Prologue

Pour yourself something: Tea, coffee, an energy drink or one of those probiotic drink thingies. I’m having a finger of bourbon. Elijah Craig barrel proof if you’re asking.

Hold your drink up…

Here’s to unknown ventures, and cautionary tales. CLINK

Shape here. Welcome to before day one. Building Blaak Museum on open forum for everyones entertainment and education.

Shapeshyfter reader,

I can hear you wondering whats the deal with the fabricated image just above?

I’ve always carried a torch for old tales made new.

Back in the 19th century bored and curious New Yorkers wandered sometimes on a whim through those hallowed black and white double doors.

P.T. Barnum's freak house where annoyingly weird and bearded people with large feet and felonies performed freakish performances for wandering imaginations.

Barnum built his uniquely faceted world brick and mortar by brick and sawdust. A strange house of lions, elephants and WOWZERS.

Passerbyers wondered “What cockamamie foolishness is P.T up to now?”

Barnum was many things

Business Man

Entertainer

Conman

Grifter

A charlatan who convinced common working stiffs that animals, clowns and obvious lies were worth two small coins. Big money, those days.

15th century

Folks shorter than us, skinnier than us, dressed like renaissance era druids in linen and chenille — insatiably curious fans of fine art, formally known as Romans wandered like herded Swifties into Santa Maria delle Grazie, where Leonardo da Vinci painted dinner.

Yes—dinner. Leo painted The Last Supper veeerrry slowly. He had no other place to be apparently.

Church custodians making a whopping one brass coin an hour set up bleachers for da Vinci’s underwear throwing fans to plop their barely-padded bums on.

He painted.

He rambled like a daytime talkshow host.

Romans watched in awe.

I wonder if he hummed? Tapped his feet? I wonder if he chatted about church gossip and shadow theory and spicy ragu or whatever genius things geniuses mumble while covered in paint.

Da Vinci and that nut job Barnum had their workplace. They too made work publicly, on open forum. Curious parties observed, marveled and learned.

Welcome to my interpretation. A public space for curious ones to gather. I call it Shapeshyfter… You’ll find out why later.

— Shape

Up next: Day one.

Currently snowed in, out of sunflower seeds and bored outta my mind. Figured i’d start day one in this letter.

For starters i’m not married to Beehiiv as an enterprise or platform. Listening to 12 rounds of garish Twitter squabble a couple years back between Beehiiv’s Ceo and Kit’s got old quick.

Sometimes business owners don’t realize everything they make is parity. They also don’t realize everything they say is marketing. I formed suspicions and opinions. Between their sour grapes and my sour taste I pivoted towards Ghost CMS.

I like Ghost. Coolest dude, designer extraordinare on X dabbles with Ghost, Tobias van Schneider.

like really - I like ghost… I like their mission. I like open source. Ghost just works, kinda. The themes suck. I found some tinkering necessary.

I see Ghost for what it is. A collection of hobbyists building their hobby. That’s my problem with Ghost… Sometimes it mirrors a hobby, not a business. Certainly not a business I want to construct two newsletters on top of. Grounds don’t seem stable enough. After living in San Francisco for half my life I’ve developed rocky-grounds-ptsd. Ghost feels rocky.

What does a guy do? Choose pesky or rocky?

I choose pesky

To Be Continued