Tag: Lifestyle

Brigitte Bardot, iconic French actress and activist, dies at 91

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PARIS — Brigitte Bardot, the French 1960s sex symbol who became one of the greatest screen sirens of the 20th century and later a militant animal rights activist and far-right supporter, has died. She was 91.

Bardot died Sunday at her home in southern France, according to Bruno Jacquelin, of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the protection of animals. Speaking to The Associated Press, he gave no cause of death, and said that no arrangements had been made for funeral or memorial services. She had been hospitalized last month.

Bardot became an international celebrity as a sexualized teen bride in the 1956 movie “And God Created Woman.” Directed by then husband Roger Vadim, it triggered a scandal with scenes of the long-legged beauty dancing on tables naked.

At the height of a cinema career that spanned more than two dozen films and three marriages, Bardot came to symbolize a nation bursting out of bourgeois respectability. Her tousled, blond hair, voluptuous figure and pouty irreverence made her one of France’s best-known stars, even as she struggled with depression.

Such was her widespread appeal that in 1969 her features were chosen to be the model for “Marianne,” the national emblem of France and the official Gallic seal. Bardot’s face appeared on statues, postage stamps and coins.

‘’We are mourning a legend,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in an X post.

Bardot’s second career as an animal rights activist was equally sensational. She traveled to the Arctic to blow the whistle on the slaughter of baby seals. She also condemned the use of animals in laboratory experiments, and she opposed Muslim slaughter rituals.

“Man is an insatiable predator,” Bardot told The Associated Press on her 73rd birthday, in 2007. “I don’t care about my past glory. That means nothing in the face of an animal that suffers, since it has no power, no words to defend itself.”

Her activism earned her compatriots’ respect and, in 1985, she was awarded the Legion of Honor, the nation’s highest recognition.

Later, however, she fell from public grace as her animal protection diatribes took on a decidedly extremist tone. She frequently decried the influx of immigrants into France, especially Muslims.

She was convicted and fined five times in French courts of inciting racial hatred, in incidents inspired by her opposition to the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep during annual religious holidays.

Bardot’s 1992 marriage to fourth husband Bernard d’Ormale, a onetime adviser to far-right National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, contributed to her political shift. She described Le Pen, an outspoken nationalist with multiple racism convictions of his own, as a “lovely, intelligent man.”

In 2012, she supported the presidential bid of Marine Le Pen, who now leads her father’s renamed National Rally party. Le Pen paid homage Sunday to an “exceptional woman” who was “incredibly French.”

In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Bardot said in an interview that most actors protesting sexual harassment in the film industry were “hypocritical,” because many played “the teases” with producers to land parts.

She said she had never had been a victim of sexual harassment and found it “charming to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a nice little ass.”

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born Sept. 28, 1934, to a wealthy industrialist. A shy child, she studied classical ballet and was discovered by a family friend who put her on the cover of Elle magazine at age 14.

Bardot once described her childhood as “difficult” and said that her father was a strict disciplinarian who would sometimes punish her with a horse whip.

Vadim, a French movie produce who she married in 1952, saw her potential and wrote “And God Created Woman” to showcase her provocative sensuality, an explosive cocktail of childlike innocence and raw sexuality.

The film, which portrayed Bardot as a teen who marries to escape an orphanage and then beds her brother-in-law, had a decisive influence on New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, and came to embody the hedonism and sexual freedom of the 1960s.

The film was a box-office hit, and it made Bardot a superstar. Her girlish pout, tiny waist and generous bust were often more appreciated than her talent.

“It’s an embarrassment to have acted so badly,” Bardot said of her early films. “I suffered a lot in the beginning. I was really treated like someone less than nothing.”

Bardot’s unabashed, off-screen love affair with co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant eradicated the boundaries between her public and private life and turned her into a hot prize for paparazzi.

Bardot never adjusted to the limelight. She blamed the constant media attention for the suicide attempt that followed 10 months after the birth of her only child, Nicolas. Photographers had broken into her house two weeks before she gave birth to snap a picture of her pregnant.

Nicolas’ father was Jacques Charrier, a French actor who she married in 1959 but who never felt comfortable in his role as Monsieur Bardot. Bardot soon gave up her son to his father, and later said she had been chronically depressed and unready for the duties of being a mother.

“I was looking for roots then,” she said in an interview. “I had none to offer.”

In her 1996 autobiography “Initiales B.B.,” she likened her pregnancy to “a tumor growing inside me,” and described Charrier as “temperamental and abusive.”

Bardot married her third husband, West German millionaire playboy Gunther Sachs, in 1966, and they divorced three years later.

Among her films were “A Parisian” (1957); “In Case of Misfortune,” in which she starred in 1958 with screen legend Jean Gabin; “The Truth” (1960); “Private Life” (1962); “A Ravishing Idiot” (1964); “Shalako” (1968); “Women” (1969); “The Bear And The Doll” (1970); “Rum Boulevard” (1971); and “Don Juan” (1973).

With the exception of 1963’s critically acclaimed “Contempt,” directed by Godard, Bardot’s films were rarely complicated by plots. Often they were vehicles to display Bardot in scanty dresses or frolicking nude in the sun.

“It was never a great passion of mine,” she said of filmmaking. “And it can be deadly sometimes. Marilyn (Monroe) perished because of it.”

Bardot retired to her Riviera villa in St. Tropez at the age of 39 in 1973 after “The Woman Grabber.” As fans brought flowers to her home Sunday, the local St. Tropez administration called for “respect for the privacy of her family and the serenity of the places where she lived.”

She emerged a decade later with a new persona: An animal rights lobbyist, her face was wrinkled and her voice was deep following years of heavy smoking. She abandoned her jet-set life and sold off movie memorabilia and jewelry to create a foundation devoted exclusively to the prevention of animal cruelty.

Depression sometimes dogged her, and she said that she attempted suicide again on her 49th birthday.

Her activism knew no borders. She urged South Korea to ban the sale of dog meat and once wrote to U.S. President Bill Clinton asking why the U.S. Navy recaptured two dolphins it had released into the wild.

She attacked centuries-old French and Italian sporting traditions including the Palio, a free-for-all horse race, and campaigned on behalf of wolves, rabbits, kittens and turtle doves.

“It’s true that sometimes I get carried away, but when I see how slowly things move forward … my distress takes over,” Bardot told the AP when asked about her racial hatred convictions and opposition to Muslim ritual slaughter,

In 1997, several towns removed Bardot-inspired statues of Marianne after the actress voiced anti-immigrant sentiment. Also that year, she received death threats after calling for a ban on the sale of horse meat.

Environmental campaigner Paul Watson, who was beaten on a seal hunt protest in Canada alongside Bardot in 1977 and campaigned with her for five decades, acknowledged that “many disagreed with Brigitte’s politics or some of her views.”

“Her allegiance was not to the world of humans,” he said. “The animals of this world lost a wonderful friend today.”

Bardot once said that she identified with the animals that she was trying to save.

“I can understand hunted animals, because of the way I was treated,” Bardot said. “What happened to me was inhuman. I was constantly surrounded by the world press.”

___

Elaine Ganley provided reporting for this story before her retirement. Angela Charlton contributed to this report.

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December 28, 2025
New York subway ends its MetroCard era and switches fully to tap-and-go fares

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NEW YORK — When the MetroCard replaced the New York City subway token in 1994, the swipeable plastic card infused much-needed modernity into one of the world’s oldest and largest transit systems.

Now, more than three decades later, the gold-hued fare card and its notoriously finicky magnetic strip are following the token into retirement.

The last day to buy or refill a MetroCard is Dec. 31, 2025, as the transit system fully transitions to OMNY, a contactless payment system that allows riders to tap their credit card, phone or other smart device to pay fares, much like they do for other everyday purchases.

Transit officials say more than 90% of subway and bus trips are now paid using the tap-and-go system, introduced in 2019.

Major cities around the world, including London and Singapore, have long used similar contactless systems. In the U.S., San Francisco launched a pay-go system earlier this year, joining Chicago and others.

The humble MetroCard may have outlasted its useful life, but in its day it was revolutionary, says Jodi Shapiro, curator at the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn, which opened an exhibit earlier this month reflecting on the MetroCard’s legacy.

Before MetroCards, bus and subway riders relied on tokens, the brass-colored coins introduced in 1953 that were purchased from station booths. When the subway opened in 1904, paper tickets cost just a nickel, or about $1.82 in today’s dollars.

“There was a resistance to change from tokens to something else because tokens work,” Shapiro said on a recent visit to the museum, housed underground in a decommissioned subway station. “MetroCards introduced a whole other level of thinking for New Yorkers.”

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched public campaigns to teach commuters how to swipe the originally blue-colored cards correctly, hoping to avoid the dreaded error message or lost fares. Officials even briefly toyed with the idea of an quirky mascot, the Cardvaark, before coming to their senses.

The cards quickly became collectors items as the transit system rolled out special commemorative editions marking major events, such as the “Subway Series” between baseball’s New York Mets and the New York Yankees in the 2000 World Series. At the time, a fare cost $1.50.

Artists from David Bowie and Olivia Rodrigo to seminal New York hip hop acts, such as the Wu-Tang Clan, the Notorious B.I.G. and LL Cool J, have also graced the plastic card over the years, as have iconic New York shows like Seinfeld and Law & Order.

“For me, the most special cards are cards which present New York City to the world,” said Lev Radin, a collector in the Bronx. “Not only photos of landmarks, skylines, but also about people who live and make New York special.”

Perfecting the correct angle and velocity of the MetroCard swipe also became something of a point of pride separating real New Yorkers from those just visiting.

During her failed 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton, a former U.S. Senator from New York, took an excruciating five swipes at a Bronx turnstile. In fairness, her chief Democratic opponent at the time, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a native Brooklynite, didn’t even appear to realize tokens had been discontinued.

Unlike the MetroCard rollout, OMNY has required little adjustment.

Riders reluctant to use a credit card or smart device can purchase an OMNY card they can reload, similar to a MetroCard. Existing MetroCards will also continue to work into 2026, allowing riders to use remaining balances.

MTA spokespersons declined to comment, pointing instead to their many public statements as the deadline approaches.

The agency has said the changeover saves at least $20 million annually in MetroCard-related costs.

The new system also allows unlimited free rides within a seven-day period because the fare is capped after 12 rides. It’ll max out at $35 a week once the fare rises to $3 in January.

Still, new changes come with tradeoffs, with some critics raising concerns about data collection and surveillance.

Near Times Square on a recent morning, Ronald Minor was among the dwindling group of “straphangers” still swiping MetroCards.

The 70-year-old Manhattan resident said he’s sad to see them go. He has an OMNY card but found the vending machines to reload it more cumbersome.

“It’s hard for the elders,” Minor said as he caught a train to Brooklyn. “Don’t push us aside and make it like we don’t count. You push these machines away, you push us away.”

John Sacchetti, another MetroCard user at the Port Authority stop, said he likes being able to see his balance as he swipes through a turnstile so he knows how much he’s been spending on rides.

“It’s just like everything else, just something to get used to,” he said as he headed uptown. “Once I get used to it, I think it’ll be okay.”

___

Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo

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December 28, 2025
Sure, the newspaper informed. But as it fades, those who used it for other things must adjust, too

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The sun would rise over the Rockies, and Robin Gammons would run to the front porch to grab the morning paper before school.

She wanted the comics and her dad wanted sports, but the Montana Standard meant more than their daily race to grab “Calvin and Hobbes” or baseball scores. When one of the three kids made honor roll, won a basketball game or dressed a freshly slain bison for the History Club, appearing in the Standard’s pages made the achievement feel more real. Robin became an artist with a one-woman show at a downtown gallery and the front-page article went on the fridge, too. Five years later, the yellowing article is still there.

The Montana Standard slashed print circulation to three days a week two years ago, cutting back the expense of printing like 1,200 U.S. newspapers over the past two decades. About 3,500 papers closed over the same time. An average of two a week have shut this year.

That slow fade, it turns out, means more than changing news habits. It speaks directly to the newspaper’s presence in our lives — not just in terms of the information printed upon it, but in its identity as a physical object with many other uses.

“You can pass it on. You can keep it. And then, of course, there’s all the fun things,” says Diane DeBlois, one of the founders of the Ephemera Society of America, a group of scholars, researchers, dealers and collectors who focus on what they call “precious primary source information.”

“Newspapers wrapped fish. They washed windows. They appeared in outhouses,” she says. “And — free toilet paper.”

The downward lurch in the media business has changed American democracy over the last two decades — some think for better, many for worse. What’s indisputable: The gradual dwindling of the printed paper — the item that so many millions read to inform themselves and then repurposed into household workflows — has quietly altered the texture of daily life.

People used to catch up on the world, then save their precious memories, protect their floors and furniture, wrap gifts, line pet cages and light fires. In Butte, in San Antonio, Texas, in much of New Jersey and worldwide, lives without the printed paper are just a tiny bit different.

For newspaper publishers, the expense of printing is just too high in an industry that’s under strain in an online society. For ordinary people, the physical paper is joining the pay phone, the cassette tape, the answering machine, the bank check, the sound of the internal combustion engine and the ivory-white pair of women’s gloves as objects whose disappearance marks the passage of time.

“Very hard to see it while it’s happening, much easier to see things like that in even modest retrospect,” says Marilyn Nissenson, co-author of “Going Going Gone: Vanishing Americana.” “Young women were going to work and they wore them for a while and then one day they looked at them and thought, ‘This is ludicrous.’ That was a small but telling icon for a much larger social change.”

Nick Mathews thinks a lot about newspapers. Both of his parents worked at the Pekin (Illinois) Daily Times. He went on to become sports editor of the Houston Chronicle and, now, an assistant professor at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism.

“I have fond memories of my parents using newspapers to wrap presents,” he says. “In my family, you always knew that the gift was from my parents because of what it was wrapped in.”

In Houston, he recently recalled, the Chronicle reliably sold out when the Astros, Rockets or Texas won a championship because so many people wanted the paper as a keepsake.

Four years ago, Mathews interviewed 19 people in Caroline County, Virginia, about the 2018 shuttering of the Caroline Progress, a 99-year-old weekly paper that was shuttered months before its 100th anniversary.

In “Print Imprint: The Connection Between the Physical Newspaper and the Self,” published in the Journal of Communication Inquiry, wistful Virginians remember their senior high school portrait and their daughter’s picture in a wedding dress appearing in the Progress. Plus, one told Mathews, “My fingers are too clean now. I feel sad without ink smudges.”

Flush with cash from Omahans who invested years ago with local boy Warren Buffett, Nebraska Wildlife Rehab is a well-equipped center for migratory waterfowl, wading birds, reptiles, foxes, bobcats, coyotes, mink and beaver.

“We get over 8,000 animals every year and we use that newspaper for almost all of those animals,” Executive Director Laura Stastny says.

Getting old newspapers has never been a problem in this neighborly Midwestern city. Yet Stastny frets about the electronic future.

“We do pretty well now,” she says. “If we lost that source and had to use something else or had to purchase something, that, with the available options that we have now, would cost us more than $10,000 a year easily.”

That would be nearly 1% of the budget, Stastny says, but “I’ve never been in a position to be without them, so I might be shocked with a higher dollar figure.”

Until 1974, the Omaha World-Herald printed a morning edition and two afternoon ones, including a late-afternoon Wall Street Edition with closing prices.

“Afternoon major-league baseball was still standard then, so I got to gorge on both baseball and stock market facts,” an 85-year-old Buffett told the World-Herald in 2013, By then, he had become the world’s most famous investor and the paper’s owner.

The World-Herald ended its second afternoon edition in 2016 and Buffett left the newspaper business five years ago. Fewer than 60,000 households take the paper today, according to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, down from nearly more than 190,000 in 2005, or about one per household.

Few places symbolize the move from print to digital more than Akalla, a district of Stockholm where the ST01 data center sits at a site once occupied by the factory that prints Sweden main newspaper, Kaun says.

“They have less and less machines, and instead the building is taken over more and more by this co-location data center,” she says.

Data centers use huge amounts of energy, of course, and the environmental benefit of using less printing paper is also offset by the enormous popularity of online shopping.

“You will see a decline in printed papers, but there is a huge increase in packaging,” says Cecilia Alcoreza, manager, of forest sector transformation for the World Wildlife Fund.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution announced in August that it would stop providing a print edition at year’s end and go completely digital, making Atlanta the largest U.S. metro area without a printed daily newspaper.

The habit of following the news — of being informed about the world — can’t be divorced from the existence of print, says Anne Kaun, professor of media and communication studies at Södertörn University in Stockholm.

Children who grew up in homes with printed newspapers and magazines randomly came across news and socialized into a news-reading habit, Kaun observed. With cell phones, that doesn’t happen.

“I do think it meaningfully changes how we relate to each other, how we relate to things like the news. It is reshaping attention spans and communications,” says Sarah Wasserman, a cultural critic and assistant dean at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire who specializes in changing forms of communication.

“These things will always continue to exist in certain spheres and certain pockets and certain class niches,” she says. “But I do think they’re fading.”

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December 26, 2025
The Most Noteworthy L.A. Bar Openings of 2025

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If 2025 proved anything for L.A.’s hospitality scene, it’s that a hip bar can always attract a crowd. Los Angeles nightlife has been struggling to regain its footing since the Covid-19 pandemic, and though traditional clubs might be a thing of Hollywood’s storied past, craft cocktail bars are still all the craze.

Although old-school dive bars certainly serve an important purpose in the local drinking culture, swanky speakeasies, elegant lounges and neighborhood wine bars seem to be the most successful in getting Angelenos out of their house. In 2025, we saw exciting bar openings all across the city, from Melrose Hill to Venice.

The Benjamin on Melrose opened a separate bar concept upstairs, emphasizing the art and intricacies of mixology. Max Reis of Mírate opened a margarita-focused joint in Sherman Oaks, and Bar Jubilee took over the former Rock and Reilly’s space on the Sunset Strip. Downtown L.A. also welcomed another scenic rooftop restaurant, while CDMX-inspired Café Tondo took Chinatown by storm.

Whether you’re looking to sip a refreshing spritz in an upscale speakeasy by chef Evan Funke or dance the night away during a vinyl night in Virgil Village, these are the best L.A. bar openings of 2025.

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Allie Lebos

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December 26, 2025
Why your holiday gift returns might go to a landfill and what you can do about it

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The holiday season will soon come to a close, but the busiest time of the year for product returns is just beginning.

The National Retail Federation estimates 17% of holiday purchases will be sent back this year. More retailers are reporting extended return windows and increased holiday staff to handle the rush this year.

A major driver for returns is uncertainty. When we buy for other people, finding what they want is a bit of a guessing game. Online purchases have higher return rates because finding the right size and color is tough when you’re just staring at images on screens.

“Clothing and footwear, as you can imagine, because fit is such an important criteria, they have higher rates of returns,” said Saskia van Gendt, chief sustainability officer at Blue Yonder, which sells software designed to improve companies’ supply chain management.

Returns come with an environmental cost, but there’s a lot consumers and companies are doing to minimize it.

If a company sells a thing, it’s probably packaged in plastic. Plastic is made from oil, and oil production releases emissions that warm the planet. If that thing is bought online, it’s put on a plane or a train or a truck that usually uses oil-based fuel.

If you buy a thing and return it, it goes through most or all of that all over again.

And once those products are back with the retailer, they may be sent along to a refurbisher, liquidator, recycler or landfill. All these steps require more travel, packaging and energy, ultimately translating to more emissions. Joseph Sarkis, who teaches supply chain management at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, estimates that returning an item increases its impact on the planet by 25% to 30%.

Roughly a third of the time, those returns don’t make their way to another consumer. Because frequently, it’s not worth reselling.

If, for example, you get a phone, but you send it back because you don’t like the color, the seller has to pay for the fuel and equipment to get the phone back, and then has to pay for the labor to assess whether it has been damaged since leaving the facility.

“It can be quite expensive,” said Sarkis. “And if you send it out to a new customer and the phone is bad, imagine the reputational hit you’ll get. You’ll get another return and you’ll lose a customer who’s unhappy with the product or material. So the companies are hesitant to take that chance.”

Something as expensive as a phone might get sold to a secondary or refurbishment market. But that $6 silicone spatula you got off Amazon? Probably not worth it. Plus, some stuff — think a bathing suit or a bra — is less attractive to customers if there’s a chance it’s been resold. The companies know that.

And that’s where the costs of returns are more than just environmental — and consumers wind up paying. Even free returns aren’t really free.

“Refurbishment, inspection, repackaging, all of these things get factored into the retail price,” said Christopher Faires, assistant professor of logistics and supply chain management at Georgia Southern University.

If you want to reduce the impact of your returns, the first move is to increase their chances of resale. Be careful not to damage it, and reuse the packaging to send it back, said Cardiff University logistics and operations management lecturer Danni Zhang.

If you have to return something, do it quickly. That ugly Christmas sweater you got at the white elephant office party has a much better chance of selling on Dec. 20 than it does on Jan. 5. Zhang said it’s not worth the cost to the company to store that sweater once it’s gone out of season.

Another tip: in-person shopping is better than online because purchases get returned less often, and in-person returns are better, too — because those items get resold more often. Zhang said it reduces landfill waste. Sarkis said it reduces emissions because companies with brick-and-mortar locations spread out across the country and closer to consumers thus move restocked goods shorter distances.

“If I can return in-store, then I definitely will,” Zhang said. “The managers can put that stuff back to the market as soon as possible.”

Obviously the best thing consumers can do is minimize returns. Many shoppers engage in “bracketing behavior,” or buying multiple sizes of the same item, keeping what fits, and returning the rest.

“This behavior of bringing the dressing room to our homes is not sustainable,” said Faires.

If you’re buying for someone else, you can also consider taking the guesswork out of the equation and going for a gift card.

“I know we do really want to pick up something really nice to express our love for our friends or our family. But if we are more sustainable, probably the gift card will be much better than just purchasing the product,” Zhang said.

Sarkis wants to see companies provide more information in product descriptions about the environmental impact of returning an item, or how much of the purchase price factors in return costs.

“But I don’t know if they want to send a negative message,” he said. “If you’re telling someone to stop something because of negative results, that’s not going to sell.”

Sarkis and Zhang both say charging for returns would help. Already Amazon is requiring customers pay in certain situations.

On the tech side, Blue Yonder’s recent acquisition of Optoro, a company that provides a return management system for retailers and brands, uses a software to quickly assess the condition of returned products and route them to stores that are most likely to resell them.

“Having that process be more digitized, you can quickly assess the condition and put it back into inventory,” said van Gendt. “So that’s a big way to just avoid landfill and also all of the carbon emissions that are associated with that.”

Clothing is returned most often. Many sizes do not reflect specific measurements, like women’s dresses, so they vary a lot between brands. Zhang said better sizing could help reduce the need for returns. On top of that, Sarkis said more 3D imaging and virtual reality programs could help customers be more accurate with their purchases, saving some returns.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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December 26, 2025
What It Really Takes to Build Staying Power in New York’s Frenetic Food Scene

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A candid look at modern bakery economics from one of NYC’s most watched shops. Alexander Stein

This Q&A is part of Observer’s Expert Insights series, where industry leaders, innovators and strategists distill years of experience into direct, practical takeaways and deliver clarity on the issues shaping their industries. In a New York food scene defined by relentless turnover and algorithm-fueled hype, Radio Bakery stands out for a different reason: it has built genuine staying power.

Led by chef and co-owner Kelly Mencin, Radio Bakery has become one of the city’s most consistently buzzy—and influential—bakery brands. With locations in Greenpoint and Prospect Heights, Radio is known for its seasonal pastries, savory-forward menu and lines that seem to materialize regardless of weather, press cycles or platform trends. The bakery has earned praise from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and daytime television alike, but its real achievement may be cultural rather than critical: Radio feels embedded in its neighborhoods rather than extracted from them.

At a moment when many food businesses chase virality, Mencin has built Radio around repetition, rigor and restraint. Menu innovation is constant, but never at the expense of execution. Scarcity exists, but as a function of space and process, not manufactured exclusivity. Social media plays a role in visibility, yet the brand’s identity is grounded in what happens on the floor: the rhythm of service, the confidence of the team and the reliability of a loaf of bread that tastes the same every day.

In this conversation, Mencin unpacks the business of running a modern bakery at scale—what it takes to sustain demand in a trend-saturated market, how systems and leadership protect creative integrity and why community collaboration remains central to Radio’s growth strategy. From managing hype and seasonality to navigating post-pandemic shifts in consumer taste, Mencin offers a pragmatic look at how durable brand equity is built in hospitality, one batch, one service and one neighborhood at a time.

Chef and co-owner Kelly Mencin oversees Radio Bakery’s culinary direction, with a focus on systems, seasonality and long-term sustainability. Courtesy Radio Bakery

Radio Bakery has become one of those rare New York spots that consistently draws a line around the block. Beyond great pastries, what are the key ingredients that create that kind of sustained enthusiasm and loyalty?

Consistency and passion. One of our neighbors down the street at our Greenpoint location comes in every single day for a loaf of our seeded bread. Every day. He has come to expect that the bread will be the same, if not better, every day, and if it’s not, he will let us know! I say passion, but what I am really trying to convey is energy. When you walk into Radio, the energy from the bakers, sandwich cooks and servers is palpable. You can feel the heat from the ovens, smell the croissants, watch the cookies being scooped. The music is on, the staff is chattering. It just feels good to be in the space. People want to be around what makes them feel good.

Radio is known for its seasonal “drops” that feel both curated and consistent. How do you balance creativity with consistency, especially when developing new or seasonal items that customers now expect to sell out?

We have a few factors we look at. The two biggest ones are scalability and execution. Anyone can make something perfect once. The biggest test is making 60 to 180 of that same item, perfectly, every single time—and not letting it wreck service. Then, that perfect execution needs to be taught to our bakers. Can they all pipe perfectly? Maybe not. Can we teach them to? We’ll try our hardest. If it can’t be executed at a high level, we won’t run the item.

New York’s food scene moves fast, and trends turn over even faster. What’s your strategy for staying relevant without chasing every new flavor or format that pops up?

Simple, delicious food will always be relevant. We focus on seasonality more than anything else and let the ingredients speak for themselves.

From your vantage point, how has the business of bakeries evolved post-pandemic? Are there lasting shifts in consumer behavior, operations or expectations that you’ve had to adapt to?

I am still in awe of how many bakeries keep opening up every season since the pandemic! New York City has no shortage of sweet tooths. The biggest shift, in my opinion, is in people’s taste. More and more, I am seeing bakeries put savory pastries on the menu or sandwiches. We have been lucky enough that our model has worked for us extremely well. From the start, we were making savory croissant-based pastries and different focaccias and sandwiches. People want to come in and get a savory item and a sweet item, more often than not.

Social media has played a role in Radio’s visibility. What’s your philosophy around online storytelling? How do you translate something as sensory as a pastry into digital moments that resonate?

I knew from the start that I wanted our Instagram to be a platform for inspiration, not only for industry vets but for food lovers in general. I think our page resonates with so many people because it isn’t too manicured. There’s a good range of professional photos, behind-the-scenes videos of our processes and staff faces.

You’ve built a model that embraces scarcity without leaning on exclusivity. How do you think about managing hype, especially around holiday drops or social-media-driven surges in demand?

To be honest, the “hype” aspect of radio bakery is still a hard pill for me to swallow. We didn’t create Radio Bakery as a “hype” or “viral” bakery. Radio’s intention has always been to create simple, craveable food. The scarcity aspect only comes from the fact that our baking spaces are so small—there is a limit to how much production (or people) we can fit in each space. When it comes to managing the hype, we try to remind guests that most items take three days to make, we are making as much as we can and that if they miss out on one drop, there will always be another. We will never sacrifice quality for quantity.

Radio Bakery has become a cultural touchpoint as much as a culinary one. How intentional has that been, and what role does community play in your brand strategy?

Community has always played a huge role in how radio functions. Radio started as a pop-up. We reached out to industry friends who ran our favorite businesses (Mel the Baker, Bonnie’s, Claud) and literally popped up in their spaces selling what we were testing. It created an amazing community pocket in each area of the city. Once we opened Radio, we decided to make it a point to continue to do pop-ups and collabs with other like-minded people. It allows us to connect in a meaningful way with other people and businesses we’re excited about, keeps us learning and it keeps our guests engaged.

Many hospitality founders talk about the challenge of scaling without losing soul. As you’ve expanded from Greenpoint to Prospect Heights, what have you learned about growth and maintaining a distinct brand identity?

Radio wouldn’t be able to grow as successfully as we have if we didn’t have a strong management foundation. Each bakery relies on a “Bakery Chef”—think of it as a Chef de Cuisine—that runs the back-of-house operations at each location. They each bring their own management style, ideas and culture to each bakery. We learned early on that I, personally, cannot help radio grow and thrive if I am deep in the day-to-day operations. Instead, I’ve taken on the role of culinary director, essentially working with the bakery chefs side by side, creating new menu items, dialing in the current menu and looking ahead. Nina, our general manager, also goes back and forth between both bakeries, helping to oversee the FOH operations and the overall growth of the bakeries. It’s true what they say—teamwork really does make the dream work!

nside Radio Bakery’, where compact production spaces, open kitchens and steady rhythm shape both the guest experience and daily operations. Alexander Stein

Consistency is a constant challenge in high-volume bakeries. What systems or team philosophies help you maintain Radio’s quality and creative integrity at scale?

The biggest lesson we learned this year was creating SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for everything! From how we build our sandwiches to how we create a weekend special. Even then, we look at all of our recipes and SOPs as “living documents.” Some of our recipes have three to five different versions of them all saved in our library.

Having updated recipes is only the first part of the consistency challenge. Proper communication between managers and staff is the other part of it. We’re all learning and teaching in real time.

The holiday season also puts a spotlight on leadership, especially in a high-pressure, high-visibility business. What practices help you lead your team through those peak periods effectively?

It’s going to sound simple stupid, but I am so big on getting enough sleep, eating healthy meals throughout the day (instead of just snacking on sugar) and making time for myself to either run or go for a walk. I am lucky that I am able to carve out time for myself during the workday to step outside, get some sunshine and go for a run. It gives me a reset during a busy day and lets me keep showing up positive for my team.

It’s been a learning curve, but I have also come to realize that leaders “bring the weather” with them. I try to hit the ground running when I come into work, exude high energy and positivity and give out a LOT of affirmations.

From menu innovation to brand identity, what’s your process for deciding when to iterate and when to hold onto a core classic?

We are constantly iterating, refining and tasting our menu, from the core classics to our seasonal items. Radio’s menu was designed with several aspects in mind: flavor (a cinnamon item, a citrus item, a vegetarian savory, a fruit item), texture (chewy, crunchy, soft, sticky), and shape (pinwheel, claw, round, square). So, whenever we choose to change an item, it has to fit into its specific category. As far as seasonal items, we retest and taste and tinker with whatever we ran the previous year before deciding that we will run with that again. If we want to try something new, it has to be better and more craveable than what we have previously run.

Looking ahead to 2026, what does thoughtful growth look like for Radio Bakery? Are there ways you’re thinking about expanding the brand—or protecting its essence—as demand continues to build?

Right now, I am trying to focus on two big-ticket items: one, mentoring and growing our team and two, developing systems that make everyone’s job more streamlined. As unsexy as that sounds, the team and our systems are a big reason for Radio’s success. Having a team that loves to teach and mentor translates into bakers and servers who are knowledgeable and confident. Having the right systems in place allows us to scale up production while still making crazy delicious product. Tangible growth-wise, I am so excited that we are expanding our production space at our original Greenpoint location with the hope that we can have more diverse offerings throughout the day.

A classic croissant from Radio Bakery, where laminated dough is treated as both a technical discipline and a foundation for seasonal variation. Alexander Stein

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Sonia Rubeck

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December 26, 2025
From red donkeys to vibrant art: Colorblind painter’s colorful journey

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DORAL, Fla. — When Fernando Dávila was 8 years old in Colombia, he failed a drawing class because he painted donkeys red.

There was a reason for that: He is colorblind.

Now the 72-year-old Dávila is an established and respected artist whose vibrant paintings have been exhibited in South America, Europe and the United States.

“I have the most wonderful job in the world, which is painting every morning,” Dávila said from his studio in a Miami suburb. “To mix colors. To have joy to share with the world, that’s really my passion.”

He started off painting only in black and white until he was around 30 years old because of his colorblindness, a congenital condition which makes it difficult for people to tell the difference between certain colors, particularly red and green, and shades of color. There is no cure for the condition, which for Dávila also makes the colors pink, violet, turquoise and yellow-green confusing.

Since the mid-1980s, Dávila has painted in color through the help of glasses developed by an ophthalmologist in New York, where Dávila was living at the time. One lens is transparent and the other is shaded red, and they help him discriminate between contrasting shades that normally blur together. With the lenses, he can see almost two-thirds of the colors, but without them he only sees around 40% of the colors.

Dávila compared his condition to having a box of chocolates but only being able to eat a sample of the selection. He says he has such a strong desire to see every color.

“It’s something that I miss in my life, that if somebody says, ‘Look at this flower,’ which is bright, bright pink, I want to do it,” he said. “It’s something that comes from my heart so passionately. I can feel the vibration of color.”

Colorblindness runs his family. A grandfather and some great uncles only saw in black and white, while his mother and her three sisters also were colorblind even though the condition is rarer in women. His two brothers also have trouble discriminating between colors.

Dávila has spent his career in Colombia, New York and Florida. He was awarded the “Order of Democracy” by the Colombian Congress in 1999 for his contribution to the arts. He also has published two hardcover books and many catalogues about his paintings, and his work has appeared at major auctions including Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

His paintings include romantic images of men and women embracing and landscapes, often using the color blue as a foundation.

“I think color is one of the most important things in life,” he said. “And especially for me.”

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Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida contributed to this report.

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December 25, 2025
Virtual reality opens doors for older people to build closer connections in real life

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LOS GATOS, Calif. — Like many retirement communities, The Terraces serves as a tranquil refuge for a nucleus of older people who no longer can travel to faraway places or engaging in bold adventures.

But they can still be thrust back to their days of wanderlust and thrill-seeking whenever caretakers at the community in Los Gatos, California, schedule a date for residents — many of whom are in their 80s and 90s — to take turns donning virtual reality headsets.

Within a matter of minutes, the headsets can transport them to Europe, immerse them in the ocean depths or soar them on breathtaking hang-gliding expeditions while they sit by each other. The selection of VR programming was curated by Rendever, a company that has turned a sometimes isolating form of technology into a catalyst for better cognition and social connections in 800 retirement communities in the United States and Canada.

A group of The Terraces residents who participated in a VR session earlier this year found themselves paddling their arms alongside their chairs as they swam with a pod of dolphins while watching one of Rendever’s 3D programs. “We got to go underwater and didn’t even have to hold our breath!” exclaimed 81-year-old Ginny Baird following the virtual submersion.

During a session featuring a virtual ride in a hot-air balloon, one resident gasped, “Oh my God!” Another shuddered, “It’s hard to watch!”

The Rendever technology can also be used to virtually take older adults back to the places where they grew up as children. For some, it will be the first time they’ve seen their hometowns in decades.

A virtual trip to her childhood neighborhood in New York City’s Queens borough helped sell Sue Livingstone, 84, on the merits of the VR technology even though she still is able to get out more often than many residents of The Terraces, which is located in Silicon Valley about 55 miles south of San Francisco.

“It isn’t just about being able to see it again, it’s about all the memories that it brings back,” Livingstone said. “There are a few people living here who never really leave their comfort zones. But if you could entice them to come down to try out a headset, they might find that they really enjoy it.”

Adrian Marshall, The Terraces’ community life director, said that once word about a VR experience spreads from one resident to another, more of the uninitiated typically become curious enough to try it out — even if it means missing out on playing Mexican Train, a dominoes-like board game that’s popular in the community.

“It turns into a conversation starter for them. It really does connect people,” Marshall said of Rendever’s VR programming. “It helps create a human bridge that makes them realize they share certain similarities and interests. It turns the artificial world into reality.”

Rendever, a privately owned company based in Somerville, Massachusetts, hopes to build upon its senior living platform with a recent grant from the National Institutes of Health that will provide nearly $4.5 million to study ways to reduce social isolation among seniors living at home and their caregivers.

Some studies have found VR programming presented in a limited viewing format can help older people maintain and improve cognitive functions, burnish memories and foster social connections with their families and fellow residents of care facilities. Experts say the technology may be useful as an addition to and not a replacement for other activities.

“There is always a risk of too much screen time,” Katherine “Kate” Dupuis, a neuropsychologist and professor who studies aging issues at Sheridan College in Canada, said. “But if you use it cautiously, with meaning and purpose, it can be very helpful. It can be an opportunity for the elderly to engage with someone and share a sense of wonder.”

VR headsets may be an easier way for older people to interact with technology instead of fumbling around with a smartphone or another device that requires navigating buttons or other mechanisms, said Pallabi Bhowmick, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who is examining the use of VR with older adults.

“The stereotypes that older adults aren’t willing to try new technology needs to change because they are willing and want to adapt to technologies that are meaningful to them,” Bhowmick said. “Besides helping them to relieve stress, be entertained and connect with other people, there is an intergenerational aspect that might help them build their relationships with younger people who find out they use VR and say, ‘Grandpa is cool!’”

Rendever CEO Kyle Rand’s interest in helping his own grandmother deal with the emotional and mental challenges of aging pushed him down a path that led him to cofound the company in 2016 after studying neuroengineering at Duke University.

“What really fascinates me about humans is just how much our brain depends on social connection and how much we learn from others,” Rand said. “A group of elderly residents who don’t really know each other that well can come together, spend 30 minutes in a VR experience together and then find themselves sitting down to have lunch together while continuing a conversation about the experience.”

It’s a large enough market that another VR specialist, Dallas-based Mynd Immersive, competes against Rendever with services tailored for senior living communities.

Besides helping create social connections, the VR programming from both Rendever and Mynd has been employed as a possible tool for potentially slowing down the deleterious effects of dementia. That’s how another Silicon Valley retirement village, the Forum, sometimes uses the technology.

Bob Rogallo, a Forum resident with dementia that has rendered him speechless, seemed to be enjoying taking a virtual hike through Glacier National Park in Montana as he nodded and smiled while celebrating his 83rd birthday with his wife of 61 years.

Sallie Rogallo, who doesn’t have dementia, said the experience brought back fond memories of the couple’s visits to the same park during the more than 30 years they spent cruising around the U.S. in their recreational vehicle.

“It made me wish I was 30 years younger so I could do it again,” she said of the virtual visit to Glacier. “This lets you get out of the same environment and either go to a new place or visit places where you have been.”

In another session at the Forum, 93-year-old Almut Schultz laughed with delight while viewing a virtual classical music performance at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado and later seemed to want to play with a puppy frolicking around in her VR headset.

“That was quite a session we had there,” Schultz said with a big grin after she took off her headset and returned to reality.

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December 24, 2025
The Most Ambitious Hotels to Open Around the World in 2025

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The travel industry has a problem with words. Walk through any luxury hotel conference, and you’ll hear the same ones lobbed around like currency: “authentic,” “experiential,” “transformative.” Marketing teams deploy them with the confidence of people who’ve never actually stayed anywhere transformative. The couples booking their anniversary trips debate them endlessly—she wants “authentic,” he wants “comfortable,” they both say “experience” like it’s something you can order from room service.

But the hotels that opened in 2025 suggest the industry might finally be asking better questions. After surveying this year’s most ambitious openings across six continents, a pattern emerges: The properties worth anyone’s time aren’t selling comfort, authenticity or even experience. They’re selling something rarer: the chance to move through the world differently, even temporarily.

The thread connecting them isn’t luxury or location but obsession. Behind each property stands someone who looked at conventional wisdom and chose violence. The couple who decided their Cretan hotel’s roof should be someone else’s olive grove. The architect who thought Prague’s most oppressive Communist-era tower just needed better lighting and a sense of humor. The chef who built an entire restaurant around the radical idea that garbage doesn’t exist.

These hoteliers aren’t chasing trends or conducting market research, but building the hotels they wish existed, then betting there are enough like-minded travelers to fill them. They’re right. In an age when every city has the same glass tower with the same infinity pool serving the same burrata, the real luxury has become specificity. Hotels that do one thing—whether that’s zero-waste dining or gorilla voyeurism or forcing you to walk five days just to check in—and do it with the conviction of people who’d rather be perfect for some than pleasant for all.

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Paul Jebara

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December 24, 2025
Edmunds: The best used luxury vehicles to be had for under $40,000

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When you’re shopping for a high-quality vehicle, the idea of acquiring one with a luxury badge that’s packed with features can be appealing. But it can also be an expensive proposition in today’s market when the average price of a new car is approximately $50,000. Thankfully, there is an alternative: Buy a used one.

The experts at Edmunds know there are plenty of great used luxury vehicles that you can easily get for less than $40,000. These are five of their favorites that deliver a refined driving experience and superior comfort and technology features compared to more mainstream vehicles.

Smooth and powerful engines and sporty handling make the 3 Series a fun-to-drive means of transportation. When considering a used model, know that this seventh-generation version rolled into BMW dealerships for the 2019 model year. It brought added power from the standard turbocharged four-cylinder engine, improved handling and a slightly larger trunk. Rear-wheel drive is standard, although all-wheel drive is available as an option to provide better traction in winter weather.

Look for: You’ll find the sporty M340i and even the plug-in hybrid 330e on dealer lots. But getting a 2022 to 2024 base 330i is the easiest way to stay below $40,000. Look for one that came equipped with the car’s helpful — but optional at the time — advanced driver aids, such as adaptive cruise control and lane keeping assistance.

Introduced beginning with the 2020 model year, the Mercedes-Benz GLB is a savvy choice for a subcompact luxury SUV. Initially, it was available solely with a 221-horsepower four-cylinder engine and front- or all-wheel drive. In 2021, Mercedes added a sportier 302-horsepower variant called the AMG GLB 35. Additional highlights include a roomy cabin and good outward visibility. There is an optional third row, though keep in mind it’s tiny and only suitable for small kids.

Look for: We think you’ll be pleased with the performance, high economy and smooth ride of the regular GLB 250. You’ll find plenty of used 2023 and 2024 models for under $40,000. Similar to the 3 Series, make sure to get a used GLB that has the vehicle’s optional advanced driver aids.

The Genesis GV70 is a small five-seat SUV that’s big on style and content. Having made its debut for the 2022 model year, this first-generation GV70 looks sharp and gets down the road quickly thanks to its choice of a 300-horsepower four-cylinder engine or an available 375-horsepower V6. The V6, in particular, provides the GV70 with impressive acceleration for merging onto the highway or passing slower vehicles. All GV70s feature an attractive cabin, numerous standard features, and a spacious cargo area.

Look for: You’ll find plenty of 2022 and 2023 GV70s for under $40,000. A 2.5T designation means the GV70 has the four-cylinder engine, while 3.5T means it has the V6.

The Acura MDX will appeal to you if you want a versatile luxury SUV with three rows of seating. It also comes with the surprise of being sporty and comfortable at the same time. A redesign for the 2022 model year brought a more energetic-looking exterior, more legroom for all three rows, and improved technology features. The base engine is a 290-horsepower V6 and offers a choice of front- or all-wheel drive. A punchier 335-horsepower Type S model is available, yet used models could be significantly more expensive.

Look for: You should have no trouble tracking down a 2022 MDX for under $40,000. We recommend the MDX A-Spec trim level for its sportier styling and appealing collection of convenience and technology features.

For a true family hauler, check out the Buick Enclave. Straddling the line between mainstream and luxury brands, the Enclave comes with the benefit of delivering more SUV for your money than a rival with a more upscale badge. An all-new Enclave came out for the 2025 model year, but you’ll want to look at the previous-generation model produced from 2018 to 2024. Edmunds found this older version to be stylish and highly capable of hauling people, cargo, or a combination of the two.

Look for: Aim for a 2023 or 2024 Enclave. You’ll find plenty of for-sale Enclaves in the midlevel Premium trim. That’s a great way to go because it comes with some desirable extras, such as ventilated front seats and a premium sound system, that the base Essence trim lacks.

Wanting a luxury label on a used vehicle doesn’t have to be a budget-busting proposition. The right pick can bring added pride of ownership and many miles of driving pleasure.

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This story was provided to The Associated Press by the automotive website Edmunds. Nick Kurczewski is a contributor at Edmunds.

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December 24, 2025
27 Photos Of Donald Trump In 2025 He Probably Reaaaaaally Doesn’t Want You To See

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Unflattering Photos Of Donald Trump From 2025