Cool Drinks Are So Hot Right Now

It was an exclusive event in the city’s gravel pit district, the gritty industrial corner turned counterculture fashion hub for up-and-coming artists, crypto hopefuls, and neo-modern-micro-influencers. In a generational twist, this latest crop of the impossibly hip had moved into the smoky corridor after being forced from their trendy condos, which were retrofitted into gravel processing facilities back when a previous wave of even trendier 20-somethings had claimed the entire industrial district for vlogging lofts catering to the nouveau TikTok aristocracy.

This was inevitable once the millennial hipsters started having kids and drove up the rent around the pork processing plant, attracted to the green space, good schools, and free hog smell. Of course, that forced the meat packing crews to side hustle their way into affording the higher rents outside the gravel enclave, eventually leading to the out-of-town pig processing that would collapse the real estate market enough to once again attract the type of alternative online content creators who could make a living reviewing knockoff luxury goods on livestream as long as they also kept up with their weekend gig of harvesting precious metals from those electric scooters you can rent with an app.

Nature…was healing.

It was there, in a poorly-lit warehouse on the east side of the district, that stood Kayleigh and Teighlor, a locally famous fashion design team who were either siblings or a couple depending on which facet of the targeted advertising algorithm they were pandering to that day.

Teighlor had just dramatically revealed their latest line of nondenominational normal-core semi-urban faux practical streetwear, and Kayleigh was walking through the trendsetter logic of how even though their latest designs were functionally and stylistically indistinguishable from something available at Old Navy, they were actually a double ironic reverse counterculture commentary on the perversions of suburban normalcy and a nod to the cracks forming at the foundation of global financial structures.

Demetrius, the impossibly chic editor of an underground fashion magazine so exclusive that the only one allowed to read it was himself, stroked his goatee with knowing understanding, but had one question.

Demetrius: “Why are your designs, like…six inches tall?”

Teighlor: “They’re mockups. We ordered 50 for this show.”

Kayleigh: “Minimum order was actually 5,000.”

Teighlor: “What the hell, Kayleigh?? That must have cost everything we have. If Demetrius doesn’t like this collection—“

Demetrius: “—Demetrius doesn’t like this collection.”

Teighlor: “—yeah, see? Since Demetrius doesn’t like this collection…we’re sunk! What are we going to do with 5,000 of these little things?!”

Kayleigh: “Think a beer fits in one? I might know a website…”

Will Meh sell enough of these today to help cover rent on the semi-converted industrial loft space shared by a couple of questionable fashion designers and a guy who makes custom knives out of old septic tanks? Or will we be forced to take a loss on Kayleigh and Teighlor before cold calling zoos in chilly climates to offer toasty hoodies for fashionable meerkats? Find out next episode, only on Meh.com.

(There’s no next episode. We don’t have the attention span for that.)