Lizard Pals, Jake Steaks, & Babysitters 🥩

Did a lizard wander into your house today? Don’t kill it or shoo it away. Name it, groom it and pamper it. Make it a part of your family.

Lizards, hamsters, guinea pigs are not just creepy, crawly, lab animals anymore. These pocket-sized pals are stealing the spotlight from cats and dogs, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. That’s right. People are now getting into unique pets. The number of American households embracing these diminutive companions has surged by 7% this year.

Reasons: A wave of unique pet startups and specialized products created just for them. Moreover, while pet adoption rates increased during the pandemic, the popularity of dog ownership declined.

Maybe people are just looking for something different, or an interesting conversation starter.

Either way, startups are setting up all sorts of products to groom and train your pet lizards and guinea pigs.

• Rock and Scott offers cozy habitats, miniature party hats, and a range of other goodies. 
• GuineaDad crafts customizable wooden castles fit for guinea pig royalty. 
• Pocket’s Pet has a delightful array of snacks, chew toys, and accessories on Etsy. 
• Norm's Piggy Pen gives spa services like nail trims and blow-drys for guinea pigs, rabbits, and ferrets. 
• PetSmart creates stylish decor for small pets, including faux leather and sherpa couches.

Though these pets may be small, the potential for profit is enormous, with businesses eagerly competing for a piece of the massive $136.8 billion pet market.

There’s a fake restaurant in town. Well, almost fake! 

Mehran’s Steak House has a near-perfect Google rating, with 91 glowing reviews. Their website and voice mail state that the restaurant, on East 83rd Street in Manhattan, is fully booked for months, an irresistible challenge for New Yorkers who treat reservation-hunting like a professional sport.

Yet few diners have been lucky enough to land a reservation. Most will never get a seat. Why? Because the restaurant does not exist. 

Mehran’s is an elaborate joke among friends that, somewhere along the way, became entirely serious. 

The restaurant’s address was actually a “hacker house” occupied by 16  tech workers. One of the flatmates - Mehran Jalali — cooked steaks for his roommates’ dinners. As an internal joke, the flatmates renamed their address on Google Maps as Mehran’s Steak House. From there, grew a waiting list of hundreds (more than 900), hoping to get a seat at the restaurant. 

Seeing the over-enthusiastic waitlist, the flatmates decided to stage a dinner. They booked an event space in the East Village, contacted people from the waiting list, and brought on board some volunteers for help. The guests included restaurateurs, food critics, hospitality and brand managers from local restaurants, curious to find out what about this restaurant made it so special. Soon enough, they realised that there was nothing special — they were just experiencing the punch line of some online joke between a bunch of friends.

The friends developed a four-course menu ($114 before tax, tip and wine). But the food tasted average. Not surprisingly, though, as the chefs weren’t really professionals, but 21 years olds with little to no cooking experience. 

At one point in the evening, a group of young people stood outside cheering for Drake, an attempt to convince passers-by that the rapper was inside. Three hours into dinner service, two volunteers staged a marriage proposal at the front of the dining room — as a social experiment.

💀 Dead Market - 95% of NFTs are now worthless, according to a recent report.