Change that ticket to LaGuardia.
Summer jobs! New York City restaurant gossip
Good morning everyone.
My husband came home from his haircut on Sunday with a book for me: Julia Elliott’s new short story collection, Hellions. We read her last collection, The Wilds, a few years ago. There’s one story in it called Regeneration at Mukti about a medical spa on a Caribbean island. Lines from it roll around in my head when I see women on the subway with 70%-healed facelift scars. You can read it here. I’ll let you know how Hellions is.
There are many questions in my letter today: Were Floaties sandals a socioeconomic flex in your middle school? Should you attempt a flight out of Newark this week? Do you need a job this summer? Is this Chuck Todd’s Anthony Bourdain moment? Is MML Hospitality taking over the restaurants at Nine Orchard?
And an answer to a question many of your have been asking: Where the hell is Feed Me’s Anonymous Transit Expert? He’s been stuck underground for the past six weeks on the F train, with no cell service. but he’s back. Below, he writes about why you should change that flight to LaGuardia. Capital B, he’s Back.
Feed Me’s Anonymous Transit Expert is helping me build a modern Metro Section. In his last column, he wrote about that Zohran party. The Anonymous Transit Expert has to stay anonymous because he has a Real Job in a Real Office, but you’ll be seeing more of him around here in his column, Stand Clear.
Hello. It’s been a while. While the highest-volume individual travel days happen around Thanksgiving, Christmas, the ensuing holiday slowdown, and spring break — as we explored last week — the real action in American leisure travel is the summer vacation season. This June, I’ll be, all leisurely and in no particular order:
Flying to a yet-unknown location over the Juneteenth weekend because I want to pretend I don’t live in New York for a while;
Taking the train upstate to an undisclosed location to convene with my family on matters of great importance, like what kind of grill my parents should buy;
Taking the train to the ferry to Massachusetts for what promises to be an enlightening whirlwind of a vacation; and
Flying to California by way of Denver for a wedding, to a regional airport monopolized by one airline: United.
Last week, every MileagePlus member got a love letter from United CEO Scott Kirby, explaining the latest bout of unchecked chaos at Newark airport. A reassuring pilot narrated United’s many safety measures, and somewhere between “air traffic controllers clearly need more staff and better technology” and “the good news,” I remembered I was scheduled to fly out of Newark on my way to California in a few days.
I changed my ticket to LaGuardia. Today, we’ll talk about why I did, and why you should, too.
To understand how we got here, you have to sit down with a bowl of transport-related alphabet soup: the birth of Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) under FDR , the formation of the DOT in 1967, deregulation in the Carter years, and Reagan’s infamous PATCO strike-breaking. It all culminates in the system we have today: fewer controllers managing four times as many flights, with outdated tech, shrinking staff, and radar systems that belong in a museum.
Every day, 14,000 overworked air traffic controllers guide 46,000 commercial flights across the U.S. That’s up from 14,000 flights in 1981, when we had 17,500 controllers. New tech has helped, sort of. But with 90% of facilities still understaffed, and modernization perennially underfunded, there’s only so much you can do with duct tape and good intentions.
Like a lot of computer-aided knowledge work, some of this workload has been eased by new technologies — space-based transponder systems like those pioneered by NAV Canada, the ongoing replacement of paper flight strips with electronic equivalents, and halting modernization half-measures mean incremental improvements to the work of these 14,000 controllers. But because staffing targets have not expanded consummately with increased flight volumes while the controller workforce continues to shrink, the stark reality is going to continue to be headlines like these unless priorities change quickly.
“Every day, 14,000 overworked air traffic controllers guide 46,000 commercial flights across the U.S. That’s up from 14,000 flights in 1981, when we had 17,500 controllers.”
Suppose Secretary Duffy’s shit-is-maybe-not-great press tour squeezes enough funding from Congress tomorrow to (i) Modernize air traffic hardware and (ii) Hire enough new controllers to keep staffing above skeleton-crew levels. Would it be enough to ensure the chaos at Newark doesn’t happen again when today 90% of facilities are short controllers, and so many radar systems are slipping beyond repair? Will a problem solvable only on a time horizon longer than a federal election cycle be palatable to own? ATC, itself delicate, relies on telecom infrastructure that’s as antique as the radar it connects, and, especially in the Northeast, an electric grid growing more temperamental and unstable with each passing year.
The naked truth about elected officials’ priorities, as quoted to me by a midwestern state’s former Transportation Commissioner, is that “You are what you eat. In government, you are what you spend.” Nobody has spent. Four decades on from Reagan breaking the PATCO strike, only half-measures. Maybe some administrations tried on paper. Half-measures. Where does the buck stop? Far from cancelling my flights out of fear after the Secretary's lengthy and blunt commentary expressing real concern about the state of civil air systems, I’d actually applaud him for, though I suspect partly by accident, being the first in his position to plainly communicate that there is a problem in a way a TV viewer or Twitter scroller can understand.
At risk of coming off like a broken record: you don’t notice it until it breaks. I didn’t move my flight to LaGuardia because I think I’ll be vaporized by a TAP Air A320 thanks to a cascading failure of big systems. I moved it because I believe the most immediate and tangible result of these revelations at EWR will be higher-frequency delays brought about by more conservative air traffic management like this, and I don’t intend to be party to that trying to make my first connecting flight in seven years. As always I wish you all, wherever you are, wherever you’re going, and however you’re getting there, a summer of safe, comfortable, and leisurely getting around.
If I had a beverage cart like this, I’d talk to you about:
The Queen of the Skies given away by its Emir: Qatar Airways won’t operate the 747 anymore because it costs too much, but the Kingdom decided the perfect way to grease US-Qatar relations was to toss the President with the keys to a dusty old Boeing and say “you figure out what to do with it”. The flag carrier’s $90+bn Boeing order at a time the company’s export competitiveness and reputation are deeply bruised probably didn’t hurt either. Qatar and its financial machinery have, in the past, been a little less overt in exerting their influence from the west end of the Gulf, but I look forward to having to read some judge’s contortionist opinion about why actually this rocks and we should do more of it.
Doing a victory lap about NYC’s congestion pricing: By every measure, The Zone™ has worked exactly as intended. The entire populations of Queens, Staten Island and Long Island aren’t bankrupt. Traffic is moving faster. The MTA is getting its bag, and the DOJ appears to have sent a team of all-time bunglers to try and kill it in New Jersey. Good luck!
Many in New Jersey stayed there this weekend: Because Hot Labor Summer was back for a brief threequel. This time it was the engineers who run the NJT trains servicing the north of the state and connecting to New York Penn Station, who until a tentative agreement Sunday went on strike for the weekend. The system, already full to bursting at normal capacity, saw enormous cuts and large disruptions gap-filled by bus and migration to the also-overstuffed-on-weekends PATH system. This also made me remember when NJ Transit deployed this gem for the Beyhive. Good luck if you plan on going to the World Cup in 2026. I’ll be renting my crib out to the highest bidder.
What if we had just one railroad that was really big: We could probably call it something like “Consolidated Rail”. Class I (the largest kind) rail operators are again starting to hear talks of mergers creeping into earnings calls. Notably, BNSF, a subsidiary of US Treasury investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, views the prospect as unlikely, but I predict we’ll see one on at least second base by the end of the year.
TheF1 Movie looks like, well, a movie: I typically defer to
’s expertise on the movies (he has committed to seeing this in theaters together), but the live filming integrated with the British Grand Prix last year and the insertion of Pitt and Idris’ protagonists into real crashes / overtakes that happened over the last few seasons feels novel for a sports film. I don’t think this movie was made for me, because I’ll wake up early to watch free practice on Friday, but expect to see a lot of Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc merchandise on your sidewalks opening weekend.
This concludes Stand Clear by Anonymous Transit Expert.
I know there are a few thousand college students who read Feed Me. I came upon some exciting internships and summer gigs that I’d be applying to if I didn’t have a summer game plan lined up yet.
Carousel operator, Central Park. When looking through seasonal open positions for Central Amusement International (which operates parks in Coney Island, as well), there were a couple of ride-focused jobs that really would’ve been a wild card for the applicant. But this one is specifically for the Friedsam Memorial Carousel in Central Park. $16.50/hour.
Summer intern at No Agency, New York. No experience required! A summer in New York City with models! Zines!
Domestic Couple, Southampton. Lovebirds wanted. A Hamptons family is looking for a duo to live above their house and take care of it — one of you should be a meticulous housekeeper; the other, a jack-of-all-domestic-chores who can fix a dec and clean a boat.
Back office at Sag Harbor Books. Best bookstore in the Hamptons. $30/hour, email info@sagsouthbooks.com
Raw bar shucker at CRU, Nantucket.
Amber Waves Farm flower field crew, Amagansett. The job description uses bouqueting as a verb. “The position is both fun and challenging, and a great opportunity to develop a new skill set and learn.” $16.50/hour
General Assignment Reporter, East Hampton Star. Cover everything from school board drama to sceney weddings. Candidates must have reliable transportation and be willing to work locally. $26-$31/hr.
Assistant basketball instructor on Martha’s Vineyard. Sounds tight. $20-$23/hr.
A three-month gig at Barstool, New York. You have three months to prove yourself at Barstool’s ItGirl division, whatever that means. Requirements include common sense and a sense of urgency. $80k/year if the first three months go well.
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There comes a moment in every man’s life where they want their Bourdain moment. For Chuck Todd, that moment is today. The former NBC moderator announced a new show called Sunday Night With Chuck Todd, which will feature one-on-one interviews filmed at popular restaurants and bars in… Washington. The show will live on a new platform called Noosphere, which I heard of for the first time a few weeks ago when I was at Tina Brown’s Truth Tellers conference. Substack’s CEO Chris Best was on a panel with Noosphere’s CEO, Jane Ferguson. Noosphere is a social-media-like platform for journalists to post content and share revenue with paying subscribers, and will focus on politics in a "relaxed atmosphere". Per Bloomberg, Ferguson raised about a million dollars in funding for Noosphere last October. She said the company teamed up with Todd to “really ramp up our political offerings.” There are only 11 or 12 good restaurants in DC, so I wonder how long this show will go…
New York Magazine profile of Zohran is GOLD.
Tip: A reader emailed me last night that David Kuhn, one of New York’s most prolific literary agents, is going to be working on a new hospitality project in the Marlton Hotel (which I famously call “the poor man’s Casa Cipriani”).
Tip: Another reader told me last night that Sailor’s April Bloomfield is going to consult on the restaurants at Nine Orchard. After a brief email exchange with Gabriel Stulman this morning, I learned that Bloomfield is indeed working on new projects, “as any chef and restaurateur of her caliber would,” but she’ll remain a part of Sailor. A few minutes later, news broke that Bloomfield would be joining MML Hospitality. A friend described the restaurant group as, “the dudes that invented modern Austin.” And now I’m left to wonder if MML will be taking over the restaurants at Nine Orchard…
Tory Burch collaborated with Swedish candy brand Bon Bon. Apparently Burch has been a fan of the sour candy for a while, and many meetings in the office come with bowls of Bon Bon candies. The puffy sandals in the collection remind me a lot of, trigger warning, Floaties which carry a lot of nostalgic memories of Long Island middle school hallways for me.
Hedi Slimane launched a publishing house. The endeavor is called Bright Young Things, and will focus on publishing Slimane’s own photography from Dior Homme, Saint Laurent, and Celine.
Curious if ATE has thoughts on this season of the Rehearsal. It has been a bit all over the place but I’ve largely enjoyed watching. I’m flying over Memorial Day weekend and will be tormenting myself over air traffic control, pilot communications, and real ID nightmares…
ATE - don't you feel a bit ODD not having everyone sing happy 100th birthday to DELTA???? https://www.delta.com/us/en/about-delta/centennial/overview