Re:Envisioning Web3 | How to curate great IRL experiences

Lyss framed the topic: web3 spends so much time on profile pictures and handles, but something special happens when you share a meal. She credited the prior night's ~20-person ape dinner at Jed's own restaurant, De Stefano's, and its staff, and made the case for curated tables where everyone is building something and no one feels shilled.

After Superhighgasfees admitted his default IRL move is getting "a little too drunk," Jed delivered the etiquette lesson — stay on point, save it for the after-party — landing the room's first big laugh, especially the bit about not being the guy singing Broadway songs while others talk business.

Makaveli (calling in from Houston, "the 19th anniversary of my 21st birthday") tied his own energy to good food and good tequila, then paid Jed a real compliment: the long family-style dinner table with the sides being passed around "feels like home… like somebody just went to their mom's house."

Squiddy traced IRL events back to grabbing a Twitter handle and buying strangers drinks to talk NFTs, then recounted meeting King as an up-and-coming artist years ago. He also appointed himself "the bookmark baddie," lobbying the room to bookmark the space to help the hosts.

The room's biggest laugh: Jed recounting how his dad emailed a party that had booked a table for twelve and asked them to invite two fewer people to a 60th birthday — "who the fuck does that?" — capped by an aside from another speaker: "Only 10 showed up, Jed." Underneath the comedy, Lyss and Jed used it to show how hard on-premises hospitality actually is.

Lyss on getting Jed's old-school dad his first regen: he handed her cash, she bought and transferred it, and swore her to secrecy about the wallet. The point beneath the joke — Jed and his dad are more alike than either admits.

Superhighgasfees positioned De Stefano's as a one-of-one "signature lane" — a distinctive IRL experience nobody else offers, and the kind of thing that actually converts curious people into holders.

Jed did something he says he'd never done in ~175 spaces: openly told people to buy a regen (roughly $100), guaranteeing the value back in one visit. That flowed into a candid breakdown of beef margins — $75 wholesale per ribeye, steak as the worst-margin item in the house — while Lyss half-jokingly told people not to take the free steak for granted.

Prompted by Bored Osaka, Jed told the backstory: the building was his great-grandparents' 1909 home, nearly knocked down for condos, saved by his dad's sentimentality and stubborn insistence on a steakhouse — "'cause I can't get a good fillet anywhere." During COVID they rebuilt the new spot with their own regular customers' hands.

Jed reappeared to report his building got tagged (a six-by-three-foot piece), an $800 removal quote, and a plan to power-wash it himself. Makaveli and Bored Osaka offered the actual folk remedy — pour Coca-Cola on it first — which Lyss immediately volunteered to do with Diet Coke instead ("I just got a fresh batch… crispy Diet Coke").

Lyss "defended" Sam after hearing Show tease him in an earlier space, kicking off a warm bit about wanting friends "you control that will troll you." She then gently roasted Sam's cyclops-ling profile picture, and floated getting everyone to don regen PFPs.