“You just need to pretend to be an important person”

The Weekender

“You just need to pretend to be an important person”

In this edition of The Weekender: inadvisable loopholes, the international hunt for a golden hare, and a tech founder unpacks an acquisition that left shareholders with nothing

Substack

Oct 24, 2026

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Photo by

Lukas Flippo

This week, we’re sneaking into places where we just barely belong, making peace with unruly body parts, and debriefing fashion month over a bottle of wine.

WILD-GOOSE CHASES

The curious incident of the golden hare in the nighttime

How one British artist turned the world into a search party after burying a precious, jewel-laden piece, leaving the only clues to its location in a children’s book.

The Golden Hare That Sparked a Three-Year Treasure-Hunting Frenzy

—

Jason R Ward

in

Intriguing Times

On the night of August 7, 1979, British artist Kit Williams and television presenter Bamber Gascoigne were in a park in Bedfordshire. Williams was there to bury a valuable golden hare, and Gascoigne was an independent witness to the fact that a treasure had really been buried.

The magnificent hare was handmade by Williams and was made of 18-carat gold, decorated with precious stones, including a ruby eye, along with moonstone, turquoise, mother-of-pearl, and a compound called faience. It had been valued at around £5,000 (around £33,000 or $44,000 today).

Williams let it be known that he’d buried the hare somewhere in Britain, and anyone who found it could keep it. All people had to do to find it was solve a series of complicated clues hidden in an elaborately illustrated children’s book called

Masquerade

.

It was supposed to be a bit of fun.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary mass treasure hunts in British history. People got really, really into it. The book sold more than a million copies, and people from all over the world flew into the UK to try their luck. Williams soon found himself more popular than he wanted to be, and had to deal with thousands of desperate treasure hunters constantly hassling him.

When the hare was eventually found around two and a half years later, things got even weirder.

It all started in 1976 when a publisher named Tom Maschler approached the artist Kit Williams to see if he wanted to illustrate a children’s book. When Williams turned him down, Maschler said, “Pity, I think you could do something with books which has never been done before.”

It got Williams thinking, and the idea grew on him. He wanted people to really look at his art and spend time examining it. That was when he came up with the idea of making it a puzzle.

He then spent three years working on the intricate paintings for the book.

Masquerade

was essentially a magical fable for children where a hare called Jack was entrusted with delivering a precious jewel from the Moon to the Sun. Unfortunately, Jack lost the treasure somewhere in Britain.

Readers were welcome to try to find the jewel.

Williams learned traditional jewelling techniques and used tools inherited from his grandfather to make the elaborate hare. In addition to the gold and jewels, there were other decorations like bells. It was then placed in a ceramic casket and sealed with wax.

When Williams and Gascoigne buried the treasure, they carefully replaced the turf to hide what they’d done. Gascoigne had apparently also brought a fresh cowpat in a Tupperware box, and he placed it on the upturned earth to further disguise the disturbed ground.

Once they’d officially buried it, the

Masquerade

book was released. It proved spectacularly popular.

The first printing sold out in two days. Soon, thousands of treasure seekers across Britain were frantically searching for an ornate gold hare.

Somewhat predictably, some people got massively carried away. Quite a few became convinced they had solved the puzzle and knew where the treasure lay. They would then go and dig up a section of a park or someone’s garden and find they were wrong. Landowners were forced to erect signs telling them to go away. (Reminiscent of the Pokémon Go fad.)

Laker Airways got in on the action and offered Ten-Day Masquerade Treasure Tours. In addition to the flight, passengers also got a map of Britain and a spade, so they could get started the moment they landed.

According to later estimates, nearly two million treasure seekers in countries as far afield as Australia and Japan tried to solve the puzzle.

Meanwhile, Williams suddenly found himself inundated with mail. Over the course of the hunt, he received around 30,000 letters, sometimes more than 200 a day. He tried to read them all to see if anyone had discovered the solution. They hadn’t.

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PRODIGIES

“My 3-year-old’s latest artwork,” shared by

Rebecca Boureka

HEALTH

“My boobs and I had issues long before anyone handed me a hospital gown”

For much of her life, Maura Brannigan has been worried about her breasts. Mostly because, at times, it seems like they might be trying to kill her.

Me, My Boobs, and Our Cancer Scares

—

Maura Brannigan

in

Clotheshorse

The first time, I was walking home on one of those sparkling October afternoons, fresh off a very Illinois standardized test called the Prairie State Achievement Exam. When I hiked up my backpack strap, heavy with physics textbooks and a Vera Bradley pencil case, my hand brushed against something that, as far as I knew, hadn’t been there before. Right there outside Mason Park, I felt around and found it: a blob the size and shape of a kidney bean, springy and a little soft to the touch. I was 16, certainly more worried about my ACT score than my mortality.

When I got home, I called my parents at work, got ready for ballet, and spent the next two hours trying very hard to think about pliés. Later that night, I lay in bed among my stuffed animals while my mom sat at my desk, frantically googling on the baby blue Dell laptop I’d gotten for my birthday days earlier and scaring herself half to death. I remember thinking, maybe for the first time, that I might be too old for all those stuffed animals.

It turned out to be nothing, of course: mastitis, an infection that called for a course of antibiotics and a ballpoint circle drawn around the lump so I could watch it shrink. It happened once more, about a year later, which is how I came to give myself monthly breast exams at 16, when I should have been more worried about getting boobs than losing them.

The most recent time was 10 days ago. I’d gone in for an ultrasound to monitor a new mass found on a routine mammogram six months earlier. By now, two decades in, I can perform the choreography in my sleep. The stoic ultrasound tech does the scan, then exits, leaving you tits-out in silence. Eventually, she returns with marching orders. If she comes back alone, you get dressed and go home. If she brings the radiologist, you don’t… But last week, she brought the radiologist. The mass had grown “significantly” since my last scan, which meant another needle biopsy.

In between, by my count, I’ve had two needle biopsies, two titanium marker clips, three mammograms, 15 physical exams, and 12 ultrasounds, under the care of two different surgical oncologists at two different cancer centers in two different states.

After 20 years of this, I no longer experience these appointments as emergencies. They’re more like jury duty: dreaded, unavoidable, and recurring whether I like it or not. Which is why, when the radiologist peeked in behind the tech, when she said we’d need a biopsy to rule out cancer, when she handed me a thick, glossy pamphlet titled

How to Interpret Your Biopsy Result

, I laughed.

[. . .]

The truth is, my boobs and I had issues long before anyone handed me a hospital gown. Breasts are complicated things to live with… Inside mine, I’ve been keeping score for my entire adult life. There’s a startup-world idea I’ve always liked: Increase the surface area of your luck. Put yourself in more rooms, and good fortune has more chances to find you. My boobs have done the inverse. Every scan widens the surface area for bad news, and after enough years of waiting for the other shoe to drop, you start thinking like a gambler. I’ve won so many hands. Eventually, the house wins, and one of these days, my doctor won’t be bringing good news.

Keep reading

THE GOLDEN YEARS

FASHION

Editors of the roundtable

Gabriella Karefa-Johnson gathers a cohort of seasoned fashion professionals to dissect what they saw come down the runways and evaluate the state of the industry at large.

Get in, Losers. We’re Debriefing the Collections.

—

Gabriella Karefa-Johnson

in

Brain Matter

At the close of the Spring 2027 season, and as recently as *checks notes* YESTERDAY, we have seen yet another round of creative-director musical chairs and it appears that our business is only about to get kookier. The exit of Anthony Vaccarello from Saint Laurent we knew about… they famously do not accommodate me at their show, so I can’t speak to that not-so-solemn hero’s procession/ego death dipped in gold, BUT if the front row all dressed in complete black was any indication, Vaccarello was at least granted the opportunity to throw his own funeral. Fab! Veronica Leoni from Calvin Klein and Seán McGirr from Alexander McQueen, on the other hand, those were a relative surprise and, had they been announced in Paris, the news certainly would have shaken a few post-show tables and spawned a couple spirals over cigarettes and martinis.

Luckily, there really was no shortage of the proverbial shit to talk this season—nor of cigarettes and martinis. Thank god for the 10pm dinner sitch that is de rigueur for Paris fashion week because after each day, I personally needed to kiki with my friends and untangle what the hell was happening in a GROUP setting. Because, as much as I love to write about fashion, some things simply must be screamed over one another in a noisy restaurant, preferably with women who know what the fuck they’re talking about and aren’t afraid to disagree with me.

Keep watching

ACCIDENTAL ART

TOUGH EXITS

Even business deals can make for difficult goodbyes

When Dennis Crowley co-founded the tech company Foursquare, the possibilities seemed endless. Now, a month after an acquisition that yielded a “$0 outcome for equity holders,” Crowley unpacks what went wrong and what went right, and imparts advice for fellow founders.

Some final words on Foursquare.

—

Dennis Crowley

in

Teendrama Snippets

Almost exactly a month ago, Foursquare was acquired, marking the end of a 17-year story that started around my kitchen table in the East Village in 2009. “The terms of the deal were not disclosed,” but some details have surfaced online. One of our earliest angel investors wrote:

Several days after the announcement I got the paperwork about the sale from Foursquare’s legal counsel. [...] around page 50 was the sentence I needed to see, which said that “each share of Preferred Stock was cancelled and extinguished, without any conversion thereof or payment of any cash or other property or consideration therefor, and ceased to exist.”

Translation: The Foursquare acquisition was a $0 outcome for equity holders—$0 for preferred, $0 for common. It’s bittersweet to see these details surface publicly—at least now there’s an opportunity to comment on them.

I was heartbroken by this ending. There are so many people who put so much time and energy and passion and love into building Foursquare—the company, the products, the brand, the culture. If you were part of it (or even close to it), you know exactly what I’m talking about. To our ~1,600 former employees over 17 years, I am sorry the Foursquare story ended in such a way that makes it seem like our collective efforts were worth… nothing?

I’m writing this post for three reasons, (1) I want an artifact that that captures FSQ’s ending from my POV to exist on the internet, (2) I want to hold leadership (myself included) accountable for the outcome, and (3) I’ve learned a lot—strategically, emotionally, psychologically—about starting, scaling, and losing a company that I loved, and those learnings feel worthy of sharing with other founders and investors. “Trust” and “transparency” have always been core to Foursquare’s DNA, so if there’s going to be any last word on the company, they should echo these values.

[. . .]

I was the CEO for the first seven years (and I raised both equity and debt) and was Chair/Co-Chair of the Board for 17 years (as the company raised *more* equity and debt), so I take responsibility in part for how we got here. We raised a lot of capital under my leadership, and my decisions as CEO led us to the point where we needed additional capital, including the private equity round in 2019. (I stepped out of the CEO role in 2016 and stepped away from my day-to-day role running the R&D Lab in 2021.) I kept my Board Seat after I left and often thought of myself as a champion for the common shareholder. In hindsight, I could have pushed harder as a board member (though tricky when holding just one of seven seats).

The CEO job is impossibly hard and often thankless, but even in the darkest of scenarios there’s a way to lead with grace and humility. To many current and former employees, the final chapter of the company felt disrespectful. To provide a single example, current employees told me that, despite an in-person all hands meeting, they learned their shares would be worth nothing via an email from Foursquare’s legal team. Former employees learned these details via an email from Carta, with details buried in a 125-page PDF sent from Foursquare’s legal team. No single individual stood up to own (or even acknowledge) the outcome—the antithesis of the transparency and trust that was so core to our early DNA.

Keep reading

ORGANIZED CHAOS

TESTING LIMITS

The power of assumed authority

David Allegretti has a treasure trove of fluorescent yellow vests he’s collected from his time reporting on music festivals at Vice. Years later, he decided to put them to the test.

Turns Out Wearing a Hi-Vis Vest Gets You Into Everything for Free

—

david allegretti

in

David Allegretti

When you’re young, you have an unquenchable desire to do things. Festivals, concerts, shows. These things cost money. When you have $7 to your name, you are forced into a box, and the only way out is to get creative. Fences were my friend. Over, under, through. There was always a spot. Always a section to exploit, a place unguarded. A reward there for anyone willing to climb for it.

Sometimes there wouldn’t be a fence. Sometimes the only way in was through the front. So I became observant. Security guards are human beings, and human beings are distracted by shiny things. Life is all about picking your moments. Pick your moment right and you can slip by god himself.

This ability would come in handy more times than I can count in my early work for VICE. One of my first big pieces involved sneaking into the headquarters of Australia’s most notorious cult. A crazy thing to have done for $100, looking back. But what else was VICE built on if not the hubris and gall of 20-year-old freelancers willing to risk their lives for a byline.

Writing for VICE throughout my time at uni opened certain doors. I started getting press invites to concerts and festivals. I’d show up, and this time I’d be welcomed in. Skip the line. Here’s your pass. Here, put this on.

A vest. A beautiful yellow fluorescent vest… The vest got me everywhere I desired. All I had to do was act like I belonged.

And so I kept every vest I was given. I kept one in my bag, a couple in my car, and a whole bunch under my bed or the back of my wardrobe.

In late 2016, after a conversation with my editor, I decided to write about vests. At first it was going to be a stream-of-consciousness feature; a love letter to the high-vis vest. At the time I wrote:

The world is a stratified place. Important people get into exclusive places. Everyone else has to pay shit loads of money, or watch longingly through the fence. But there’s a loophole into getting into places for free, if you’re so inclined. You just need to pretend to be an important person. And people who wear hi-vis are important in the sense that they fix things no one else cares about. If you see someone in hi-vis stepping through a barricade, or marching past a bouncer, you naturally assume they’re headed to fix something. This makes a hi-vis vest the keys to life.

But that on its own was boring. I had to put it into action. And so I decided I had to bring the reader along on a ride to actually test that theory—to see what I could sneak into in just one day, and write about that.

We started at the movies. I wanted an easy win to ease us in. I’d been sneaking into movies since I was in my early teens, so this should’ve been a piece of tiramisu. And it was. The only bummer was that we were at the mercy of whatever was showing at the time, which turned out to be “Office Christmas Party.” We stuck around for a bit. Surprisingly, it was okay. Although the thrill of sneaking in may have played a part.

The zoo proved more of a challenge, albeit just a psychological one…

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FOMO

Substackers featured in this edition

Art & Photography:

Lukas Flippo

,

Rebecca

,

Lily O’Connell

,

agnes fenn

Video & Audio:

Gabriella Karefa-Johnson

Writing:

Jason R Ward

,

Maura Brannigan

,

Dennis Crowley

,

david allegretti

,

Tasnim Ahmed

Recently launched

Jimmy Chin, a climber, skier, photographer, and filmmaker, is now on

Substack

.

The comedian, writer, and actor Abbi Jacobson is now on

Substack

, which she’ll use to share works she’s created as well as works in progress.

Delia Smith, a British chef and broadcaster, has joined

Substack.

Hattie Brett, the former editor in chief of

Grazia

, has joined

Substack

to write about “women, work, and whether we’re all beginning to redefine ambition.”

British news outlet

The i Paper

has launched a

Substack

.

Shea Serrano, founder of the popular culture Substack “Good Movie” and a five-time

New York Times

bestselling author, has launched

After Review

, a weekly NBA newsletter.

Jordyn Huitema, a professional soccer player and the CEO of Jordyskin, has joined

Substack

. Her subscription proceeds will go toward supporting Soccer Without Borders.

The Strand, a legendary New York bookstore, is now on

Substack

, sharing “dispatches from booksellers, staff picks, book recommendations, and treasures from our archive.”

Inspired by the writers and creators featured in the Weekender? Starting your own Substack is just a few clicks away:

Start a Substack

The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by

Danya Issawi

out of Substack’s New York office.

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