By Walt Hickey
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Parking Lots
One of the hottest types of real estate these days is “industrial outdoor storage” or IOS, which you may know more conventionally as “parking lots where you can leave stuff for a while.” Previously, the field was full of smaller investors leasing to trucking companies for long-term vehicle storage. Since 2021, large institutional investors have shoved $4.7 billion into the space. This is largely due to demand from construction companies that need storage space for under-construction data centers and power plants. Since 2020, rents for IOS properties have increased 123 percent, well outstripping rents for industrial warehouses (which grew 58 percent over the period).
Patrick Sisson, The New York Times
Cinemas
In attempts to make the moviegoing experience better and more competitive, the North American exhibition business has plowed $1.5 billion into movie theater improvements this year. Improvements include expanded menus, more large screen formats, better reclining seats and anything that might make moviegoers more willing to head to the cinema to catch a movie. It is just the first part of a $2.2 billion pledge from the industry to make theaters better. Luxury recliners to compete with the amenities of the couch, better projection equipment to run a lap around even the best home entertainment setup and menus that can compete with deliveries are making a dent, according to the industry. The number of Gen Z people who saw six or more movies in a year increased to 37 percent, and is up 8 percentage points since 2023.
Safari
Tourism to Africa has bounced back from the pandemic, with 74 million visitors traveling to Africa in 2024 — up 7 percent over the level in 2019. One issue for the African tourism industry, and conservation tourism in particular, is that safaris are being sold as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. This has done a great job of making conservation tourism a desirable experience, to be certain, and selling an experience as a real bucket list item does make it a hot ticket. However, one fear among the industry is that once-in-a-lifetime experiences don’t manage to get repeat customers. This is one reason why growth has been harder to come by for destinations in Kenya, Morocco and South Africa.
Tony Hawk
Skating video games are back, with July seeing the release of “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4.” Yesterday kicked off the early access period to the new entry in EA’s “Skate” series. That said, though the new entries are appealing to longtime fans, the mechanics have been largely unchanged for decades, and the new features appear to be limited to micro-transactions. The first nine games in the “Tony Hawk” series were released at a reliable clip — ranging from 333 days to 406 days between entries — but saw a steady decline in Metacritic ratings from 1999 to 2007. They peaked with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 at a 98 and then declining to 73 with Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground in 2007.
Matcha
Global demand for matcha has exploded this year, with U.S. retail sales up 86 percent compared to three years ago as the powdered tea becomes a bit of a trend. Demand is in a bit of a crunch — Japan, which is one of the biggest producers, had poor weather for matcha this year — and matcha from China is currently subject to a 37.5 percent tariff. Commercial tea buyers in the United States are reportedly paying 75 percent more for the highest-grade 2025 crop of Japanese matcha, with lower grades costing 30 percent to 50 percent more than usual
Dee-Ann Durbin, The Associated Press
Games
New data from Ampere Analysis found that adaptations of video games into television shows and movies are juicing playing numbers for the games. On average, player growth is up 140 percent for the adapted games, with television adaptations proving to be stronger motivators than film adaptations (up 203 percent versus up 48 percent). One of the big winners has been Fallout on Amazon Prime Video, which sent the game franchise’s monthly active users up 490 percent. Another is HBO’s The Last of Us, which increased monthly players of both The Last of Us Part II (70 percent) and The Last of Us Part I (29 percent).
Tony Maglio, The Hollywood Reporter
Montreal
The world’s governments’ direct response to address the human damage to the ozone layer is a smashing and resounding success. They demonstrated that by directly addressing the human impact on climate, it’s entirely feasible to reverse and repair extensive damage to sophisticated atmospheric systems. The Montreal Protocol, adopted in 1987 to phase out the chlorofluorocarbons that were putting a hole in the ozone layer, worked exactly as hoped. Scientists predict that the ozone layer will recover to the health it had in 1980 over the midlatitudes and tropics by 2040, over the Arctic by 2045 and over Antarctica by 2066. Progress continues, with the latest report from the World Meteorological Organization proving that the ozone layer was materially healthier in 2024 than it was over the 2003-2022 average.
Meghan Bartels, Scientific American
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Nobody tell t***p or rfkj about the Montreal protocol. They'll immediately try to roll it back in the name of "make the atmosphere even more polluted again" or some other nonsense.