It's a Shanda: Now in sticker form

Keep your NFTs. We're going with some good old-fashioned stickers.

Welcome to It’s A Shanda, one Northeastern Jew’s quest to find a decent bagel in Seattle (and beyond). Along with free bagel reviews every Sunday, we also offer bonus posts each Wednesday. If you’re already subscribed, I hope you’ll consider upgrading to a paid subscription! Thank you for reading.

Halfway through the Mel Brooks’ film “Spaceballs,” the heroes find themselves face-to-face with the mysterious and diminutive Yogurt. When they ask what the master of the Schwartz does in his cave home, Yogurt replies “Merchandising!”

“We put the picture’s name on everything. Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the real money from the movie is made!”

It’s kinda surprising in retrospect that there isn’t a bagel-related scene in “Spaceballs” now that I think about it.

Anyway, It’s a Shanda has stickers now.

You may have noticed we’ve got a fancy new logo up there in the left-hand corner. That logo is also now in sticker form!

If you’ve been a reader long enough, you’ve probably realized there are certain topics and phrases I come back to often. Naturally, there are stickers for those as well.

When I was growing up, the “Cornmeal Ring of Doom” was the signal I used to determine if a bagel was going to be any good. If the bottom of the bagel was caked in cornmeal, more often than not, it portended a disappointing experience. In reality, that’s now always the case, but I still can’t help but notice when the CRoD is present and how it affects my first impression of any bagel.

Longtime readers probably also know how important I think salt is to the everything bagel seasoning mix. Without it, you have a collection of seeds and bits that may or may not have flavor. But when the right amount of salt is involved, everything pops. It is, as I am wont to say, AS GOD INTENDED.

Speaking of everything bagels, you probably know how much we appreciate a heavy seed hand around here. Getting an everything or seeded bagel and being able to count the individual seeds is a big bummer and usually means there isn’t going to be much flavor. You might as well have just gotten a plain. To paraphrase a commonly overused phrase, “Go big on seeds or go home.”

Keep an eye out for these stickers the next time you’re in the vicinity of your favorite bagel joint. You never know where they might pop up.

As a special thank you to paid subscribers, I’m offering up one of the It’s a Shanda logo stickers as well as your choice of one of the three secondary stickers. Paid subscribers will find a form link below that you just need to fill out and I’ll pop those in the mail free of charge.

This offer goes for brand-new paid subscribers, too. So if you want to support the newsletter and get some goodies for it, now’s the perfect time. Once you sign up, whether it’s monthly or yearly, you’ll see the form link below.