Breakfast Club is now Footnotes!

Stepping into the future with a new name.

Introducing Footnotes

A quarter century ago I started running around my hometown.

It was late summer and the humidity sat dank upon the hills that roll alongside Interstate 85. To be outside that time of year is to move through the great funk of heat that defines late summer in the Carolinas.

People born outside the American South, blessed to live in northern climes or low humidity or cooling Pacific breezes, struggle to comprehend this kind of heat—the meat-fat feel of superheated moisture that surrounds you, permeating your shuffle along the pavement.

I was new to competitive running and had no idea how to train or even where to do it. So I followed the roads, creating little mental maps of streets and sidewalks. As I went, I began to notice small things I’d never recognized: which streets to avoid due to heavy car traffic, where road shoulders were wide or narrow, how the water drained off my high-school campus to pool in great puddles downslope, the way spiders built webs across paths that stuck against my sweaty skin as I passed.

I observed my town in new ways: how the sidewalks were cracked in some neighborhoods and smooth in others, how the size of houses shifted from block to block, how the texture of asphalt changed underfoot as I ran across town.

There were not deep or systematic observations. They were little questions, modest reflections, and small curiosities that eventually led to deeper thoughts about history, culture, power, and self.

Wandering, I think, leads to wondering. That’s how this newsletter was born—from the questions that come from moving through the world on foot. These are stories of running, walking, and hiking, stories that are sometimes nostalgic and whimsical, other times investigative and incisive, but always grounded in movement and reverence.

And so Breakfast Club is getting a new name to reflect this creative evolution.

Today is also the debut of a new visual identity for the newsletter—an energetic new look created by Hristijan Eftimov that conveys a sense of forward momentum and exploration. It boldly evolves our focus on running and endurance sport’s relationship to culture, history, and place. The type is Recoleta, an elegant but unpretentious seriffed typeface that evokes popular types from the 1970s, the period of the first running boom. The dot on the “S" an ode to citation, the establishment of truth by grounding it in reference.

If you’re listening to the voiceovers, you’ll also hear outstanding intro and outro music thoughtfully created by Doc & The Doses with sound editing from Hibernation Studio. It’s a fun riff and cooler than I’ll ever be in an audio recording!

A special thank you to

Erin Shetron

, who has been a vital partner in helping with this branding refresh. I once asked Erin how she described her job, which she described as a combination of editor and growth strategist. But I think of her more as a ‘Substack Consigliere’ who makes good ideas great ideas and helps manifest those thoughts into life with brilliance, experience, and kindness. Thanks so much, Erin!

As we step into this new chapter, Footnotes will keep exploring the vibrant intersection of movement and meaning with the same spirit of curiosity that defined Breakfast Club. Movement, broadly defined, connects the material world with our inner lives. And so we'll wander and wonder, documenting our relationships to space, place, and power. 

Welcome to Footnotes—where every step has a story and every story leaves a mark.

Breakfast Club, the run, is not going anywhere

Our little running crew in the East Bay rolls strong with a life of its own. The Breakfast Club Run continues its weekly Thursday-morning trot around the Oakland/Berkeley hills. (Next January will mark ten years of weekly runs!)

• If you’re in the area, join us for a run or post-run coffee! Find details on Strava and join our lively Whatsapp group by emailing katieklymko[at]gmail[dot]com.

  • Group run starts at Lake Temescal at 6:30am. Sip & nibble at Ain’t Normal Cafe at 7:30am.

Why change the name?

Here’s some rationale if you’re curious. Since starting the newsletter in 2015 as a weekly reminder for an eponymous weekly run, the tone, substance, and quality has evolved from its origins as a light-hearted missive, hastily assembled and filled with gifs and memes. (A spirit that lives on in the “Tweets of the Week” segment.)¹ 

Now, in 2024, the newsletter has grown in maturity, quality of writing, subject matter, audience, and creative effort. So it was worth reconsidering its name.

The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes once noted that names help turn “the consequences of things imagined in the mind, into a reckoning of the consequences.” In other words, names make vague ideas concrete and place abstract concepts into context. I’ve got many things imagined and the new name helps realize and represent those ideas, helping people recognize and discover them.²

The specific name Footnotes encapsulates a few perspectives to my writing: a would-be academic who anchored his work with footnotes to primary and secondary sources, a runner who observes the world he trods upon, and a writer, who grew up jotting musings on the internet. I’m stoked to commit to growing this little space.

Want to help?

I believe we can create a better internet by investing in the thoughtful work we love. And the best way you can support this little effort is by sharing the letter with a friend. This not only spreads the word, it also brings in new perspectives and ideas, shaping the letter’s direction and evolution.

What’s coming up?

• 3 stories about built environment, pedestrians, and my long-time enemy: the intersection near my house. 

  • I dusted off my archival skills for these, flipping through one-hundred-year-old newspaper to help write the stories. I’m excited (and nervous) about how they’ll be received and I’d love your feedback when they come out!

• A guest post from a new contributor about skin-tight lycra and masculinity (you’re going to love it).

• A bonus post for paid subscribers about my favorite bags for running, sport, commuting, and life. Upgrade here to get it.

Thanks as always for reading. See you in the footnotes.

Tweets of the week

1.  You can read a deeper history of the newsletter’s origins in this letter from 2023.

2. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: Revised Student Edition, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 26.