Comments on: Don’t Look Up

By: Bill Wilson

Bill Wilson — Mon, 25 May 2026 15:28:23 +0000

I remember going to the Savarin Coffee Shop in the lobby.

By: Randy Wilson

Randy Wilson — Fri, 15 May 2026 16:46:30 +0000

Immortalized way back when in a Joni Mitchell song…

He opens up his suitcase
In the continental suite
And people twenty stories down
Look like colored currents in the street
A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof
Like a dragonfly on a tomb
And business men in button downs
Press into conference rooms

By: Seth Schlusberg

Seth Schlusberg — Fri, 08 May 2026 13:15:31 +0000

I remember when I was a kid, so details are hazy, my dad who did not like going to NYC at all and only did so when he had to arranged a trip specifically so he could helicopter from JFK to the Pan Am building. He was extremely juiced for a while afterwards.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 08 May 2026 04:53:37 +0000

I love your writing style. And I love the memories that you recounted here. Thanks for sharing.

That is all.

By: Guillaume de Syon

Guillaume de Syon — Thu, 07 May 2026 17:15:44 +0000

I remember visiting NYC in 1983 as a prospective foreign student who was also an airplane nut. One of the first things I did was to go to the Pan Am building and hope for some goodies from the airline. The fellow who assisted me handed me stickers of the Pan Am/National merger (a kind of ring-ynag combination of the two logos.) Little else was available, due to cut-back, Yet looking back, I can say I visited the place when the airline still lived! Regarding 1991: I flew out to the US in August 1991 for a semester of graduate studies: the plane was a Pan Am A310. When I flew back to Geneva in December , the A310 bore a Delta livery.

By: Bibi

Bibi — Mon, 04 May 2026 19:50:15 +0000

You taught me something
I didn’t know that Gropius was the architect that build the Pan Am building
I visited his modernist style house in Lincoln MA he was a Harvard architect moving to the US before the 2nd WW sure saved his life. He ended up the rest of his life in MA.

By: Gimlet Winglet

Gimlet Winglet — Sat, 02 May 2026 01:30:26 +0000

(sorry, can’t resist) You went there:

Why don’t they do what they say?
Say what you mean
Oh, baby, one thing leads to another

By: Chris H.

Chris H. — Fri, 01 May 2026 18:59:37 +0000

In January, my wife and I took a trip to Key West, and stopped in the First Flight Restaurant at 301 Whitehead St, where several signs note it was the first ticket office for Pan Am. It was fun find a piece of aviation history there.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 01 May 2026 13:50:05 +0000

I flew Pan Am for the first of many trips, in 1972. We flew from New York to Dakar and then on to Monrovia. We were going to Sierra Leone and after a day’s rest in Liberia we went on a Ghana airways puddle jumper to Freetown. Four years later we flew to what was then called Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire). Between the two trip Pan Am’s service was already on the decline–I still remember the canned beef stew entree. Too much debt. And over the next years until it’s bankruptcy the airline sold off all it’s assets until at the end it was a hollow shell of itself.

By: Matt D

Matt D — Fri, 01 May 2026 12:09:29 +0000

“One Thing Leads To Another”

Is that a subtle nod to that The Fixx song, what with your occasional ruminations on 80’s music?

And your recent post about The Cars. I spaced out and forgot one of my faves, “Since You’re Gone”.

The opening and backing instrument track of “clack-clack-clack-clack”, simple as it is, I have never heard in any other song.

And it IS a solid rocker.

Also, you’re from Boston. That’s a lot closer to New York than me, a lifelong Californian. Who would not set foot in New York City until 1997. Came via a Continental 757, LAX-EWR. I was 24 at the time.