Corona Diaries – New York Bounces Back, Sort of…

 

 

Four months ago a walk around Manhattan had been sad, a tour of a desolate city under virtual lockdown. Now I was attempting the same walk on a weekend, and was happy to find some life had returned to the streets.

Earlier a walk around the elite Madison and Fifth Avenues had revealed shuttered stores with even the jewelry removed from the windows and the mannequins clothes-less to ensure there was no break-ins or looting during the quarantine.  Restaurants were closed and only stuffed red bears sat at Nello’s sidewalk tables in lieu of real-life diners.

Walking down the avenues on a Saturday, nearly four months later, was still sad because the full energy of New York City was not there. Couples and families walked in masks and I saw an occasional shopper/tourist with brand name bags but those were few and far between.

I was walking to Fifth and 57^th street to celebrate the new Black Lives Matter  mural on the street outside Trump Tower. It was a bit disappointing – it was narrow and on one side of the street; it did not stand out and shout like the one in Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House.  Someone had smeared part of it with red and white paint. Cops stood outside Trump Tower but there was very little crowd or even pedestrian flow.

This was not the avenue I knew and loved, with people from every corner of the world flowing through it. Most stores even when open looked closed. Some were open only by appointment or for curbside pickups. This is how New York has managed to keep itself on the flat side of the Covid-19 curve, and perhaps this slow and steady way is the best.

Restaurants are still closed indoors but outdoors they have sprouted extensions, makeshift cafes. I walked through the diners as I crossed the sidewalk outside Tao. I could not but remember the fun birthday bash the family had given me there last year – glittering and fun and pure New York City with its imposing Buddha icon and festive food.

So I walked down the sad avenues, part deserted, part six-feet apart, masked populace. The only thing alive and animated were the show windows of the stores  where life had returned to normal with the mannequins prancing around in resort wear and summer styles and even fantasy wear – the only acknowledgment of the crisis seemed to be the sequined masks some of them were wearing.

I browsed some of the fantastic, glittering evening stilettos at Jimmy Choo, gawked at the surreal wear at Hermes and passed by scores of elegant boutiques. The mannequins in the windows of  Bergdorf  Goodman were also having a rip-roaring time flaunting gorgeous concoctions. Where would we wear them outside of the show window?  There was a semblance of reality in this fantastic scene  – some of the models were wearing masks, albeit gorgeous sequined ones.

Nowadays unless you’re an essential worker or on a Zoom call, you don’t get to meet real people, leave alone get to talk to them! So I walked next to Lexington Avenue to see more fake people in the beautiful windows of Bloomie’s.  On my last visit a few months back the stores were under lockdown, though resort wear and travel were the fantasies flouted in the windows.

Now the store windows once again celebrated gorgeous people and gorgeous clothes so I indulged myself in staring freely, fantasizing that gorgeous times would return to NYC. I remembered almost with fondness the tsunami of tourists and visitors who would come through these doors on a summer day, the shoppers armed with their Bloomingdale bags. All ghosts of a bygone time.

 

I clicked a few pictures of the dreams-for-free and returned to the masked, six feet apart real world.  It is the world inhabited by most New Yorkers who feel almost a feeling of camaraderie with each other as they each jog or walk their dogs and live in a city still on hold.

It is a brave city, a city still under siege but holding its own. New York City is a survivor and will live through this.