Breakfast With Strangers
It's no small thing to appreciate the tiny, intimate, and authentic.
I arrived at PublicUs well before eight to snag a table for breakfast when I noticed a woman gazing at the pastries with her husband. This wasn’t an ordinary morning for me; I was there to have breakfast with strangers (more about this later), so I was keenly aware of everyone who entered, scanning faces to see if they might be searching for me, too. And although I’d never met this woman before, I knew her work as an artist, filmmaker, and curator of the Office of Collecting & Design.
Everyone will tell you Vegas is a big small town, especially for the downtown locals, and yet we didn’t know each other in real life. Rather, the day prior, I’d watched a video she’d produced on the mystery of a 32-sided die. In it, she used a black chalkboard like a detective might to diagram the die’s origins, positing theories and discoveries, posting photos and other paraphernalia as clues, linking it all with lines and arrows. I had spent seven minutes under her spell, paying close attention to her hands and face as she outlined her case.
Before I could overthink it, I leapt up to say hi.
“Excuse me, are you Jessica?”
It was, indeed, Jessica Oreck. She looked surprised. I explained how I knew her. Then, I took a chance.
“This is going to sound weird,” I said, “but I am here to have breakfast with whomever shows up, and I’d publicized the date before I’d realized that it was July 4, a holiday, so I don’t know if anyone will come … .” The cashier waited patiently as our meet-cute unfolded.
“So …” I went in for the pitch. I might have even tried to look forlorn; I was not above evoking sympathy for my plight. “Would you like to have breakfast with me?”
Jessica glanced at her husband Teller and expressed some hesitation that we would talk about work, so I sweetened the deal: “You’re in luck because I don’t even want to!”
They agreed.
There’s a backstory to this serendipitous encounter that I think makes a good case for following one’s intuition and saying “yes” to opportunities that might arise. It takes a bit of unwinding itself, so bear with me as I outline three main points:
One, I am not just a casual observer of Jessica’s work—I also happened to write about it for Why Is This Interesting? several months prior, and in addition to watching her video on the origins of the vintage Czech fortune telling die, I’d become a monthly donor to the museum.
Two, I’ve recently discovered the under-appreciated but scientifically-verified healing balm of talking to strangers, and I wrote about this too, about how I missed strangers without knowing it, and how casual moments of intimacy and connection can actually be good for all of us, and we should foster more of them.
So my newfound appreciation for tiny objects and miniature oddities, plus the smallest moments of intimacy with people I don’t know, came together with the third and final element.
Breakfast.
I am the host of a breakfast group that meets weekly at PublicUs. It’s a new venture to me, launched several weeks ago as the Vegas chapter of my friend Ben Dietz’s Breakfast Clubbing initiative. Ben’s vision, which is contagious, is for people to meet up for food and conversation all over the world, and it is happening! People are hosting breakfast gatherings in Mexico City, Lisbon, Portland, London—and now here. Weekly, after everyone concludes their no-agenda, no-host, no-pitch events, organizers post casual report-outs of their table topics on LinkedIn, and Ben sweeps them up to publish in his Monday newsletter.
Anyone who has attempted to build community in Vegas knows that it is challenging; more than one person has raised an eyebrow when I say this is what I am up to. Or, confused, head cocked to the side, eyes squinted, they ask who is behind this. Am I a nonprofit? From out of town? Why?
“Just motivated,” I say. Yeah, I don’t know what I ultimately want from it either, other than to create community and connection. It’s fun! And it feels cool to be a part of something happening around the globe.
How is it going? Well, because I am motivated to talk to strangers, I have air dropped the image publicizing breakfast to many, many people whose names I don’t even remember. I have shared it with an attorney and his buddy, a developer, who I met at Flower Child; a Chippendale model I stood in line with at Chipotle; a teacher who moved here from Tucson and was volunteering with the Biden campaign; and a man shopping at Home Depot for plants that do not attract bees, who had worked in the Los Angeles entertainment industry as a sound engineer for 30 years before retiring in Vegas six years ago, and who told me he hasn’t made a single friend since.
None of them have come to breakfast. Yet.
In the end, our July 4 meal could not have been more perfect. My friend Cate, who I know from the university, showed up as well, and Jessica is lovely, and so is Teller, and I got to share with them how much Jessica’s work has influenced me (despite that we agreed not to talk about it much.) In fact, we discussed a whole range of topics that you can read about in Breakfast Clubbing #13 if you’re so inclined.
It’s true about the impact of Jessica’s museum, which allowed me to see objects that are small, old or broken, discarded or cheap—lots of them toys—in a new way. Of course we know that anything can be valuable when you revise your opinion of what matters, but it’s surprising that the same paradigm shift that happened in 1917, when Duchamp said this urinal is a work of art, could also happen to us in 2024 with objects that were otherwise discarded, donated, or sold for cheap.
Ben’s initiative with Breakfast Clubbing feels a bit similar, and perhaps that’s why I gravitated toward it. Not to make too much of it by invoking the avante-garde, but breakfast is also ordinary until it’s not. In Vegas—a city of glitz and grandeur, of gigantic concerts and oversized resorts, conventions of hundreds of thousands of people, all-you-can-eat buffets, and the largest, spherical LED screen in the world—a small thing like gathering for meal can feel radical and extraordinary.
Regarding smallness, I think it takes a heavy dose of self-acceptance to love small things and not feel small ourselves. Maybe I needed to remember this against the backdrop of the huge and artificial. I don’t want Breakfast Club Vegas to remain tiny—I want it to flourish and grow, of course. But I can appreciate that it began this way, and also that I’ve had to get a little scrappy to help it along.
Maybe I will meet you there soon. Everyone is invited. PublicUs, Thursdays at 8.
Hey, here’s another thing that I am creating with my friend and co-founder Tom Brecke. It’s a community for mid-career professionals who are seeking to pivot and build businesses they love. Check it out, or let’s schedule a time to connect.
I can't wait to come to breakfast!
You’re an inspiration! Maybe I can host a Breakfast Club in LA. JA