Just a ranting list of some brand encounters in New York last week:

JetBlue: I love flying Jetblue. I was crushed when my departing red-eye flight from Denver was delayed over an hour, finally leaving after 2 a.m. DIA is no place to spend a morning, and a complimentary 6-ounce bottle of water was nice, but not enough.

NYC Cab Ride: What can I say? Wouldn’t matter, because the cabbie doesn’t speak English anyway.

Soho Grand Hotel: A cool premise that seems to be going over quite well. Built 10 years ago, the hotel was intentionally scraped up and scratched up to give it a power-industrialist feel. The rooms are nice, the staff friendly and helpful and they offer some great packages along with their sister hotel, The Tribeca Grand. Complimentary loaner bicycles in case you aren’t sweating enough in the summer heat. Their web site looks kind of cool, but is VERY user unfriendly. From the loud music, the requirements for pop-ups, and initial lack of text, it has got to be a problem for the hotels. Hey, call me and we’ll start a Persuasion Architecture project for you.

NYC Subway: I love it. Cheaper than Disneyland and (for those of us that don’t ride it every day) a better surge of adrenalin. New Yorkers fall asleep between stops. Nebraskans can’t. Our fight-or-flight reflex just doesn’t know how to handle the situation, and 4 days isn’t enough. Note to MTA maintenance folks: Have you ever heard of these devices?

Brooklyn: Fuggetaboudit. The Future Now digs in Red Hook are always fun to visit, especially when you are trying to explain to your Russian cab driver where he is going. We had a great Peruvian meal at Mancora. Jeff used his fluent spanish to coax the best dishes out of the waiter and Howie and I just ate everything put in front of us.

Letterman: No, I didn’t get to be on the show, or even in the audience. But, I did make a trek to the Ed Sullivan theater and stopped in at Hello Deli! to pick up a t-shirt, a box of Explode-a-Pop and a fruit whippie.