A Pandemic Ended My Relationship (with New York City)
Peter Zubiago
February 2, 2022
The Metropolitan Museum of Art stands regally on the line between one of the most important urban parks in the United States and the glorious brownstones of the Upper East Side. Looking at it from the outside is breathtaking – you wouldn’t even be able to tell that the façade used to be completely different when the museum was first conceived. Of course, that’s been papered over now. Similar to other major art museums, like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this one looks like a palace, as if it were too perfect to be marked by anything happening beyond its walls. Like the rest of New York City, it is here to prove only that it can be. That everything it contains is ordered and quantifiable. That it is a monolith because it was created out of nothing beyond sheer will. On the steps leading into the shining edifice sit flocks of young people, crowding around the artistic treasures commemorating multiple cultures and multiple generations. Nearly all of them have masks pulled tightly under their chins, ready to be pulled up to their face when their reservation finally begins. To adapt to the numerous public health standards, the Met – like nearly everything else in New York – has decided that the best way to keep crowds limited within the museum at any time is to require people to tell them when exactly they will be arriving. I was one such guest. I respected this caution. The more infectious Delta variant now accounted for about 97% of all cases in the city and I was desperate to avoid it. In the city, the average number of cases on any given day was about 1,900, which was too high for my comfort. I did not want to add to that. Nonetheless, I had received both doses of the Pfizer vaccine in May and felt like there was no need to completely quarantine myself anymore. But I would go out of my way to follow every guideline imposed upon me – I had no intention of getting the coronavirus, even if I ended up with a mild case. As I walked towards the entrance, I was overcome by the sheer amount of noise surrounding me – cars rushed along the road, a street performer loudly blew into a trumpet at the base of the steps, fountains throughout the courtyard resounded with their glorious displays of splashing water. I had to choose what to pay attention to. Carefully pulling into the line, just two minutes after our reservation began, I pulled the mask I wore around my wrist over my nose. A worker at the museum was coming through the line, asking for IDs and vaccination cards. Her voice cut everything else out of the way; she was doing her job. Having forgotten that most places in New York City required proof of vaccination, I pulled up a picture of mine on my phone, which felt like an inadequate substitute. I also pulled up my reservation to prove that I was being a goody-two shoes and did everything I was told. The museum’s rules seemed to indicate that visitors had to, no? Apparently, not. Most lines have a starting point and an ending point, but that wasn’t the case here. People were being let in at the front of the line as one would expect, but as the staff member approached me and I showed her my documents for approximately one second, I was told to go past the front of the line and enter the museum. She was doing the same for everyone that stepped into line. I almost asked her about my reservation, but she had moved on to another group by the time I looked back. Baffled, I made my way up some more stairs, then looked back quickly. The line was fragmenting, with some people (like me) slipping by the others waiting in the bureaucratic queue. I slipped inside, with barely any staff doing a substantial check to make sure that I was who I said I was. Wasn’t the point of the rules they set in place to limit the number of people in the museum to a documentable number so that it would be easier to trace who may have come into contact with someone infected by the coronavirus? Weren’t the rules that New York City had set in service of rooting out the disease? Where was that happening here? I expected it to be harder to get in. I wanted it to be harder to get in. But stepping in the grand entrance hall, I forgot all about that chaos. The first impression the Met makes is grandiosity. With enormous vaulted ceilings and a spattering of Ionian columns, it appears classical and austere. The scale and craft on display impressed itself on the guests too; it was eerily quiet for the number of people packed inside. Were they also taken in by the monolithic space? Perhaps it was the ability of the museum to seamlessly blend the old and the new, as projectors beamed text written in carefully stylized fonts onto a big marble wall, thus tying modern technology into the old architecture. The building itself seemed to be pleading its visitors that it was worth coming back: Attendance in 2021 is about only half of what it had been in 2019. International visitors used to account for a third of visitors, but now form only a sliver of the visitor percentage, which greatly impacts the economics of the entire operation, since non-New Yorkers must pay $25, while city natives get to pay what they can. The stakes are higher now; visitors need to be impressed in order to come back. The design of this remarkable entrance hall – which previously might not have drawn so much attention – now begged me to trust the museum again. Naturally, there was another line to wait in to buy tickets, so that’s what I did. This one kept its structure. It moved relatively quickly (and groups mostly kept six feet apart), as the system churned out happy people with maps of the halls, but I nonetheless got the chance to inspect the careful grandiosity of the space. The floor was slick and smooth and I felt that the building implored me to call it impressive. A vague echo through the hall made every word sound like it came from the voice of God, and each utterance carried the same message: There is order here. I allowed myself to delight in the ostentatious touches that made the hall what it was. But when I looked behind me, a man stood with his mask fully off. He was standing with another man, who had his secured over his nose and under his chin, but this guy confrontationally had it off. He wasn’t scratching his nose; he wasn’t drinking water. The mask was nowhere near his face. It wasn’t even in his hand or on his wrist. I noticed other people noticing in the line. This was simply not done. Not here, not in New York, this beautiful city. He broke the contract and nothing was happening to him. It was clear that no guests had the courage to say something to him – I certainly didn’t. But it took a while before a worker summoned up their courage to tell him to put his mask on. Thankfully, he did, without a fight, but the glare with which he stared at the worker as they walked away was deathly. The spectre of danger raised its head, and though the course was corrected, it could only be so long before it happened again. I saw him later in the modern art exhibit, next to a block of cheese with hair on it (meant completely unironically, by the way), with his mask boldly pulled completely under his chin. July 2021. Delta Rising.
I’ve always seen New York as a place of great refinement. Fifth Avenue, for example, practically begs you to fawn all over it, with the decadent window displays and fancy skyscrapers. Of course, not every part of the city can be so elegant. The subway system that sits underneath all the luxury is a testament to this. And though it has never been a particularly lovely part of New York, the coronavirus pandemic has made riding on the Metropolitan Transit Authority even more uncomfortable, sharpening the disconnect between the life lived above ground and the one traveled through below. In these pandemic times, no matter where you are looking when you’re on the subway, you will always see a sign that tells you that masks are required and must be worn correctly. Most of these signs are bright yellow, with cartoon faces drawn over them. These little faces are surprisingly cute – the folks over on Madison Avenue did a good job on the design – but there’s a strange harshness to it all. For one, the masks really do look like they’re suffocating the animated faces, especially the faces that are double masked. There’s secure and then there’s muzzled, and these pictures come way too close to the latter. One variant of this ad campaign completely betrays the sincerity of the public health crisis. It depicts two people talking without masks underneath a caption that says “Bad.” Fair enough. The next scene shows two people talking, but wearing masks securely. “Better,” the caption reads. To close out the sequence, the two people are silently looking down at their phones or books. The caption: “Best.” Great. While it is a relatively harmless ad, it speaks to the wide disconnect between the enforceable, rigid policies that the city and state governments are trying to enact and the mundane manner in which people go about their lives. It’s bold of the MTA to assume that people are willing to give up talking to each other for the sake of preventing the spread of the coronavirus. It’s not even like this is a particularly dangerous situation – although the close-quarters of the subway are not at all conducive to social distancing, if people are wearing a mask, why tell them that they can’t talk? Why even put an ad out there that even suggests muzzling yourself when you put a mask on? The ads are a parody of themselves, so convinced that they’re showcasing safety on a subway, when they’re actually parroting a strange reality that maybe suggests that communicating with others is not allowed. I wouldn’t mind, but they also seem to be failing to inspire subway riders of anything either. Masks are supposedly required to ride on the subways, yet on any given ride, there are two to three people forgoing that requirement. After all, who’s enforcing it? In a city of rugged individualists, who am I – a mere weekend visitor to this metropolis – to tell them what to do? The city certainly can’t afford to hire workers whose only job is to make sure every passenger on the subway is following the rules. Besides, there is evidence that public transportation is not a serious Covid-19 risk, provided that riders are masked and subway cars aren’t stuffed full of passengers. There’s not a threat of the subways becoming that packed for a long time – ridership on subways in the city is still only at about 50% of pre-pandemic levels. So what’s the use of me sticking my neck out to call someone else out? It’s easier to make peace with the fact that the rules aren’t always going to be followed. In July, I was taking the train downtown to get on a ferry to Rockaway Beach. A large white man entered the subway car without a mask on. When he took a seat across from me, I tried hard not to make eye contact. He was a big guy and clearly knew that he was an outlier on the train. Apparently, that status was a hard pill for him to swallow, because he looked just about ready to fight anyone that dared to challenge his lack of mask wearing. Confusingly, he was wearing a Boston T-shirt and a New York Yankees hat. I guess he was just conflicted. Regardless, I didn’t know what to do. Signs everywhere within sight said that everyone was required to wear a mask, regardless of their vaccination status. This man just knew that that didn’t apply to him. But should I say something? A quick look around the train told me no. No one else even batted an eye. When in Rome, I guess. The silence surrounding this guy sucked all the energy out of the train car. It wasn’t quite so much that he was going to ignite a super spreader event (he probably wasn’t, at least, not right now) as it was that he willfully balked at the rules set to protect public health. This guy – yawning and making faces into his phone – was upending the social norms of New York City. And all he did was ignore some words, some ideas, plastered as bright yellow warnings on the walls surrounding him. He’s no hero, that’s for sure. But he proved so succinctly the falsity of the promise that lies at the heart of this metropolis: People will not, in fact, conform to order. June 2021. Light at the End of the Tunnel?
I ate at a restaurant in Midtown called Chop-Shop when cases were low. I walked there directly from the shiny new Moynihan Train Hall, a cosmetic upgrade to Penn Station (even if it was probably an unnecessary one), with my girlfriend at the time, Caroline. It was raining, so even though it wasn’t exactly far – maybe half a mile or so – the two of us were drenched upon arrival. We were meeting some of Caroline’s friends, Anna and Gigi, there for her birthday celebration and they had initially planned a whole night out, but since they had all been activities for outside and it was currently pouring, it had been pared down to just dinner. I was excited to have a lux (though not luxury) meal in a restaurant, since it had been over a year since I had done so. Chop-Shop is a tiny little place, with perhaps 10-12 tables in the front section and perhaps half that number in a back section. An old street sign from a trading post in Chinatown hangs on the wall, looming large over the small room and giving the whole place a feeling of history. I got the sense that this restaurant’s roots go very deep into New York’s Asian community. As I looked at it, it left me thinking about the time I went to a restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown with my sisters, where we were embarrassed to be the only people in the restaurant that spoke English as our first language. From there, I flashed back to when I walked through San Francisco’s Chinatown with my mother and, for the first time, saw a wet market. It made me think of another wet market in Wuhan. But I was spiraling down a rabbit hole of generalized, probably racist associations that led me to one of the most pressing social disruptions the world had ever seen. The tight intimacy of the small place was nice. I was shocked by how much I had missed being in a restaurant. The smells wafting in from the kitchen, the dim clatter of forks and knives on dishes, the animated conversations that people get carried away in – all of it enveloped me in a warm embrace, like a warm blanket wrapped tight during a thunderstorm. I felt thankful that this place had made it through the worst of the pandemic over through the winter. Now, people were starting to get vaccinated and everything was safer. This was going to be a flawless dinner. Apparently, there was no table for us when we arrived. So, I guess it wasn’t going to be flawless after all. We waited about 15 minutes for a table large enough for our group of four, even though we had a reservation. As we waited, I started talking with Gigi, who struck me as a highly social person. It might’ve been the fact that she took it upon herself to say hello to everyone that walked into the restaurant and looked at her for a second too long. Her parents owned a restaurant in Worcester, Massachusetts, so she was being very patient for the restaurant to get itself in order. She asked me about myself, wanting to know what I did, what sort of circles I ran in, what I wanted to do with my life, all that jazz. As I spoke with her about myself – something I hate doing and had, thankfully, been spared from because the pandemic had made meeting new people extremely difficult – Anna and Caroline were commiserating over how frustrating it was that there were no open tables, despite having a reservation. Anna was standing quietly, with her arms crossed across her chest and assuming a stance that said “You messed up” to the waitstaff. Eventually, a host came over while Gigi was explaining the musical she was currently writing and led us off to a table. When we were seated, we looked over the menus and quickly debated what we should get. Should we go for fried rice? Or curry? What about lo mein? Nothing on the slate sounded anything less than delicious. I proposed getting pork dumplings as an appetizer, not realizing that Anna and Gigi were vegetarian and the idea was scuttled, until Caroline proposed vegetable dumplings. Not a crime, but a disappointment. I had forgotten what it meant to be beholden to others when ordering for a group. A waiter arrived and we ordered some drinks, but needed more time for the food. When drinks arrived, none of us could agree on which ones were good and which ones were not. For my part, I liked the beer I had ordered and Caroline’s Moscow mule, but was not particularly enthused by Gigi’s cucumber gin and tonic, which was otherwise a big hit. Anna seemed to take personal offense to my taste in drinks and told me that I had a simplistic palate. I think it was meant as a joke, but I couldn’t be sure. Eager to avoid rocking the boat, I took great care to not say anything controversial (i.e. share my opinions about anything) for the rest of the night. A new group was seated near us while we waited for our food to come. They were an especially loud group and it was very easy for us to overhear what they were talking about. We listened all night. Unfortunately, they mostly talked about politics, and, suffice to say, they had different opinions on matters than anyone at my table had. However, what was more uncomfortable was how clear it became that one of them was vaguely sick. There was an irregular, but throaty, coughing emanating from one of them, and each time that she did it, the four of us looked at each other with a little panic. Our food could not come out fast enough, so we could eat and move away. And when it did, it actually did not. A waiter mistakenly brought us another table’s dishes, though the matter was quickly sorted out without any fuss. As we continued to wait, Caroline, as is her custom, blew out the candle on our table, negating its warm glow. Something was lost then; the whole project of going to a restaurant with a group suddenly seemed less appealing than it had just an hour earlier. The food arrived to save me from solipsism. We all ate voraciously, trying each other’s dishes and licking each plate clean. The fried rice I ordered was satisfying to the extreme – the savory saltiness forced me to continue plunging my fork into the deep dish. I was, however, even more impressed by the curry Gigi ordered at Anna’s suggestion, which was perfectly absorbed by the white rice that accompanied it, making a warm, richly spicy feast. I told Anna that she had good taste, in an effort to smooth over the tension that had been percolating all night. She scoffed, but I think she appreciated my effort. It was hard to talk with her. All in all, I proclaimed to the table, this had to be one of the greatest dinners I had ever eaten. Everyone – even Anna – agreed, and I felt that the two of us had finally found some common ground. If only there hadn’t been an ominous coughing emanating from the neighboring table. With each belch all four of us stiffened, our bodies physically unsure of whether we should rush through the meal or drop everything and leave. Was the risk of the coronavirus really worth the excellent food? To say that felt disingenuous, especially when the restaurant business has been so hard hit by the pandemic. New York’s dining scene has been impacted even more than in other places, with 54% of restaurants saying in January 2021 that they could not survive the next 6 months without federal aid, compared with 34% nationwide. Nearly 1,000 eateries had been closed since the beginning of the pandemic in the city alone, and that number is almost certainly an underestimate. But in spite of the plight of restaurant workers and owners, I was uncomfortable sitting in a tightly packed, small restaurant. The city closed down sections of some avenues uptown to let restaurants build outdoor seating on the weekend, but that wasn’t a possibility down here, and though it wasn’t a weekend, the rain made it undesirable too. There was so much effort put into making dining out seem safe, but it wasn’t exactly working. It just looked like effort. When the bill came, the four of us decided to split it. Naturally, there was debate as to how to do so. Anna, who had ordered one of the more expensive meals, wanted us to just split the meal four ways, but I didn’t think that was fair, given that my fried rice was not nearly as costly as her poached salmon. The one thing about eating out that I never for a second missed was splitting up payment. It always hurts somebody, usually the person who bought the most expensive things. It was no different this time, with Anna leaving a little mad at the rest of us for not covering her meal. We split off into pairs after that meal, since Anna and Gigi wanted to meander around midtown for a bit, while I was eager to put my things down and relax. I took the C train with Caroline to 109th Street, and we walked through the city thinking about how odd the concrete skyscrapers looked as they intruded into the night sky that floated high above us, vast, formless, dark, and free. March 2020. The End of the World.
I had a ticket to see Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – my favorite play – on Broadway on March 25, 2020. It was going to be the first time I would have been in the city by myself. I was excited to explore the vibrant, bustling place and get lost in the concrete jungle. I wasn’t even going to have to pay for a hotel – an old friend of mine was going to let me stay with her. It was going to be perfect. Then, I got an email, one that still sits in my inbox, even though I compulsively delete everything. It arrived in my inbox on March 12, telling me that I would not, in fact, be seeing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on Broadway on March 25, 2020. In truth, I had known such a message was coming, since by that point it was clear that the world was folding in on itself. My heart sank anyway. But I was not to worry, the email said, because “performances beyond April 12th are still on sale and are expected to play.” As that date kept getting pushed back, 51,000 members of the Actor’s Equity Association lost their jobs. In the television and film industries, nearly 295,000 (including movie theater workers) people lost work. The performing arts – long centered in the Big Apple – withered. Nearly a year and a half later, Broadway made its big return. It has since been marred with cancellations and restrictions, as cast and crew members continue to contract the coronavirus. Some productions haven’t been able to manage these cancellations and have had to close. It’s no longer a draw. It no longer feels safe, even if it is. People suffered, lost their jobs, and were told it would be fine soon. It is still not fine. Governor Andrew Cuomo made the directive to close down Broadway. At the time, he seemed like he was doing a pretty great job containing the coronavirus. In releasing a message on March 12, 2020 that all but admitted the city was unsafe, however inadvertently, he shut off the lights of New York City.
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