NYC September 26, 2025

Greetings from NHY …

I usually don’t post domestic travel, but hell.. it’s NY and it’s actually a trip to Brooklyn! Our annual “girls trip” — and we decided to head to Brooklyn. I’m sort of the tour leader! Born and raised and educated in Brooklyn gives me a lot of “cred” on this trip.

Carol and I came in last night (Thursday) and stayed at the TWA Hotel at the airport, located in Terminal 5 in the actual Saarinen building from where TWA flights flew. I’ve stayed three times before but it was new for Carol so it was fun to explore the building. It’s the actual “flight center” at JFK. Some of you may renmenber flying in and out of the old Idlewild Airport (the name before it was called JFK) and either using or seeing the TWA terminal which was like no other.

Anyway, the actual terminal opened in 1962 (a year after Saarinen died) and was the headquarters for TWA until TWA went bankrupt in 2001. After more than 15 years of dormancy, the building was restored and reopened as the TWA Hotel in 2019—with the flair of the 1960s permeating the space (music from the 60s everywhere, photo booths, replicas of a 1960 beauty salon, a room to play Twister, and more). We had fun exploring the whole place incluing the infinity pool on the roof where you can swim while planes are buzzing overhead. We had planned to eat at a somewhat mafia restaurant in Queens, but we were exhausted and decided to eat at the hotel and have cocktails at “Connie” located at the hotel—a 1958 Lockheed Constellation airplane turned cocktail lounge parked on the old TWA tarmac. Apparently the plane served as an Alaskan bush plane bringing supplies to Prudhoe Bay and larter was a marijuana dropper after it was no longer with TWA! They have cocktails with names like “Vodka is ny Co-Pilot.”

I have to say, the TWA terminal holds a bit of nostalgia. I don’t think I ever flew into or out of the terminal, but it was definitely a “date destination” when I was in college. You’d just sit in the lounge and watch people coming and going and see them headed to far off places (that I could only dream of at that time!)

This morning (Friday) we met up with Adrienne from Chicago and immediately headed to the subway into Manhattan (the trip is mostly Brooklyn, but there were a few things we wanted to see in Manhattan so this was the day to do that). We headed first to see the Ben Shahn show at the Jewish Museum.

But first it was lunch at LOX located inside the museum. We shared a wonderful chopped herring that was vodka infused! and they served complementary vodka shots with it (they were out of vodka so they substituted gin) and they started with a complementary “Matzo Babka!” And we had a bagel with lox (natch!). Then it was on to the exhibit which was very impressive.

The Ben Shahn show called “On Nonconformity” was very very good and extremely appropriate for these times–dealing with social issues of the 30s, 40s, 50s: unemployment, discrimination, authoritarianism–championing labor and human rights–and Shahn’s philosophy of dissent. The works cover the years between the great depression and the Vietnam War. One of the paintings is of the Supreme Court (when it was a real court). It was done in 1963 and commemorates Brown v Board of Education decision, symbolizing the importance of the court as a space for justice. The justices are very tiny at the bottom of the picture and the columns of the court are towering… it is the court that is important and the spirit of social justice, not the individual justices.

From there we walked down Fifth Avenue to see the renovated Frick Museum–straight out of the Gilded Age. Not exactly my taste, and all I could think was how it was possible for one family to live in such a huge place. Don’t even know how they found their way to their bedrooms.

We stopped into the cafe at the Frick (The Westmoreland) to have some tea and dessert… and then headed back to our hotel in Brooklyn (the Even) to make our 8 pm reservations at Sofreh (my very favorite NY restaurant).

We walked to the restaurant down Flatbush Ave which was bustling and then had a wonderful Persian meal… A butternut squash with strained yogurt, chili roasted pepita seeds, and a spiced butter glaze; .. and a Persian flat bread with feta and herbs, walnuts, and radish; … and a sort of Israeli salad.. .all followed by a lamb shank that just melted in your mouth, cooked with butter beans, dill, and lime… alongside a complex basmati rice dish with carrots and rosewater and different spices (dill, fennel, cilantro I think). For dessert we had a pistachio/rosewater/saffron ice cream with a cardamom rose cake. Totally wonderful.

Given that we had now clocked in at more than 15,000 steps (more than 6 miles) we decided to taxi back to the hotel.

Ah Brooklyn!!