The nightly curfew imposed on the residents of the Big Apple has restored many of them to the trauma of the twin disaster.

Just as Paris is the city of love, New York is the city nonstop, with all respect to Tel Aviv. From the noisy shows and musicals on Broadway Avenue, through the crowds of Times Square tourists and art galleries in SoHo to the nightclubs in the city, New York never seems to stop. 

Riots continue throughout the US following the killing of George Floyd // Photo: Reuters

Therefore, the curfew imposed on the city yesterday and will continue until Sunday was almost unimaginable. From 8 p.m., the city is just as empty as Corona. If we put the situation into the life of a teenage girl, the responsible adult seems to have decided that the girl who spends until the wee hours of the night each morning will have to be spun in her room during the hours when even preschoolers are still awake. 

There is no doubt that this is a significant shock to the residents of the city, one they experienced perhaps only after the terrible attack in which the twin buildings were dropped in the city. Unsurprisingly, battle-legacy stories from those days of 2001, seen before ages, pop up in the minds of city veterans. 

The legacy of that horrific attack remains with the residents to this day and refuses to let go. It is interesting to see what the legacy of 2020 demonstrations will be, though the urban closure is the only thing they have in common. The early curfew comes after and after long days of violent demonstrations throughout the city that included robbery, looting, destruction and burning of police vehicles, buildings and shops. 

Such images have not been seen in New York for many years, since the omnipotent Mayor Rudy Giuliani managed to reduce crime in the city, which until then was considered dangerous. Many of the videos and photos circulated on looting from both the US and New York social networks focused on the luxury stores. Top fashion stores, where every shirt cost thousands of dollars at a minimum, looted a pub in the west and pictures of men and women going out and carrying valuable merchandise everywhere . 

There were even entertaining videos circulating showing a girl plundering a giant cheesecake from the American restaurant "Cheese Factory", the main thing to loot. But the main casualties of the terrible looting that occurs on the streets are not the super designers or business tycoons, but the owners of the small and medium stores. 

Those people couldn't sell their wares for months because of the Corona restrictions, and if they could, they made a tiny percentage of what they had previously earned. When they saw the light at the end of the tunnel, thinking that the nightmare would soon be over, the looters came and turned the coals off. 

Independent business owners thought the Corona epidemic had brought them into the worst financial condition they could reach, and had committed suicide. The violent looters forced them into a much worse situation. 

The big business and high-end fashion stores can afford to protect their wares: They seal the windows with thick wooden planks and install sophisticated alarms and alarm systems, but the self-employed, again, remain exposed. 

In the current situation, one of two things will have to stop - looting or New York as a whole. If the city has proven anything in the past, it's that it lives by the immortal phrase "the play must go on." Even if temporarily, the pace of life in the city is slowed down - whether because of the Corona or curfew - life will return to normal in the Big Apple. 

The threats will not help

Even Trump's threats to send the U.S. military to suppress violent protests will not help. The city is stronger than the crises it is going through. This does not mean that they will stop supporting what is right and true, full rights and justice for the African American community that has been oppressed, overthrown and killed over centuries of American history. New Yorkers will continue to protest, but they will also live.