A wacky West Village one-bedroom apartment for $700k
Free letter today.
Good afternoon, everyone.
I’m writing this in the passenger seat on a drive that’s taken us from Brooklyn to Astoria (to pick up my sister) to the Kermit-green trees surrounding Guilford, VT (where we bought Whoopie pies from a 93-year-old woman), and will eventually wind up in Stowe, VT (where my cousin is getting married this weekend).
After dinner last night, I walked from Water Street to East Broadway and passed groups of young men in suits talking to girls in long white skirts at downtown bars. Everyone was spilled out onto the street at Fish Market and Bar Oliver and Time Again and Le Dive. If I was in New York right now, I’d get a giant spritz and an outdoor table at Il Posto Accanto. Try to follow all of their menu rules when ordering pasta.
Today’s newsletter includes: Anonymous Transit Expert on the first annual Cannonball Train, The Jane Hotel’s disco ball lives, Air Mail’s new fashion contributor, and a Hudson hotel is getting a new restaurant.
A Million-Plus Excess Visitors Are Expected in New York in June. Can Our Transportation Infrastructure Keep Up?
Feed Me’s Anonymous Transit Expert writes a column called Stand Clear. He has to stay anonymous because he has a Real Job in a Real Office.
Summer is here in New York. The first annual Cannonball super-express left for Montauk two weeks ago (Thursdays and Fridays at 4:07PM, if you can get a seat). Lifeguards are back on the beaches, we’re allowed to wear white again, and the entire region is prepared, even steeled, for a back-to-back-to-back gauntlet of the NBA Finals (at MSG June 8th, June 10th, and potentially June 16th), the World Cup (eight total matches, including the Final, from June 13th to July 19th) and America250 (July 3rd to July 8th) that promise to anchor a record year of tourism visits and dollars spent.
Maybe I’m strange, but when I travel on leisure, often what sticks with me the longest is how getting around feels. I remember cutting the line and cramming into dusty slow Renfe service more than I remember the Barcelona Grand Prix, and I remember the ferry that gets me to Nantucket as much as I remember anything on the island (RIP Gazebo). New York is expecting a million excess visitors in June for the World Cup alone. Much of the impression they’ll take home will be how they got around. We would be wise to not light them on fire.
Some of the critical pieces of the Penn Station complex, all critical points of failure that, if something goes wrong, could impact the daily lives of tens of millions of people this summer:
A Interlocking: the rail junction on the West side of the station that feels like you’re going through a Plinko board. Mostly 1970s vintage equipment. You could legally smoke inside an airplane in the ‘70s.
North River Tunnels: Twin tunnels between New York City and New Jersey. In continuous service since 1910. The first transatlantic flight was in 1919. Slated for replacement by 2035 after three decades of talking, with the Federal portion of funds often the subject of impoundment shenanigans.
The Portal Bridge: The busiest rail bridge in the Western Hemisphere. ~200k people a day. The original structure, which crosses the Hackensack River in New Jersey, was finished in 1910 during the Taft Administration and replaced this year at a cost of about $2 billion. To be demolished in 2028 at the age of 118.
Amtrak, responsible for the two most recent Penn Station debacles, is now facing sizable funding cuts in the proposed BUILD 250 act, replacing the expiring Infrastructure and Jobs Act, itself triage for a generation of deferred maintenance at the expense of Americans who don’t yet exist. We have all of the resources readily available to make getting around accessible and pleasant. We’re still missing the will. As I travel to celebrate 250 years of America, I’ll be crossing my fingers all the way, hoping that I’m around to remember getting to 300.
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The Jane Hotel’s iconic disco ball has found a new home in Montauk.
Phoebe Bridgers announced her 2026 tour dates. The entire tour will be phone-free, which makes you wonder what the photo opp becomes – will there be a boost in merch sales? Will there be printed zines for fans to take home?
A Brooklyn Heights newsletter called Pineapple Street launched this week.
A Bed-Stuy and Clinton Hill newsletter called Bed-Stuy Stoop launched this week. The local news boom continues.
I learned about Artists & Mothers from a dinner they hosted with Ulla Johnson this week. The New York fashion designer has previously worked on collections with women artists (the estates of Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner, as well as contemporary painter Shara Hughes) but this week she teamed up with the beloved art-world non-profit Artists & Mothers on what looked like a very special dinner in Soho. Artists & Mothers gives $25,000 childcare grants to artists with young kids. A smart and relatively low-lift way for a fashion brand to engage with the art world by going right to the center of it. Bonus points for Joana Avillez-designed merch.
For less that $1 million, you can get a one-bedroom West Village apartment with a little stove that looks like it’s a walking piece of furniture from Beauty and the Beast. It’s a little Gay Victorian, and it’s a little hometown Irish bar but I like it. Benefits include being walking distance from Jefferson Market Garden, C.O. Bigelow, and living inside of a tapestry.
The Knicks’ Plaza33 watch party is back on for Game 2 tonight. Gates open at 7 p.m. The gathering outside Madison Square Garden was so lively on Wednesday that I literally thought the game was in New York. Thank you, New York Street Activity Permit Office, for lifting the ban that was put in place after six fans were arrested following a Knicks win in the Eastern Conference finals.
Friend of the Letter, Amanda Lee Burkett, has a sparkly new byline at Air Mail. 🪄
This morning, I was notified about a new private aviation catering company called Cloud Club. They’re delivering everything from green juice and skincare kits to truffle service and gluten-free chicken nuggets directly to private jets. If anyone flies private and gets their hands on an order, please send photos.
Robert Pattinson plans to send his daughter to Hogwarts when he shoots The Batman: Part II. “I’ve already looked and there’s a Harry Potter school,” by which he means a school for the actors on the HBO show, which shoots nearby, to attend. He told GQ he went to something similar when he filmed one of the original Harry Potter movies in the early ‘00s. “I was like, This is where you’re going to go to school. To Hogwarts. And I legitimately think that might actually be her first school.”
Alyssa Vingan, former editor-in-chief of NYLON, has joined the Magasin team.
Hudson’s Rivertown Lodge is opening a new restaurant called Pez.
The Norwegian soccer team did a Viking photo shoot before departing for the World Cup. “I knew it might get some criticism, but I wanted to play on that sense of journey that goes back to the Vikings, as if they’re setting sail for America.”
This year’s French Open showcased a new bonanza in luxury fashion x tennis collabs. Makes me wonder if it’s gonna get even bigger at Wimbledon and the US Open. Reports the FT: “Fashion has long separated itself from sport because they [the luxury brands] felt slightly uncomfortable about the taste level and were confused about how to place athletes in their world,” says Jo Taylor, a 17-year veteran of Nike who now runs the sports-fashion consultancy, Glow Inc. “Now, if you speak to anyone at LVMH or Kering, you see there’s been an awakening that the intersection of fashion and sport is the future of luxury.”
I think these local newsletters are great. Let’s share more detailed information about our actual neighborhoods, and empower people to write and share with other interested individuals.
Right now it’s feeling a little bit like the old days of the Internet, where you can claim a space with a great web domain. People who’s neighborhoods aren’t covered, get writing!
If it isn't Knicks in four I'm trying to travel as little as possible June 16th. That could be such a crazy day getting around!