{"id":202322,"date":"2021-03-14T23:59:22","date_gmt":"2021-03-14T20:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-i-survived-a-year-in-weird-empty-manhattan\/"},"modified":"2021-03-14T23:59:22","modified_gmt":"2021-03-14T20:59:22","slug":"how-i-survived-a-year-in-weird-empty-manhattan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-i-survived-a-year-in-weird-empty-manhattan\/","title":{"rendered":"#How I survived a year in weird, empty Manhattan"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How I survived a year in weird, empty Manhattan<\/strong>”
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A year ago, virtually all of the nearly 4 million people who swamp Manhattan below 60th<\/sup>\u00a0Street each day deserted the central city \u2014 except me. I am one of a handful of people \u2014 less than 30,000, in a space that would fit six times that in a similarly dense residential neighborhood \u2014 for whom Midtown isn\u2019t just work or entertainment, but home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have lived in West Midtown for nearly 20 years. It did not occur to me to leave town. Where would I go? It\u2019s nice that so many people have second homes in Florida or feel it is normal for adults to move in with their parents.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

My neighbors moved out by the double-parked truckload, leaving their sad furniture discards in the recycling room. But with vacations off limits, too, I haven\u2019t spent a night away in 15 months.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plus, I have been through disasters before. Blackouts, hurricanes, blizzards, terror attacks, crumbling buildings, a police shooting (of an armed white man). Once, our street literally caught on fire.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

When did I realize this time was different? There is empty, and there is\u00a0empty<\/em>. I\u2019ve had the run of a near-empty Midtown before, when a snowstorm, for example, kept people from commuting. But even then, global tourists walking around Times Square have been company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By the second week of last March, empty was different. Our news<\/a>paper vendor, an always-in-a-good-mood older man reliably out selling his wares by the subway, was gone. Rain, shine, heat wave, snow, he had never missed a weekday \u2014 and he hasn\u2019t returned for a year now. Empty meant the scammy \u201ccharity\u201d solicitors with their cardboard boxes for \u201cdonations\u201d were gone.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last March and April meant ambulance noise, blocks away, on the West Side Highway. By summer, the ambulances were replaced by drag racers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It also meant empty stores. Last March, for something to do, I took a picture of every single \u201cClosed\u201d sign in every single window around Rockefeller Center and Madison Avenue. They ranged from hand-lettered \u201cWe\u2019ll be back in a couple of weeks\u201d to laser-printed missives affixed with chain-store logos. Many have been replaced with \u201cFor lease\u201d signs.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Otherwise, things were \u2014 and are \u2014 quiet. Office towers are empty, save for the security guards who say \u201cHi\u201d when I go on my daily walk. Broadway is dark.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a Jane Jacobs book come to life: With little \u201cgood\u201d foot traffic to police \u201cbad\u201d foot traffic, the perception of safety erodes. Transient vagrants aggressively panhandle. When you\u2019re the only one on the street, the line between aggressive panhandling and being mugged feels rather thin. I haven\u2019t been out after dark in months. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m that scared, though; I just have nowhere to go after dark.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bad? The looting, when all of Midtown was boarded up for weeks, smelling of wood, and our building got an armed guard after dark. Our drugstore being violently robbed. Police barriers everywhere. Critical public spaces, such as Columbus Circle, still closed to pedestrians. The historic Roosevelt Hotel boarded up, closed forever.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The weird? Being the only soul in Grand Central besides a pigeon. Walking by Godiva\u2019s hopeful Easter bunnies long after spring had turned to summer and fall (now, Godiva\u2019s multiple Midtown stores are also gone forever, but I rescued a plush bunny as a souvenir of this strange time).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sitting in the backyard during summer at dusk, helicopters whirring overhead. A Christmas tree all to myself. St. Patrick\u2019s decorations festooning pub windows \u2014 from\u00a0last\u00a0<\/em>year.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The good? Bryant Park did its annual skating rink, one of Midtown\u2019s only signs of normalcy (Rockefeller Center did a severely shortened season). No line at the Whole Foods. Making friends with the local dogs on their daily walks. Little kids running around in Times Square. Young women dressed to the nines for Instagram pictures on empty streets. Finally having a tourist ask me to take her picture after months of drought.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s still one step forward, two back. A few more people at one outdoor-dining restaurant on one block \u2014 but more restaurants that never reopened, even after indoor dining resumed.<\/p>\n

Of course, if you ignore the death, the looting, the job losses, the loss in real-estate valuations and the highly uncertain prospects for central-city recovery, it hasn\u2019t been that bad. There\u2019s no place like home.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute\u2019s City Journal.<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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“#How I survived a year in weird, empty Manhattan” A year ago, virtually all of the nearly 4 million people who swamp Manhattan below 60th\u00a0Street each day deserted the central city \u2014 except me. I am one of a handful of people \u2014 less than 30,000, in a space that would fit six times that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":202323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/03\/210312_Yang___Covid_One_Year_In_Ghost-Town.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[97691,1545,70344,4953],"class_list":["post-202322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-3-14-21","tag-coronavirus","tag-coronavirus-in-ny","tag-new-york-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}