Happy Monday. Doesn’t it look nice outside? Well, quick warning, it’s currently feeling like 18 degrees with the windchill, so go find extra layers and winter protection before your venture out. Hopefully, this is our last super cold day until next winter!
“Mother of Social Security” Frances Perkins found inspiration in Hell’s Kitchen and became the first woman in a US presidential cabinet. Her name is now on W46th Street between 9th and 10th Avenue — just in time for the end of Women’s History Month. Read more…

One of the mayor’s newest appointees got her start right here at John Jay, but her story extends far beyond matriculating at the Hell’s Kitchen college — Ravesa Bajo brings both her policy expertise and her family’s past as political refugees from Albania via Paris to her work as the newest Executive Director in the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Read more…

What we’ve been reading
The new bike lane on the Brooklyn Bridge is slowing down cars. (New York Daily News)
The mayor plans to clear homeless encampments and move to “healthy living conditions with wraparound services”. (New York Times)
Congrats to Ariana DeBose — making history with her West Side Story Oscar. (Variety)
A unique American Natural History Museum vaccination site closes this week, after nearly 100,000 shots under the blue whale. (NBC)
Do New York dogs look like their owners? (New Yorker)
Freeze Frame

After the chills of today, it’s going to be a great week to get out and see spring in the neighborhood. It was lovely to walk past these trees in blossom at Hell’s Kitchen Park yesterday afternoon (just before a flurry of snow!)
Happy birthday to Beth Campbell Duke, Benedicte Lenoble and Daniel Dunlow.