of economic disaster head on by enacting a series of market-oriented economic structural reforms. He also opened the door to foreign investment, but so far, the amount materialized has been one-fifth of the goal set by the leadership for sustainable development.
Unfortunately, the pace of reforms has been slow and subject to many restrictions, disincentives and taxes that have impeded the advance of the private economy and desperately needed growth. The new constitution, endorsed by the public on February 2019 through a referendum, doesn’t introduce any significant change to its prevailing model of centralized planning and state dominance over the means of production and land.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/opinion/cuba-economy.html
Cubans work directly for the state. While the regime has grudgingly expanded some limited areas of private enterprise, as of October 2018, there were are only about 588,000 self-employed Cubans in a country of 11.3 million people. Almost every profitable sector of the economy is reserved for the state: manufacturing, mining, construction, tourism, energy, tobacco and sugar production, financial and insurance activities, real estate, engineering, education, journalism, entertainment and sports, among others. Even the “repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles” is officially designated an exclusive preserve of the regime.
What this means is that about 9 in 10 Cuban workers are dependent on the Cuban government for employment. They cannot change jobs without permission. Their salaries are set by the regime. They cannot negotiate to improve their wages or working conditions — because the only trade union is controlled by the state, which is also their employer. This is a form of social control: Cubans know their livelihoods can be taken away in an instant for the slightest expression of “counterrevolutionary” sentiment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/20/black-lives-matter-is-supporting-exploitation-cuban-workers/
After the triumph of Fidel Castro one of the first things he did was to nationalized and intervened all private poperty. Fabrics that were privately owned by cubans or foreigners like sugar canes, agricultural fields etc, passed to be state owned. This made the state the sole owner, administrator, employer, and investor of almost the entire Cuban economy.
Before 1959, Cuba had 156 active sugar mills that ground cane and was one of the countries that exported the most sugar in the world. Today only 26 remain active.
https://oncubanews.com/en/cuba/economy/cuban-economy/cuba-crisis-of-an-industry-that-doesnt-take-off/?amp
Until 1959, the Cuban economy had been directed not by a government or central power, but by the aggregation of millions of decision-making agents operating freely as consumers, workers, professionals, merchants, businessmen, bankers, peasants, owners, and investors. The levels of production, the variety, and the quality of the goods and services available in any quantity that Cubans preferred and freely bought with their incomes were managed by many thousands of industrial, agricultural, and commercial companies of all sizes, spread throughout the country.
The expropriations of 1960, which continued later with smaller companies, not only canceled the rights to private property of the means of production, but also limited and eliminated the freedom to carry out transactions of goods and services of all kinds.
Central planning and decisions of Fidel Castro:
Mass expropriations were accompanied in Cuba by the organization of the central planning system, typical of communist societies, to direct what was called the socialist economy (as a step prior to the utopian and never achieved communist economy). This is how the Central Planning Board (JUCEPLAN) was founded, together with similar offices in all State agencies.
The expropriated companies throughout the country then lost the autonomy and flexibility necessary to adapt to the changing conditions of the economy, remaining subject to a centralized and very rigid administration, unable to meet the demand of buyers in all its detail and specificity. The restrictions imposed on private initiatives to organize social, cultural or political activities have prevented the development of the country’s social capital, that is, the set of interpersonal relationships that enrich the life of any society, already damaged since 1959 as a result of intrusive policies of a government that wants to control all aspects of life in the country.
Only in Cuba and North Korea is the state in charge of the agriculture.
In 2018, Cuba imported $1.9 billion in agricultural products, 60% of which could be produced in the country. As part of his agrarian reform, Raul Castro began leasing fallow state-owned land to farmers through 10-year contracts — now increased to 20 years — that may be canceled or renewed depending on the farms performance. The lack of agricultural productiveness in Cuba is definitely multifaceted. A massive portion of the blame lies on the inefficient, often corrupt, and incompetent central planning undertaken by the state. The state maintains a monopoly on agricultural resources/inputs (tractors, irrigation, seeds, fertilizer, plows, etc.) while also maintaining a virtual monopoly on the distribution of agricultural products by requiring farmers to sell to the state at set prices and prohibiting the export of agricultural products. The effect is that agriculture is incredibly unproductive and often profitable.
The state has a monopoly on the sale of dairy, beef and other cattle-based products. Cattle owners are not allowed to sell cheese, milk, butter or meat from their animals. They are also not allowed to slaughter animals without prior government authorization. Agricultural productivity would be vastly improved if individual farmer were able to fully own their agricultural business and land and were able to freely purchase and import the necessary supplies to farm. And then were able to freely sell their products on the open market directly to the Cuban people (or to export to foreign markets) at whatever price they deem reasonable.
The sad thing is that this is happening on a tropical island with fertile lands that, before being intervened and nationalized by Castro, had made Cuba the largest exporter of agricultural products in Latin America in proportion to its population, according to a 1957 report by FAO. The country was self-sufficient in beef, milk, tropical fruits, coffee, tobacco, and exported its surplus, and in fish and shellfish, pork, chicken, root vegetables, vegetables, and eggs. It ranked first in Latin America in fish consumption and third in calorie consumption, with 2,682 daily. It also produced 75 % of the food the Cubans consumed. There were almost seven million head of cattle, one cow per inhabitant, and almost 1,000 million liters of milk were produced per year.
A country that used to be a food exporter now imports 81% of what it consumes. Instead of one cow per inhabitant, there are three inhabitants per cow (3.6 million very skinny heads), less than half the milk is produced than 62 years ago, and from 60,000 tons of coffee in 1958, today 8,000 tons are produced.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.fao.org/3/ap645e/ap645e.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiCtLzhrrT_AhXviJUCHd1hCfEQFnoECBAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2XG692gYXAVlBJ9GzJ8LVk
https://www.google.com/amp/s/havanatimes.org/features/cuba-the-decline-of-a-country-running-out-of-food/amp/
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/07/01/cuba-is-facing-its-worst-shortage-of-food-since-the-1990s
Military control of the economy:
During the last 26 years, Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (Gaesa), a mega-conglomerate of companies belonging to the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), had a single leader: its executive president, Major General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja. After his death, on July 1, 2022, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) published: “He leaves us as a legacy a business system model that serves as an example for the country, for having demonstrated its efficiency.” Military Counterintelligence officer and former son-in-law of Raúl Castro. He was one of the fourteen members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PCC, a deputy to the National Assembly and advisor to President Miguel Díaz-Canel. In 2020 he was included in the list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury.
At the time of his sudden death, Rodríguez López-Calleja, decided and controlled operations in tourism, maritime transportation, manufacturing of explosives, travel agencies, real estate investments, management of supermarkets and retail stores, gas stations, services finance and telecommunications. In Cuba, the political and economic decisions with the greatest impact are made by a small group of state leaders, and are kept secret even from the press, which is controlled by the Communist Party.
Gaesa’s presence and operations appear not to be limited to commercial activities in the interior of the island. There are indications that they extend to at least eleven countries. At least 42 companies that have been created in recent decades are represented/directed by Cuban officials (or family members of these) with positions or ties to the military business conglomerate.
Although the exact amount of money that Gaesa controls and what its impact has been on the economic development of the island is not known, the percentage of its participation in the national economy could reach 40% of GDP, according to the Cuban-American businessman and analyst Emilio Morales, author of several investigations that warn about the excessive economic power of the business group. Morales has also estimated that Gaesa, at least five years ago, had a 90% share in the retail market that operated in dollars.
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-40298131
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba-military-idUSKBN1962VK
Since its creation in 1995, the heads of Gaesa have sought to consolidate under a single umbrella the management of key sectors for Cuba. A good example is tourism, where a large part of the Caribbean country’s income came from until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent decades, the military conglomerate has monopolized the areas with the highest profitability and tourist potential, and the predominance of the luxury segment has been guaranteed with the absorption of hotels such as those of the extinct Habaguanex S.A., in Old Havana, and the control of companies that are in charge of the construction of tourist facilities.
In addition, Gaesa controls a part of the flow of dollars for remittances that enter the island and that represented 6.8% of Cuba’s GDP between 2005 and 2020. Beyond the commercial agreements with large international companies, this item is probably the one that generates the greatest impact of the conglomerate on the lives of ordinary Cubans, many of whom survive thanks to the remittances they receive from relatives abroad.
The business is round because the money does not arrive in Cuba in foreign currencies, but in an electronic medium that can only be spent in retail stores, which also make up the network of companies that Gaesa centralizes and manages. In other words, it benefits from its intermediary participation in the receipt of remittances through Financiera Cimex (Fincimex) and then from spending on the purchase of goods that many Cubans make with that income in stores in MLC (freely convertible currency).
But Gaesa’s domain does not end there: it extends to activities related to the import and export of products through companies such as Tecnotex, Tecnoimport, Cubagro and Ecasol. Through Almacenes Universales S.A. (AUSA), the conglomerate is in charge of the administration of the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM), the first zone in Cuba subject to special regulation to encourage foreign investment.
Gaesa’s concentration of economic power began when Fidel Castro granted the Armed Forces military power over trade or investment related to the entry of foreign currency, during the crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union called “Special Period”. At that time, Raúl Castro was the minister of the FAR.
In mid-2016, El Nuevo Herald identified at least 25 companies linked to the Cuban government and registered in tax shelters in countries such as the Bahamas, Panama, and the British Virgin Islands. The birth of some of these companies dates back to the early nineties. Various names linked to the high sphere of the Communist Party and the Castro family appeared. Among them, Guillermo Faustino Rodríguez López-Calleja, brother of the recently deceased president of Gaesa, who was on the register of seven companies.
https://www.14ymedio.com/internacional/Cuba-Papeles-Panama-Nuevo-Herald_0_2012798712.html
These companies are characterized by being registered in countries with flexible tax and commercial regulations; in some cases the denominations are similar and the public information about their owners and financial management is almost nil. As a general rule, they do not have websites or social networks. The framework seems to be supported by two reasons: control of the economy within Cuba and evasion of US sanctions.
Private sector:
Another constant in 63 years of communism has been the government continuous asphyxiation of any attempts at making a living by one’s own account. For Cubans on the island it is impossible to open businesses spontaneously. The system does not allow or promote it. These companies must be approved by various government agencies, and it is the State that decides who is granted the favor, in what sector and under what conditions. Those who are finally authorized are usually people related to the Government. Even so, these companies cannot import or export products and services directly; for this they must use state companies that charge 20% for management. Furthermore, these “private” entities may have accounts in dollars, but only use them for payments for import and export processes.
During the brutal “Special Period” of the 1990s, when the end of Soviet subsidies had produced an economic cataclysm in Cuba, the government decriminalised microenterprise and self-employment activities in order to attract hard currency via tourism and exports. But when the worst of the period had ended by 1996, Fidel Castro once again restricted private-sector activity and the government continued propagandising against it to reinforce the stigma of profit-making. The self-employed or small merchants and independent Cuban artisans, called merolicos, have been accepted in stages in this half century of economic confusion and in a “legal” way, when the Castro regime has reached its neck in water. Then, when they think they are unnecessary, they disappear. Cuban leaders had always been uneasy with private economic activity, previously describing it as an evil that was necessary to provide jobs and services that the state could not during hard times.
La ofensiva revolucionaria:
In 1968 Fidel nationalized all remaining private small businesses, which at the time totaled to be about 58,000 small enterprises. The Cuban government also issued blanket bans on self-employment, farmer’s markets, and private gardens on state farms. In total the nationalized enterprises included 17,000 food retailers, 25,000 industrial product merchants, 11,300 bars and restaurants, 9,600 small workshops, and 14,000 barbers, laundries, and other small retail shops. With the elimination of many business, the state failed to fill the void of their lost services and their economic sectors quickly became under-served.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Offensive#:~:text=The%20Revolutionary%20Offensive%20was%20a,be%20about%2058%2C000%20small%20enterprises
Starting in 1989, the government’s strategies began to boost the economy, which had lost 85% of foreign trade and which reached its highest peak in 1993. This context allowed the Cuban state to generate a group of measures that favored the quantitative increase of self-employment in the country. In 1995, there were 325,800 non-state workers, almost doubling the number of self-employed workers in 1989, which amounted to 212,900. The increase in this sector was slow but constant in subsequent years, reaching 400,000 workers in 1998. On average, the annual growth rate of the private sector of the economy was favorable, reaching a value of 10.3%.
Beginning of the 21st century
In the year 2000, the centralized model was resumed and some measures were carried out that harmed the self-employed. Once again they withheld the issuance of licenses to be able to exercise as non-state entities Therefore, the presence of state property returned in all sectors and branches, to the detriment of the rest of the forms of management and property.
A series of reforms starting in 2010 allowed Cubans to work as “self-employed people” in the private sector, but they could only have jobs in 127 narrow categories defined by the government. In 2018 Self-employment provided work to 13 percent of the Cuban labor force, and generated 12 percent of GDP. It offered lodging in private homes and meals in small restaurants (paladares) to tourists. However, the government imposed severe restrictions, suspended licenses for certain activities, and increases taxes exponentially based on the number of employees hired. The ideological reason behind these limitations was to avoid the concentration of property and wealth. On top of all that were the large number of permits, bureaucratic obstacles and inspections small business faced.
In 2021, amid Cuba’s worst crisis and pressured by popular unrest the Cuban government allowed the establishment of MSMEs after being prohibited for 53 year,. Its approval responded more to the urgency of a critical economic and social situation than to the conceptualization of the model itself, even when it opened up space for SMEs as a “complement” to the state sector. These companies do not have access to areas considered strategic by the Cuban State such as health, telecommunications, energy, defense and the media. The MSMEs can be state, private or mixed, and are recognized as an economic unit with legal personality with their own characteristics.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-58132000.amp
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/world/americas/cuba-expands-private-enterprise.html
Criticisms focussed on the obstacles included in Decree-Law 46: only permanent residents in Cuba will be authorized to create a company and they will not be able to have more than one SME. The exclusion of emigrants or foreigners also raises many doubts, in addition to what the economist Pedro Montreal describes as “asymmetric treatment of private and state actors”, since the latter will enjoy privileged treatment.
Private companies in Cuba will have to be approved by the government and by the Ministry of Economy. In addition to that, there is a set of measures and controls and interference by the State in the activity of these companies that makes it very difficult for them to make efficient decisions.
As a consequence of this, the framework created is uncertain, unsustainable and is incapable of offering sufficient guarantees for the exercise of a private, independent and autonomous economic activity from state power.
Clearly, this open regulation will be taken advantage of by thousands of Cubans not connected to the regime to start their own business projects. But rising above certain levels of wealth will be almost impossible without connections and the government’s blessing.
Beyond a certain business threshold, it is a tall order to operate in Cuba without getting on the good side of the powers that be, at least, at the local level (municipal or provincial PCC secretaries, military heads, managers of state enterprises) for two reasons: first, the widespread corruption in the state bureaucracy, where it is better to walk hand in hand with someone powerful; and second, because a high concentration of capital in a political outsider is a threat for the Government. If there were an economic decentralization there would be some political decentralization, and both are anathema for orthodox Cubans. At the time of Obama’s visit to the island, the regime felt threatened due to the talks he had with the self-employed (the private sector of the economy). This was presented by Fidel—just the day Obama returned—as a new strategy to subvert imperialism, and triggered widespread criticism of the US president, among other things for not lifting the embargo.
Cuban economists have also warned that this this mechanism will not only serve to enrich the embryonic caste of loyal capitalists, but will also finance and subsidize the related MSMEs so that, through the reinvestment of the profits generated by their favored access to state contracts and other subtle advantages of being “sponsored” —such as having direct access to foreign trade, or receiving foreign currency at preferential prices— they will monopolize the national market and, little by little, displace legitimate private entrepreneurs.
The logical conclusion is that the permits —not rights— granted to the private sector are a tactic to revive that impoverishing but secure centralized system, to which the government will return as soon as the economic situation improves, destroying in the meantime those who have enriched themselves with the opening, as it did with the pot plan in the 1990s and the anti-self-employment offensive that began in 2016, which ended with the infamous Ordering Task. If something has never been scarce in the Cuba of the Communist Party are pretexts to crush those who prosper. As Marrero Cruz (Cuba’s prime minister) has warned, “the socialist state enterprise is the fundamental actor, and the new actors are its complement.”
Until January, close to 6,600 new companies have been approved, of which almost 6,500 are private SMEs, the state ones stand at around 90; while cooperatives reach just over 60. Around 50% are small businesses and the rest is distributed almost equally between micro and medium-sized enterprises.
They are cooped up and tightly controlled by the government. They do not have autonomy, nor freedom of action, nor the capacity to generate and accumulate wealth. It is a well-assembled model, not so much to deceive the Cubans, but rather the Administration of President Joe Biden. Far from enabling the growth, drive and success of Cuban entrepreneurs, what the government seeks with MSMEs is to capture the investment of US capital in Cuba, under the protection of the Helms-Burton Act itself, which allows US investments in the Cuban private sector.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-24790569.amp
https://amp.dw.com/en/cuba-new-restrictions-holding-back-the-private-sectoa-44709164
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-economy-idUSKBN1EF318
https://diariodecuba.com/cuba/1630603410_33825.html
https://www.iri.org/news/a-new-economic-policy-in-cuba-is-hurting-private-workers/
https://havanatimes.org/features/new-business-failures-in-cuba-predicted-to-exceed-90-percent/amp/
Cuba’s unique laws for foreing investment:
Reported obstacles to FDi (Foreing Direct Investment) in Cuba are bureaucratic delays and red tape, market fears, prejudice against foreign investment, a ban on foreign entrepreneurs directly hiring and paying their employees, monetary and exchange rate duality, lack of knowledge, training and sufficient motivation of Cuban companies. The Cuban government has taken some steps to speed up the FDI approval process, such as the easing of some rules to assess foreign investors, the elimination of cumbersome feasibility studies and the announcement of the creation of a single channel (“ventanilla única”) for foreign investment.
In 2022 Cuba approved 30 businesses with foreign capital for an approximate amount of 402 million dollars, new businesses have been approved in the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) and 13 Hotel Management and Marketing contracts. In addition, there are advanced negotiations for more than 50 new projects worth $9 billion. In general figures, since the approval of Law 118 in 2014, 272 foreign-invested businesses outside the ZEDM and 51 within it have materialized in the Caribbean nation. Of the 321 currently active, there are 104 joint ventures, 161 international partnership contracts, and 56 wholly foreign capital companies. All these investments have achieved a total amount of committed capital investment of more than 10 billion dollars, with companies from around 40 countries.
https://www.prensa-latina.cu/2022/11/15/cuba-aprobo-30-negocios-de-inversion-extranjera-en-lo-que-va-de-2022
The requirement of foreign firms to enter joint ventures with the government is perhaps the largest deterrent to investment. Firms are only allowed to own up to 49% of the stake in their company and have minimal input into the operations and management. The ability to hire workers is the sole responsibility of the Cuban government, and prospective employees are forced to undergo a strenuous application process. The management of the state only compounds the inefficiency by overstaffing many of the tourism-related businesses. Another problem internal to Cuba is the low wages paid to workers in every sector.
International firms engaging in foreign direct investment in Cuba do not pay workers for their companies directly but instead pay workers’ salaries directly to the government. These wages are often paid in US dollars before being converted at a one to one exchange rate to Cuban pesos. After being converted to Cuban pesos, the wages are distributed to the workers. This amounts to a large de facto tax on Cuban worker’s wages. For example, a worker in the tourism industry earning $500 USD would be paid 500 Cuban pesos. The exchange rate from pesos to US dollars is roughly 25 to 1, so the worker is getting paid around $20 USD while the government keeps $480 USD, in clear violation of international labor agreements. Under this arrangement the state pockets over 90 percent of the worker’s purported salaries.
Then come the hard realities of trying to do business in an economy that is tightly contolled by a one party state, an infrastructure that is dilapidated and outdated, and a populace whose purchasing power is limited by a monthly median salary of $20. Add to that a legal system that lacks transparency and is heavily tilted in favour of the state. Very heavy administrative procederes.
Cuba holds a yearly fair to attract foreign investment. Havana International Fair (FIHAV), the annual business forum organized every year by the Cuban authorities to raise capital and which brings together some 4,000 businessmen from 70 countries.
https://foreignbrief.com/daily-news/international-fair-of-havana-to-conclude/
https://www.caribbean-council.org/havana-international-fair-returns-with-a-large-spanish-presence/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-economy-tradefair-idINKBN28I37O
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3581558-the-folly-of-investing-in-cuba/amp/
https://globaledge.msu.edu/countries/cuba/risk
https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/investing-in-cuba-can-be-a-risky-business/
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-cuba-investment-idUKBRE88618E20120907
While we can also aknowelege the negative impacts of the U.S. embargo, we can also say that Cuba has received triple the economic help that Western Europe did with The Marshall Plan after World War 2, more than $300 billion, given, free of charge, by the USSR, Venezuela and Cuban emigrants. Plus the credit loans that Cuba has never paid back, and which amount to a debt of more than $60 billion. Investments made in the Island by foreing countries for more than $40 billion since the 1990s. And overall trade and foreing relations with more 160 countries. Trade, that also includes the United States as one of Cuba's biggest trading partners, the US has sold more than $8 billion worth of agricultural goods to Cuba since 2000.
https://diariodecuba.com/economia/1696330703_50132.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cibercuba.com/noticias/2023-10-02-u1-e208512-s27061-regimen-cubano-habria-recibido-300-mil-millones-dolares
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_relations
Spain alone has 300 companies working in Cuba. Canada has more than 100, including the most successful foreing company in the Island, Sherritt International. Canadian-Cuban joint ventures include hotels, travel companies, and mining companies. Canada is also Cuba’s largest source of tourism. More than 1 million Canadians visit the island each year.
The European Union is Cuba’s main export and trade partner. It is also the largest foreign investor in the country (mainly in the tourism, construction, light industry and agro-industry sectors) and accounts for one third of the tourists arriving on the island. Cuba’s main export goods are agricultural products, beverages, tobacco and mineral fuels, for which there is no preferential trade regime.
The main export goods from the EU to Cuba are food, chemicals products, plastics, basic metals and their manufactures, machinery, household appliances and transport equipment.
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/cuba/european-union-and-cuba_en?s=136 https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-remains-cubas-top-trade-partner-committed-mutual-respect-top-diplomat-says-2023-05-25/
https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/exports/cuba
China:
China exports to Cuba since 2004:
$20 billion.
https://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-china-trade-idUSL1N2K919P
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports/cuba
https://america.cgtn.com/2018/06/19/china-and-cuba-expand-trade-cooperation-and-investment
According to data from China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), Chinese investment flows into Cuba reached US$11.4 million in 2020, while total Chinese direct investment stock reached US$140 million.
That same year, Chinese-invested enterprises signed 37 new underwriting projects in Cuba with a total new signed contract value of US$314 million and a completed turnover of US$142 million. At the end of 2020, there were a total of 383 Chinese laborers working in Cuba. Beijing Enterprises Holdings is building a $460 million golf resort on the island.
In 2021, the trade volume between China and Cuba reached US$1.02 billion. The top exports of China to Cuba included electrical machinery and equipment, sound recorders, television image and reproducers, and other components (US$133.3 million), machinery, mechanical appliances, and nuclear reactors (US$103.6 million), vehicles and accessories (US$48.7 million), pharmaceutical products (US$28.8 million), and iron and steel (US$24.6 million).
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-11-25/The-future-of-China-Cuba-economic-relations-1ffzUR222VW/index.html
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/chn/partnecub
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-cuba-bilateral-trade-and-investment-prospects/

For over six decades, the Communist Party has maintained its hold on Cuba, suppressing nearly all forms of individual rights and freedoms. Under Castro's rule, Cuba has plummeted from a middle-income nation to the most destitute and oppressive country in the Western Hemisphere. Presently, Cubans endure the lowest wages, the poorest economic freedom, and the most restricted press in the region.
Explaining Cuba's economic failure:
The economy of Cuba is a mixed command economy dominated by state-run enterprises. Government decisions — not market forces of supply and demand — largely determines the production, availability and value of goods. The government employs the majority of the population: over 75 per cent of the workforce. State salaries are abysmally low, roughly the equivalent of $10 USD per month. Although a 2019 constitution recognizes private property in theory, the state owns most means of production.
Heritage.org’s Economic Freedom Index for 2022 ranked Cuba 175th out of 177 countries
https://www.heritage.org/index/country/cuba
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Cuba
A constant in the 63 years of the revolution has been heavy dependence on a foreign nation, first with the USSR ($65 billion in 1960–1990) and later with Venezuela ($122 billion in 2007–2017 alone, save for FDI). Despite such huge external economic support, Cuba has been unable to restructure its economy to finance imports with its own exports and without foreign aid and subsidies.
During the Cold War, the Cuban economy was heavily dependent on subsidies from the Soviet Union, valued at $65 billion in total from 1960 to 1990 (over three times as the entirety of U.S. economic aid to Latin America through the Alliance for Progress), an average of $2.17 billion a year. This accounted for between 10% and 40% of Cuban GDP, depending on the year. During its peak in 2012, trade, subsidies and investment from Venezuela reached a total of $14,000 billion, close to 12 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Despite the extraordinary foreign subsidies it has received, the Cuban economy has had a deplorable performance. In the period of 2012-2019 years, growth was a third of the officially set figure needed for adequate and sustainable growth, while investment was a third of what is was required. The production of the industrial, mining and sugar sectors is well below the level of 1989, and of the thirteen key products of agriculture, livestock and fishing, eleven have reduced their production. Today, Cuba is suffering its worst economic crisis since the 1990s
Throughout the Revolution, Cuba has suffered an annual fiscal deficit in merchandise trade, but since the beginning of the century it has benefited from a surplus in the balance of services: tourism and exports of health personnel, sold mainly to Venezuela. Said surplus was greater than the deficit in merchandise trade. However, as the Venezuelan economy weakened, the Cuban surplus fell sharply. In addition, Venezuela’s oil supply was cut in half and merchandise trade was down by a third.
Cuba’s woes are a result of the inefficient economic model of centralized planning, state enterprises and agricultural collectivization its leaders have pursued despite the failure of these models worldwide. In his decade in power, President Raúl Castro tried to face his brother Fidel’s legacy of economic disaster head on by enacting a series of market-oriented economic structural reforms. He also opened the door to foreign investment, but so far, the amount materialized has been one-fifth of the goal set by the leadership for sustainable development.
Unfortunately, the pace of reforms has been slow and subject to many restrictions, disincentives and taxes that have impeded the advance of the private economy and desperately needed growth. The new constitution, endorsed by the public on February 2019 through a referendum, doesn’t introduce any significant change to its prevailing model of centralized planning and state dominance over the means of production and land.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/28/opinion/cuba-economy.html
Cubans work directly for the state. While the regime has grudgingly expanded some limited areas of private enterprise, as of October 2018, there were are only about 588,000 self-employed Cubans in a country of 11.3 million people. Almost every profitable sector of the economy is reserved for the state: manufacturing, mining, construction, tourism, energy, tobacco and sugar production, financial and insurance activities, real estate, engineering, education, journalism, entertainment and sports, among others. Even the “repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles” is officially designated an exclusive preserve of the regime.
What this means is that about 9 in 10 Cuban workers are dependent on the Cuban government for employment. They cannot change jobs without permission. Their salaries are set by the regime. They cannot negotiate to improve their wages or working conditions — because the only trade union is controlled by the state, which is also their employer. This is a form of social control: Cubans know their livelihoods can be taken away in an instant for the slightest expression of “counterrevolutionary” sentiment.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/20/black-lives-matter-is-supporting-exploitation-cuban-workers/
After the triumph of Fidel Castro one of the first things he did was to nationalized and intervened all private poperty. Fabrics that were privately owned by cubans or foreigners like sugar canes, agricultural fields etc, passed to be state owned. This made the state the sole owner, administrator, employer, and investor of almost the entire Cuban economy.
Before 1959, Cuba had 156 active sugar mills that ground cane and was one of the countries that exported the most sugar in the world. Today only 26 remain active.
https://oncubanews.com/en/cuba/economy/cuban-economy/cuba-crisis-of-an-industry-that-doesnt-take-off/?amp
Until 1959, the Cuban economy had been directed not by a government or central power, but by the aggregation of millions of decision-making agents operating freely as consumers, workers, professionals, merchants, businessmen, bankers, peasants, owners, and investors. The levels of production, the variety, and the quality of the goods and services available in any quantity that Cubans preferred and freely bought with their incomes were managed by many thousands of industrial, agricultural, and commercial companies of all sizes, spread throughout the country.
The expropriations of 1960, which continued later with smaller companies, not only canceled the rights to private property of the means of production, but also limited and eliminated the freedom to carry out transactions of goods and services of all kinds.
Central planning and decisions of Fidel Castro:
Mass expropriations were accompanied in Cuba by the organization of the central planning system, typical of communist societies, to direct what was called the socialist economy (as a step prior to the utopian and never achieved communist economy). This is how the Central Planning Board (JUCEPLAN) was founded, together with similar offices in all State agencies.
The expropriated companies throughout the country then lost the autonomy and flexibility necessary to adapt to the changing conditions of the economy, remaining subject to a centralized and very rigid administration, unable to meet the demand of buyers in all its detail and specificity. The restrictions imposed on private initiatives to organize social, cultural or political activities have prevented the development of the country’s social capital, that is, the set of interpersonal relationships that enrich the life of any society, already damaged since 1959 as a result of intrusive policies of a government that wants to control all aspects of life in the country.
Only in Cuba and North Korea is the state in charge of the agriculture.
In 2018, Cuba imported $1.9 billion in agricultural products, 60% of which could be produced in the country. As part of his agrarian reform, Raul Castro began leasing fallow state-owned land to farmers through 10-year contracts — now increased to 20 years — that may be canceled or renewed depending on the farms performance. The lack of agricultural productiveness in Cuba is definitely multifaceted. A massive portion of the blame lies on the inefficient, often corrupt, and incompetent central planning undertaken by the state. The state maintains a monopoly on agricultural resources/inputs (tractors, irrigation, seeds, fertilizer, plows, etc.) while also maintaining a virtual monopoly on the distribution of agricultural products by requiring farmers to sell to the state at set prices and prohibiting the export of agricultural products. The effect is that agriculture is incredibly unproductive and often profitable.
The state has a monopoly on the sale of dairy, beef and other cattle-based products. Cattle owners are not allowed to sell cheese, milk, butter or meat from their animals. They are also not allowed to slaughter animals without prior government authorization. Agricultural productivity would be vastly improved if individual farmer were able to fully own their agricultural business and land and were able to freely purchase and import the necessary supplies to farm. And then were able to freely sell their products on the open market directly to the Cuban people (or to export to foreign markets) at whatever price they deem reasonable.
The sad thing is that this is happening on a tropical island with fertile lands that, before being intervened and nationalized by Castro, had made Cuba the largest exporter of agricultural products in Latin America in proportion to its population, according to a 1957 report by FAO. The country was self-sufficient in beef, milk, tropical fruits, coffee, tobacco, and exported its surplus, and in fish and shellfish, pork, chicken, root vegetables, vegetables, and eggs. It ranked first in Latin America in fish consumption and third in calorie consumption, with 2,682 daily. It also produced 75 % of the food the Cubans consumed. There were almost seven million head of cattle, one cow per inhabitant, and almost 1,000 million liters of milk were produced per year.
A country that used to be a food exporter now imports 81% of what it consumes. Instead of one cow per inhabitant, there are three inhabitants per cow (3.6 million very skinny heads), less than half the milk is produced than 62 years ago, and from 60,000 tons of coffee in 1958, today 8,000 tons are produced.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.fao.org/3/ap645e/ap645e.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiCtLzhrrT_AhXviJUCHd1hCfEQFnoECBAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2XG692gYXAVlBJ9GzJ8LVk
https://www.google.com/amp/s/havanatimes.org/features/cuba-the-decline-of-a-country-running-out-of-food/amp/
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/07/01/cuba-is-facing-its-worst-shortage-of-food-since-the-1990s
Military control of the economy:
During the last 26 years, Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (Gaesa), a mega-conglomerate of companies belonging to the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), had a single leader: its executive president, Major General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja. After his death, on July 1, 2022, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) published: “He leaves us as a legacy a business system model that serves as an example for the country, for having demonstrated its efficiency.” Military Counterintelligence officer and former son-in-law of Raúl Castro. He was one of the fourteen members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the PCC, a deputy to the National Assembly and advisor to President Miguel Díaz-Canel. In 2020 he was included in the list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury.
At the time of his sudden death, Rodríguez López-Calleja, decided and controlled operations in tourism, maritime transportation, manufacturing of explosives, travel agencies, real estate investments, management of supermarkets and retail stores, gas stations, services finance and telecommunications. In Cuba, the political and economic decisions with the greatest impact are made by a small group of state leaders, and are kept secret even from the press, which is controlled by the Communist Party.
Gaesa’s presence and operations appear not to be limited to commercial activities in the interior of the island. There are indications that they extend to at least eleven countries. At least 42 companies that have been created in recent decades are represented/directed by Cuban officials (or family members of these) with positions or ties to the military business conglomerate.
Although the exact amount of money that Gaesa controls and what its impact has been on the economic development of the island is not known, the percentage of its participation in the national economy could reach 40% of GDP, according to the Cuban-American businessman and analyst Emilio Morales, author of several investigations that warn about the excessive economic power of the business group. Morales has also estimated that Gaesa, at least five years ago, had a 90% share in the retail market that operated in dollars.
https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-40298131
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cuba-military-idUSKBN1962VK
Since its creation in 1995, the heads of Gaesa have sought to consolidate under a single umbrella the management of key sectors for Cuba. A good example is tourism, where a large part of the Caribbean country’s income came from until the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent decades, the military conglomerate has monopolized the areas with the highest profitability and tourist potential, and the predominance of the luxury segment has been guaranteed with the absorption of hotels such as those of the extinct Habaguanex S.A., in Old Havana, and the control of companies that are in charge of the construction of tourist facilities.
In addition, Gaesa controls a part of the flow of dollars for remittances that enter the island and that represented 6.8% of Cuba’s GDP between 2005 and 2020. Beyond the commercial agreements with large international companies, this item is probably the one that generates the greatest impact of the conglomerate on the lives of ordinary Cubans, many of whom survive thanks to the remittances they receive from relatives abroad.
The business is round because the money does not arrive in Cuba in foreign currencies, but in an electronic medium that can only be spent in retail stores, which also make up the network of companies that Gaesa centralizes and manages. In other words, it benefits from its intermediary participation in the receipt of remittances through Financiera Cimex (Fincimex) and then from spending on the purchase of goods that many Cubans make with that income in stores in MLC (freely convertible currency).
But Gaesa’s domain does not end there: it extends to activities related to the import and export of products through companies such as Tecnotex, Tecnoimport, Cubagro and Ecasol. Through Almacenes Universales S.A. (AUSA), the conglomerate is in charge of the administration of the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM), the first zone in Cuba subject to special regulation to encourage foreign investment.
Gaesa’s concentration of economic power began when Fidel Castro granted the Armed Forces military power over trade or investment related to the entry of foreign currency, during the crisis caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union called “Special Period”. At that time, Raúl Castro was the minister of the FAR.
In mid-2016, El Nuevo Herald identified at least 25 companies linked to the Cuban government and registered in tax shelters in countries such as the Bahamas, Panama, and the British Virgin Islands. The birth of some of these companies dates back to the early nineties. Various names linked to the high sphere of the Communist Party and the Castro family appeared. Among them, Guillermo Faustino Rodríguez López-Calleja, brother of the recently deceased president of Gaesa, who was on the register of seven companies.
https://www.14ymedio.com/internacional/Cuba-Papeles-Panama-Nuevo-Herald_0_2012798712.html
These companies are characterized by being registered in countries with flexible tax and commercial regulations; in some cases the denominations are similar and the public information about their owners and financial management is almost nil. As a general rule, they do not have websites or social networks. The framework seems to be supported by two reasons: control of the economy within Cuba and evasion of US sanctions.
Private sector:
Another constant in 63 years of communism has been the government continuous asphyxiation of any attempts at making a living by one’s own account. For Cubans on the island it is impossible to open businesses spontaneously. The system does not allow or promote it. These companies must be approved by various government agencies, and it is the State that decides who is granted the favor, in what sector and under what conditions. Those who are finally authorized are usually people related to the Government. Even so, these companies cannot import or export products and services directly; for this they must use state companies that charge 20% for management. Furthermore, these “private” entities may have accounts in dollars, but only use them for payments for import and export processes.
During the brutal “Special Period” of the 1990s, when the end of Soviet subsidies had produced an economic cataclysm in Cuba, the government decriminalised microenterprise and self-employment activities in order to attract hard currency via tourism and exports. But when the worst of the period had ended by 1996, Fidel Castro once again restricted private-sector activity and the government continued propagandising against it to reinforce the stigma of profit-making. The self-employed or small merchants and independent Cuban artisans, called merolicos, have been accepted in stages in this half century of economic confusion and in a “legal” way, when the Castro regime has reached its neck in water. Then, when they think they are unnecessary, they disappear. Cuban leaders had always been uneasy with private economic activity, previously describing it as an evil that was necessary to provide jobs and services that the state could not during hard times.
La ofensiva revolucionaria:
In 1968 Fidel nationalized all remaining private small businesses, which at the time totaled to be about 58,000 small enterprises. The Cuban government also issued blanket bans on self-employment, farmer’s markets, and private gardens on state farms. In total the nationalized enterprises included 17,000 food retailers, 25,000 industrial product merchants, 11,300 bars and restaurants, 9,600 small workshops, and 14,000 barbers, laundries, and other small retail shops. With the elimination of many business, the state failed to fill the void of their lost services and their economic sectors quickly became under-served.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Offensive#:~:text=The%20Revolutionary%20Offensive%20was%20a,be%20about%2058%2C000%20small%20enterprises
Starting in 1989, the government’s strategies began to boost the economy, which had lost 85% of foreign trade and which reached its highest peak in 1993. This context allowed the Cuban state to generate a group of measures that favored the quantitative increase of self-employment in the country. In 1995, there were 325,800 non-state workers, almost doubling the number of self-employed workers in 1989, which amounted to 212,900. The increase in this sector was slow but constant in subsequent years, reaching 400,000 workers in 1998. On average, the annual growth rate of the private sector of the economy was favorable, reaching a value of 10.3%.
Beginning of the 21st century
In the year 2000, the centralized model was resumed and some measures were carried out that harmed the self-employed. Once again they withheld the issuance of licenses to be able to exercise as non-state entities Therefore, the presence of state property returned in all sectors and branches, to the detriment of the rest of the forms of management and property.
A series of reforms starting in 2010 allowed Cubans to work as “self-employed people” in the private sector, but they could only have jobs in 127 narrow categories defined by the government. In 2018 Self-employment provided work to 13 percent of the Cuban labor force, and generated 12 percent of GDP. It offered lodging in private homes and meals in small restaurants (paladares) to tourists. However, the government imposed severe restrictions, suspended licenses for certain activities, and increases taxes exponentially based on the number of employees hired. The ideological reason behind these limitations was to avoid the concentration of property and wealth. On top of all that were the large number of permits, bureaucratic obstacles and inspections small business faced.
In 2021, amid Cuba’s worst crisis and pressured by popular unrest the Cuban government allowed the establishment of MSMEs after being prohibited for 53 year,. Its approval responded more to the urgency of a critical economic and social situation than to the conceptualization of the model itself, even when it opened up space for SMEs as a “complement” to the state sector. These companies do not have access to areas considered strategic by the Cuban State such as health, telecommunications, energy, defense and the media. The MSMEs can be state, private or mixed, and are recognized as an economic unit with legal personality with their own characteristics.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-58132000.amp
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/world/americas/cuba-expands-private-enterprise.html
Criticisms focussed on the obstacles included in Decree-Law 46: only permanent residents in Cuba will be authorized to create a company and they will not be able to have more than one SME. The exclusion of emigrants or foreigners also raises many doubts, in addition to what the economist Pedro Montreal describes as “asymmetric treatment of private and state actors”, since the latter will enjoy privileged treatment.
Private companies in Cuba will have to be approved by the government and by the Ministry of Economy. In addition to that, there is a set of measures and controls and interference by the State in the activity of these companies that makes it very difficult for them to make efficient decisions.
As a consequence of this, the framework created is uncertain, unsustainable and is incapable of offering sufficient guarantees for the exercise of a private, independent and autonomous economic activity from state power.
Clearly, this open regulation will be taken advantage of by thousands of Cubans not connected to the regime to start their own business projects. But rising above certain levels of wealth will be almost impossible without connections and the government’s blessing.
Beyond a certain business threshold, it is a tall order to operate in Cuba without getting on the good side of the powers that be, at least, at the local level (municipal or provincial PCC secretaries, military heads, managers of state enterprises) for two reasons: first, the widespread corruption in the state bureaucracy, where it is better to walk hand in hand with someone powerful; and second, because a high concentration of capital in a political outsider is a threat for the Government. If there were an economic decentralization there would be some political decentralization, and both are anathema for orthodox Cubans. At the time of Obama’s visit to the island, the regime felt threatened due to the talks he had with the self-employed (the private sector of the economy). This was presented by Fidel—just the day Obama returned—as a new strategy to subvert imperialism, and triggered widespread criticism of the US president, among other things for not lifting the embargo.
Cuban economists have also warned that this this mechanism will not only serve to enrich the embryonic caste of loyal capitalists, but will also finance and subsidize the related MSMEs so that, through the reinvestment of the profits generated by their favored access to state contracts and other subtle advantages of being “sponsored” —such as having direct access to foreign trade, or receiving foreign currency at preferential prices— they will monopolize the national market and, little by little, displace legitimate private entrepreneurs.
The logical conclusion is that the permits —not rights— granted to the private sector are a tactic to revive that impoverishing but secure centralized system, to which the government will return as soon as the economic situation improves, destroying in the meantime those who have enriched themselves with the opening, as it did with the pot plan in the 1990s and the anti-self-employment offensive that began in 2016, which ended with the infamous Ordering Task. If something has never been scarce in the Cuba of the Communist Party are pretexts to crush those who prosper. As Marrero Cruz (Cuba’s prime minister) has warned, “the socialist state enterprise is the fundamental actor, and the new actors are its complement.”
Until January, close to 6,600 new companies have been approved, of which almost 6,500 are private SMEs, the state ones stand at around 90; while cooperatives reach just over 60. Around 50% are small businesses and the rest is distributed almost equally between micro and medium-sized enterprises.
They are cooped up and tightly controlled by the government. They do not have autonomy, nor freedom of action, nor the capacity to generate and accumulate wealth. It is a well-assembled model, not so much to deceive the Cubans, but rather the Administration of President Joe Biden. Far from enabling the growth, drive and success of Cuban entrepreneurs, what the government seeks with MSMEs is to capture the investment of US capital in Cuba, under the protection of the Helms-Burton Act itself, which allows US investments in the Cuban private sector.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-24790569.amp
https://amp.dw.com/en/cuba-new-restrictions-holding-back-the-private-sectoa-44709164
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-economy-idUSKBN1EF318
https://diariodecuba.com/cuba/1630603410_33825.html
https://www.iri.org/news/a-new-economic-policy-in-cuba-is-hurting-private-workers/
https://havanatimes.org/features/new-business-failures-in-cuba-predicted-to-exceed-90-percent/amp/
Cuba’s unique laws for foreing investment:
Reported obstacles to FDi (Foreing Direct Investment) in Cuba are bureaucratic delays and red tape, market fears, prejudice against foreign investment, a ban on foreign entrepreneurs directly hiring and paying their employees, monetary and exchange rate duality, lack of knowledge, training and sufficient motivation of Cuban companies. The Cuban government has taken some steps to speed up the FDI approval process, such as the easing of some rules to assess foreign investors, the elimination of cumbersome feasibility studies and the announcement of the creation of a single channel (“ventanilla única”) for foreign investment.
In 2022 Cuba approved 30 businesses with foreign capital for an approximate amount of 402 million dollars, new businesses have been approved in the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) and 13 Hotel Management and Marketing contracts. In addition, there are advanced negotiations for more than 50 new projects worth $9 billion. In general figures, since the approval of Law 118 in 2014, 272 foreign-invested businesses outside the ZEDM and 51 within it have materialized in the Caribbean nation. Of the 321 currently active, there are 104 joint ventures, 161 international partnership contracts, and 56 wholly foreign capital companies. All these investments have achieved a total amount of committed capital investment of more than 10 billion dollars, with companies from around 40 countries.
https://www.prensa-latina.cu/2022/11/15/cuba-aprobo-30-negocios-de-inversion-extranjera-en-lo-que-va-de-2022
The requirement of foreign firms to enter joint ventures with the government is perhaps the largest deterrent to investment. Firms are only allowed to own up to 49% of the stake in their company and have minimal input into the operations and management. The ability to hire workers is the sole responsibility of the Cuban government, and prospective employees are forced to undergo a strenuous application process. The management of the state only compounds the inefficiency by overstaffing many of the tourism-related businesses. Another problem internal to Cuba is the low wages paid to workers in every sector.
International firms engaging in foreign direct investment in Cuba do not pay workers for their companies directly but instead pay workers’ salaries directly to the government. These wages are often paid in US dollars before being converted at a one to one exchange rate to Cuban pesos. After being converted to Cuban pesos, the wages are distributed to the workers. This amounts to a large de facto tax on Cuban worker’s wages. For example, a worker in the tourism industry earning $500 USD would be paid 500 Cuban pesos. The exchange rate from pesos to US dollars is roughly 25 to 1, so the worker is getting paid around $20 USD while the government keeps $480 USD, in clear violation of international labor agreements. Under this arrangement the state pockets over 90 percent of the worker’s purported salaries.
Then come the hard realities of trying to do business in an economy that is tightly contolled by a one party state, an infrastructure that is dilapidated and outdated, and a populace whose purchasing power is limited by a monthly median salary of $20. Add to that a legal system that lacks transparency and is heavily tilted in favour of the state. Very heavy administrative procederes.
Cuba holds a yearly fair to attract foreign investment. Havana International Fair (FIHAV), the annual business forum organized every year by the Cuban authorities to raise capital and which brings together some 4,000 businessmen from 70 countries.
https://foreignbrief.com/daily-news/international-fair-of-havana-to-conclude/
https://www.caribbean-council.org/havana-international-fair-returns-with-a-large-spanish-presence/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-economy-tradefair-idINKBN28I37O
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3581558-the-folly-of-investing-in-cuba/amp/
https://globaledge.msu.edu/countries/cuba/risk
https://www.almendron.com/tribuna/investing-in-cuba-can-be-a-risky-business/
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-cuba-investment-idUKBRE88618E20120907
While we can also aknowelege the negative impacts of the U.S. embargo, we can also say that Cuba has received triple the economic help that Western Europe did with The Marshall Plan after World War 2, more than $300 billion, given, free of charge, by the USSR, Venezuela and Cuban emigrants. Plus the credit loans that Cuba has never paid back, and which amount to a debt of more than $60 billion. Investments made in the Island by foreing countries for more than $40 billion since the 1990s. And overall trade and foreing relations with more 160 countries. Trade, that also includes the United States as one of Cuba's biggest trading partners, the US has sold more than $8 billion worth of agricultural goods to Cuba since 2000.
https://diariodecuba.com/economia/1696330703_50132.html
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cibercuba.com/noticias/2023-10-02-u1-e208512-s27061-regimen-cubano-habria-recibido-300-mil-millones-dolares
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba%E2%80%93Soviet_Union_relations
Spain alone has 300 companies working in Cuba. Canada has more than 100, including the most successful foreing company in the Island, Sherritt International. Canadian-Cuban joint ventures include hotels, travel companies, and mining companies. Canada is also Cuba’s largest source of tourism. More than 1 million Canadians visit the island each year.
The European Union is Cuba’s main export and trade partner. It is also the largest foreign investor in the country (mainly in the tourism, construction, light industry and agro-industry sectors) and accounts for one third of the tourists arriving on the island. Cuba’s main export goods are agricultural products, beverages, tobacco and mineral fuels, for which there is no preferential trade regime.
The main export goods from the EU to Cuba are food, chemicals products, plastics, basic metals and their manufactures, machinery, household appliances and transport equipment.
https://www.eeas.europa.eu/cuba/european-union-and-cuba_en?s=136 https://www.reuters.com/world/eu-remains-cubas-top-trade-partner-committed-mutual-respect-top-diplomat-says-2023-05-25/
https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/exports/cuba
China:
China exports to Cuba since 2004:
$20 billion.
https://www.reuters.com/article/cuba-china-trade-idUSL1N2K919P
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/exports/cuba
https://america.cgtn.com/2018/06/19/china-and-cuba-expand-trade-cooperation-and-investment
According to data from China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), Chinese investment flows into Cuba reached US$11.4 million in 2020, while total Chinese direct investment stock reached US$140 million.
That same year, Chinese-invested enterprises signed 37 new underwriting projects in Cuba with a total new signed contract value of US$314 million and a completed turnover of US$142 million. At the end of 2020, there were a total of 383 Chinese laborers working in Cuba. Beijing Enterprises Holdings is building a $460 million golf resort on the island.
In 2021, the trade volume between China and Cuba reached US$1.02 billion. The top exports of China to Cuba included electrical machinery and equipment, sound recorders, television image and reproducers, and other components (US$133.3 million), machinery, mechanical appliances, and nuclear reactors (US$103.6 million), vehicles and accessories (US$48.7 million), pharmaceutical products (US$28.8 million), and iron and steel (US$24.6 million).
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-11-25/The-future-of-China-Cuba-economic-relations-1ffzUR222VW/index.html
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/chn/partnecub
https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-cuba-bilateral-trade-and-investment-prospects/