Is New York dying? The pandemic closes the city that never slept

Despite its glory and fame, all of this so typical that this city neither sleeps nor lets sleep because there is always a party around the corner, New York today is a boring place.

The Big Apple is in pause mode. In Be ready, trying to tame a pandemic that has punished her so much with loss of life, hardship at work, business closures and starvation among the garlands. His excessive reliance on tourism, which put the hospitality industry into a coma, led to one million inhabitants are unoccupied.

While this is a phenomenon that affects other cities around the world, the Big Apple stages the contemporary splendor of the Golden Rome of the Old Empire. The comparison was made by John Lennon over 40 years ago.

As with this Rome, a citizen debate arose here, at the mercy of the people who left: is New York over? She is dead?

Marilyn Monroe is credited with the phrase “I love New York because it escapes me”.

This sense of intransigence has been reduced to next to nothing. It should be understood, from the point of view of the well-known leisure offer, that each person is then free of his particular will.

But after a year of health crisis, having visited the same parks and the same streets, having visited museums (the only accessible culture, with reduced capacity), having made shopping at the supermarket the distraction of the weekend (few people do tail like in a club), applying the standard of social distancing that alienates friends and scares strangers, the room for joy is limited, and even more so in the cold.

“New York is missing,” writer Michael Greenberg said in a zoom debate hosted by the Public Library.

Inner life

“After World War I and the Spanish Flu, that feeling that you had to celebrate every night, because the next day you could die, had incredible power and stimulated creativity,” said Hari Kunzru, British novelist based in Manhattan. and who sighs for the reset button to be pressed.

“What we aspire to is contact. We’ll all be excited when we walk into a bar. I will be happy to stand at the entrance of a side-by-side restaurant with a lot of strangers waiting for a table, ”Kunzru says about what he is missing.

You have to turn to the inner life. The next door neighbor, named Norma, an apt name for a woman with musical syndrome, performs the Metropolitan operas at full volume.

If you are looking for live sound, you can go out into the hallway, as if you were going to take the elevator, and stand there, listening to the other neighbor, a professional jazzman, while he rehearses the piano so as not to. to forget who he is.

At this point where even reading or watching TV series and movies at home causes boredom, when cinemas, theaters, concert halls or bars and restaurants – patching terraces takes courage in freezing temperatures -, they find themselves able to collect the cobwebs and the city of pleasure is an inert juggernaut, any novelty acquires the relevance of the unexpected.

“In the middle of everything else, we need this, New York needs this,” writes Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times.

The review alludes to the recently opened Moynihan Station, an extension of the dilapidated Penn Station, the midtown Manhattan and busiest rail hub in the United States, a refuge, moreover, for the abandoned homeless in poverty and drugs. .

The new lobby, named in honor of visionary Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (deceased 2003), occupies what was once the central post office, a giant Beaux-Arts-style building, with a spectacular staircase and Corinthian columns at outside. Inside, the result of reform and adaptation, its transparent glass ceiling and cathedral marble stand out in an open space.

“A big step towards a better city”, emphasizes Kilmmelman.

“I heard it was a very nice place and wanted to check it out,” says Ethan, a lawyer who is accompanied by his girlfriend. “I said he could eat on this floor, how clean it is,” he says, praising the place.

“It’s a rare moment. The city is boring, but it’s for our health. So visiting a new building is maybe the most exciting thing we can do, ”he admits.

“Is New York over?”

“It’s not open, but it’s still very much alive.” She is not dead, she took a little nap and will come back like never before.

“It is no longer the lively city that it used to be, we cannot be side by side in a bar, but it is something temporary and we have reconnected with our parks, with the public space, we have adopted the European coffee culture and dine on the terraces even in winter. I’ve never seen so many neighbors on the street, ”says Jonathan Rosen.

Rosen, longtime public relations, with her professional colleague, Risa Heller, launched the initiative NY forever, forever, non-profit organization with the aim of neutralizing the narrative that the Big Apple is dead and conspires for its revitalization.

“New York is more than alive,” Heller replies. “There are many people who are deeply committed to staying here, helping its rebirth. NY Forever’s task is to involve all these people and give them the tools to collaborate, ”he underlines.

“We created this organization in response to the frustration of last spring with everyone who left, with the idea that the city is dead,” he continues.

“We talked for months with colleagues, with friends to clarify what we could do with the impact. The aim is to keep people connected, to remind them how exciting New York is and to involve them in the project in different ways, ”he insists.

There were other crises – the bankruptcy of the 1970s, 9/11, the financial crisis – and the city always came back, Rosen says.

“New York is density, where people congregate. Covid is a big challenge, but it will end and new restaurants, businesses, entrepreneurs will emerge, tourists will come back. I think we have to work so that those who have suffered the most from the virus have the necessary support and that we must all help move the city forward, ”he said.

Campaign to “revive” the city

Rosen and Heller conveyed their proposal through a video on social media in which recognized New Yorkers, led by comedian Jerry Seinfeld (the first who rose up against the New York funeral a few months ago), they demand their commitment to the city from citizens.

Actors, musicians, designers, athletes, celebrities, entities of all kinds (from banks or technology companies to real estate companies or sports teams to social groups) have expressed their commitment. Not to mention ordinary citizens.

They have set themselves the goal of collecting 500,000 votes by April, with a horizon of one million.

“We want to create a popular power movement,” says Heller. “It’s not enough to come back as before,” Rosen adds.

“Sleeping Beauty”

They care about the city and its citizens: the essentials, the students in debt, the homeless, families suffering from lack of food. One of his first campaigns consisted of collaborators from the fashion world designing clothes to raise funds for workers in the food industry, one of the most punished.

“Sleeping Beauty” is the adjective with which Rosen describes New York. “He will wake up,” he predicts.

State Governor Andrew Cuomo recently announced his Valentine’s Day gift. The restaurants will be able to serve 25% of occupancy inside them from this Sunday.

And the mayor, Bill de Blasio, spoke of the “good omen” for the future of the city. A few days ago, a snow owl (Bubo scandiacus) was seen in Central Park. Something like this hadn’t happened for 130 years.

La Vanguardia, New York, correspondent

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