Start spreading the news: New York is back
It’s too early to declare victory, but city’s reopening looks like a postcard from the near future
NEW YORK—The crowds are back, the masks are off, the bars are open. On Wednesday, the biggest city in the U.S., and one of those hit earliest and hardest by the coronavirus, officially reopened, lifting many of its pandemic mask and social distancing restrictions and allowing most businesses to return to full capacity.
The streets and parks were full of people exposing their faces to the summer-like heat, even if the bars and restaurants weren’t exactly full. It was a flashback to scenes of pre-pandemic life for this city — and perhaps a postcard from Toronto’s nearish future.
In Times Square, where the famous naked cowboy had a face as bare as most of the rest of his body, a bride and groom posing for photos repeatedly dipped into a dramatic, bent-over kissing pose. For me, it briefly called to mind the famous Life magazine shot of a sailor kissing a nurse during celebrations to mark the end of the Second World War.
There was no tickertape parade, but this day in the Big Apple seemed a celebration of victory, too. Perhaps too early — almost everyone you talk to wonders if there’s another wave of infections in store for this city and this country — but the vaccinated feel a confidence that they are protected.
Just over a year ago, the images of an entirely empty Times Square drove home the reality of the pandemic. I had been there in December 2019, and the streets had been as crowded as a mosh pit. But those pictures of that barren space — at a time when New Yorkers were confined to their apartments and hospitals overflowed with COVID-19 cases — made the new reality stark.
The new new reality, on May 19, 2021, wasn’t the human-sardine-can type of crowded I remembered, but through the day hundreds of people filled the square doing what people have long done in Times Square — taking selfies in front of the advertising vistas and lounging in the sun.
At Junior’s Deli on Broadway at 42nd Street, a waitress asked, “Is this your first time eating in a restaurant? How long has it been?” She herself had gone out to a bar for the first time in 14 months this week. There and at other restaurants around New York, dining rooms were open to full capacity for the first time since the pandemic began Wednesday, though my own walk-by survey showed their patios remained a lot more crowded than their dining rooms.
And many restaurants remained closed — popular tourist destinations such as Ellen DeGeneres’ singing-waiter Stardust Diner remain shuttered for now, and Broadway theatres will not reopen for performances until September.
At one of the many souvenir shops near Times Square, a clerk who didn’t want me to print his name because his boss wouldn’t like him talking to the media, told me the pandemic had devastated the business. “It took all of our customers,” he said, gesturing to the shop that was empty on Wednesday morning. “It closed the restaurants, it closed the shows. There’s nothing.” I asked if the city reopening was reason for optimism. “It’s going to take a long time,” he said with a shrug.
The pandemic isn’t in the city’s past — everywhere you go, there are reminders of that. Almost all the ads in the subway, and a good deal of those in Times Square, either tout mask safety or thank essential workers or celebrate the city’s reopening (“New York Is Back” read signs over the subway entrances). About half the people on the street still wear masks, and most people indoors in stores still wear them too. (Most stores still require them, independently of government rules that only require them in hospitals, schools, nursing homes and on public transit.) I did see a woman at Starbucks barefaced waiting for her drink, and a Foot Locker clerk stood just inside the store showing his smile to potential customers, but most people pulled their masks on as they crossed the threshold of a shop.
Walk-up, free mobile COVID testing sites are located on the sidewalk every few blocks. Near Union Square, a man stood beside a tent offering free, no-appointment-necessary vaccines — “We’re giving out the J&J vaccine here! One shot vaccine! Walk right up!” he shouted like a carnival barker. It’s a sign of the ready availability of doses here that his tent had empty seats and no lineup.
But there are many signs of life beyond the pandemic.
In Central Park, where a year ago last month a mobile disaster hospital opened to treat COVID patients, you could forget the virus once had this city on the ropes. Women took part in yoga classes on the lawns, benches were full of people having animated conversations or working away on laptops, and joggers and cyclists filled the roads, their faces bare.
One woman I spoke with there said that Manhattan, usually among the best places in the world to live in her eyes, felt like a prison during the height of lockdowns, because those so-expensive apartments are so famously small. She’d spent most of the pandemic living alone, bubbling with two close friends who lived nearby as her only regular company. She recalled the spring of 2020 in particular as a paranoid, lonely time, when she was afraid she might catch the virus in the elevator, or the hallway. “Now, I’d be happy if I never spend an entire day in my apartment ever again,” she said.
The scene was similar at various parks all the way down Manhattan. In Madison Square Park, two gray-haired women on folding chairs painted the scene before them on the recently reopened public lawn, where sunbathers lay out next to mommy groups with strollers and toddlers spread out under the trees. In Union Square, the farmer’s market was packed with people — most still masked — shopping for vegetables and baked goods, and the chess boards saw decent action as spectators surrounded the tables. At Macy’s department store, which was covered in flowers from a recent promotional show, dozens of people crowded the entrance waiting for the doors to open, ignoring the faded social-distancing markers spaced out along the sidewalk.
As the sun grew hot in the afternoon — the temperature soared above 30 C — Washington Square park in Greenwich Village was absolutely packed. Almost no one I could see was wearing masks. An entertainer sang about shaking his sillies out over a loudspeaker for a giddy audience of dozens of children and their parents on the lawn. A troupe of dancers practised choreography on the pavement, calling out the steps. A suntanning man with one of those silver, folding reflective screens in his lap sat next to a crowd of men shouting an argument about something on the benches. Graduates of NYU in their gowns and mortar caps spread out on blankets and posed for pictures for their parents in front of the archway at the park’s entrance. A bunch of them climbed into the fountain and splashed around in their formal wear.
They were popping champagne, celebrating. “At last! Finally done!” one young woman shouted, tipping a bottle back to drink. She was probably talking about her education. Probably. But the slogan seemed to apply more widely, as “the city that never sleeps,” finally began to awaken from a long, long nightmare.