As the City Thaws
It was August, and in the midst of a serious cookie craving, I found myself and a few friends headed on a late-night train to New York Penn Station. Touching ground at Madison Square Garden, I was in awe at the sights (or lack thereof) lurking the dreary streets of Manhattan. With citywide ‘For Lease’ and ‘Store Closed’ signs, we’d felt an overpowering sense of relief seeing the glow of the lights from the Insomnia Cookies storefront. By the time we’d looped back around to Penn, we’d seen more rats than people. At home, decimating a small box of oatmeal raisins, I’d figured I’d do a little research, maybe the numbers painted a more hopeful picture?
But it was just as bad as it looked. Executive orders that forced the closings on “nonessential” businesses ended up eradicating about 2800 businesses across the city. Restaurants, bookstores, theaters, entire industries laid to waste in a matter of months. Concerts were canceled, sporting events were put on hold, and indoor dining restrictions kept the city’s vital hospitality industry on the verge of disappearing. Summer passed as the city closed in on a devastating winter.
Now, after a year of quarantines, social distancing, new health guidelines, and COVID-related restrictions, the new world we are heading towards is becoming clearer. Ask yourself, when was the last time you forgot to wear your mask? How about counting the number of hand sanitizer dispensers on the walls in your local grocery market? Have you heard of this new thing called Zoom?
In the midst of another shameless cookie craving, I decide it’s time to check in on the city and grab my camera, hop on the train, and, taking my first steps out of Penn Station, wonder if my eyes are deceiving me.
New York City, the once-epicenter of America’s COVID crisis, has transitioned from a desolate ghost town to a medical-themed Halloween party: the streets fully repopulated with street musicians, hot dog stands, and woefully underdressed midday joggers. Barring face-masks and health-guideline posters, things feel almost...normal. How can this be? How did the endless COVID restrictions and the boundless energy of the city reach this equilibrium?
Well, no use dwelling on that, it’s time to get some cookies.
Taking a hard right onto 8th Avenue, I am bombarded with the usual lights and screens. On one screen at the side of Madison Square Garden, New York Knicks forward Julius Randal is being congratulated for his NBA All-Star nomination. Looking around, Madison Square Garden is surrounded by street-vendors proudly waving around Knicks merchandise, and strangely, people are buying. The front door to MSG hadn’t been boarded up and webbed with Caution tape as I’d expected to see – in fact, it looked wide open for business. And, in fact, under strictly enforced social-distancing policies, a live Knicks game is an $80 ticket away. With lifted restrictions from Governor Andrew Cuomo, venues and arenas with capacity over 10,000 will be permitted to reopen at 10% of normal capacity. So the sporting life in the city may be wheezing, but at least now it's breathing.
I make my way into the subway and hop onto the 1 Train headed downtown, saving myself a treacherous hike in the February chill. I ride for two stops before suddenly hearing: “66th Street, Lincoln Center.”
And just like that, I’d accidentally sent myself uptown by about 32 blocks. I leap off of the train, scurrying up the stairs to get back out onto the road. I look across the street to see the subway entrance, rushing to get myself back on course, but I suddenly stop. I hear...music? Not some street-corner saxophonist – I hear falsettos, modes, and whistles... an opera singer? It can’t be; I don’t hear the muffled sound of a medical mask or the feedback of a face shield. I walk a few blocks to follow the sound and the sight astonishes me.
Surrounded by a crowd of onlookers and sitting behind a window, a pianist and a singer are serenading locals as if it were an opera house concert. Looking above them I see text painted on the glass: Musical Storefronts. Kaufman Music Center, in another effort to establish the city’s new normal, has brought live music back to the ears of New Yorkers through these pop-up concerts. From professional musicians to talents behind some of Broadway’s biggest hits, New York’s finest now have a chance to glean a bit of glory that was first rescinded with the waves of canceled concerts and shuttered venues. This seems like a good way for the city’s thespians to scratch that high-art itch, at least until May 30th of this year, when Broadway is sure to make a major comeback. Judging from the happy and intrigued faces all looking intently towards the glass, the onlookers seem to forget for a moment the blank box office next door or the closed coffee shop across the street.
Hungry and cookieless, I follow the warm, wafting aromas down the street on Columbus Avenue. Turning the corner, I’m greeted by the sight of a small wooden structure parked at the side of the road, wide as a car and long as a bus, tightly lodged between a designer mask kiosk and a plastic-shielded flower stand. I look around to see these structures are everywhere, obstructing the road, all unique and color-coated. Peering into their open windows I see Christmas lights lining the ceiling, small groups of people packed around small tables...eating? It turns out that these little stands aren’t just taking up what little parking Manhattan has to spare. Established to combat the limited indoor-dining restrictions, the city has instituted the Open Restaurants Program. Restaurants with adequate curb-space are allowed to open up these small structures to serve more customers at a time, giving a hand to over ten-thousand restaurants all over the city. After inquiring a bit further with some of Columbus’s resident restaurateurs, all of these stands are able to stay up with loosened restrictions on capacity. Designed by the restaurant owners themselves, they are constructed to shield customers from inclement weather year-round, the city even allowing the use of electronic heating to keep diners warm during the winter months. With these structures soon to become permanent installations, you can be sure to expect these to become natural sites on cramped avenues, forlorn drivers no longer seething over the loss of a potential parking spot.
Alas, I cannot afford to take up a table in these cozy little cocoons, as Manhattan is the only place in America where $10 is a steal for a burger. I stalk down a few more blocks and swing by a Nathan’s, thankful that I don’t need to pinch my nose at the sight of hot horse manure. Chomping down an overly-expensive hot dog, I take a glance over to Central Park. With the sun out, reliving a bit of that February chill, people are out and about, gleaming with high spirits. So, after slathering my hands with the city’s self-produced over-abundant discounted totally-cruelty-free hand-sanitizer, I take a walk through the slushy downpour of the dying winter. Once again, I hear music, but it seems to be resonating from all over the park. Passing by a saxophone, I see no open case filled with spare change and crumpled dollar bills, but a small plastic sign with a barcode on it, several bystanders walking by and leaving their tips with a couple of screen taps. Walking towards the barren amphitheater, huddled together in a small circle, lounging on beach chairs and sipping on cans of light beer, playing terrible indie music on a small stereo (glad some things never change). Walking out of the park, I am sent off with the clopping sounds of horses, a barrage of dog barks, and the sounds of dozens of daytime joggers, basking in the golden sunlight. The sight would seem almost normal barring all of the gloves, masks, and face-shields, but I guess this is the normal now, isn’t it?
Reverting my course, I head down a flight of stairs into the subway stationed under Trump Tower (didn’t expect to see that name again so soon). I wave hello to a costumed-man, who kindly wipes the turnstile for me as I slip onto the train platform. Riding back downtown is relatively uneventful, my eyes wandering from gloved bar-handle holders to MTA ads alerting riders of some citywide health crisis (you don’t say?). The subway brings me back to Penn Station, where I stand in a (surprisingly) spaced-out crowd, awaiting the next train back to Jersey. As time goes on, certain sights start to blend into the background. All of the surprises I got today coming off of the train, well, that just might be how things are for another couple of years. Things change, but people adapt, no matter the circumstance, and while I’m glad for that, I’m also very upset I didn’t get my cookies, man.
