13/09/2023 SHŌ Group’s upscale NFT restaurant in San Francisco is officially never being built

After many delays, the NFT-backed restaurant/club that was supposed to offer memberships between $7,500-$300,000 is “not possible [to open] at this time”

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It looks like SHŌ — the NFT-backed restaurant/club in San Francisco that was supposed to open this fall as a two-story “culinary entertainment and nightlife experience” operated under SHŌ Group — is never going to happen. After Nation’s Restaurant Newspreviously reported onapparent construction delays on the project following a groundbreaking ceremony in Aug. 2022, amid lower than anticipated response to NFT membership sales, the project will not be completed.

“We have reached the difficult conclusion that bringing SHŌ to life atop Salesforce Park is not possible at this time,” Josh Sigel, CEO of SHŌ Group said in a statement publishedby Eater.

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According to Eater, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which oversees Salesforce Park, where the NFT restaurant was supposed to be located, terminated its lease in July. SHŌ Group did not respond to requests for further comment.

SHŌwas first announcedin June 2022 during the NFT craze, when many operators thought that pricey crypto-backed digitalmemberships would be the future of exclusive dining clubs for an elite customer base. SHŌ San Francisco was supposed to be the company’s flagship and prototype business model that could be repeated in other cities around the world. When it was first announced, Sigel said the company would have offered three tiers of access to customers costing between $7,500-$300,000, with perks ranging from priority reservations and courtesy car pickup/dropoff, to exclusive curated trips to Japan.

However, just 10 months later, the project was struggling. In an interview in early 2023, Sigel revealed that only 100 NFTs were sold during the initial private sale, and that the promised wider public sale of the initially promised 3,275 NFTs had not yet happened, though it was set to occur within the next four weeks. As initially reported by SFGate, that wider public NFT sales never happened.

SHŌ isn’t the only group struggling to grow interest in exclusive NFT clubs. Brooklyn Chop House in New York City was also supposed to open a subterranean NFT lounge under its steakhouse with memberships costing between $8,000-$100,000, but the plans were scrapped, since Brooklyn Chop House co-owner Robert Cummins told Nation’s Restaurant News that customer tastes — and demand for NFTs — have changed and withered. Another similar project, helmed by New Jersey-based Dragonfly Brands, was abandoned early on in the development process.

Arts

https://www.nrn.com/operations/sh-group-s-upscale-nft-restaurant-san-francisco-officially-never-being-built

Interesting NFTs
Alex in Wonderland
A figure, Alex, stands mostly naked in the midst of a physical and psychological maelstrom. He is clad only in nostalgic 80’s era socks, on a tenuous island between active waters and a variety of shark denizens. Sharks on the right side of the image are all beached, including a shark with a quartz crystal snout, an orange shark wrapped in a life buoy, and a shark further in the distance wearing an 80’s style shirt with the number “88”. On the left side is the largest shark, wearing bright glossy red lipstick and brandishing prominent teeth with braces. She is cordoned off from the figure by a roped float divider, and within her thought bubble is a warning symbol. Behind the figure, hovering in the air, are Grey aliens emerging from the distance, out of a series of elliptical UFO shaped interdimensional membranes. The Greys take on the visual form of spermazoa ostensibly impregnating the interdimensional thresholds. As is typical, these Greys inhabit a zone just behind the unconscious topology of Alex’s dissociative mind. Though Alex’s bottom half is representative, his top half mutates into a psychological cornucopia. In a manner akin to “Auto-Erotic Sphinx”, a predecessor work, the figure has self suctioned—an act of sensual infatuation, enjoyment, and exploration. Upward exists the figure’s primary conscious eye, adorned with a revolutionary beret emblazoned with a Bitcoin badge. The figure’s summit features the nose of a fighter jet facing off against video game Bullet Bills, one of whom is marked by a communist North Korean star. A cropped section of a UFO observes the contest. Alex’s mind branches both left and right. To the left is more singular embodied consciousness, manifesting two eyes and a Ganesh trunk grasping crayons. The right branch dissociates upward diagonally, emerging into an array of eyes, faces, teeth, tail, a unicorn horn, and much more—all of which participate in expressing his unconscious being; a democracy of psychic factions representing thought impressions and associations. All illumination and darkness– fernal, infernal, high consciousness and corporeal underbelly–reside in this realm. In the distance are relatively languid, light clouds, and against the firmament hovers a colossal distant eye peering over the scene and far beyond. This painting possesses underlying genetic traits with previous works such as “Auto-Erotic Sphinx with Toys”, “Dionysus”, and “Fuku-Shiva”. The work serves also as a nod to an earlier period of art inspiration during late teens and early twenties— born out of the nakedness, vulnerability, curiosity, and wonder inherent to coming of age and all subsequent psychedelic revelation.
Not Forgotten, But Gone
Not Forgotten, But Gone by WhIsBe
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I made a picture from start to finish every single day from May 1st, 2007 - January 7th, 2021. This is every motherfucking one of those pictures.
Monty
What's up! I'm Monty. I'm often referred to as the Samwise Gamgee of the group. I once snuggled a chimpanzee. I don't like to talk about it. It's pawesome to meet you!
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By OthersideDeployer