Happy Friday — we’re back with more Hot Bones.

In a sweeping act of synchronicity, G and I tested negative for covid the same morning her mom and sister got in the car to visit from Tennessee. Things we’re planning on swapping:

Will report back.

▶️ Last edition: Traveling around town on a tiny, adorable, very nerdy bike.

⏩ This week: 5 ways to help the planet, make money, and still be a good person.

About five years ago this December, G and I drove out to my parents in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and that’s when two of the last things I’d ever have expected ended up happening.

The initial surprise was that G convinced me to try Chick-fil-A for the first time. We had gotten past the brake-for-your-life section of the Beltway and were cruising along suburban roads as the sun set. The question of dinner arose. And when you’re in the last town before the “country” really starts, there are two options: Chipotle or Chick-fil-A.

“I had Chipotle for lunch,” G said. “Can we please go get dinner at Chick-fil-A.”

“At the place that donates money to anti-LGBTQ groups?” I asked, having not had Chipotle for many days. “As a reminder, we’re gay.”

“True but they also make really good chicken sandwiches,” G shot back. “And I can hear your stomach from here.”

She mentioned waffle fries next. This was not a battle I was going to win.

“If I say yes, you have to pretend to be my roommate when we order. This Subaru really gives us away.”

Half an hour later and we were in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Our chicken and fries were steaming in the backseat, waiting to prove me wrong as soon as we arrived.

That’s when we saw the blue police lights.

I’ll spare you the weirdness, but the second surprising thing that happened was that in an area with no stoplights, no cell service, and an extremely low crime rate, we happened to get caught in the middle of a rogue police shoot-out happening along The One Road across the county. I think it was a first for the region.

In fact, it was so out of place that G and I thought we were just hearing fireworks in front of us, until the back of our knees started to get sweaty and we realized those were gunshots from the escaping car.

Ultimately, we got to my parents safely, but it was a very long, confusing, stressful night. And throughout it all, this was the main thought in my head:

“If I die after giving money to Chick-fil-A but before I actually get to eat anything, I’m going to be really pissed.”

This newsletter edition is not about gun violence, road trips, or Chick-fil-A. It’s about the only other insanely well-loved company I can think of that’s known for its values before its products, but in a very different way. And that’s Patagonia.

I’m going a little off-piste today because I finally finished David Gelles’ new book, Dirtbag Billionaire, which is about how founder Yvon Chouinard built Patagonia, established an incredible brand and series of exceptional quality products, and then gave away his fortune to help the planet. Much like Chouinard’s own book Let My People Go Surfing, this one made a big impression on me.

I thought I’d share some of the things that surprised and inspired me about Chouinard’s journey. And not in a corporate takeaways kind of way. These are things that anyone looking to lead a more intentional life or forge a unique path should find useful.

E-von Shah-nard.

Patagonia isn’t without its warts, even if it is held up as the paragon of business virtue. It’s donated millions of dollars to environmental and social justice causes, protected thousands of acres of pristine wilderness, basically invented corporate childcare facilities, and even sued Trump. But it’s also an apparel company that’s constantly using valuable resources, creating more stuff, and straining the environment, in order to, well, help the planet. Kinda tough to do both.

That’s the great irony of the company. “In trying to run a responsible company, Chouinard had created an unsolvable paradox,” as Gelles put it. “Everything we make pollutes,” one of Patagonia’s famous catalogs began.

The brand also pioneered the synthetic fleeces — aka plastic-based products full of microplastics that are harmful to our health — that you now see on suburban kids and investment bankers alike. And funnily enough, Chouinard’s wife got the inspiration for the product when she was going from stall to stall in LA’s fashion district decades ago. She found the source material she was hunting for — at the time it was being sold for use as toilet seat covers.

Other hypocrisies include collaborating with the US Army to supply high-quality combat apparel (many employees were not happy about this), and Chouinard & co even helped consult with America’s largest retailer (and massive polluter) Walmart for a while in the early 2000s.

Amazingly, when you’re an iconoclastic brand leader, you can make moves like this, and while Walmart might revert to many unsustainable practices when the next CEO rolls around, it also spurs hundreds of other consumer goods companies to join forces to clean up their act and help protect the planet via the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (now called Cascale).

Chouinard was a black sheep growing up (he spoke only French as a toddler until his family relocated from Maine to LA), but as he moved through life, he built many lasting friendships.

The main friend and foil in his life was Doug Tompkins, another mountaineer who founded The North Face and Esprit clothing companies, sold them for big bucks, and used the funds to first buy fancy fast cars and mansions and then later buy and protect more than 2 million acres of wilderness in South America.

Whereas Tompkins sold his companies and used the proceeds to make a massive conservation impact, Chouinard always resisted the urge to sell Patagonia. He argued the brand could do more good by being a unique and successful example to other companies, rather than selling out.

In many ways, “the whole point of Patagonia was to demonstrate that capitalism didn’t have to be so awful,” Gelles writes.

This innovation was really Chouinard’s wife’s doing. In the 80s, she opened a childcare center at Patagonia’s headquarters after she noticed that many of the company’s working mothers were struggling to take care of their kids and manage their work responsibilities.

Patagonia’s first-of-its-kind childcare program has been going strong for over 40 years now — according to Gelles, virtually every mother at Patagonia returns to the company after maternity leave (versus ~70% at most companies). “And Patagonia has for years had an unusually large number of women in serious leadership roles.”

Plus, hearing kids laughing while you’re toiling away at the office leads to a lot less snarky “per my last emails.” When the company decided to incorporate the childcare facilities throughout the campus rather than in one spot, everyone became kinder.

“We all started to observe that when you were in a meeting and the windows were open and you heard kids playing, people were nicer to each other. They were more collaborative,” one key employee observed.

Over the years, Patagonia’s leaders would ask Chouinard what would happen to the company after he died. After all, he’d always tightly protected ownership, never accepting outside investment and (for better or worse) not offering employees stock options.

During the pandemic, Chouinard started a secret committee to find a way to ensure that Patagonia was in good hands after he was gone. Plus, he was tired of being labelled a billionaire: “I don’t have $1 billion in the bank. You know, I don’t drive Lexuses.” According to Gelles he’s the last guy you’d ever see at Davos. In fact, in order to interview him you’d have to find him first, typically fishing on some remote and beautiful river.

When Forbes added him to its annual billionaires ranking a few years ago, he stormed around the office. “Get me off that list!” he said. “I hate that list!”

So a few years ago, Patagonia finally made an unprecedented move. It put all its stock in two trusts (voting and nonvoting), one to protect the company’s values and the other to donate all Patagonia’s profits to fight for the environment and defend nature.

More details are here if you’re curious, but the big picture is that instead of selling the company or going public, Chouinard had finally managed to solve that Patagonia paradox by “creat[ing] lasting value, not for himself, but for the planet.”

I’ll cheers to that with a chicken sandwich.

NOT AN AD, just a cool bike I thought yall should know about because this 90s throwback is just waiting for prime time.

Model: Performance Aspen LX

Size: Large

Price: $400

The shop is open until 3pm on Friday and Saturday and various other hours during the week. All proceeds go directly to help provide bikes to neighbors in need.

⏰ Happening tonight: Wine tasting and vintage shopping at Bar Botanical from 5-8pm. Bonus: There will be house plants for sale from Crozet Plant Social.

🔁 Also happening tonight: Watershed Moments, a free mini film festival celebrating our local waterways (Vinegar Hill Theater, doors open at 6:30).

🍅 Shoutout this week: Huge congrats to the team at Flashfood for making the TIME Best Inventions of the Year list. Here’s how you can save up to 50% off groceries.

🏡 Cool house of the week: Stucco cottage with a huge stone fireplace, right in Belmont (2 bed, 1 bath, $439k).

🐶 Pet of the week: Maisie! Loves nothing more than a hike and a handful of treats. Can give sassy side-eye for days (hound, female, 2 years old and 34 lbs).

💼 Job of the week: Executive Director for the Virginia Conservation Network (hybrid but based in Richmond, $115k - $125k).

Or, consider this Assistant City Manager position, which stoked a lively reddit discussion about the $205k salary.

Have an event or rec you’d like to share? Hiring? Interested in advertising?

Share any and all info here.