The Pleasure Lists Q&A: Sami Reiss

Pleasures, Curated by Sami Reiss of Snake

We’re back with another installment of

The Pleasure Lists

: Pleasures, Curated.

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy getting to know members of the Pleasure Lists community and what makes their Pleasures tick.

Pleasures, Curated by

Sami Reiss

of

SNAKE

&

SNAKE SUPER HEALTH

From

Sami Reiss

: I write the Super Health and Snake newsletters (about dark nutrition/demon health, and design, respectively, est. 2014), with the second collected in a book, Sheer Drift (back when it covered vintage clothing) on Shining Life Press. Other than that I freelance for different publications on these topics and others, source items, consult, and hold group workouts weekly in Carroll Gardens when the weather is nice.

Social: @samisreiss

Location: New York City

Pleasures:

Sleeping in

Because of either bloodline or work history I’m a late riser and my brain doesn’t turn on until 11 AM or noon. Still, I keep to a decent Spaniard wakeup time (8) and get it in even though my soul just wants to keep Saudi hours and work from 4 pm to 12.

Boiling Point (1990)

This is my favorite movie, I think… serious peace of mind as the credits roll. BP, dir. Takeshi Kitano, follows a bartender who runs a baseball team whose reserve outfielder is crossed by a Yakuza. The manager intervenes, the outfielder buys a gun from another Yakuza and then shit really goes down. It’s a beautiful movie—flawless wardrobe (suits esp.), architecture, hair, and rectilinear composition throughout… and the shots are painterly, but it’s more fun than beautiful… the pacing is wild and there are scenes, (a karaoke scene in particular) that are as good as anything put to film. It just hits. It’s not the “best” movie (but it’s close); it’s just my favorite. Also Kitano is also an inspiring guy because his directing career only began when he was 40.

Canadian chocolate bars

I feel like these answers need to be deep but this one is not; I just really like old school Canadian candy bars. I grew up there and so these are nostalgic for me. They’re also better (or I like them more) because they are made per British tradition (better chocolate, more sugar, sometimes less sugar). They don’t have them at all in New York, even though there are so many importers here. When I’m home in Ottawa I like to grab one from the grocery store and just walk around. I rank them as Big Turk first, then Bridge Mix, Eat More, Mirage, Mack Toffee, Coffee Crisp, then Gum Wheelies, then the rest. Some (most) have been getting discontinued because only old people eat them, and many are hard to find. Any single one of these is worthy of serious time.

Legends of the Hasidim

Found this book on a stoop last summer and I blazed through it a couple times since. There’s an essay in the first half which is fine; the second half’s all stories/quotes about fate, magic, spirituality, times in history, specific Rabbis, miracles, things like that. Very beautiful and distinct language, lots of lore, lots of wisdom. Sometimes it gets too serious but what can you do? Feels like a complement to the Svetlana Alexievich books—same part of the world but different people. Also simpler usage.