47. I'd do it again
JFK was a disaster. It was worth it.
Today's letter includes: Beer is back on the Staten Island Ferry, the Chrysler Building needs a new neighborhood name (GraCE?), T Mag's editor is leaving to pursue theater, Allbirds is shutting down and sold for just $39 million, Crown Shy is doing a weekend residency in Maine, kimbap is officially having a moment, Zara's collab budget must be unhinged, and more.
“Hi friends, we just got to Cabo and can’t wait to see you,” the bride-to-be texted a big group of us flying from NYC. “Sending a heads up to the NY crew that JFK was quite rough this morning with the TSA chaos. We arrived at 5am for our 830am flight, and between baggage and PreCheck, we just made it. We hoped the news was overblown, but def arrive earlier than normal!”
It was not overblown.
TSA PreCheck took two and a half hours and began outside in the cold. The regular line was four. I watched people ask staff what they should do because they were about to miss their flights. They were told to stay in line. Then I watched them miss their flights, get through security, and get back into a very long line to rebook. I have scoliosis, which makes two and a half hours on a concrete floor its own special category of hell — though perhaps not as bad as the friend who flew the next day and was reportedly throwing up into a bucket from food poisoning in the line. The things we’ll do for weddings.
Here's the state of play at New York-area airports right now. JetBlue's Terminal 5 at JFK has been among the worst — it has no CLEAR lanes. Friends flying Delta out of JFK reported it "more intense than I've ever seen but nothing like your pic." Newark, one of the worst airports on earth, somehow seemed better than JFK, with a friend reporting: "Just so you know we really took this to heart. Through security over three hours before our flight."
The reason any of this is happening: DHS funding lapsed on February 14th. TSA agents are essential workers, which means they’re legally required to show up — they just haven’t been getting paid to do it. More than 500 have quit. After nearly two months of no pay, Trump finally signed an emergency order last week to release back pay, tapping a border security fund to do it. Most agents received something by Monday. Whether they'd keep getting paid was genuinely unclear — the order doesn't fund the agency going forward.
And then, this week, something moved. House Speaker Mike Johnson — who had called the Senate's proposed DHS funding bill "a joke" just days earlier — announced a two-track approach with Senate Republican leader John Thune: pass the Senate bill to reopen most of DHS now, funding TSA, the Coast Guard, and FEMA, then fund ICE and Border Patrol separately through budget reconciliation. Democrats didn't get the ICE reform language they'd been demanding. But they got Republicans to blink.
The impasse, for those keeping track: Democrats want ICE reform attached to any DHS funding bill. Republicans wouldn’t hear it. They are both blaming each other for the bad times you are having at the airport.
I naturally do not like being horribly inconvenienced, but there is a part of me that wonders if enough missed flights and ruined vacations is what forced a resolution. Last week, Delta revoked its VIP congressional services: no more airport escorts, no line-skipping, no dedicated rebooking desk.
The call for ICE reform isn’t procedural. It’s a direct response to federal agents killing two US citizens in Minneapolis in January. In both cases, video contradicted the government’s self-defense account. In both cases, no federal charges followed. The reforms requested — warrants, accountability, no raids near schools and churches — are not radical asks. They are basic rights that would allow immigration enforcement to be carried out with more dignity.
So can inconvenience, applied in the right places, produce accountability? I’ve been thinking about it since I was standing on that concrete floor at 5AM, rolling my neck and watching a woman in a blazer realize she’d missed her flight to wherever.
It's not a perfect outcome. Democrats didn't get the reforms they asked for, and the reconciliation path for ICE funding still has to clear the Senate. But the line held long enough to force a deal.
My back hurt for two days. I’d do it again.
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Team Ciara. What is it about West Wilson that makes him catnip to hot women? It’s not translating through the screen.
Beer, hard seltzers, and canned cocktails returned to the Staten Island Ferry for the first time since 2019 thanks to a Dunkin' franchise that is paying the city $27,000 a month to run the concessions. Council Member Frank Morano offered the definitive quote: "It doesn't just taste like beer, it tastes like the weekend." Sir, it is a free ferry to Staten Island. But sure.
Crown Shy goes to Maine. The Michelin-starred NYC restaurant is doing a weekend dining residency at White Barn Inn in Kennebunk, Maine on Friday, April 17th. $175+ per guest and an additional $50 per guest for wine pairing will get you dinner and a cocktail hour with the Crown Shy team.
Brett Westervelt to serve as its first-ever head of Meta Edits. Edits launched a year ago as Meta's response to TikTok's CapCut tool, and helped drive a 10% increase in original content on Instagram in the fourth quarter, the company says. Also Meta and YouTube were found negligent in a landmark Social Media Addiction Case. Meta must pay $4.2 million in combined compensatory and punitive damages, and YouTube must pay $1.8 million to a now 20-year-old woman identified as K.G.M. I’m interested in how they proved it, but it’s no secret social media is designed to be addicting.
Would you live in the Chrysler Building? The Chrysler Building is back on the market after its previous leaseholder was evicted for falling more than $21 million behind on ground rent. New York Magazine's Christopher Bonanos notes that it likely could become residential, developed by the same group that is turning the Flatiron building into apartments. But how will they market the neighborhood?
“One can, albeit hazily, envision a future residential strip stretching from the Chrysler Building at one end to Tudor City at the other, presumably to be called Murray Hill North or the East Deuce or Grand Central East (GraCE?).”
Software bubble bursting, AI bubble inflating. Amazon said it would slash about 16,000 corporate roles, months after cutting 14,000 employees. Last week, Meta began laying off hundreds of employees. Oracle is following suite and began layoffs on Thursday. Meanwhile, OpenAI raised a record-breaking $122B that values the company at $852 billion — even more than previously announced.
People really want to watch sexy AI fruits cheat on each other. "Fruit Love Island" — an AI-generated TikTok series featuring anthropomorphic fruit competing on a Love Island knockoff — racked up 3 million followers and 38 million views in under two weeks before TikTok started pulling episodes because people reported it in an effort to save the environment. Of 22 posted, only 10 remain live. The creator, who goes by Bananito, announced he's "losing motivation" amid the takedowns.
Andreessen Horowitz partner Justine Moore, who has bet on AI video companies, called the moment an inflection point in the WSJ: "Despite the show’s inherent absurdity, there’s truly a lot of consumer demand for it."
Bananito has since launched a new series — essentially The Summer I Turned Pretty, but fruit — which already has 189,000 followers despite not having posted a single episode.
Allbirds sells for $39M. The buyer is American Exchange Group, who also owns Aerosoles. Once valued at $4 billion, Allbirds plans to cease operations.
T Mag Editor-in-chief is making moves. Hanya Yanagihara, editor-in-chief of T Magazine since 2015, is stepping down to "pursue opportunities in theater." She is also listing her Soho one-bedroom at 95 Greene Street for $2.2 million. What does it all mean?
Adding these bakeries to my Google Maps. Little Egg pastry chef and Cake Zine co-founder, Tanya Bush shared her anti-viral pastry tour of south Brooklyn.
Kimbap mania. Much like Dachshunds, kimbap (basically Korean sushi but filled with things like bulgogi and pickled radish) seems to be having a moment. Which is funny because kimbap is what my mom would pack for road trips, theme park lunches, and sneaking food into movie theaters.
Fast casual spot Everydaily was making waves for their affordable Midtown lunches, including kimbap. Now the team behind Nami Nori is getting in on the action with TBD Gimbap, a kimbap pop-up without a set end date in the West Village.
OK United Air! The airline just announced the Relax Row — three economy seats with leg rests that fold up 90 degrees into a couch-like flat surface for long-haul flights, complete with a fitted mattress pad, blanket, and extra pillows. It's the first North American carrier to offer this, though Air New Zealand has had a version since 2011. Pricing hasn't been announced and it will launch in 2027. I for one, welcome a little healthy competition for Delta!
Zara’s collab budget is popping off. The fast fashion giant just announced a two-year design partnership with John Galliano, and last week Zara Home dropped a 35-piece home accessories collection with interior stylist Colin King — brass lamps, onyx vessels, lacquered objects, starting at $80 and going up to a $2,800 egg-shaped lamp. Now Willy Chavarria joins the roster. Whether this is a brand elevation strategy or just a very busy press calendar is unclear, but it’s getting people talking.
Andy Warhol slept here, probably. 35 Stuyvesant Street — a 19th-century Anglo-Italianate townhouse in the East Village, famous for its wisteria-wrapped facade — is on the market for the first time since Lee B. Anderson bought it in 1958. Anderson spent decades filling it with Gothic Revival treasures while hosting everyone from Andy Warhol to Halston to Lee Radziwill. It is, per one description, "an unholy mess." It has entered contract at a $3.895 million ask.
Thanks for reading!