When we first moved to the city, it didn’t take much to become fascinated with real estate. I thought that if we could just make enough money to buy a plot of land to build a 15-story parking lot, we would be fine. A business that pulls in cash with few employees. Those days are gone.

For a long time, we never had the capital to buy anything other than a home, but I kept looking because I love building things and real estate. We were invested in venture, not real estate. There was a time in the late 90s when I wanted to start buying residential properties near subway stops in Brooklyn.  Again, not the right time for us.

Eventually, we began buying and building real estate. Given today’s real estate market, I was not the only one looking for opportunities. Unfortunately, too many real estate landlords are awful landlords. The bad ones don’t care about their tenants. We do.

There are countless small property owners who have been hit with rising taxes, insurance premiums, and, of course, rent regulations who are getting squeezed every day. Because of this, many of these buildings are not maintained, and the tenants are the ones who pay for it. Freezing the rent is not the answer because real estate is far from one-size-fits-all.

Zohran is trying to reshape real estate policy. He is trying to build more housing, changing the simple economics of supply and demand. He established the pied-a-terre tax, which I am a big fan of. Those who own second homes in NYC must pay an annual tax based on the value of the apartment. As they should. The fear is that these people will leave the city, but they won’t, because NYC is a luxury, and they all love coming here for their culture fix, which is why many own places here even though Florida is their “place of residency”. Zohran is forcing landlords to fix properties, as he should. Some NYCHA buildings are uninhabitable, yet people still live there, and it is unacceptable.

I have been reading There Is No Place For Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone, who won a Pulitzer for this book. I keep thinking rinse, wash, repeat. The cadence of the book hits as if you are going through the highs and lows of getting housing yourself. It is painful, but maybe that is the point. Zohran makes the point, which I do agree with, that for NYC to continue to succeed, we need more affordable housing for our many working people. It is not like we have built high-speed rail lines to get people in and out of NYC with ease, so they can live in affordable areas. The social programs have been slashed, and given the cost, compared to the positive outcomes that would help many, it makes zero sense that we have so many people in need of housing. Compassion and housing go a long way.

Real estate owners have built tremendous wealth over the last couple of decades, setting prices that continue to rise without reacting to the market because being empty is fine with them. It is killing our city.

Where should the power be?

The cat is out of the bag with cannabis. Anyone who thinks this goes back in the box is out of their mind — I said it last week, and I’ll say it again: more Americans partake in cannabis now than smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol. Americans like to drink, smoke, gamble, and have sex. Shocking, I know. We’re not unringing that bell. So now the interesting question is what happens with psychedelics and/or mushrooms as it moves towards big pharma and legalization. And it’s moving fast.

Back in April, Trump signed an executive order directing the FDA to fast-track psychedelic drug review. Within a week, the FDA had already handed out priority vouchers — the kind that compress a 10-to-12-month review down to one or two — to three companies working on psilocybin and MDMA-like compounds for treatment-resistant depression and PTSD. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Eli Lilly announced it was acquiring a psychedelics company called AtaiBeckley for $2.8 billion in cash, with an additional $1 billion possible if certain milestones are met. That’s not a biotech flyer. That’s the company that gave us Prozac writing a multibillion-dollar check to get into this space. Their lead drug isn’t LSD, by the way — it’s a synthetic DMT compound, delivered as a nasal spray in a clinical setting, with patients monitored for a couple of hours after dosing. It’s shown real, lasting results for depression that hasn’t responded to anything else, although I know many who have done ketamine treatments for depression that have been incredibly successful.

We were talking about this at dinner last week. Are we excited, or are we scared? Because we’ve known for a long time that psychedelics genuinely help with PTSD, treatment-resistant depression, and other things traditional medicine hasn’t cracked, or we have not figured it out yet. That part isn’t in question anymore. What is in question is everything else. How does this actually get sold? Do you go to a dispensary-style storefront, or does this stay locked up in a clinical setting where you show up, take it under supervision, and go home? Is anyone going to let people walk out with a bottle and dose themselves at home, the way microdosing culture already does informally — because if so, who’s making sure what’s actually in it? Will this spur a larger illegal market?

Pharma has the money and the infrastructure to do massive, real research. But pharma also has a long history of cutting corners once something’s profitable, and I don’t think anyone’s forgotten that. How oxy was foisted on anyone with pain to become addicts was not that long ago. I don’t have the answers here. I just think it’s worth sitting with before the industry gets built. Considering the states haven’t done the best job of rolling out the cannabis industry, I fear what a mess this will be, although pharma has tons of cash with deep pockets for themselves and the government, and that is all they really care about.

What do you think — clinic-only, or eventually something more open access? I’m genuinely curious where people land on this.

David Garrett sent me an email out of nowhere. I answer my emails, so when I got his, I looked him up and discovered he had started an organization called the Institute for Primary Facts. He’s the man behind the Trump-Epstein bookmobile. A lovely guy. He did this for his daughter, and once he started, he couldn’t let it go.

Working with the survivors, he and his team took the entirety of the Epstein files — all the pages the DOJ was forced to release — and turned them into a physical museum installation drawing over 15,000 people in NY and DC. One went up in a converted gallery in Tribeca. Another, even bigger, in DC: 3,500 bound volumes lining the walls of a 12,000-square-foot space. You walk in, and you can read the actual evidence, page by page, that’s been buried, redacted, and suppressed from public view for years.

It’s such a simple idea — put the evidence in front of people and let them draw their own conclusions. Power to the people. It might be the only real way any of us ever find out what actually happened behind closed doors with Trump, Epstein, and everyone who protected them for decades. I asked Garrett the obvious question: what’s your endgame here? He wants to build a Trump presidential library before Trump does — regardless of what happens to Trump between now and then — so that when it’s built, it tells the truth. Not the version Trump would write about himself, the one where he lies every day and then lies about the lies. The real one.

Then came the moment that actually gives me hope. Last week the Senate was set to vote on Todd Blanche’s confirmation as Attorney General; Garrett’s team and Epstein survivors loaded up the bookmobile, drove it to Capitol Hill, and hand-delivered specially bound volumes of the files straight to the offices of the senators who’d be voting — every relevant page bookmarked, every survivor’s testimony highlighted. Then they went on cable, city to city, and kept up the pressure. Prediction markets on Blanche’s confirmation had been sitting comfortably high for him. Within about 24 hours of those books landing on senators’ desks, the odds cratered. That’s the part I keep coming back to.

In a moment where crazy, selfish power-monger people are running the country, this was a reminder that pressure — real, physical, undeniable pressure — still moves things. I want to believe people win in the end. This was a small, real piece of evidence that we can. The bookmobile is going on the road before the midterms — Texas, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, Florida, and more stops are being added.

If this is the kind of thing you want to see more of, here’s a donation link. They need it to keep the truck moving and to support the survivors along the way. Knowing that there are people like David Garrett out there who care about the future of this country and are building organic movements gives me much-needed hope.

Late in Albany’s last budget session at some ungodly hour in Albany, union Local 338 pushed legislation through that would replace the mandatory LPA (labor peace agreement) that every cannabis business must sign to get a license. It was passed, as most who voted for it probably had no idea what they were voting on or were strong-armed, and it now sits on Governor Hochul’s desk awaiting a signature or a veto.

Here’s what it does: it kills the labor peace agreement requirement that every cannabis dispensary in New York has been forced to sign since day one. In exchange, it creates a three-person Cannabis Wage Board — one industry rep and two union members — with the power to set wages across the entire industry. Let that sit for a second. Name me another private industry in this state where a union gets a permanent seat on a government board that sets wages for government-regulated businesses. I can’t think of one. This didn’t happen by accident.

Here’s the backstory to understand why this happened now. When I first got into this business, I was genuinely righteous about the labor peace agreement. I am always righteous, so there is that too. These are small stores and farms — some of them employ three or four people, in total. Not three or four hundred. The state forced every one of them to sign an agreement with a union before they could even open. What happened next, in stores that size, was predictable: the union attempted to move in by trying to convince employees that they deserve more and their employers are not doing right by them. This rhetoric changes the culture of these tiny businesses overnight. Not in a good way. It has been disruptive to owners who are already fighting for their lives just to keep the lights on.

So Gotham sued. We took the Office of Cannabis Management to federal court, arguing that federal labor law is clear: employees get to choose their own union, or choose none at all. New York’s law gave cannabis workers exactly one option — one union, take it or leave it — and that’s not legal under the National Labor Relations Act. This unlawfully preempts federal authority over private-sector labor relations. We haven’t won outright yet, but a federal judge has already agreed with us that dispensaries shouldn’t be forced to renew these agreements, and we’re waiting on the final written decision.

Instead of letting a court sort out whether the mandate was even legal, they went and attempted to get something arguably bigger — a permanent hand on the wage lever for the whole industry. Meanwhile, nobody in this business is making money. Price compression is brutal right now — the same customers who spent freely last year are back buying the same amount, but stores are pulling in 20 to 30% less from them because the state itself created the conditions for that compression. The OCM continues to issue licenses, effectively enabling people to lose money. And on top of it, dispensaries still can’t do anything outside their four walls. No weddings, no venues, no concerts — because the law that governs cannabis states that cannabis can’t be sold or distributed anywhere alcohol is served, and that’s been read broadly enough to choke off almost every path to additional revenue.

Look to California if you want to see where this all leads. It’s been legal there for consumers for almost a decade now, and the illicit market is bigger than the legal one — not close, either. Licensed growers are producing a fraction of what unlicensed operators are still pumping out. Ten years in, and the state hasn’t come close to killing the market it was supposed to replace. Whose fault is that? Not the consumers. Not the operators trying to build real businesses under real rules. It’s the state — every time you tax a legal product until it can’t compete with the guy who pays no tax at all, every time you bury a small operator in compliance costs while the illegal seller has none, you’re not protecting a nascent industry that pays taxes to the state. And when no one is truly working to shut down the illegal market, then the state is subsidizing the illicit market.

New York has the exact same problem brewing, and nobody in Albany wants to say it out loud: you cannot regulate and tax an industry into oblivion and then act shocked when its underground version thrives. There are illegal shops everywhere, from countless websites that sell products and ship across the country, to bodegas all over the city selling products, to trucks selling products, to illegal dispensaries selling products. So here’s where we are: an industry that employs people and pays taxes, but can’t grow beyond its own storefronts, and that may soon have a union sitting on the board that decides what everyone gets paid — a union with no capital in these businesses and no risk if they fail.

I’m not anti-union. I’m very much pro-labor. There is a big difference. What I’m against is telling small business owners they have no say in who represents their employees, and telling those employees they don’t get a choice either. If you think this is as backward as I do, call your state senator, your assembly member, and the governor’s office. Tell them the data that came out last week is clear: cannabis is used by more Americans than tobacco or alcohol, and it’s time the industry stopped being treated like a second-class citizen just because it doesn’t have the lobbying money the alcohol and tobacco industries do. What we do have is the ability to grow, employ people, and pay our taxes, unlike the illicit market.

As a country and a state, we should be investing in the next wave of industries, not holding them back by clinging to past vice competition. If Hochul signs this into law, it will destroy the cannabis industry. The industry is already angry at every misstep; it will scream loud and clear to everyone that the leaders in the state don’t care about the future of cannabis, and we will all wonder (as we all do these days) what tit-for-tat was given to get this signed?

I got this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. Deb Perlman started Smitten Kitchen twenty years ago out of her tiny NY kitchen. She published her debut cookbook in 2012. At that time, a new up-and-coming company, Food 52, put on an annual event focused on the top cookbooks of the year. I sat on the board of Food 52 and was one of the first investors, so, of course, I attended that event. After that event, I remember thinking about the new businesses being created on the web platform and how many almost fell into it, building loyal audiences around things they liked to do, hence Deb.

I love her success. She disrupted an old business model by creating a food blog with recipes she loved and sharing them with the world, turning it into a financial career through cookbooks and more. Her recipes are always good.

This summer I made this and have made it again and again. This recipe works in the winter months too. It is so easy and a fantastic side dish.

Preheat the oven to 450.

Chop one head of cauliflower into small pieces. Chop one head of Savoy cabbage into thin strips, then cut in half. Toss them both together with olive oil and kosher salt, then spread them all across a rimmed cookie sheet. Roast until the vegetables are nice and crispy, some very dark brown. I did this early in the day and reheated it just before tossing in the dressing and serving.

Whisk together 2 tbsp lemon juice, 2 tbsp tahini, 1 tbsp olive oil, and a little water if the dressing is too thick.

Toss and mix the dressing and vegetables, warm, and serve. A winner!

Mike was a fixture out in Amagansett (on the left). We’d known him for over thirty years, since we first started coming out here. He owned the fish store next to the IGA — which isn’t even an IGA anymore, though we all still call it that — and he was woven into the fabric of this community in a way that everyone experiences in their own neighborhoods. His spot was called Amagansett Fish Market, but we called it Mike’s.

You could walk in at ten in the morning or four in the afternoon and get a shot of tequila with him, or a beer, and just hang out. All the regulars were there. He’d sit at the high-top table that had a few chairs and watch soccer on the hanging TV. He knew his fish. His tuna salad was the best around. His lobster salad, his seaweed salad, and his taro root salad were also excellent— the guy was a genuine talent and a true character. We are missing those mainstays in our fridge every day this summer.

He let me borrow his pots over the years, come into the back kitchen, and show me how he did things. When he got sick last year and started having trouble sleeping, I brought him gummies back from the city to see if they’d help. This summer I drove up to the store, one of my first stops out east, to pick up the salads and say hi to Mike, and there was a sign that they were closed this summer due to Mike’s illness. I knew he’d been diagnosed with cancer last year.

About two weeks ago, he passed away. I think about him every time I drive up to that IGA for my weekly groceries. There is a hole in our summer. How many times did I call to say, “Can I get a lobster dinner for eight, pick up at six,” and he made it happen every time. I loved gossiping with him about what was going on in town. He always asked about the kids and the entire family. He knew us all. But that’s exactly what made him part of this place. Now I wonder who our fishmonger will be. Who do we go to now? I miss the camaraderie vs. buying from a place where you don’t know anyone behind the counter.

That’s the thing about everything local out here — it’s the people who make it what it is. Which is part of why I can’t wrap my head around what East Hampton has turned into. It looks like the Upper East Side now. I don’t go into town anymore unless I need to run an errand at Citarella or see a movie — there’s nothing left that feels like it belongs here. Even the old hardware store recently got sold to Hermès. How does that serve the people who actually live here year-round? Why would a year-round local ever need to shop for their kid’s clothes at Gucci? The town can’t seem to issue permits on time, but they don’t say much about the absurdity of luxury creeping into every last local thing. That’s a whole separate conversation.

For now, I just want to say I miss Mike. I’ll never forget him, and I’ll keep driving into the parking lot and looking at that fish store, hoping someone takes it over and keeps it going. It’s a reminder of how many different communities we all move through in a lifetime — none more important than another, necessarily, but each one real. You end up connecting with people almost by accident, and they become part of your life. There’s something genuinely beautiful about that, especially right now, watching so much hatred coming from the leader of this country. Being able to recognize and hold onto the warm, small communities in our lives feels essential right now. Rest in peace, Mike.

This past weekend I went to see a Lauryn Hill concert at the Clubhouse in East Hampton. In all the years I have been out east, I never knew this venue existed. It is a nice spot to have an outdoor event. It was produced by Murmrr and MRR Experiences. A tough business where organization is the key.

I don’t want to fully crap on the event because it was an entertaining evening and everyone certainly seemed to be enjoying themselves, but I have been to enough events and concerts in my life to know good execution when I see it. This would not be it.

The doors are supposed to open at four, and the show was originally supposed to come on at seven, but they sent an email changing it to six pm. Lauryn Hill is never on time, but I figured if they open at four, we can grab our picnic table, play some cards, have a drink, a smoke, and some food, and enjoy the weather and venue. The thing is, they don’t actually let us in until five forty, so we have to stand in line until then.

Nobody is allowed to bring in food or drinks; everything is available for purchase on the premises. There are three food trucks and a bar, and inside the VIP section, there is more food and drinks to buy that they are making somewhere. A lobster roll is $45, but again, it is the Hamptons. But here’s the kicker: when you pay with Apple Pay, you can’t even complete the transaction until you select a tip of twenty to thirty percent. Essentially, the ticket-buyers are subsidizing the staff’s wages because God knows these venues are barely paying minimum wage, if that, and making up the difference through everyone’s purchases at checkout. The attendees are all footing the payroll. There were several Europeans in the audience, foreign languages being spoken, and I am sure they can not believe this is how this works.

Around six-thirty, instead of Lauryn Hill, a Bob Marley cover band takes the stage. They first said they were going to play four songs, but instead they played for over two hours. It was painful. Akin to sitting through a bad bar mitzvah band. There is nothing worse than bad live music. Lauryn Hill eventually comes on at 830— no apology, no acknowledgment, because that’s just who she is. I have been listening to her from the early Fugees albums and then, of course, the iconic album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and it’s genuinely some of the best work of that era. I know she is always late.

Hill sold off her music rights years ago, so now when she performs, she reworks the songs so they don’t match the original recordings — because if they matched too closely, she’d owe royalties to whoever owns the rights. So you’re standing there recognizing the song but not really. After four or five numbers like that, we’d had enough and left.

Now here’s what actually gets me. Roughly twelve hundred people are attending. Lots of people smoking weed, and asking others if they can have a hit. Gotham couldn’t sell a single gram there — not because of demand, because the demand was screaming at us — but because liquor lobbyists wrote it into New York’s OCM regulations that cannabis can’t be sold or distributed anywhere there is a liquor license. We would have done incredible business that night, and the concertgoers would have been thrilled because many had probably smoked through what they had waiting for the event. It’s absurd.

If you think this is as ridiculous as I do, call your state senator. Call your delegates. Tell them this carve-out for the alcohol industry makes zero sense, and it’s time to fix it. As for the promoter, I am not sure I will ever attend one of their events again. The whole operation was disorganized at every turn. Maybe they don’t care about repeat business.

The best call of the night was leaving after we had enough. We got out of the parking lot with ease. I can’t even imagine what a shitshow getting out of that lot last night would have looked like.

Gotham Growth is Gotham’s business accelerator. We don’t take a piece of the business; we do not charge a dime. It actually costs us money, but we do this because it is essential to help underserved brands in the cannabis industry rise up. This industry was supposedly designed to make a positive financial impact on those who have been hurt by the absurd war on drugs, but for all the rhetoric from the government, that has not been the case. At Gotham, we decided it was our responsibility to do something.

Along with Gia Moron, we created a six-week curriculum for four Black-owned brands that applied to the program. We brought in people from multiple industries to discuss brand leadership, product development, market alignment, operations, risk management, sales, the realities of investors, finance and funding metrics, storytelling, pitching, visibility, and, later, the use of AI.

At our next The Highrise Conference on October 22nd (more on that soon), each team will present their products, and those products will also be on Gotham’s shelves starting July 31st. If you are around, come meet the Founders on July 31st, between 4-7 at Gotham’s Williamsburg store in the Domino Sugar Factory at 296 Kent Avenue

Here is the lineup of these new brands to watch out for!

I love technology. I really do. I’m all in, and have always been.

But let’s talk about everything we touch. Making coffee, starting a car, turning the lights on in your house, listening to music- it’s all tied to an app.

In the past, you used to hand someone a key. Your kid, your friend, the valet, whoever. They drove off. Simple. Now? My car opens with an app or a card. Which means if I want to lend my car to someone, I basically can’t. No key, no borrowing. You’re screwed.

We have a coffee machine that our daughter jokes about every morning, saying she needs to go get her phone to get a cup.

Even turning the TV on and off can be a challenge. The lighting in the house has long given up the on/off switch.

I don’t have a key to my own house anymore. We’ve got keypads. Codes. Electronic everything.

And look, I get the appeal. It’s slick. It’s modern. It is efficient (when it works); I like the concept.

But there’s something to be said for on, off, and dim. That’s it. A key you can hand off. A switch you can flip. No app, no battery dying at the worst moment, no code to remember or share.

I’m not saying go back. I’m saying — sometimes I long for those days. The simple, dumb, reliable version of things. Where a key was just a key, and anyone holding it could drive your car.

Technology’s amazing. But every now and then, give me the analog version, maybe just for the car.

Last week, New York State launched “Cannabis Honestly” — a statewide campaign to help students, schools, and parents talk to young people about weed. It came out of a yearlong listening effort: 23 facilitated sessions with more than 450 young people, parents, educators, and community members. The goal is to dispel myths and give families real tools for the conversation.

This should have been launched before the first legal dispensary hit the street, but better late than never. Here’s the thing. It’s pretty simple. Talk about weed to your kids like you talk about alcohol and sex. Directly, honestly, early. Here’s what’s actually scary: roughly a third of teens surveyed couldn’t correctly guess the legal age for cannabis consumption in New York. And that confusion isn’t happening in a vacuum.

It’s happening while illegal stores are everywhere — bodegas, underground operations, unlicensed delivery services all selling product with zero oversight. So parents are scared. Of course they are because you have to be 21 to buy legal weed, and the reality is kids can buy weed underage anywhere but a legal dispensary. Just like alcohol and sex (although you don’t have to be of age to have sex), teenagers are partaking in all of it. If you don’t think so, you are kidding yourself.

Parents are not just worried their kid might try weed — they’re worried their kid will buy something laced with god-knows-what from an unlicensed shop down the block. A campaign teaching families how to talk about cannabis? Great. Necessary, even. But it’s treating the symptom, not the disease. The real problem isn’t the conversation — it’s that illegal weed is still everywhere, undermining the entire point of legalization and regulation in the first place. You can hand every parent in New York a conversation guide. It won’t matter if the corner bodega is still selling untested product to a sixteen-year-old. Fix the enforcement problem. Then the conversation gets a lot easier.