After more than a year of lockdown with empty streets, shops, restaurants, and subways, New York is clawing its way back slowly to being the vibrant city that never sleeps. For the first time in twelve months, rush hour traffic blared its incessant horns and clogged the city’s arteries, bridges and tunnels this week, almost like the old days.
In February, restaurants were allowed to open for in-house dining, but only at 25% capacity, until 11pm. During the pandemic, many restaurants built covered wooden or tented outside dining areas on the street in front, many with stand-up heaters to keep customers comfortable in the New York cold.
However, many businesses and restaurants remain closed, especially in Manhattan. With so many premises standing empty, commercial rents are among the lowest they have been in decades. But people aren’t renting. People have been leaving Manhattan in droves.
Street crime in the principal borough has been very visible. The Citizen mobile app that informs New Yorkers of happenings in their city reports stabbings daily, many around Port Authority, the main bus terminal in midtown.
But overall crime in the city is down, according to officials. Every major crime category with the exception of “grand larceny auto” decreased in February. In contrast, gun arrests across the five boroughs that same month were at a record high of 400.
Although overall hate crimes also decreased by 42 percent, anti-Asian hate crimes went up. A hate crime is motivated by bias toward the victim’s gender, ethnic background, or race, and criminal penalties for hate crimes are harsher. Experts agree that relentless references to the coronavirus by former President Trump over the last year stoked anti-Asian and Asian-American sentiment.
A recent instance caught on a building lobby security camera showed a tall, heavy set man viciously kick-stomping a petite 65 year old Asian-American woman’s head as he called out racial slurs. While the assault itself was particularly disturbing, even more so was the indifference and disengagement of the doorman and the delivery man who stood inside and watched, and then quietly closed the building door on her as she tried to get up from the pavement after the assailant had fled. Such hate crimes targeting Asians and Asian Americans have increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The feeling of being in the Big Apple over the last few months has been depressing. Shuttered shops on what used to be busy avenues bustling with life and tourists show that the pandemic has hit New Yorkers hard. People have lost their jobs, their livelihoods, and their homes. You can see desperation in people’s eyes.
Theresa Buell, age 53, has lived in New York City for 20 years—through 9/11, the 2008 financial crisis, and now COVID-19. She said that the pandemic has hit the city the hardest.
“At the beginning,” she said, “I was scared. Every 15 minutes, I heard an ambulance or sirens go by. I knew someone had died or was being rushed to the hospital.”
For six months at the height of the pandemic, New Yorkers recognized the heroic efforts of the first responders and health care workers. “Every day for 5 minutes at 7pm, everyone stopped what they were doing and cheered and banged pots and pans,” she said.
But Buell is concerned about the longer term ramifications of the pandemic because wealthy people have left the city. “For someone like me, a long time upper-west-side apartment owner, I am worried that property taxes will go up.”
Some businesses have decided to reopen, but the streets in midtown Manhattan do not feel safe. The city moved homeless people into the closed hotels near Port Authority, and many now hang out on the street corners as the weather is turning warmer. Many of them have mental illness.
Despite the depression and fear, however, there is hope. Even as officials warn of another surge in COVID-19 cases due to Passover, Easter, and spring break all converging this week, new vaccination centers are opening up in New York. The city has opened eligibility to people younger than 65. New York City’s schoolchildren are going back to school on Monday, and more people are getting back to work.
“NY feels like it’s coming back,” said Buell. “You can tell by the traffic and all the new outdoor dining.” Yet, people fear businesses having to close and the long term damage to the city, and many wonder whether New York will ever be the same.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has no doubt about New York’s comeback. He ordered the 80,000 municipal workers now working remotely to return to their offices on May 3.
“New York City always fights back,” said the Mayor. “And we will do so again.”
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