The Four Freedoms is presented by Ramp – the finance platform that helps businesses control spend, automate expenses, and manage bills. As a Liber reader, you can get $250 when you sign up here. T&Cs apply.
HEADLINES
This week, at a glance.
Frieze Abu Dhabi and the great art land grab
Monaco hosts a bike race
Straker’s opens in New York this month
The return of the Bentley magazine
The Omega Speedmaster, now in small
The slow reveal of Dunhill AW26
Land Rover will sell you its Dakar-winning Defender
Ricoh can’t make cameras fast enough
Istanbul is now Europe’s busiest airport
Ritz-Carlton Reserve goes urban
ITA Airways now allows big dogs in the cabin
Why NetJets stopped selling jet cards
Reykjaböð: Iceland’s newest geothermal lagoon
Jesse Itzler and the art of the misogi
56:51 – what the fastest half marathon ever tells us
The Altar, New York’s new longevity bathhouse
TIME
What to do: culture, events, and experiences worth your time.
Frieze Abu Dhabi and the great art land grab
Frieze named the 84 galleries for its first Abu Dhabi fair this week, confirming what October’s announcement promised: the emirate now has a marquee week on the global art calendar, 19 to 22 November at Manarat Al Saadiyat. Gagosian, Pace, Perrotin and Victoria Miro will show alongside the region’s most established dealers, with sculpture programmes, artist awards and talks built around the booths – a full cultural season compressed into four days.
The fair is one piece of a much larger project, as Abu Dhabi’s culture department has spent two decades building Saadiyat Island into a museum district to rival any capital, the Louvre Abu Dhabi already in place, a Guggenheim and the Zayed National Museum on the way, and it was that same department which brought Frieze in, evolving its homegrown fair of 17 years into this. Art Basel, meanwhile, opened in Doha this February – the world’s two biggest fair brands now sit 500km apart on the Gulf.
Monaco hosts a bike race
The Vuelta a España set off from Monaco last weekend, making the principality the first place to have hosted the start of all three cycling Grand Tours. The opening time trial borrowed generously from the Formula 1 circuit – starting from inside the casino and down around the hairpin through the marina’s storied streets. Watching from the barriers cost nothing, which the Grand Prix, however, cannot claim. Tadej Pogačar, a Monaco resident and the sport’s reigning force, won it by nine hundredths of a second – an F1 margin on an F1 track.
He took two more stages this week and built a lead of nearly four minutes, cruising toward the only Grand Tour missing from his collection. Then, on Saturday’s Stage 8, a rock on the roadside sent him over the bars at speed, and out of the race in an ambulance. It was his first abandonment in ten Grand Tours: a concussion, broken collarbone, and neck fracture.
His team says he is stable, and recovery will no doubt take a while – even for a Slovenian superhuman. The race, in all its brutality, carries on without him, suddenly wide open. The one Grand Tour he hasn’t won will have to wait.
Straker's opens in New York this month
Thomas Straker built an audience of millions on butter, parlayed it into Straker's, a Notting Hill dining room with a queue to match the following, and this week he confirmed the New York chapter will finally open this month. The address carries stories: 59 Grand Street in SoHo, home for three decades to Keith McNally’s Lucky Strike, a heritage space Straker says he walked into once and immediately knew was the one. Nine months of construction delays later, it’s emerged as a more grown-up room than London, cooking over fire in an open kitchen up front, a proper banquetted dining room under skylights at the back.
McNally himself gave a blessing of sorts, telling Straker he’d be in three times a week for lunch, provided the mussel flatbread makes the menu. It will.
The return of the Bentley magazine
Bentley has revived its 25-year-old customer magazine as W.O., named for founder Walter Owen Bentley, and to launch it, the marque has turned Automat in Mayfair into the Bentley Newsagent until 4 September. Pass through Mount Street this week and a limited-edition copy comes free with a coffee, while stocks last – a rather civilised transaction by launch standards.
A photograph in the Bentley archive shows four racing cars, and their drivers gathered on that very street in 1929, before departing for Le Mans, where Bentley would finish 1-2-3-4. The new issue, produced with contributors including photographer Greg Williams and Road Rat editor Peter Grunert, puts Billy Zane and his 1990 Turbo R on the cover, printed to coffee-table permanence: textured wrap, foil detailing, Bentley Green matched by hand.
FINANCIAL
What to buy: product launches and material obsessions.
The Omega Speedmaster, now in small
Omega has rebuilt its 38mm Speedmaster in the image of the Moonwatch, and about time – the outgoing small model, with its oval subdials and jewellery-box colourways, never truly convinced anyone. The new one gets round subdials, a proper bezel with the dot-over-ninety detail, the five-link bracelet, and, in the black no-date version, a recipe Omega hasn’t sold since the Speedmaster ‘Reduced’ disappeared in 2009.
Notably, the very first Speedmaster, in 1957, measured 38.6mm. This is a homecoming, in other words, and the 42mm everyone knows is the version that grew.
The release hasn’t arrived without criticism. The case sits nearly 15mm tall on the wrist – the main wearability issue the community has voiced disagreement with – and seven references at once is perhaps overkill when a couple would have landed harder. Still, with the whole industry trending smaller, it’s a step in the right direction. The steel classic starts at $6,500.
The slow reveal of Dunhill AW26
One of the most overlooked – or perhaps misunderstood – big names in designer menswear, Dunhill has just put its AW26 collection into stores and online, and the way it was rolled out deserves at least some of the attention the clothes themselves will no doubt receive. When Simon Holloway showed the collection in January, he did it privately, at Villa Mozart in Milan. No runway, that is. The campaign, shot by Ethan James Green with Lord Snowdon as muse, was published entirely in black and white – a match for the cold, grey English palette that inspired the collection.
Now, with the clothes finally buyable, the world gets the reveal in full colour. In an industry that frontloads its excitement six months before anything exists, letting anticipation build until it drags people into stores is a clever inversion, and a rather confident one. Hooked on dopamine and the comforts of immediacy, how nice a change it can be to enjoy the fruits of patience.
From the racks, a few of our favourites: the suede driving jacket, the camel hair cigar shirt jacket, a hilariously clever pill box lighter, the healthily-priced but knowingly on-brand padel brooch, and these double-faced cashmere scarves.
Land Rover will sell you its Dakar-winning Defender
In January, three near-production Defenders entered the Dakar Rally’s new Stock class and finished first, second and fourth, with the great Stéphane Peterhansel driving one of them. This month at Monterey Car Week, Land Rover revealed the road-legal version. The Defender Dakar keeps the race truck’s body architecture and driveline, adds a derestricted 626bhp V8 that out-powers the racer, and rides on 35-inch tyres with rally-spec dampers and a Flight Mode, which manages torque mid-jump – a feature no school pickup requires, and plenty will enjoy knowing exists.
It will be a limited edition, positioned above the $159,000 Octa, with production numbers and pricing revealed at the 2027 Dakar in January. Registrations of interest are already open. Land Rover has not stopped swinging since the modern Defender launched, and it doesn’t appear to be slowing down.
Ricoh can’t make cameras fast enough
The Ricoh GR IV has become the proper camera that ordinary people actually carry. It’s pocketable, sharp, mercifully simple, and it sells so well that Ricoh’s own financial reports credit the GR series for the company’s growth in cameras, with the recent Monochrome edition gone on arrival. This week brought the sequel announcement: the GR IVx, carrying a newly designed 40mm-equivalent lens, closer to how the eye actually sees, due this winter.
One practical note: as the outgoing GR IIIx ends production in October, anyone tempted by the current model should move before the stock does.
LOCATION
Where to go: travel and mobility for the globally curious.
Istanbul is now Europe’s busiest airport
For nearly thirty years, Heathrow was Europe’s front door. It held the busiest-airport title from 1996 to 2019, reclaimed it after the pandemic, but as of July, the crown belongs to Istanbul: 8.15 million passengers against Heathrow’s 7.86 million. Part of the new gap is circumstance, with Heathrow’s Middle East traffic down 20.2% amid the Iran-US conflict.
Istanbul, though, was built for exactly this, a mega-hub where Europe, Asia and Africa meet, feeding Turkish Airlines’ network, which flies to more countries than any other carrier. A fourth runway is even slated to open later this year. Heathrow, meanwhile, continues a decades-long debate about a third runway that, on the most optimistic timeline, would arrive in 2035. Credit where credit is due – they’ve done well to manage on two, all things considered.
Ritz-Carlton Reserve goes urban
There are only nine Ritz-Carlton Reserves on earth, all remote by design – cliffs in Los Cabos, jungle in Krabi, and that scarcity, really, is what has helped define the product. Marriott’s announcement last week broke the brand’s founding rule: the first city Reserve is coming to Shanghai, 110 rooms inside a 480-metre, 103-storey tower on the North Bund, the tallest building on the Puxi side of the river, slated for 2030.
Shanghai, upon opening, will become the only city in the world holding all eight of Marriott’s luxury brands, a fact the group slipped into its announcement almost as an aside, and one that says plenty about where hotel strategy is heading. A 2030 date announced in 2026 leaves room for the usual slippage, so treat the timeline as directional.
ITA Airways now allows big dogs in the cabin
Anyone who has tried to move a large dog across the world knows the maths never works. Most airlines cap cabin pets around 8kg, and the hold, for many owners, feels somewhere between stressful and unthinkable. The cost of the alternative, though – private charter through outfits like K9 Jets – essentially begins north of 5 figures. Big dogs cancel more relocations and long trips than anyone admits.
ITA Airways has now moved the line, becoming the first major carrier to allow dogs up to 30kg (66lb) in the cabin, no crate, on a mat beside their owner’s window seat. Dogs over 15kg (33lb) are booked into business class, which feels correct. There’s no scale at check-in, either, as a vet certificate issued within 20 days attests to weight and fitness to fly, and the dog needs its own booked space, plus a €95 ($110) fee per flight.
It’s limited to select Italian domestic routes for now, booked at least four days ahead, though the airline has signalled bigger ambitions. One carrier proving the concept is how these things start.
Why NetJets stopped selling jet cards
NetJets curtailed sales of its jet cards and leases in late July, only the second time in five years, and the reason is the opposite of trouble. The Berkshire Hathaway-owned operator says retention among fractional owners has never been higher, demand keeps arriving faster than aircraft do, and with 868 jets in the fleet, 80 more coming this year, and flight volumes up 11.8% in the first half, the constraint isn’t customers, it’s capacity.
In any fleet-based programme, fractional owners sit at the top of the priority ladder, cardholders below them, so protecting the owners means turning the card tap off. Fractional ownership, once the wonky middle child of private flying, has become the seat everyone wants, and competitors are reporting a surge as NetJets’ would-be cardholders shop elsewhere.
HEALTH
How to live: wellness, performance, and the pursuit of longevity.
Reykjaböð: Iceland’s newest geothermal lagoon
Iceland’s lagoon culture needs no introduction. The Blue Lagoon long ago became shorthand for the country itself, and this Tuesday, 1 September, a new contender opens at the foot of the Reykjadalur valley near Hveragerði, about 40 minutes from Reykjavík. Reykjaböð pairs a geothermal lagoon with a ten-stage Nordic bathhouse, saunas, cold plunges, and an Arctic room filled with actual snow, all at the trailhead of the hot-river valley hikers already adore. Bookings are open now, with lagoon passes from $65 and the full bathhouse circuit from $130.
Jesse Itzler and the art of the misogi
Jesse Itzler has built several fortunes, co-founding Marquis Jet, selling coconut water to Coca-Cola, buying into the Atlanta Hawks, and yet the thing our entrepreneurial readers most borrow from him is a calendar entry. The misogi, adapted from an ancient Japanese ritual, is his rule that every year must contain one defining challenge, committed to the calendar months in advance, and his conditions for choosing it are simple: a 50/50 chance of finishing, and don’t die. Past editions include a month living with a Navy SEAL, Ultraman, and biking across America.
This year’s, just completed around Vancouver, was the biggest yet, an Everesting triathlon he’s calling the 29029 Triple: two days biking repeats of Mt Seymour until he’d climbed the height of Everest, all 29,029 feet, then swimming Everest’s length, 5.5 miles, in Whistler’s Alta Lake, then hiking its height once more, back to back to back, 51 hours of effort in total. He is, by his own cheerful admission, a terrible swimmer, which was rather the point, and he’s the first person in the world to complete it.
The hiking leg doubled as 29029 Whistler, the flagship event of the endurance company Itzler co-founded in 2017, where 373 participants this year, the youngest 16 and the oldest 71, had 36 hours to summit Whistler Mountain eight times, 3,900 feet of climbing per lap at a 19.6% average grade, gondola down, earning the red hat that finishers wear like a medal. His own conclusion is the retainable bit: you will never regret putting something challenging on the calendar with friends. Bravo.
56:51 – what the fastest half marathon ever tells us
Yomif Kejelcha ran the fastest half marathon in history last Sunday in Buenos Aires, 56 minutes and 51 seconds, and the most useful detail for the average runner is not so much the time itself as his strategy – he covered the second 10km 34 seconds faster than the first. The negative split, easier preached than executed, remains the most reliable trick in distance running, and one of the world’s fastest men just demonstrated it at 4:20 per mile.
The record fell inside a sold-out mass race of 31,500 runners in Buenos Aires’ cool late-winter air, on a course redesigned this year to be faster – one that now needs its own certification before the record can be ratified. That’s no formality lately. The two would-be records before this one were rejected when officials ruled the pace car had shielded Jacob Kiplimo from the wind in Barcelona, and ratification is still pending half a year after his Lisbon effort.
The half marathon has outgrown its stepping-stone reputation, with its own records, tactics and stars, and for the amateur it remains the most honest distance there is: long enough to demand respect, short enough to train for with a job.
The Altar, New York’s new longevity bathhouse
New York’s recovery scene has a new centrepiece, as The Altar is now open on Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron. The space is built around a fifty-person ceremonial sauna billed as the city’s largest, where guided Aufguss sessions – the theatrical European towel-and-heat ritual – get performed at proper scale. The space splits in two: The Atrium for communal sauna and cold plunge, guided or self-directed, and The Practice for the longevity hardware, IV therapy, NAD+, red light, compression, and hyperbaric chambers. Bookings are live for both.s
yeah, information that doesn't affect me just yet... but the price of the Ricoh GR iilx wasn't added
Such a great mix of the interesting and so well written 🫡😎