The Jetsons Finally Arrives in NYC for the .01%

Silent helicopters or "Air Taxis" are being trialled over NYC... Oh, and if you’re still trying to swipe a MetroCard in 2026, you’re trying to use a rotary phone to send a DM.

The MTA is currently demanding a standing ovation because they finally figured out how to let us tap our phones on a piece of plastic to enter a subterranean tube that smells like a wet golden retriever that just rolled around in warm Chinatown garbage. Meanwhile, tech billionaires are testing “silent” air taxis over the Hudson River. What a time to be alive.

So this West Coast startup, Joby Aviation, is running test flights out of the West 30th Street Heliport just east of my old building right now. You know, that place near the pickleball courts where the “Blade” helicopters get you to JFK in 5 minutes while whistling the Succession theme in your head?

Their PR department is aggressively claiming their electric aircraft is “revolutionary” because it operates at exactly 65 decibels. They describe this volume as the exact equivalent of a “normal conversation.”

Whoever wrote that press release has clearly never spoken to a human being in Manhattan. A normal conversation in Hell’s Kitchen starts at 95 decibels and involves two people screaming at each other over a reversing rubbish truck about what is and isn’t Mamdani’s fault. Sixty-five decibels is not a conversation. Sixty-five decibels is a hostage negotiation. It’s a terrified whisper shared by two people on the subway.

I don’t think we’re worried about the ‘noise’ of these things…

It’s the perfect distillation of New York absurdity. We now have sci-fi hover-taxis for venture capitalists who simply can’t bear the existential dread of sitting in traffic on the Van Wyck. They get to float through the clouds like silent, wealthy ghosts. And the rest of us? We’re down in the darkness, furiously tapping our Apple Pay to OMNY screens twelve times, trapped in a metal tube under the East River, listening to a garbled voice from the moon announce a “mechanical issue”. (Seriously, the Artemis II transmissions from the fucking moon were clearer than the ones from the front of the subway carriage.)

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If you ask anyone actually standing on the pavement, we don’t want a silent helicopter. We just want a bus from Port Authority to JFK that doesn’t have sticky seats, doesn’t smell like discarded chicken bones, and actually departs before the heat death of the universe.

Anyway. Just wanted to gripe.
I didn’t sleep well last night.

‘til next time!
Your pal,

PS. Look, if this actually did something for your brain (or at least distracted you from the creeping dread of your own inbox for six minutes), please consider restacking this and sharing it with your people. It’s the only way the word spreads.