New York government sites are using Comic Sans.
Want to be a millionaire? Expertly park a 4,500-ton ship 25 times a day.
Good morning everyone. Hope you had a nice weekend. I woke up Saturday morning to my apartment, which is two blocks away from Prospect Park, smelling like smoke. I feel a bit depressed when I read news that it’s as dry as it’s been in New York for 100 years.
I went to my favorite restaurant in Park Slope, Terre, on Friday and got pumpkin orecchiette with chestnuts and crispy speck. I tried to recreate is last night with a bunch of rainbow chard and breadcrumbs on top.
In-between the pasta bookends of the weekend, I walked a lot. I visited Luisaviaroma on Bond Street and studied button-up shirts. I went to an engagement party. I had two bottles of wine with friends at Achilles Heel in Greenpoint. I perfected my nighttime sleep potion (Moon Juice Magnesi-om + Agent Nateur calm).
This week, I’ll be announcing some changes to the letter, including an increase in subscription price. I’m offering new and unpaid readers 20% off the current price of annual subscriptions to Feed Me for a few more hours — this is probably your last opportunity to pay $40/year for an annual subscription.
Today’s letter includes a breakdown of why some of Staten Island Ferry workers are rich, Anna Weyant’s fantastic Q4, and Mario Carbone’s church photoshoot for his new apparel brand.
STAND CLEAR: Want to be a millionaire? Expertly park a 4,500-ton ship 25 times a day.
If you’ve been reading Feed Me for a bit, you know about our Anonymous Transit Expert who is helping me build a modern Metro Section. Last month he wrote about union port strikes and Manhattan’s new casino project. 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 series, Stand Clear.
The Staten Island Ferry is big, orange, free to board, and moves some 15 million (off a peak of 25 million, pre-COVID) people between its namesake island and lower Manhattan every year. Each meandering journey through the harbor places commuters within walking distance of the entire financial district and 11(!) trains, from which they can access the rest of the MTA ‘s 472-stop network. Using tried-and-true napkin math, we can uncharitably estimate the adjusted per-ride subsidy of a ferry ride is $9.75. Less than other ferry services’ pre-fare-hike $9.85 per ride, far less than the Staten Islander’s preferred method of commuting by transit: $11.79 per express bus ride. One layer of uncharitable napkin math later, we can estimate that the ferry has a capacity to handle 78 million riders at current service levels, or that it runs, on average, at 20% of capacity.
20% of anything is, generally, not great. At whom shall I direct my ire? Certainly not the ferry operators, who continued service for nearly half my lifetime without a contract. Employed readers, if you didn’t receive a base pay increase for a decade, would you stick around at your company? If you received your raise retroactive to a decade ago in a lump sum, resulting in your paying hundreds of thousands of dollars more in taxes back to the City and State that denied you a raise in the first place than if you’d just earned it over the period, would this sit well with you? Compare the coverage and tone of public employees’ raises to the drooling over the prospect of bankers’ bonus pools going bananas again this year and behold. Unlike a transit employee, bank managing directors don’t have a camera recording them every second they work, which is terrible news for Page Six.