Latest news with #Leventhal
Business Insider
30-04-2025
- Health
- Business Insider
Teens these days don't vape, they Zyn
Teens aren't into e-cigarettes anymore. Nicotine pouches like Zyn are quickly becoming their new nicotine replacement. A new study published in the JAMA Network on Wednesday explored the nicotine habits of over 10,000 teens in 10th and 12th grade. The researchers found that their nicotine pouch use nearly doubled from 2023 to 2024. Many teens reported using both pouches and vapes. The only metric that decreased was using vapes alone. Adam M. Leventhal, the executive director of the USC Institute for Addiction Science and one of the authors of the study, told Business Insider he had a feeling that pouch use would increase among teens, as demand for Zyn soared and caused continual shortages. However, he said he was surprised to see such a huge rise, so quickly. It's harder to ban pouches If you look up "Zyn" on TikTok, your feed will be littered with young people using it, commenting on the flavor options and demonstrating how to insert " upper deckies." Leventhal said that teens' general draw toward nicotine hasn't changed over the years despite efforts to spread awareness about the health risks. Based on his team's previous research, teens like that nicotine can stimulate mood, increase metabolism, and suppress appetite. Pouches are especially alluring to teens because they're more discreet, Leventhal said. "They can use them in school without teachers seeing them or even in front of their parents," he said. Pouches can be a supplement in places they can't bring their vapes, like in movie theaters or on planes. It's also what makes pouches risky. Because of their inconspicuousness, they're easy to use continuously throughout the day. A surprising gender divide The study showed that teen girls vape more than teen boys — another unexpected finding, Leventhal said. "Historically, any kind of substance, you typically see that males have higher-use levels than females," he said. "But vaping, it's appeared to kind of switch over recent years." One theory is that pouches have more masculine branding. Zyn, a Swedish brand, was originally marketed to women who wanted to quit cigarettes. Now, everyone from Wall Street bros to Josh Brolin uses Zyn. Tucker Carlson, a former Zyn user, now plans to start his own brand, as he feels Zyn is not manly enough. It all points to marketing that could make pouches "particularly attractive to boys," Leventhal said. The health risks of Zyn and vapes for teens Leventhal's main concern with the pouch trend among teens is that they're likely "exposing themselves to higher levels of nicotine" than using e-cigarettes alone. Zyn can harm gum tissue, change your brain chemistry, and increase your heart rate. Vaping, meanwhile, is considered as harmful as smoking traditional cigarettes. Both are highly addictive. While some TikTokers say they use Zyn to try to quit vaping, Leventhal said it's not a viable solution to e-cigarette addiction, especially since many just start using both. "We don't want children to use any nicotine products," he said. "So all nicotine products should be avoided."
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Bringing a California Community to Life Through Airbrushing and Burlap
James G. Leventhal, the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, San José, first saw Esteban Raheem Abdul Raheem Samayoa's charcoal drawings when he visited the pt.2 Gallery in Oakland about three years ago. When Leventhal learned that the artist had a studio upstairs, he went to meet him. 'James was super appreciative of my work,' Samayoa recalled in a recent interview at his current studio in West Oakland. 'He had such nice things to say, and he was so supportive.' That's a bit of an understatement. Leventhal, a generally enthusiastic person, practically levitates when talking about Samayoa, 30, whom he compares to Francisco Goya, the famous Spanish painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Samayoa's drawings of dogs and the people he grew up with in Sacramento evoke humanity, he said, in much the way that Goya's paintings did. 'One of the really remarkable things about Esteban's practice is he has this almost singular ability to mimic the real world through two-dimensional tools,' Leventhal said. 'The way that he captures a dog's fur, the way he captures the edge of the paw on the floor, it's so realistic, but it's a trick. The ability to render the real world using charcoal is utter trickery. But it becomes transcendent if you do it right. I was visiting the other day, and I was like, 'Dude, you're as good as Goya. This is unbelievable.'' Leventhal's enthusiasm helped Samayoa land at the museum, also known as the ICA, for his first institutional solo exhibition much sooner than expected: Just six months elapsed between an initial studio visit from Zoë Latzer, the show's curator, and its opening day in late March. Samayoa decided to pivot away from charcoal toward other horizons for his ICA debut, 'Blood Be Water,' which runs through Aug. 24. He worked furiously to create more than 40 new pieces, which include large airbrushed works, small oil pastels and ceramics, a newer medium for him. The gallery is divided into two parts. One has dark purple walls hung with black-and-white works. The other features walls and a wooden pyramid installation covered in yellow mud. Colored pastel works and paintings on burlap hang on the textured walls, while ceramics line the pyramid. Samayoa's exposure to the world of art exhibitions began in 2017 when he moved with a cousin from Sacramento to Oakland, where they cooked in restaurants while Samayoa worked on his art. In 2019, Guillaume Ollivier, the founder of Good Mother Gallery, which was then in Oakland but has since relocated to Los Angeles, saw Samayoa's work on Instagram and offered him a solo show. 'We hadn't seen anything like it before, and we kind of look for outliers,' he said. It wasn't just Samayoa's art that impressed Ollivier. The gallerist called the artist sweet, soft-spoken and considerate, and said his visual language made sense. 'I would go to shows sometimes, and I have no idea what they're talking about; You know, we're a gallery from Oakland and dudes from Oakland,' Ollivier said. 'He was just painting dogs — like, happy dogs, sad dogs, aggressive dogs. And within that imagery, there were people shaking hands, people hugging, people smiling. People dressed a certain way, hanging out with dogs that we see in our community.' Ollivier gave Samayoa a space in the gallery. 'He jumped right in, being kind of a family member to all of us,' Ollivier said. 'Now we always check in on him and make sure that he's growing the way he wants to grow. If he needs help with anything, we're always there for him.' In 2023, Samayoa had a solo show at pt.2 of charcoal works, colorful paintings that delved into his Guatemalan and Mexican heritage and plaster casts of praying hands that explored his recent conversion to Islam. With his charcoals, he told me at the time, he wanted to put people like his friends on gallery walls and emphasize their beauty. Samayoa again celebrates his community in his current ICA show. Its title riffs on the saying that 'blood is thicker than water' and nods to how his friends gave him the closeness and support that his family couldn't provide. 'I dealt with a lot of turmoil with my mother and father,' he said. 'She, unfortunately, struggled with addiction a lot of my life, and my father was just in and out.' People in the neighborhood took care of him, he said, and he often stayed over at neighbors' houses for the school year. 'I remember my friend, he had a cool mother and father, and the father would make dinners for them all the time, and they would all sit at the table,' he said. 'I was like, 'Wow, what? This is so much fun for me.'' Samayoa started making realistic drawings of cars and faces when he was three. He didn't go to art school but took a drawing class in 2015 at Sacramento City College and found that he loved working with charcoal. He described the airbrushed paintings of groups of people in the ICA show as dreamlike. Some of the figures are based on his friends; some are historical figures like Malcolm X. He had wanted to push himself to work in the medium, as well as with ceramics and color. 'People would come up to me and say, 'Hey, you're the charcoal artist, right?'' Samayoa said. 'Even though I appreciated that, I just knew that I had more inside of me that I wanted to show.' The ICA exhibition also presents a documentary about Samayoa directed by Mancy Gant, who met him at a Los Angeles gallery. When Gant, a photographer and director who has worked for Playboy and The Fader, saw on Instagram that Samayoa was looking for someone to make a video, he offered to do it for free. 'He's just a really warm person, a genuine person,' Gant said. 'I felt that in his work, also.' Gant brought in Tyler McPherron, a cinematographer, as the director of photography. They planned on making a video of maybe 10 minutes. It's double that. McPherron said Samayoa, who he and Gant call Raheem or Rah, is a magnetic subject. 'Rah talked about the film he wanted to make to give credit to collaborators and his community,' he said. 'He's gone through a lot, and that's made him an authentic and vulnerable person.' Samayoa readily displays that vulnerability with his many close friends, said Jereme Mendez, an artist and designer who is among them. Mendez said he views Samayoa as a mentor always ready to share insecurities as well as triumphs. 'It's not a competitive race,' Mendez said. 'We feed off each other. For this show, I feel like I'm on the sidelines with a big sign saying, 'Go, Esteban!' There's a lot to cheer for. Samayoa is in a group show at the Anthony Gallery in Chicago curated by Lauren Halsey and will do two residencies later in the year, one at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and one at the Macedonia Institute in the Hudson Valley of New York. 'This is the most sure I've ever been about a path, even though it's still scary to take a chance on art,' he said. 'I want a 401(k) and big savings and all that, but I'm just proud that I get to wake up and do what I love most.'
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Restaurant star Ben Leventhal raises another $50 million for crypto dining app Blackbird
Ben Leventhal is a veteran of the restaurant industry. He cofounded the food publication Eater in 2005. He helped found and lead the restaurant reservation platform Resy, which American Express acquired in 2019. And, in 2022, the serial entrepreneur raised $11 million to found Blackbird, a blockchain-based app for restaurants. On Tuesday, his company Blackbird Labs announced its newest tranche of funding: $50 million in a Series B round led by Silicon Valley investor Spark Capital. Other participants were Coinbase, a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, and Amex Ventures. The raise was for company equity along with token warrants, or allocations of a yet-to-be-released cryptocurrency. Leventhal, who said he raised the funds in the fourth quarter of 2024, declined to disclose the round's implied valuation. Blackbird Labs has raised $85 million since 2022. Blackbird is a loyalty and payments app for restaurants. Every time users visit a restaurant registered with the app, they receive rewards in the form of an in-house cryptocurrency called $FLY. Users can use the cryptocurrency to pay for meals anywhere in Blackbird's network, which encompasses over 600 restaurants across New York City, San Francisco, and Charleston, South Carolina. 'We want to be in the great cities of the U.S.,' Leventhal said, though he declined to say which cities his app was targeting next. Leventhal's company stands out as one of only a few ventures applying blockchain technology to a broad-based consumer market, instead of crypto niches like memecoins, Wall Street behemoths, and stablecoins. Users can buy more $FLY tokens with cash. Eventually, Leventhal envisions that other applications or developers will want to build on a blockchain-based network that tracks where and what customers are eating. His company has released its own blockchain in February, built on top of Coinbase's Base, called Flynet. For now, though, Leventhal is focused on expanding Blackbird's products. Along with the $50 million fundraise, he also unveiled his app's newest offering: a loyalty program. Users who frequently check into restaurants with Blackbird are eligible. They may receive guaranteed reservations, off-the-menu entrées, or invites to exclusive events, among other potential benefits. Users can also fast track their inclusion into the loyalty program if they load in a requisite amount of $FLY into their accounts, Leventhal said. This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Blackbird gobbles up $50M for its blockchain-based payment-loyalty app for restaurants
A founder who has carved out a name for himself building products to help restaurants connect better with would-be diners has raised $50 million for his latest startup: a new take on the idea of customer loyalty. Blackbird Labs has built a payments-meets-loyalty-meets-blockchain platform for restaurants to grow repeat business while reducing some of the friction around transactions. Now, with with some 1,000 restaurants signed up, CEO Ben Leventhal said Blackbird plans to use the money to launch its newest product, a cross-restaurant 'points' service it's calling Blackbird Club, as well as to expand into more markets outside of New York (its Homebase), San Francisco and Charleston, South Carolina. (Charleston, you ask? 'Charleston punches above its class,' Leventhal said in an interview. 'It's a great restaurant city for its size.' It also appears to the be Blackbird's equivalent of New Zealand for Meta, with Leventhal calling it 'a good test market for us.') Spark Capital, a new backer, is leading this latest round, with participation also from Coinbase Ventures, Amex Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, three investors that backed Blackbird in its $24 million Series A in 2023. Valuation is not being disclosed but for a point of reference, PitchBook notes that the startup was valued at around $124 million in that last round. The startup has raised $85 million to-date. Coinbase and Amex are strategic names in that list. Amex acquired Resy, a reservations platform that Leventhal previously founded, in 2019. The two companies — Resy and Blackbird — are not integrating now but 'It's fair to say we will,' Leventhal said. Previous to Resy, the third restaurant-focused startup Leventhal founded, the food blog Eater, was also acquired: it's now part of Vox. No plans on how and if to partner there. Meanwhile, Blackbird describes its Flynet payment service as an layer-three transaction protocol built on Coinbase's BASE. Diners can use it to pay for meals at the table via Blackbird's app, as well as to redeem loyalty points when they visit restaurants. It's worth asking whether blockchain was strictly a necessary part of the mix? There are plenty of other loyalty and payment programs in the market -- include a number that are direct competitors to Blackbird like Punchh, Toast, Lightspeed, etc. -- that are built on more conventional financial structures. 'I don't think it necessarily 'has to be built on blockchain,'' Leventhal said. 'Visa's network, more or less, was created using the same principles that we're using for Flynet, and obviously they didn't have blockchain.' But he pointed out too that 'there are a few things that we do believe that over time will be important opportunities, and those opportunities will be based on being on-chain.' These include how Blackbird and restaurants hold customer profiles and activity, he said. 'Consumers will be able to continue to own that profile.' It also relates to how Blackbird envisions its engagement with restaurants, he said: each restaurant customer ultimately will be a shareholder of Blackbird. You might think that with two startups dedicated to the consumer-facing side of the restaurant trade that Leventhal might have had his fill of the business. As it turns out, he's still hungry for more. Owning restaurants has long been a challenging enterprise, but the economy and changing consumer habits have especially knocked the world of restaurants around a lot in the last few years. Leventhal cites figures from the National Restaurant Association that note that the average profitability of restaurants these days is under 5%, compared to an average of around 20% in the early Noughties. While platforms like Instagram and TikTok have turned the world into armchair foodies, producing legions of people who virally flock to the latest and coolest cafe, they are doing this amid a time of rapidly declining margins and heightened price sensitivity. These are areas that are only going to get tougher if the U.S. really locks down on its latest tariff hikes. 'There is a disconnect in the restaurant industry between the popularity and the intensity of consumer love for restaurants and ultimately the profitability of the industry,' he said. That disconnect, of course, in startup thinking means opportunity. 'The restaurant industry is made up of millions of local, small business owners around the world. Those restaurants are at the mercy of tech platforms that can charge a large, and often growing, percentage of a restaurant's margin,' Arianna Simpson General Partner at a16z crypto, told TechCrunch over email. She believes this is specifically where blockchain can play a role: improving that margin structure. 'Ben's vision is for a network that is owned by the restaurants and the diners themselves, which is something that only blockchains enable.' Today, Blackbird is already saving its restaurant customers 3-4% in payment processing fees, she added. This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Sign in to access your portfolio
