This report begins with a snack.
Faced with portions of what they say is the best strudel in the city, Hayfa Bachus, a retired biochemist, and Basiliki Siuti, owner of a beauty salon, discuss on the terrace of an Upper West Side patisserie whether the pandemic has changed the New York spirit.
"Now it's all
carpe diem,
no one makes plans anymore, ”says Siuti sipping a cappuccino;
"People are more supportive, suffering has made us more empathetic," says Bachus.
The friends enjoy themselves on Sundays on that terrace, installed in the middle of the road thanks to the municipal initiative Open Streets, an emergency action due to the pandemic that closed dozens of streets to traffic - a hundred kilometers in total - to favor consumption in the exterior of bars and restaurants.
The unexpected irruption of a powerful motorcycle, which parks next to him, makes Bachus and Siuti spoil the motorcyclist's behavior.
The gesture of counterclaim is unprecedented in a city and a country characterized by respect - or indifference - to the freedom of the other.
Morning yoga session on the terrace of The Edge, the highest vantage point in Manhattan.Michael George / EPS
"You get used to good things right away," jokes Bachus about the backwater of the streets without traffic. Because one of the keys after the pandemic, in which the US was ground zero in March 2020, will be to find out if the suffering and limitations for more than a year will have compensated, if the city gains in habitability or if the return to normalcy will mean more of the same as before: congestion, noise, inaccessibility. The streets full of people walking or enjoying
brunch
, of hopscotch games and girls in dragonfly skirts, or the dance of scooters, hissing like snakes, seem to indicate that New Yorkers do not want to back down. “This is a crucial moment. We cannot go back to what was before, the excess traffic, a high accident rate and hardly any option for more sustainable forms of transport ”, explains Erwin Figueroa, director of Transportation Alternatives, a pressure group responsible in part for the City Council making permanent by law the Open Streets program.
“It is now when we must reclaim public space. Pedestrians have only 24%, sidewalks; bicycle lanes account for 0.93%, but it is also about giving citizens more transport options, not only bicycles, but also efficient collective means. The message is clear: drivers cannot be the only users in the city ”. Figueroa argues that, in the city of one million millionaires and the tens of thousands of homeless people, "decades of inequality have forged unequal public identities."
The example of the
open street
on 34th Avenue in Elmhurst (Queens) reflects how the lives of the neighbors have changed. Managed by 150 volunteers, it spans 26 blocks and a wide boulevard, and is the only one operating seven days a week, from eight to eight, through portable barriers that volunteers place and remove every 24 hours. Rita Wade, a senior volunteer, assures that 34 is the most relevant example of
open street
because it is in "the area with the least green areas in the city in proportion to the number of inhabitants." It was also one of the epicenters of the virus.
Today language workshops, games and children's races, Zumba or salsa classes and even free legal advice for residents affected by evictions - one of the black spots of the pandemic - coexist on 34 avenue, which unlike the rest of
open streets
has not been enabled for consumers - there are no bars or restaurants on the boulevard - but for citizens.
New York is the quintessence of contrast, if not contradiction: a progressive neighborhood that forces the closure of a hotel converted into a homeless shelter; a legion of volunteers who pamper the gardens and disdain their neighbor; the luxury pet shops before which homeless people snooze; the closure of a futuristic tower after several suicides due to lack of future ... A frenzied anthill, of beings in pursuit of chimeras or sustenance, which requires continuous movement, like the cyclist in order not to fall off the bicycle. That is why this fall it was astonishing to see Times Square without cars, the sidewalks of the main avenues of Manhattan without the army of office workers swallowing sandwiches in stride or the Broadway neon lights off while dust accumulated on the posters. Traffic in all its forms - traffic, traffic,tourism - defines the city and feeds it as well as consumes it.
In Queens, 26 blocks are closed to traffic on a daily basis. There are classes and consultancies on the street. Happens all over town Michael George / EPS
Inna Zelikson lives off the flow of commuters at beautiful Grand Central Station. With her sister, the owner of a charming jewelry store in one of the shopping malls, there were days when she thought about throwing in the towel, when her business was the only one open in the gallery. “Before we had three shifts of employees to attend the store and we were open every day. 750,000 people passed through the station every day and more than a million tourists a year. After confinement, it looked like a graveyard. Many days I wondered what I was doing here alone, behind the counter ”. The trouble to pay the rent - today, 20% of the $ 12,000 he spent before the pandemic - is history in the future. “I don't know if the city is going to be better or worse than before, but it is different, and it will take time to regain its strength. But I am optimisticnot only for the reincorporation of the people to the offices, but for the return of the tourists. Everyone is looking forward to going back to New York because it is THE city. The world has its eyes on us. And we have complied, we have followed the sanitary guidelines, we have been vaccinated: nothing can go wrong ".
Although the boroughs of Queens or Brooklyn suffered the most virulence of the COVID attack - refrigerated trucks still keep the bodies of 750 unclaimed victims on a Brooklyn pier - it is Manhattan, and especially the areas of Midtown and Lower Manhattan, the epicenter financial, the one that shows the most visible scars: a string of commercial premises for rent and thousands of empty offices. Hudson Yards, the largest privately owned development intervention, has bordered on bankruptcy. Not even the sophisticated image of early risers
yogis
Stretching like cats on the terrace of The Edge, one of the city's viewpoints, he manages to blur the threat of ruin that hangs over New York's most luxurious shell, so apparent that it can make you think that everything is splendor and lust, and not scab or rats that also coexist a few meters away.
Office prices have plummeted in Manhattan, an island that depended vitally on 1.6 million pedestrians a day, and there has never been so much space available, 16.4%, much more than after the 9/11 attacks in 2001 or the Great Recession of 2008. The transformation will be evident: if telecommuting is consolidated as a priority option, many steel and glass hives will remain empty. “The teleworking trend will continue, but not so pronounced because we are social beings and we need each other. The large number of offices available may not be rented for three or four years, but they will be rented; some may be used for residential use, and it may cost Manhattan a little more to recover than the rest of the city, perhaps until 2022 or 2023 ", Kenneth T. Jackson, an adventure by telephone,city historian and professor emeritus of Columbia, who underscores New York's resilience. There are signs for optimism, he assures: "Of the 450 neighborhoods that officially make up the city, some have already completely returned to normal."
There have never been so many free offices in Manhattan, which depended on 1.8 million passers-by daily. its price has plummeted.Michael George / EPS
A street south of Central Park, Maria Loi's restaurant was experiencing unusual activity before the city lifted restrictions on May 19. Philanthropist, popularizer and host of culinary programs on television, Loi made her place the home of a neighborhood devastated by darkness and fear. It did not close for a single day, although they were not open to the public, and the kitchen prepared “600 servings a day, sometimes up to a thousand, for hospital personnel; then for the homeless and for those who lost their income due to the pandemic ”, he explains. The City Council has recognized her contribution with an award, but Loi assures that for her the best recognition is feeding the people. "I don't do anything different from what I did before," says the chef;"One of the lessons of the pandemic is to have realized how interdependent we are." He is optimistic. “I think that society will be better, that people have realized that individualism leads nowhere. It has also made us rediscover the importance of nature. Society, in general, is now more supportive and more connected with the environment ”, he concludes, assuring that as a precaution he would not enable all the restaurant's capacity even if he could do so from May 19. Regarding the end of the restrictions, he warns: "New York will not work 100% until Broadway reopens."it is now more supportive and is more connected with the environment ”, he concludes, assuring that as a precaution he would not enable the entire capacity of the restaurant even if he could do so from May 19. Regarding the end of the restrictions, he warns: "New York will not work 100% until Broadway reopens."it is now more supportive and is more connected with the environment ”, he concludes, assuring that as a precaution he would not enable the entire capacity of the restaurant even if he could do so from May 19. Regarding the end of the restrictions, he warns: "New York will not work 100% until Broadway reopens."
Broadway, which before the pandemic contributed $ 11.5 billion a year to the city's economy - $ 8 billion in spending on restaurants, hotels, shops and taxis, according to The Broadway League - is the thorn in the side of the recovery. 65% of its viewers were tourists and they have not returned yet. Due to the difficulty of the set-ups and the need to implement security measures in the halls, the theaters will not reopen until mid-September. The hiatus has forced its 1,100 professionals to reinvent themselves as only a New Yorker knows how to do: with a complete script twist.
Anne Brummel was on tour with a
My Fair Lady production
when the pandemic broke out. With her husband, also an actor; a one-year-old son and two dogs suddenly found himself out of work and not knowing when they would step on stage again. "In the summer I began to see on social networks how many colleagues announced small businesses, and I thought it would be a good idea to create a website that would bring them all together," he says. Brummel launched The Broadway Merchant Collective in record time, which today represents some 80 Broadway professionals recycled into entrepreneurs. “There is everything from children's clothing designers to craft brewers, and growing. My husband and I want to get back on stage, but realistically I think that will take time. New York depends a lot on tourism ”.
Above, Emmanuel Abreu, co-founder of a community bookstore in Washington Heights, and chef Maria Loi, in front of his restaurant, who served food to homeless and toilets in the toughest times of the pandemic. Below, Inna Zelikson, at her jewelry store at Grand Central Station, and Erwin Figueroa, from Transportation Alternatives. Michael George / EPS
"Tourism will be key to recovery. Before the pandemic, 67 or 68 million people visited us a year," recalls Jackson; "Also young people, because this has always been the city of opportunities." But young people like Emmanuel Abreu, photographer and videographer and founding partner of a community bookstore in Washington Heights, a migrant neighborhood north of Manhattan, assures that he would go to North Carolina, "for example," if there were good options for job. "There I would pay 400 or 500 dollars a month for a large apartment," says Abreu, along with piles of books inherited from volunteers who were swept away by the pandemic.
“In this neighborhood we saw literally hungry people, we contributed to food pantries; then we offered the place to test for covid… It has been a very hard experience, which has shown the true face of the people. Recovery will be long-term, because the pandemic has caused real frustration and has shown that the
American way of life
it has to readjust, that what they call New York is a collection of disparate groups ”. The bookstore that the twenty-something Abreu co-manages offers literacy classes, music, free books, information…, a welcoming social network for an exhausted neighborhood. But he, as a citizen, perceives a collective sense of mistrust. “Open it all up? I find it too optimistic because people don't have money to spend. For fun, okay, but staying in this city doesn't make any sense because it bleeds you ”.
The dreaded spike in inflation when the economy reaches cruising speed worries many in a city of prohibitive prices. Before the pandemic, 2,600 New Yorkers left the city a week due to the inability to afford the cost of living - housing, especially - according to the US Census Bureau. Will the new normal mean again? astronomical rents or the lesson of excess has been learned? Will gentrification lurk?
Suketu Mehta's next book will be a great literary report about the city where he came as a child from India and where he teaches at the university. Mehta, who has seen every last change of skin of this magnetic and showrenco entity, is optimistic. “To save New York, you had to kill her first. Killing the hypergentrified playground of the global rich that it had become. Perhaps the city needed this disaster. Can Greenwich Village become a town again, instead of a corporate university campus? ”He says, referring to the institution where he teaches. “Have the people of New York fled? Not enough. To survive, you need fewer rich people. More harshness. More permeability. Once again, it can become accessible to the young, the immigrants, the non-super-rich ”.Mehta defends miscegenation against imposture, to its ultimate consequences. "What I love about Queens [the neighborhood he came to in the seventies], the density and the diversity, the two things that make it delicious, are now being criticized as the factors that caused a special hell in New York," says the writer. , author of This land is our land. Manifesto of the immigrant, about the brutal impact of the coronavirus in the neighborhood where he grew up. Because, addictions aside - it is probably the city in the world that most hooks the visitor, even if it generates a kind of Stockholm syndrome in the resident - New York is both the disease and its remedy.the two things that make it delicious are now being criticized as the factors that caused a special hell in New York, ”says the writer, author of This Land is Our Land. Manifesto of the immigrant, about the brutal impact of the coronavirus in the neighborhood where he grew up. Because, addictions aside - it is probably the city in the world that most hooks the visitor, even if it generates a kind of Stockholm syndrome in the resident - New York is both the disease and its remedy.the two things that make it delicious are now being criticized as the factors that caused a special hell in New York, ”says the writer, author of This Land is Our Land. Manifesto of the immigrant, about the brutal impact of the coronavirus in the neighborhood where he grew up. Because, addictions aside - it is probably the city in the world that most hooks the visitor, even if it generates a kind of Stockholm syndrome in the resident - New York is both the disease and its remedy.although it generates a sort of Stockholm syndrome in the resident— New York is both the disease and its remedy.although it generates a sort of Stockholm syndrome in the resident— New York is both the disease and its remedy.