Saturday reflections

Reflections on the side of a bus on 42nd Street, taken from an Uber with my phone.

Pity the poor driver

...who thought that taking 42nd Street yesterday evening was a good idea.

In New York, there's always a crowd

I don't know what it was like on the other major crosstown streets, but on 42nd Street, people started congregating an hour before the sun actually set.

More Manhattanhenge

Turned down the exposure, turned up the drama.

Manhattanhenge

A few times a year, the rising or setting sun lines up with the grid of crosstown streets in Manhattan, a phenomenon that has been dubbed Manhattanhenge. The few times that I've remembered it was happening it was cloudy or raining, so last night's sunset was the first time I've actually seen it.

Here's the view from 42nd Street.

Street photography

I just liked the look of this trio standing on 42nd Street on a typical summer day in New York.

Life in the time of coronavirus

This is the picture I should have used for the previous entry, but I forgot I'd taken it: a movie theatre on 42nd Street announcing its reopening a few weeks ago.

I will not be going to the movies any time soon, maybe ever, but I am supposed to go to the theatre in a couple of weeks, a prospect that has me more than a little anxious.

Saturday reflections

42nd Street, as reflected in the windows of the Port Authority bus terminal. You don't get much more New York than this.

Saturday reflections

I had two short papers due today, and turned them in with a whopping 18 minutes to spare before the deadline. So late posting, as is becoming the usual state of affairs.

Anyway, here's a city bus reflecting its own version of 42nd Street back to us. 

(And when I wrote that last sentence, I was immediately reminded that “city bus” was the example I gave in Linguistics class this week for a noun modified by another noun. I've got school on the brain, but honestly these days being able to ignore current events is a blessing.)

Opening up

Here's West 42nd Street this afternoon -- much emptier than it would have been on a weekday in the Before times, but it's a big improvement over the zombie apocalypse emptiness of mid-April. There are cars. And a bicycle. And people.

Most of the state is in the process of allowing some businesses to re-open, but New York City is still the national epicenter and remains in lockdown.

Even so, more and more of us are starting to emerge from our dens, timidly stepping into the light, squinting as our eyes adjust,  sniffing the air like wild animals checking for predators. I walked to the post office to mail my absentee ballot application and mostly enjoyed the excursion, though I still strip off my clothes and take a shower the minute I get home.

It will be a long time before I can touch something that's been handled by strangers and not feel the need for a complete decontamination.

Life in the time of coronavirus

London calling
Yes, I was there too
And you know what they said
Well, some of it was true....

(Yes, I was listening to apocalypse music this morning -- why do you ask? I did eventually switch to Bach.)

I've cut back on the amount of news that I consume, because so much of it just makes me angry at a time when I am almost literally powerless. But I am not surprised to see that the pushback and conspiracy theories are rampant. I can ignore the claims that hardly anyone has died in New York and hospitals are just moving bodies from one to another for FAKE NEWS photo ops, because only an idiot would believe them.

The pushback that everyone had predicted is now turning up. Since fewer people than feared have died in the U.S. (only 45,000!) then the models were wrong and all of the shutdowns were an overreaction. Another common, related theme: the hospitals in New York never quite ran out of ICU beds and ventilators, so all of Cuomo's speeches were just political posturing to make Trump look bad.

It doesn't seem to occur to these idiots that the number of deaths has been lower than it could have been -- though still heartbreakingly high and we're a long, long way from the end of this -- because we took such extraordinary measures. Most people who could stay home, did, not just in the United States but in almost every country in the world. It's mind-boggling to me that we actually did this. We're all washing our hands and wiping down our groceries and staying six feet apart -- in short, doing everything possible to keep this stupid, sneaky, unbelievably contagious virus from jumping to another host.

And it's working! New York hospitals have managed -- barely -- not to be overrun because we did everything possible to slow the rate of infection. It's still awful here; there are more than enough bodies to fill every morgue and mortuary. But all of this isolation and being careful to the point of paranoia is paying off, and I keep thinking, Good for us. Hurray for humanity! 

And that's not something I often have occasion to say.

This is the worst zombie apocalypse movie ever

Yesterday I had to mail off a form while we still have a Post Office, so I ventured a little farther from home -- all of three or four blocks -- than I've been going.

This is West 42nd Street in the middle of a weekday, looking west towards the Hudson on the left and east towards Times Square and Midtown on the right. Not quite zombie apocalypse empty, maybe, but close. A couple of people, a few cars, a bus. I've lived in this neighborhood for twenty years, and I've seen this street at all hours of the day and night, in blizzards and hurricanes, and I've never seen it like this.

Urban poetry

Since I actually have been back in New York for more than a month, we're overdue for some urban poetry.

Here's 42nd Street at night, as seen from one of the hotel rooms I lived in while my kitchen renovation made my apartment unlivable.