Speaker 1: Flex and Frooms, Flex and Frooms.
Speaker 2: This is the Flex and Frooms catch up podcast.
Speaker 1: It is Flex and Rooms on Cats. I went to LA.
Speaker 2: I think you should call it Los Angeles. La sounds
Speaker 2: like your head's up your ears?
Speaker 1: Respectfully, who says Los Angeles?
Speaker 2: And I sounded about LA.
Speaker 1: I've been people in the room who said and adamant
Speaker 1: no free.
Speaker 2: Say I was in Los Angeles? What city of Angels?
Speaker 1: If I said I was in California, you'd be like,
Speaker 1: who is this girl?
Speaker 2: I'm being serious.
Speaker 1: Well, I was in the city of Angels and I
Speaker 1: went to the most expensive grocery store. It's a chain.
Speaker 1: It's called air one, which is an anagram of nowhere,
Speaker 1: very very very LA. Now you might not know the
Speaker 1: name of this chain, but you might recall the viral
Speaker 1: Belahadide smoothie. It was nineteen dollars or Bury and some
Speaker 1: other miscellaneous ingredients and superfoods. It popped off. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to tell you how much it would cost the conversion,
Speaker 1: roughly forty Australian dollars. It's ridiculous. So when it was
Speaker 1: time to go to Air one, I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna deal with it because up until
Speaker 1: that point I already spent I couldn't even tell you
Speaker 1: how much money spent a Coachella just on nonsense food.
Speaker 1: Twelve dollars fifty hot dogs. That's twenty bucks for a
Speaker 1: common hot dog. I was done spending money. So my
Speaker 1: best friend's go into Air one, and, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: it just feels like a bougie Coals with overpriced everything
Speaker 1: forty dollars sushi, twenty dollars Asaii, all of the whatever.
Speaker 1: My friend rolls up to the checkout. She's like, really
Speaker 1: stoked to get this tote bag, right, I'm like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: Like we love a souvenir. She picks one up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's like a durable cotton twill, nothing special. But
Speaker 1: when it gets ringed up at the checkout, it's one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty US dollars. She's stunned.
Speaker 2: Creepers.
Speaker 1: The checkout guy is stunned. He's looking at her, she's
Speaker 1: looking at him. Will she buy it? Won't she? Obviously
Speaker 1: she doesn't know what. He says. The shadiest thing ever,
Speaker 1: we have a cheaper one. Oh okay, that's the cheaper one.
Speaker 1: Pulls out this generic navy blue tote that says air
Speaker 1: One in collegiate font, not embroidered, just a little direct
Speaker 1: to garment print, nothing special or autodestone. Eighty dollars eighty
Speaker 1: US dollars? Can you believe that? And it led me
Speaker 1: to do some research because I'm like, okay, I can
Speaker 1: understand a bit of a gag. A gag store. You know,
Speaker 1: you buy some premium novelty you call a day whatever. No,
Speaker 1: it's not a gag to locals. They derive their personalities
Speaker 1: and their social status from how frequently they go to
Speaker 1: Air One and how much money they spend. But I
Speaker 1: think it's a social experiment of some point. We all
Speaker 1: know what makes capitalism as a system work is the
Speaker 1: illusion that things are worth a lot of money, right, branding, marketing,
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. Things are worth as much as
Speaker 1: someone is willing to pay for it. So when you
Speaker 1: open up a generic soupmuket and you say, hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna do tote bags branded tote bags, but charge one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars, most people will say that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But a percentage, like you know what, that's sick, I'll
Speaker 1: buy it. They're making bank off your stupidity. I did
Speaker 1: some research and by that I went onto Wikipedia.
Speaker 2: Hmmm.
Speaker 1: I thought it was necessary because I want to figureut
Speaker 1: where the name came from. Why is it called nowhere backwards?
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Anyway? Apparently it's derived from the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two satirical novel Air One by Samuel Butler.
Speaker 1: In the novel, air One is a utopia in which
Speaker 1: individuals are responsible for their own health. It is a sham, Babes.
Speaker 1: It's a sham selling you back the illusion of health
Speaker 1: and wealth at an extreme price so you can feel
Speaker 1: like you're healthy. Meanwhile, your hips are calcified, your bones
Speaker 1: are rotting, your liver doesn't work, and your lungs are blackened.
Speaker 2: So it's giving scientology adjacent food. I went there in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, so before you, and when I was actually
Speaker 2: on a run, I was like doing a run content
Speaker 2: piece with Nike. First time I ever ran, okay athlete
Speaker 2: ten kilometers. Okay. Sick sent me down an interesting path
Speaker 2: from my life, but we'll get to that on another Babe.
Speaker 2: I went to Arawon and there was like special dog
Speaker 2: food that was like one hundred dollars for a pellet
Speaker 2: of dog food. There was diamond activated water. I was
Speaker 2: beside myself. Actually did a skit in Erewon early Adopter
Speaker 2: Eli Adopter, and I will say, you know what, if
Speaker 2: I had the cash, there was just something about it.
Speaker 1: But I think that's the point. The average person does
Speaker 1: not have the cash. One thing about La one of
Speaker 1: the most expensive places to live. One of the first
Speaker 1: time I went, I was at a bar having one
Speaker 1: of those really strange conversations with a tech bro who
Speaker 1: was like, listen, like LA is about hustling and grinding
Speaker 1: and making it in the big city whatever. But he
Speaker 1: was like most people I know who are like aesthetically
Speaker 1: pop in have chosen to own a car instead of
Speaker 1: having a place to live. Yeah, houseless people sleeping in
Speaker 1: their cars so they can flex on you. Frequently buying
Speaker 1: nineteen dollars smoothies in hopes of going viral on TikTok.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone always references that two thousand dollars Chanelle
Speaker 1: safety pin. Do you know about that? No, So when
Speaker 1: people talk about like consumerism and the value of something
Speaker 1: being attributed not to the quality but what someone is
Speaker 1: willing to pay for it, they often bring up the
Speaker 1: fact that Chanel sells a two thousand dollars safety pin
Speaker 1: or a brooch or something. It's just a safety pin,
Speaker 1: and it sells out often, and it kind of reminds
Speaker 1: me about value generally. I don't think we've been raised
Speaker 1: or socialized to understand what things are worth, because if
Speaker 1: we knew, we wouldn't consume. And above all, more than humans,
Speaker 1: I think we're consumers are the big bad overlords. I
Speaker 1: really do like so much of this world functions because
Speaker 1: we want to buy stuff. Like let's say we decided
Speaker 1: that for every meal making food at home, no cafes
Speaker 1: or they just be coffee cuts. Right, how do you
Speaker 1: make a whole business around dining if we all hammered
Speaker 1: down on eating and cooking in.
Speaker 2: Well, we're still going to see that happen with the inflation, babes.
Speaker 1: I mean, do you think so? But what happened with COVID,
Speaker 1: like cozy living was still up then people had no
Speaker 1: income and splurging was happening.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I was looking at a statistic that was talking about
Speaker 1: retail e commerce sales compared to COVID and now because
Speaker 1: there was this big spike and boom, and I was like,
Speaker 1: how is this possible where people getting money from. So
Speaker 1: online sales made up fifteen percent of all retail sales.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure in Australia because Rag Trader said it
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty and now it's thirty five percent. So
Speaker 1: people are spend ding.
Speaker 2: That's me. I'm doing my Mecca orders a bort A, Mason,
Speaker 2: pears and brush share today.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's something about when times are tough, quarter of.
Speaker 2: One thousand dollars, I'm returning it because what's that.
Speaker 1: The fact that we said a quarter of one thousand,
Speaker 1: it's not even closed to one thousand. Just say to fifty.
Speaker 1: She knew what she was doing with that on she
Speaker 1: knew that. Being said this idea of you know, when
Speaker 1: things are going well, I think that's when we do
Speaker 1: that little like silly purchases like small make it like
Speaker 1: the avocado because it's like it's an extra five bucks
Speaker 1: on the side. But then when times are tough, people
Speaker 1: start doing luxury. You know what I bought the other day,
Speaker 1: insane behavior. I keep making the mistake of traveling, spending
Speaker 1: a bag, then moving house and then spending a bag.
Speaker 2: Crazy.
Speaker 1: It's not looking good bras.
Speaker 2: Anyway, you know what I think is a heart of luxury.
Speaker 1: No, we're not doing that yet. I haven't finished anyway.
Speaker 1: Point is times are tough, all right. You know what?
Speaker 1: I saw piece of art from Ebity Russell. Who's that
Speaker 1: amazing art? Seramecist. She just did a show I was away.
Speaker 1: I told myself, if her things would be on sale,
Speaker 1: I'd buy it. Nineteen hundred, I said, I gotta do it.
Speaker 2: Is she the one that makes the religious figures?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: True?
Speaker 1: What does she bring out this time? Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you're talking about my childe? Yeah no, anyway, I'll show
Speaker 1: you later. The point is people will spend and like
Speaker 1: if we could deprogram, I wouldn't because it's nice to
Speaker 1: be a hot girl. But it'd be interesting to see
Speaker 1: what we would deem worthy to spend our money on
Speaker 1: if we deprogrammed our understanding of what is considered worthy
Speaker 1: of spending money on. Because why discretionary spending? Why do
Speaker 1: I need to buy a sweet little treat when I
Speaker 1: leave the house?
Speaker 2: Lord me going to chemistry house buying three different types
Speaker 2: of deodorantce just to feel something. I got the cucumber dove, Oh,
Speaker 2: the pink pearl dull.
Speaker 1: I think if you're a natural deodoran bybe.
Speaker 2: Serious natural deodorant. I hate people who were natural denent.
Speaker 2: Sorry controversial, Stop it just be smelly. Now you smell
Speaker 2: like smelly and eucalypts.
Speaker 1: It stinks. I have never seen the stadi. It stinks.
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