Happy Friday. It’s 40 degrees this morning — but within 24 hours temperatures will have dropped down to 15 degrees. Oh, and the wind is coming this afternoon, so don’t be fooled when you walk out the door this morning. Take extra layers!

If you would like to do more in the neighborhood in 2022, how about joining the Community Board? Thanks to Rachel Holliday Smith at THE CITY for producing this very useful guide.

This year, Community Board 4 (which covers Hell’s Kitchen) is being chaired by Jeffrey LeFrancois. You can learn more about him in this excellent Q&A published by Chelsea Community News yesterday or check out his West Side Story (first published in W42ST magazine in January 2020 — just before COVID hit).


Gary Vaynerchuk is behind the world’s first NFT restaurant — The Flyfish Club — in New York. Well, someone did pay over $400 for an NFT consisting of a 52-minute recording of farts. Yes folks, we are living in a (semi-dystopian?) Jetsons reality! Read more…


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What we’ve been reading

$6bn from Feds “will help stave off transit-pocalypse” for MTA riders. (Gothamist)

Now you can rent an umbrella — and it won’t break after the first gust of wind! (TimeOut)

Broadway’s reopening inspires a documentary, starring Frank DiLella. (NY1)

Extell successfully changes plans for 8th Avenue from 10-story office building to a 51-story hotel. (The Real Deal)

Up the Hudson, this beautiful 147-year-old lighthouse gets a lifeline. (New York Almanack)


Freeze Frame

We were guests at the Irish Arts Center last night for the Opening Night of Oona Doherty’s Hard to be Soft – A Belfast Prayer. As well as witnessing an amazing performance it was inspiring to hear the passionate words of IAC’s Executive Director Aidan Connolly before the show about the “COVID Solidarity” of New York’s arts community. “It’s the heroic efforts of people — front of house, back of house, artists, audiences, staffs, programmers, safety teams — it’s truly extraordinary what’s happening here in New York City. We are in solidarity with everyone tonight,” he said.

We are truly grateful for all those showing “COVID Solidarity” in the arts, hospitality and service industries who are helping us keep some level of normality (as we sit in our N95 masks) in these challenging times.