It’s nearly Christmas in July. Checking in on the Summer 2025 Matt-ifesto, I’ve accomplished or embodied about 25 of my 40 goals so far. Doing well!
-Josh Sharp’s Ta-da!, the new show from the writer and star of Megan Thee Stallion vehicle Dicks: The Musical, opens on Tuesday at the Greenwich House Theater.1
-The mural at the (finally) open Oberon is a…haunting choice.2
-Tickets for Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion ten-year anniversary show at the Troubadour are on sale NOW. Bring it to New York, Carly!
^Imagine this live
-Saw Gus Kenworthy at my gym this week⛷️💅
-The ’90s Vogue assistant quiz is basically the same test they administer when you come out of the closet. (I scored a 26. I’m hired!)
Out: Circuit parties/raves as primary source of night life. In: The return of the superclub. (It’s not here yet, but it’s going to happen, just watch.)
While so much of being a Nice Boy™ is about anticipating needs and acting on them, a second, large, part of the Nice Boy™ ethos is just letting shit lie. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for yourself and others, in order to lubricate the goings on, is just put up (see issue three of A Matt-azine) even in the face of indignity.
A few of you had sent me some of the indignities you choose to tolerate in this increasingly hostile and embarrassing world.
Being regularly asked: 1.) "What's for dinner?" and then 2.) "Is this chicken cooked all the way through?" -Marc (a father)
I rarely tell restaurants that I’m allergic to caviar because to say that sounds so pretentious—except once I had a tasting menu [editor: What’s that about sounding pretentious?] where caviar was on the first dish, but only a little, so I ate it. And didn’t say anything. Then there was caviar on the second dish….THEN THE CHEF CAME OVER AND MADE HAND ROLLS WITH JUST RICE AND CAVIAR. At that point it seemed safer to risk anaphylaxis than tell the truth. -Julie (a person who goes to restaurants and puts herself at risk out of kindness. NICE BOY™!)
To these I’d add riding any mode of public transportation and using an airplane bathroom. But none compare to the wildest, perhaps ultimate Nice Boy™ act from reader and friend of the -zine, Michael Finkbeiner, in that he not only tolerates the indignity but embraces it (edited from two different convos for length and clarity):
A pet peeve that I love to put up with: When people leave pieces of toilet paper or hand towels strewn about a restaurant bathroom. To me it presents an opportunity. I relish the feeling that comes from picking up other people’s trash and stuffing it neatly into the trash can.
If I really need a win, I’ll wipe off the counter top, replace the spent toilet paper roll, or scavenge in the cupboards to find extra hand towels. When I need a break from the social action of a bar, it’s nice I can go into the bathroom and tidy.
Twice in the last week I was asked “do you work here?” after doing guerilla-style cleanup at some local Chicago establishments.
Related, but less regularly addressed: loose toilet seats. I’ll risk staying in the bathroom longer than necessary to right the screws on a wobbly seat. It’s gross but necessary. I can only remember (or choose to remember?) doing this to friends’ toilets, but I’m open to branching out to public bathrooms in the future.
Fellas, he’s single and has a pristine bathroom with a sturdy toilet. Any interested parties should reach out to me directly.
I Remember The Bologna3
Just over a week ago, V and I made it to Au Cheval our anniversary dinner with the burger on our mind. Looking to divide and conquer the Chicago-size heaviness of their menu, though, we wound up splitting the burger and a bologna sandwich. Yes, the burger was great, but the bologna—sliced razor thin, layered over itself and then seared on the griddle before being nestled in a bun—won the night.
We went home holding our sated tummies rather than each other’s hands. Love is sharing a bologna sandwich.
Maybe it’s the nitrates, but bologna has staying power. As I go through the archives of my life as a Good Eater™, I’ve got core memories around the lunch meat that all extend from adulthood. Maybe it’s bologna’s kid friendly palatability that when it gets mixed up with my adult taste causes me to lock in the moment. Maybe it’s because it’s essentially the large-format version of a hot dog—itself a top-five food—that the novelty of bologna and mortadella linger with me. Maybe it’s because I don’t have it so often, for the future sake of my colon.
Whatever it is, the Au Cheval sandwich got me thinking of three other bolognas/mortadella memories:
Dearborn Brand bologna. Sliced medium.
About of pound of it, left in the fridge along with soft white bread, coleslaw and glass jug of chocolate milk. They were to be the makings of my meals while I found myself miraculously at home alone4 for a couple of days during the summer between freshmen and sophomore year of college.
perfection. Two slices of bologna, a slice of yellow American. A light smear of mayo AND a swirl of mustard. Eaten over the sink. Having the mash of bread and cheese and processed meet get trapped on the roof of my mouth. Dislodged with my tongue and washed down with the chocolate milk. Thinking THIS is independence.
Motorino roasted mortadella.
On a birthday night six or seven years ago. I was taking V to my favorite pizza spot Nicoletta only to discover it had suddenly closed5. We pivoted to the long-standing Motorino around the corner, trading Midwest-style pie for Neapolitan but not with catching a “roasted mortadella” appetizer on the menu. Well, hell, got to try it. If anything could make up from the sudden loss of Nicoletta, it was this sizzling plate of rectangular prisms of mortadella, piled up with cherry tomatoes.
The "Little Chef” at Saltie sandwich.
Running out for a bite, ravenous on a slow day while working the desk at the barbershop down the street. I stopped into the dearly departed Saltie6 for the first time.
Trying to quickly decipher the menu’s cryptic names, I spied one with mortadella listed in it and ordered. Back at the shop, I unwrapped the hulking shingle of soft focaccia stuffed with a heap of mortadella, pecorino cheese and an olive tapenade. Imagine me at a hipster barbershop, behind the check-in desk just guffawing at how GD good this sandwich was that a customer had to get my attention in order to pay for his chop. I was making very little money at the time and that $12 dollar sandwich was my magnificent splurge.
No fashion this week. It’s too hot. Just wear a tank top. Catch you next time, kids!
The show is a true gay millenial feat in that it elevates Google Slides into an art form. Also, it’s directed by Sam Pinkleton Tony Winning-director of Oh, Mary!,
Whats’s with the resurgent bar/restaurant mural? Is that like an instagram thing? Watch this be an Times Style story in four-to-six months.
Or mortadella. (But let’s be real, mortadella is just bologna with hand gestures. They’re twins, not sisters.)
In a house of seven people, having the place to just yourself and the dog for even 3 hours felt like some kind of miracle–what was it to know the house this quiet?
I still mourn their house salad studded with sliced grapes and slivers of chives and the soft serve that came in a drinking glass.
The friendly girls behind the counter, the hand written menu, the emphasis on pickles. Saltie was a pure manifestation of third-wave Williamsburg, which was essentially my first-wave Williamsburg, and might have been the peek of the neighborhood. Today the space is occupied by a Court Street Grocers outpost. Nice, but not the same.
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