Since the first signs that alerted to the arrival of the coronavirus in New York were detected, nothing has been as before. In its checkered history, no catastrophe had transformed the character of the city as the pandemic has. On the access roads to the five boroughs, electronic signs emit a unique message: "We're New York Tough." New York thus proclaims its will to resist, but it is not possible to hide that there is fear, that the wound is very deep and it is not possible to know when, if at all, it will heal. Perhaps the time of her death, so often announced, has already arrived. Accustomed, yes, to all kinds of disasters, the most traumatic, the attacks of September 11, 2001, the city had never changed as it has now. From one neighborhood to another, the situation varies, depending on factors such as purchasing power or ethnicity. The virus has raged with unusual violence against the poor, blacks and Latinos. At the first signs of danger, nearly half a million wealthy New Yorkers scrambled out of the way, seeking refuge in their Long Island mansions. As a result, certain areas of the city, such as Tribeca, Battery Park or Wall Street, literally became ghost zones.
If you think of New York as the sum of emblematic places with which the universal collective imagination has always associated the city, the invitation to visit it these days would require consulting a guide presided over by the sign of the Apocalypse. The metro, probably the most decrepit in the world, would occupy a prominent place in it. With just 20% of its regular users, the hades of New York transport is plagued by giant rats that roam nonchalantly along its platforms and walkways. The arrival of COVID-19 added a sinister detail: fueled by hunger as the leftovers on which they fed had disappeared, the vermin had become dangerously aggressive. On the surface, the picture is heartbreaking in another way: the queues of homeless people lined up in front of soup kitchens increased dramatically in the poorest neighborhoods. It is part of a panorama dominated by unemployment, dismissals and threats of eviction. The stimulus of $ 600 a week provided by the federal government, which barely covered basic expenses, ceased to be received at the end of June, with no prospect of new aid. The uncertainty of a large part of the population cannot be greater.
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There are no tourists. Places visited by huge crowds on a daily basis are closed, from Broadway theaters to museums like MoMA, the Whitney, or the Metropolitan, as well as concert halls such as the Apollo in Harlem, Carnegie Hall, or Lincoln Center. To characterize Times Square as a desert is an oxymoron, but the expression could not be more exact: the sea of lights and screens located on 42nd Street continues to emit signals, only there is no one to pay attention to them. No less unusual is the image of Grand Central. Its 107 platforms hardly receive travelers. The majestic station hall is another desert. Of the infinity of icons that constitute the hallmarks of New York, undoubtedly the most representative is the Statue of Liberty. When it was finally opened to visitors two weeks ago, the ferries to the island on which the statue stands were empty. You can also go up to the observatory on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building, but as with Lady Liberty, there are hardly any who are interested in getting closer.
The blow to the economy from the absence of tourists is devastating, although it has side effects that New Yorkers live with a mixture of strangeness and relief. Suddenly, the inhabitants of Manhattan have understood to what extent the city they believed was not theirs. It is humbling to gaze at the urban aberration of the Hudson Yards, or to take a stroll along the High Line's landscaped path, or to gaze at Diller Island on the riverbank, still half built. Its cement petals intended to prop up a visionary park, seem like a nightmare scenario. The sensation takes on an overwhelming nuance if the place you decide to visit these days is Ground Zero.
With the leftovers they fed have disappeared, the subway rats have become dangerously aggressive
The days of the plague have been governed by their own calendar, marked by their coincidence with other major events. Without a doubt, the most prominent was the outbreak of collective anger that followed George Floyd's death at the hands of the police, a déjà vu that once again highlighted how deeply rooted racism remains in American society. Floyd's death triggered a wave of protests with varying degrees of violence across the country, with New York as one of its epicenters. For several weeks, one of the major axes of the protest ran daily along Broadway, from the bridges of Manhattan South to Union Square, the historic meeting point of all kinds of political causes. The peaceful protests were marred by scenes of extremely violent looting, whose primary target was the luxury brand stores of SoHo, Madison Avenue, or Fifth Avenue. After the looting, first thing in the morning of the following day, teams of workers appeared, sealing the facades and shop windows of the establishments with wooden planks. On successive days, the boards were covered with graffiti of a political nature, some of considerable artistic value.
When, yielding to pressure from protesters, measures were taken to cut funding for the police, a feeling of insecurity arose among certain sectors of the population that led many to acquire weapons. Murders and robberies increased, although not in the proportions reported by the local tabloid press, which put the increase in crime at around 280%.
Recover pulse
New York has passed the moment that stigmatized it as the epicenter of the pandemic on a global scale. Gone are scenes like the excavation of mass graves on Hart Island, or the lifting of field hospitals in Central Park. In general terms, it can be said that the city is slowly recovering its pulse, although very slowly. Some avenues in Brooklyn or Harlem are packed with people. Bicycles pass by like exhalation over the Brooklyn Bridge, pending urgent orders, but there are no idle strollers. In the industrial areas of Long Island City or Queens, work activity is approaching normal. Spontaneous jazz bands have gathered again in Washington Square, as they have been doing for decades. There are signs of life in Central Park, despite the suspension of activities that give character to the summer season, such as the free performances of Shakespeare or the Metropolitan Opera. There is bustle on the streets of Harlem, where a gigantic graffiti has appeared that runs along the asphalt that covers an entire stretch of Malcolm Avenue X, with the motto of Black Lives Matter, painted in huge green letters, one of several that have appeared in town.
Suddenly, the inhabitants of Manhattan have understood to what extent the city they believed theirs was not
But the question of whether New York will be able to recover this time, as it has always done so far, persists. Commercial firms of international importance have definitively abandoned ship, among them, to mention one example, Victoria Secret, which according to The New York Times stopped paying the rent of the premises of Harald Square, which amounted to almost a million dollars a month. It is a symptom that the inability to return to where you were before may be more than a mere hypothesis.