I’m All Lost In, #137: The Nakagin Capsule Tower; NKD NA whiskey; Silence Please teahouse. Plus the Week in X>Y
I’m All Lost In…
The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week
#137
(This post covers 5/22/26-6/1/26)
The Week in X > (is Greater Than) Y
Hudson News at Sea-Tac, 5/31/26
A Mainstream Book Chain > The NYT We live in an era of spineless corporate self-censorship and odious government erasure. (See this week’s combination of both: A tortured NYT headline timidly and ridiculously saying Secretary of Defense Hegseth “appeared” to show an “anti-diversity stance” by blocking merit-based promotions for female and black officers at a disproportionate rate; I can think of a couple of clearer words to describe Hegseth’s ongoing pattern of sexism and racism in his bigoted campaign against women, African Americans, and LGBQT people.)
And so it was heartening to notice the opposite impulse at Hudson News, the Swiss-based airport bookstore chain. During this busy week of traveling (NYC and Chicago) I noticed identical Hudson News displays at O’Hare, JFK, and Sea-Tac flaunting a shelf of proudly woke books about Iran. By Iranian authors. (Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is a personal favorite.)
Seeing the displays was a bit like seeing a tattoo peeking out from under someone’s rolled up sleeve at a corporate meeting.
Or like a middle finger to Donald Trump.
Curry Dishes with Less Curry Sauce > Curry Dishes with Lots of Curry Sauce Exhibit A is the delicious Green Curry at Sticky Rice, a lively Thai restaurant on Orchard St. in NoLita. Unlike typical curries where you have to go wading for the provisions, the coconut milk in this dish was secondary to a tall pile of green beans, bamboo shoots, and basil.
I’d also recommend the cozy vegan veggie curry puffs as a starter.
Taking the Red Eye > Flying During the Day They’re cheaper. There aren’t check-in lines. And you’re more likely to sleep; not only are you ready for bed anyway at this late hour after a full day, but they turn out the cabin lights, it’s quiet, and the person sitting next to you is likely to be sleeping themself rather than chatting at you.
And the best part: You don’t lose a day to travel. Go to sleep on Thursday night in Seattle—as I did on my flight out of Sea-Tac this week—and wake up on Friday morning in Chicago before catching the El train toward Forest Park, getting off at Logan Square and catching the 76 bus east toward Nature Museum. I alighted at Diversey & Western/Elston two blocks from my Airbnb.
This gave way to a full day. I met my magical college friend Zoe downtown later that morning; we did the Riverwalk and drank 7-11 Slurpees; and I had a gummie in the evening before going to a dance party with some old high school friends.
Zoe & Me, Downtown Chicago after the Riverwalk, on the way to get Slurpees at 7-11, 5/29/26
This Week’s Obsessions
1) The Nakagin Capsules
As part of Japan’s Metabolist architecture movement—an eco-physiological philosophy from the 1960s (of course!) which sought to entwine buildings and biology with “design and technology that denotes human vitality”—architect Kisho Kurokawa built an apartment complex of 140 prefab modules in downtown Tokyo. Attached to a pair of steel towers, the single-occupant-capsules came online in the heart of Tokyo’s up-tempo Ginza neighborhood in 1972.
MoMA currently has an exhilarating exhibit on the Nakagin Capsule Tower that includes reconfigured module A1305. I checked it out on Monday, Memorial Day.
Capsule A1305
Capsule A1305, a fully restored unit from the Tower’s top floor on display at MoMA, 5/25/26
The Nakagin Capsule Tower photographed in 1972 currently on exhibit at MoMA.
Named after a real estate company that backed Kurokawa’s urbanist vision to give “nomadic office workers” a space “to rest and recover,” the Nakagin module hive was basically a Lego building of sleek Star-Trek-style, work-week pied-à-terres for suburban businessmen. Not only did the design embrace the new age of mass production, but the solo capsules were, in Kurokowa’s words, also a “declaration of war” against it “in support of the restoration of the self.”
The gendered marketing advertised the micro-apartments as bachelor pads. The efficient oval layout came with: wall-screen TVs; submarine windows that looked out onto the glittering city; handset phones; and Sony stereo systems. And perhaps more germane to Kurokawa’s architectural philosophy: the units also featured built-in, multi-purpose furniture.
Kurokawa explained the Metabolist part of capsule living in his manifesto “Oh, the code of the cyborg!” which he published in Space Design magazine in 1969: Individual capsules could be swapped out iteratively for upgraded models that were manufactured off-site and snapped into place as needed.
“[Kurokowa] envisioned architecture capable of growth, adaptation, and transformation through what he called ‘metabolic cycles,’” MoMA’s Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design Evangelos Kotsioris writes in the exhibit notes. “Whereby at predetermined intervals ‘only those parts that had lost their usefulness’ would be replaced and, as result, resources would be conserved.”
The Nakagin Capsule Tower didn’t work out as Kurokowa envisioned, but perhaps not coincidentally, it did ultimately sync with his generative, Theseus's-Paradox conceit. Shifting purpose rather than evolutionary maintenance became the defining MO of the complex over the years as Nakagin’s micro-spaces were re-mixed into offices, student housing, tearooms, libraries, galleries, and DJ booths. “This is not an apartment house,” Kurokawa famously declared when he debuted the project design in 1969.
With an embattled history that included revivals of creative new uses alongside lost years when the units fell into disrepair, the building was decommissioned and disassembled in 2022.
2) NKD Whiskey
NA spirits are typically too sweet. NA wine is a glass of apple juice role playing as a glass of chardonnay. Thankfully, after I complained about this sickly state of affairs late Saturday afternoon to the earnest bartender at Hekate, an all-NA neurodivergent-friendly dive in the East Village on Ave. B & E. 11th St, he poured me a glass of NKD whiskey.
ALT Distilling, the Louisville, Kentucky-based company that makes NKD whiskey (pronounced “naked”), extracts the alcohol through a process called vacuum distillation while lightly singeing the oak-flavored brew with some caramel for the subconscious.
Last week was my 13th in a row booze-free. It also now marks the moment when I finally found a substitute spirit that doesn’t need to be cut with two cups of soda water. Drink a glass of NKD neat for its burn and peaty weight.
*Hekate, a warm, go-to spot for me ever since ECB and I first hung out there in March 2024, is closing. They have a GoFundMe to help them keep the doors open until October.
3) Silence Please
In another long-running quest for quality: Last week, my commitment to discovering exemplary coffeeshops took me to Silence Please, an up-the-stairs, second-floor oasis on Bowery & Grand in NoLita. Set up in a stereo-speaker design work studio, this coffee and teahouse is ”A place to slow down,” according to the website. “To tune in and listen gently. We believe silence is not the absence of sound, but the presence of attention.”
Channeling this yoga-practice (AI?) wisdom, Silence Please is a bit Kurokowa-esque. It blurs out the grungy street below, re-making the art gallery that once occupied the spot into an elegant coffeeshop that honors the gallery mood. Delicately placed around the room, the stylish, artisan speakers echo the space’s original art show aesthetics. And the speakers are functional too, lulling the room with jams like the laid-back, guitar-jazz hip hop playing on the Tuesday morning I was there by Japanese rapper Ken Tin Min.
Crowded with diligent creative souls working at lap tops, the long library-table seating lets folks hunker down for hours to the soft tunes. There’s also peaceful window-table seating for casual coffee dates and inviting couches for solo reverie. Bonus: there’s a small, vinyl record shop and secondary seating by the barista bar and baked-goods case in the far-flung back room.
Silence Please, upstairs on Bowery between Grand St. & Broome St, 5/26/26