You may wonder what part Oakland plays in the Epstein files. A lower-middle class ganef uses his saltine-and-sausage privilege to pass into the upper echelons of international finance, academia, and politics, running an elaborate fulfillment center for executive rape, investment dividends, and sticky resenarch money by sending charmless emails from ugly houses. What’s that got to do with the East Bay? Other than, it's sort of giving Piedmont?
It’s true that Oakland does not feature prominently in the digital files of the Epstein Library, published online by the US Department of Justice on January 30. But that’s not to say the 510 doesn’t have a place in history. So, what’s a diabolical sex trafficker slash money launderer do in the East Bay anyway? I probed Epstein for regional detail so you don’t have to.
First things first: Do you want to smell good? Because Epstein certainly wanted you to. He was obsessed with scent, by the evidence of the files. They include chitchat about gift perfumes for his favorite females: fancy scents, trashy scents, and heritage odors from artisanal perfumers in the East Bay. Don’t make that face. Everyone likes smelling nice, only plebs have to submit to scent-free workplace protocols; rich people get to stink up the place so you know they were there.
Epstein’s final girlfriend, Karyna Shuliak—willed $50 million by Epstein—ordered several perfume samples from Aftel Archive, a wooden dacha on Walnut Street in Berkeley, around the corner from the pizza communists (don’t worry, no kompromat file on the worker-owned co-op, comrade).
If you want to smell like Epstein’s Lolita (cringey in a vibey way that says, I want to smell like goat horns not because my boyfriend is Satan, but because perfume museums are cool), then get the Epstein Sugar-Baby Perfume Suite from Aftelier: Palimpsest, Cuir de Gardenia, Lumiere, Wild Roses, Honey Blossom, Parfum Privé, Secret Garden, Cacao, and Vanilla Smoke. Palimpsest promises “forbidden fruit, and majestic creatures in hiding”; Lumiere “addictive” honeysuckle; and Secret Garden threatens to lure you down a “blind pathway” to a “hidden mystery” that will seize you awake “like a key fitting in a lock.”
Next artifact: tea. Receipts show tins of Mariage Frères teas mailed from a deli across the street from Rockridge BART station, to Epstein’s demon lair in NYC. You know those stylish black Pandora’s boxes stacked by the plate-glass windows of Market Hall, opposite the cookies? Boxes you might not notice if you were a coffee person, visible only to people with tea eyes?
From the townhouse fortress at 9 East 71st Street in They-All-Fucking-Knew York City, the Epstein home (which Woody Allen dubbed “Castle Dracula”) sent for delicate boxes of fragrant tea from a deli known mainly to Oakland Hilldwellers. How did Epstein’s cotèrie know that tea was there? (Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?) Stare out the windows of your BART train pondering this question, before it sucks you into a black tunnel and screams.
Or buy a selection of Epstein-Home Teas from Market Hall (100g, loose leaf: French Breakfast, Marco Polo, and Earl Grey) and curse someone with this gift. You’ll smile, they’ll thank you, then oops, they have to resign their department chair now, leaving a vacancy for someone younger and hungry for a fulltime job with benefits, like you. If you’re still not sure the curse is working, find that coven of witches who nucleate in the East Bay Regional Parks District. If your familiars can’t echolocate each other along the Leona Canyon or Stream Trail under the full moon, look for the roses and oranges they leave in their wake, and whisper your curses into the dark forest: She is listening.
And finally, advice on landing your private planes at Oakland Airport. I know we could all use some guidance there, right?
Unfortunately, Epstein’s pilot was confused about how Oakland connects to Silicon Valley and Stanford University, other than knowing it somehow does. We might all stroke our beards cogitating on those connections, too. For a pilot always flying his bosshole to some island, every place might look like an archipelago. And maybe in a way, the Bay Area is a scattering of islands, with Oakland “left” of Palo Alto. Epstein’s pilot wasn’t wrong, philosophically. But practically and morally, he was trash. He claimed he never saw underage girls on a plane everybody called the Lolita Express, and in return for his decades of never seeing underage girls, Jeffrey left him $10 mil.
And what to do if you need to refuel your private plane when meeting with fellow jackoffs (old money scion, tech overlord, Hollywood pedo)? Jeffrey advises us to park our jets at Oakland’s airport, because jet fuel is cheaper there than San Francisco. Sort of like East Bay vs. West Bay housing: the rent costs less, but not by much? If you’re living at either extreme of income inequality, though—nonpaycheck to nonpaycheck—it helps to save crypto. It helps to have friends, too. Preferably inside Oakland Air Route Traffic Control Center. And in the hills, where Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister bought a home in 94618. What’s important to take away from the files about Epstein elites is that Oakland is always the journey, never their destination. Thank fucking G-d.