A daily walk to a Japandi coffee shop in Brooklyn reveals a recurring, highly specific aesthetic: selvedge denim, thumb rings, a mustache, film-bro preferences for Akira Kurosawa, and a curated, intentionally cluttered loft. Similar style appears in readers of a newsletter, suggesting a local concentration of “taste.” The concept of taste is framed as more than fashion or consensus. Susan Sontag describes taste as governing free human responses and warns that sensibilities hardened into systems stop being sensibilities. Montesquieu characterizes natural taste as applying rules people do not know. Taste therefore depends on intention and deliberate choices rather than rote adherence.
"Centuries ago, people were already puzzling over the ways in which taste is ineffable. Montesquieu wrote, "Natural taste is not the same as theoretical knowledge. It consists in the rapid and subtle application of the very rules which we do not know." Taste requires intention. One must make choices to d"
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