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Nick Monica

@_nickmonica

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fried chicken & champagne
@gnarwhalcoffeeco
@_sunnyday.co
@companion.la

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Having fun rearranging this tomato plant because of its insane growth!

#food #gardening #gardening #horticulture #yardwork taken in Sawtelle by @_nickmonica

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14 hours ago

If you stick around to read this, you’ll have the whole picture (mostly). I’ll post relevant photos in our stories now 💙

#coffee #cafe #coffeeshop #restaurant #matcha by @_nickmonica

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10 days ago

Some thoughts upon cresting into Part Two. I frankly haven’t written as much lately or at least I haven’t posted much of it. Seems difficult to muster the right words, I wanted to make a pledge to myself going into the 3rd decade. Much love out there 🧡

#writing #writer #author #letter #substack taken in Venice by @_nickmonica

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13 days ago

Someone once told me the days would start moving faster once you stopped counting them. Nobody warns you it’s true until you’re standing in your own kitchen wondering where three weeks went, coffee going cold, the light already changing outside the window, earlier every day now.

I’ve been calling these thirst traps as a joke… some latte art, a perfect bolo. Some steam coming off something that took four hours and disappeared in four minutes. But scroll through these and you know they’re not really about the food. They’re about the version of me that stopped moving and finally ate something. That’s rarer than it should be for someone that’s built their career around this.

There’s a hunger that has nothing to do with being hungry. It shows up when things are good, genuinely good, and somehow that’s when the ground feels least solid. Success has its own vertigo. So does love, some days. So does watching a business you built with your hands turn into something bigger than your hands can hold. The thing that’s never once failed to bring me back down to earth, gently, is food. Usually it’s not fancy food, just food made with story, eaten without a phone in the other hand.

Some of this is mine… most of it isn’t, it’s someone else’s grandmother’s recipe filtered through someone else’s hands, in a room I was lucky enough to be sitting in. And some of it’s just coffee. A fun specialty drink, matcha looking like that impossible green, small rituals that take a minute and give you back the whole day in return… seemingly at least.

I don’t think I’m chasing flavors in a dish anymore. I think I’m chasing the feeling of being somewhere entirely, one bite at a time, while the days do what days do, leave, faster than you’d like, whether you were recognized it or not.

So call it a thirst trap but to me it’s evidence. Something to show that somewhere in these last two weeks, I sat down, I was present, and I ate something.

#food #foodie #recipe #cooking #cook taken in Venice by @_nickmonica

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17 days ago

Still not the talent… 😂

Jokes aside, I’m immensely grateful to work these incredible events for our partners @_sunnyday.co

Pre-Emmy’s party with @randleokun and the rest of the epic team at @carmelizedproductions

So grateful, let’s keep em rockin!! taken in West Hollywood, California by @_nickmonica

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a month ago

No shoes, great snacks, jumping off rocks… may we never grow too old for this 🙏💙

#nature #lake #cliffdiving #Outdoors #camping taken in Mammoth Lakes, California by @_nickmonica

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a month ago

“Shrimp Fog” was a situation that arose via cooking shrimp with all the doors and windows closed in the cabin and we were laughing til our cheeks hurt about the fact that there was a layer of “Shrimp Fog” covering the cabin 😂

Anyways get out there!

#nature #cabin #Hiking #camping #backpacking taken in Mammoth Lakes, California by @_nickmonica

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a month ago

I just wrote an essay called ‘Tha Crossroads’ that was inspired by the Bone Thugs N Harmony song. It’s not the most compelling origin story for a written work but that song came on in my truck the other day and it sent me into an interesting thought about how many crossroads I’ve stood at in my life and the uncertainty they presented.

My path has been all but linear and that uncertainty along the way has kept me rooted in what’s right in front of me. I wouldn’t look back on everything I’ve done and say for certain I’d do it the same. In fact, there’s been so many things I wish I could do differently but those things are what made me who I am and have given me the presence I have felt.

If you want to read it, message me and I’ll send it over. Would mean a lot to me. Love y’all 🧡

P.S. this is my diary now and I’m so ver substack

#writer #essay #author #motivation #gratitude taken in Venice by @_nickmonica

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a month ago

I haven’t posted much from Peru, which is strange considering how much of it I photographed. I came home with rolls of film and stories with Dakota that I thought I’d be dying to tell, and then for whatever reason I found myself posting about everything else. Coffee, music, dumb things that make me laugh, whatever has been right in front of me. I think some part of me just wasn’t ready to turn Peru into content yet.

There are trips you take and there are trips that seem to keep happening to you long after you get home. Peru was definitely the latter. I keep finding pieces of it in strange places, in the way morning light hits a wall in our new home, in the smell of coffee before anyone else in the house is awake, in that particular loneliness that comes over you when you realize you are standing somewhere you may never stand again. That’s the cruel little bargain of travel. You spend all this money and time trying desperately to get somewhere, and then almost immediately the place begins becoming a memory.

I think that’s why I held onto these. Photographs have always felt a little dishonest to me in that way. They make it look like we got to keep something. A mountain, a face, a morning, a version of ourselves standing thousands of miles from home with no idea yet how much we would miss it. But we didn’t keep any of it. We got a few seconds there and then the world kept moving, because the world is ruthless like that.

So these are some photographs from Peru. Not really a recap and definitely not the whole story. Just proof that for a little while I was there, alive and full of attention, and lucky enough to know even while it was happening that someday I would give almost anything to be standing there again.

#peru #travel #lima #film #analog taken in Lima, Perú by @_nickmonica

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a month ago

This can’t only be wants, it posting the stoked moments too!!! taken in Venice, California by @_nickmonica

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2 months ago

I think I even surprised myself on that first bite 😂 if you make it through this one, you’re a real one.

#food #recipe #cooking #chicken #foodie taken in Venice by @_nickmonica

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2 months ago

An Ode to Whatever This Is…

I accidentally cosplayed as a pirate, scored many a wave, drank my own coffee, ate irresponsibly, visited the place my dog stole his name from, didn’t share my sandwich with him, closed down Casablanca with Dakota and friends, bought soccer shoes despite possessing absolutely no soccer-related skills, and survived the Australian invasion of Gnarwhal every Friday. Seems productive enough. taken in Venice by @_nickmonica

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2 months ago