Crypto News: Record-breaking women

Welcome back to Pursuits Weekly! Thu-Huong Ha in Tokyo joins Annika Inampudi in New York to pay respects to two titans of culture, as well as provide you with news and recommendations around travel, dining and art. Sign up here to get this newsletter every Saturday in your inbox.

Queens of the crowd

Dolly Parton onstage at the UK Country Music Festival on April 1, 1976. Photographer: Andrew Putler/Redferns — Dolly Parton onstage at the 1976 International Festival of Country Music in the UK.

During their lives, Dolly Parton and Yayoi Kusama didn’t frequently appear on the page together. The American country musician, who died this week, and the Japanese contemporary artist, whose death was announced a day later, did share the honor of breaking global records as women in male-dominated fields. That, and they both had great wigs.

The queen of country and the priestess of polka dots both came from the mountains, but Parton, born in 1946 in rural Tennessee, slept with her family of 14 in one log cabin, and Kusama was born in 1929 to a prosperous family in Nagano prefecture’s Matsumoto City. Parton’s work and identity as a musician leaned heavily on her Appalachian upbringing, while Kusama broke away from her conservative family and Japanese society and went to New York to pursue art.

They were both prodigious and hugely prolific: Parton would go on to be nominated for more than 50 Grammy Awards, sell over 100 million records and have an estimated net worth of $450 million, with an entrepreneurial empire spanning from Broadway shows to dog treats. In 2022, Kusama’s 1959 Untitled (Nets) painting sold for $10.5 million, and in 2023, with $80.9 million in auction sales, she was the highest-grossing contemporary artist in the world, beating out David Hockney from the year before, according to Hiscox. There were also $200 skateboards.

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama at her ‪Whitney Museum of American Art‬ retrospective exhibit. Kusama wears Louis Vuitton. Photographer: Steve Eichner/WWD/Penske Media — Kusama at her ‪Whitney Museum of American Art‬ retrospective in 2012.

Their respective successes in fields largely the domain of men made them easy feminist heroes, yet neither of the women publicly identified as one. Parton refused the feminist label, and Kusama dismissed it.

Parton’s songs were at times heartfelt and heartbreaking, at others ready-made anthems. And with her brassy femininity and well-timed boob jokes, delivered in sequins and with swoopy silhouettes, she became a symbol of female empowerment.

Kusama is a symbol of something else entirely — the creative potential of unrelenting anxiety. The artist’s works were manifestations of obsessions that dogged her throughout her life. She gave few interviews and resided in Seiwa Hospital, a psychiatric clinic in Tokyo, from where she also made art daily, from 1977 until her death. Meanwhile her art took on a life of its own.

Both were known for broadly appealing work that could draw huge crowds, and both were masters of spectacle. Parton’s ardent fandom spread from the conservative American South to the liberal coasts, and she became known as the one thing “we can all agree on” in a politically divided US. “You have people wearing cowboy hats and boots, people in drag, church ladies, lesbians, holding hands, little girls,” Shima Oliaee said of going to a Parton show, on the podcast Dolly Parton’s America. There’s a push to rename Nashville International Airport in her honor.

Kusama may enjoy less name recognition worldwide than her motifs themselves — pumpkins, nets and polka dots, repeating infinitely. But her experiential, Instagrammable installations and exhibits, begging to be reaffirmed with a selfie, have the remarkable ability to mobilize kids and the culturati alike into hourslong queues.

Even now, the queueing hasn’t stopped.

By the numbers

Shanghai Source: AGI Bar — Where everyone knows your name — and your startup.

9.9 yuan

About $1.50, the price of an AGI Bubble, the signature drink at Beijing’s artificial intelligence industry watering hole, AGI Bar. The drink is mostly foam with a splash of beer — a reference to the industry’s “frothy” valuations, Zheping Huang reports.

90 decibels

The level of sound that data centers can produce, adjusted to what the human ear can perceive. Sheena Meng reports on the acousticians who are tasked with soundproofing these humming beasts, whose noise can cause insomnia (and maybe even tinnitus) among nearby residents.

900 years

The amount of time, roughly, that the Bayeux Tapestry spent away from England. Sarah Rappaport writes about the landmark exhibition and other September cultural must-sees in her monthly Bloomberg Businessweek column.

95,000 rupiah

Or about $5.40, the price of the gohu ikan tuna at Suara, a modern Indonesian restaurant in Jakarta, reviewed by Norman Harsono and Grace Sihombing in our latest Five Top Tables column.

Levitating

British-Kosovar singer and songwriter Dua Lipa performs onstage at the Sunny Hill Festival, organized by her father in Pristina, Kosovo, on Aug. 5, 2022. Photographer: Armend Nimani/Getty Images — Step aside, Coachella.

Parton started her theme park, Dollywood, to give back to her home county of Sevier, Tennessee. By the time she died, Dollywood had an annual economic impact of $1.8 billion for the region. Other stars have followed in the icon’s footsteps, trying to translate their cultural clout into economic growth back home.

Gresa Kraja reports from Dua Lipa’s music festival in Pristina, Kosovo — Sunny Hill, named after the neighborhood where the singer grew up. Political instability has made it hard for Kosovar artists to gain international traction, and for the country to be included on international artists’ European tours. Now, Lipa’s festival brings in tens of thousands of visitors, and last year it generated €22 million (about $26 million) in direct economic impact, Kraja writes.

Hybrid phase

The Audi Nuvolari supercar in Monterey, California. — Taking it slow.

As wealthy car buyers drag their feet on the electric revolution, hybrid vehicles are becoming all the rage. Hannah Elliott touts Audi’s fast-tracked $700,000 Nuvolari as emblematic of affluent buyers’ growing interest in hybrid autos. By combining a gas engine and an electric motor, hybrids assuage the logistic anxieties of charging EVs, while still offering a respite from rising gas prices.

Electric is still the future, but hybrids scratch the itch for those reluctant to give up their beloved combustible engines, Elliott writes. Hybrids are expected to account for 40% of global car production by 2030.

Housing first

A view of the abandoned buildings that formerly made up the Bangkok Water Administration but now is the site of Baan Im Jai, a homeless shelter and facility. Photographer: Mailee Osten-Tan for Bloomberg — Baan Im Jai means “Home of Contentment” in Thai.

After the hit HBO drama The White Lotus set its third season in Thailand, the country saw a surge in international interest in everything from its food scene to its festivals. But as the country seeks to court high-spending tourists, it’s also grappling with deepening inequality and an aging population. Rising homelessness in Bangkok has led a new shelter to borrow a solution from wealthier nations, writes Patpicha Tanakasempipat. The model, which offers stable accommodation before asking residents to seek work or get treatment, can provide a blueprint for citizens of booming Southeast Asian countries.

One Very Specific Recommendation: A very rolly suitcase

The Check-In in hot orange. Source: Floyd

A good suitcase is great, until it’s not: Zippers burst; cheaply made wheels stick and wobble; ubiquitous luxury hard-shells cost a fortune, only to get misidentified as belonging to someone else. The $745 Floyd Cabin Case eliminates all those follies.

Founded in 2019 in Munich and inspired by California’s free-loving skate culture of the 1970s, Floyd builds hard-shell roller cases with the same kind of polyurethane skateboard wheels perfected for navigating the uneven asphalt of Venice Beach. After more than two years of use, the 360-degree spinning system on mine still rolls so well that the bag almost moves itself.

Floyd forgoes exterior zippers altogether in favor of an aluminum frame and integrated lock that snaps into place, covering two tight-fitting compartments inside. Available in fanciful colors and custom wheel combos as vibrantly hued as Skittles, they’ll never be mistaken for anyone else’s but yours. —Hannah Elliott

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