Chase wants to buy you junk food, West Maui is reopening for tourism and is there such a things too much Taylor Swift? All that and more in this week’s Saturday Selection, our weekly round-up of interesting tidbits from around the interwebs (links to each article are embedded in the titles).
Is there such a thing as too much Taylor Swift?
My wife and I were watching the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday Night Football a couple of weeks ago. As some folks might have heard, Swift is dating Travis Kelce, a relatively well-known tight end that plays for Kansas City. She’s been attending each game, resulting in Travis Kelce jersey sales going through the roof, along with the amount of mid-game camera shots showing Taylor partying it up in the club seats with Kelce’s mom. After seeing one such shot, the game went to commercial, the first of which was advertising the theater version of Swift’s Eras Tour concert. This was followed by the Capital One Venture X commercial shown above. That’s a lot of Tay-Tay in three minutes. My wife, who is a fan, actually sighed and asked out loud, “can there be such a thing as too much Taylor Swift?” Johnny the Jet asks the same question in post above, after seeing the same Venture X commercial while spending a Halloween night watching mini Taylor Swifts and Travis Kelces ring doorbells all over his neighborhood.
Don’t forget: Chase wants to buy you Cheetos
Increasingly, card issuers have been adding monthly coupon-like credits to their products in an oxymoronic push to simultaneously add value and, at the same time, ensure that much of that potential value will never be used (what’s known as breakage). Add $15 a month in “dining credits” for five specific restaurants that will obviously require more than $15 in spend to eat at, label it “$180 in annual dining credits” and boom! You’ve got a winner. As these coupons credits pile-up, it’s easy for even the most hardened, deal-seeking miser to forget which card has his monthly $5 DoorDash discount or his $10 Goldbelly statement credit. There is one widely-available, and probably under-discussed, monthly benefit that’s worth taking a look at: Chase’s partnership with the delivery service Go Puff. Launched in 2021, conveniently while legalized pot was causing a nationwide outbreak of late-night munchies, a plethora of Chase credit cards now give you $10 per month back on GoPuff deliveries and pickups. These can be used for everything from toothpaste to junk food (the latter being more common). I actually used it to buy COVID tests from BevMo (!) at the beginning of the pandemic when I couldn’t find them anywhere in the area. Our own Stephen Pepper wrote earlier this year about how to creatively stack these credits and, in the link above, Thrifty Traveler gives a nice step-by-step guide for those folks who haven’t yet experienced the joy of a late-night Cheetos delivery.
Capital One opens a new lounge in Denver
Now, for some non-Taylor Swift. Capital One news. C1 garnered extensive praise with the introduction of its first ever Capital One Lounge in Dallas (DFW) last year. When I had a chance to visit, I was extremely impressed. It was one of the best domestic lounges that I’d ever been to and provided a welcome respite from DFW’s overcrowded Sardine Can Centurion Lounge. Another C1 Lounge opened in Washington-Dulles (IAD) earlier this year and, this week, the long-awaited Denver version has finally followed suit. Interestingly, this one is being called a “Plaza Premium Lounge in Partnership with Capital One,” probably because of how easily the sexy moniker flows off the tongue (Plaza Premium is a network of managed lounges that partners with Capital One). One Mile at a Time has a preview here.
West Maui opens for tourism
On this week’s Ask Us Anything, Stephen identified me as FM’s resident “Hawai’i expert.” While I wouldn’t go that far, most of my wife’s side of the family is from Maui and so we do have a strong connection to the island. Over the last three months, we’ve heard heartbreaking stories from family, friends and neighbors about the aftermath of the massive fires that decimated Lahaina. Since August, both the island and state have been dealing with the herculean task of housing thousands of displaced residents whose homes are now ashes. Many of those residents are currently being housed amongst the 11,000 hotel rooms in West Maui, the region of the island that encompasses Lahaina, Ka’anapali and Kapalua. Because of that, and because the livelihoods of much of the island depends directly or indirectly on tourism, Hawai’i’s governor announced a tiered re-opening of West Maui in October. Essentially, this started in the north, furthest away from Lahaina, then proceeded down the coast. This week, almost three months after the fires, the entirety of west Maui (with the exception of the destroyed areas in Lahaina) reopened. It’s a huge and complicated milestone as Maui seeks to heal and recover from what was, until recently, an unimaginable tragedy. The Travel Weekly report is above.
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Using pickup with 8 Chase cards that carry $10/month Gopuff credits. Received a lot of value out of it and will miss it when it ends after December.
DFW is my home airport and C-Lounge vs. C1-Lounge is a BIG debate among my friends and family. I believe that the food offerings, wine selection, and $70/bottle complimentary Islay Scotch are superior at the C-Lounge. However the layout and lack of view is a bit off-putting. Regarding the C1-lounge, no-one can deny that the floor to ceiling glass views of the tarmac are awesome, especially if you are there at sunset. Also, the staff at C1 seem friendly and genuinely happy to be there while the C-Lounge staff seems a bit more jaded. Note that C1-lounge has been more overcrowded than C-lounge lately (and has had 15-30 min waits to get in) since C1 still offers 2 free guests where as each C-Lounge visitor must have their own card.
No GoPuff in my area. Bummer as with my 17 Chase credit cards I could get a lot of free food every month!
love how white men keep asking if theres “too much” swift. She belongs in the kitchen eh tim?
Actually, if you read the post, it was my wife asking the question, not me. But, you’re half right!
As a white woman, there is definitely “too much swift” in the universe. I will admit she’s a great songwriter (if she still writes her own music) but enough is enough.
Would you feel better if I said I’m also sick of hearing about the Kelce brothers?
I think Linda Yaccarino is a horrible CEO and Kanye is just a terrible person.
I can think those things and also be in favor of more women executives / CEOs and also someone who has repeatedly led DEI programs and events and agrees that “Black Lives Matter.”
We humans contain multitudes. Also, implying that Taylor = All Women Artists or even All Women… come on now.
Charlotte, if Black men were to be asking the question, would you have said so? If Asian women were to be asking the question, would you have said so? If mixed race non-binary individuals were to be asking the question, would you have said so? It sounds as if you like to pigeon-hole white men into a particular stereotype. My sense is that Tim does not fit into that stereotype.