#158: Cat Marnell
Cat Marnell drops in to tell us about SLAM magazine, Money Trees, Class Pass, and more.
Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked cool person Cat Marnell to share some recommendations on Perfectly Imperfect.
Cat Marnell is a writer based in New York City who made her mark as an associate editor at Lucky fashion magazine followed by a stint as the beauty director of xoJane.com and her popular Vice column, "Amphetamine Logic". A few years later she went on to write the New York Times bestselling memoir, How to Murder Your Life, about her self-sabotaging lifestyle of addiction, fashion, and downtown nightlife. These days she writes an “alternative lifestyle guide” on Patreon called BEAUTY SHAMBLES, which you should absolutely subscribe to. And lucky for us, Cat is here to tell us what she’s been into.
Without further ado
Cat Marnell (twitter, instagram, patreon)
I always have a big money tree. Pachira aquatica. They sell them in Chinatown; I got mine at the little plant store on the Bowery a few blocks up from Confucious Plaza. You can tell it’s a money tree because the leaves kind of look like marijuana leaves. Anyway, they really grow; you barely need to take care of them. I pour a drinking glass of water in mine every morning. And you can abandon them for weeks and they’ll be okay. Of course, they represent your money; as your tree grows, your income grows. They’re good luck for your bank account. Buy them as big as you can to start; mine is 6 feet tall now. I bought it at 4 feet.
I always have white wine in the house, and rosé in the spring and summer. I’m not picky. I go to the store and buy five different kinds and lug it home. As long as its dry, I’ll drink it. But I learned a few years ago that I like “buttery” chardonnay. I always have a bottle of this stuff around. It’s so good, and it’s so cheap. It’s $11.99! And it’s my favorite wine ever. You have to drink it out of a beautiful, thin glass.
I shop late-ish at night, so a 24-hour situation is important to me. This place is in the best neighborhood, and they don’t even jack up their prices. Milk Is $1.99 and a huge tub of pineapple cut up is $4.99. They sell huge water bottles for a dollar. The flowers outside are beautiful, and it’s on Prince Street, and the name is SOHO GARDEN…it sort of glows all pretty on the block at night, too. It’s my favorite place to buy pre-cut fruit in New York City; it’s all in tubs. You dig through the ice with your hands. You have to ask them to wrap up the pineapple, though. It’ll drip everywhere.
When I was young I loved TIGER BEAT and BIG BOPPER magazine, and now I subscribe to SLAM. It’s like the teenybopper NBA magazine. Every month, there’s a pullout poster and you have to decide who you want on your fridge, you know: Trae Young or Zion? Oh, and there are articles about all of the cool teen high school players coming up. And the best pages are League Fits, with all the NBA stars in crazy clothes. And then there are the letters to the editor, and that’s, like teens at home complaining to SLAM editors being all, “There has been gross lack of representation of my man Jaylen Brown in League Fits!” I love it all.
🧘♀️ 🏋️♂️ CLASSPASS
I have to put a fitness rec in everything. To me, working out is the best part of life. I would have a completely different personality if I didn’t do it every day. And people will be like, “You’re so disciplined.” But I’m really not. The body and the brain gets hooked on it after a few weeks. This app enables that addiction. You can book at the remaining fitness studios that didn’t close during covid. You can learn Pilates Cadillacs or aerial yoga. None of it is scary, because ClassPass classes are full of NYU girls who don’t know how to do shit either. You can book the best workout in the world, BARRY’S BOOTCAMP. On and on. And the fitness studios are so glamorous. Rumble Boxing is like a nightclub. What do you have to lose?
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