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Throwback Thursday: Pandemic Nights: March-April, 2020

April 13, 2023 | 7:51 AM
in COLUMNS
19
Walking the quiet streets.

By Michael McDowell

If you stand near Wollman Rink at the southern end of Central Park at 7 p.m., when New Yorkers throw open their windows and applaud the health care and other essential workers who’ve been tending to the sick and keeping the city running, the aural sensation—surround-sound applause—is comparable to what a performer must experience on stage at Carnegie Hall, the Met, or Madison Square Garden.

The profusion of cheers, hoots, and hollers; the chorus of pots and pans; the honking of horns and fluttering of sirens—the occasional vuvuzela—all floating above a roar of applause, are more than a communication of profound gratitude: they are a reminder, for each and every one of us who has remained in Manhattan, that we are not alone. That our neighbors and friends are still out there.

What follows this daily celebration is silence. I hear it every night. It is the sound of an overwhelming absence, punctuated occasionally by the wail of an ambulance or the crash of a garbage truck hurtling down a lonely avenue.

Streets are empty. The momentary presence of an airplane is almost an event. Beginning last week, overnight service on the New York City subway was suspended for the first time in 115 years, bringing to an end the final rumbling reminder of the way things used to be.

Some neighborhoods are quieter than others. On a recent weeknight, a man on roller-skis glided down the middle of Columbus Avenue, on the Upper West Side. Near 83rd Street, he cast a quizzical glance at a group of men in folding chairs arranged a safe distance apart on the sidewalk, their bawdy Spanish rising above a recording of Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco’s “Cúcala”. The skier continued making his way downtown, disregarding a near meaningless series of red lights. The men laughed.

Gates block Lincoln Center.

Nearby, a lone security guard patrolled the perimeter of Lincoln Center, which is barricaded, its fountain subdued and inaccessible. Weeks earlier, the Metropolitan Opera had laid off its orchestra.

Across Central Park, Madison Avenue is sepulchral, illuminated apartments the only indication of a human presence. Dusty letters are strewn across the parquet floors of empty boutiques. Sidewalks accumulate evidence of their disuse.

Fifth Avenue is entirely deserted. Solitary doormen in face masks observe ambulances traveling uptown on Fifth against traffic toward Mount Sinai. Once they pass the 65th Street Traverse, the ambulances often shut off their sirens, the glittering red of their lights collecting momentarily in treetops.

Glimpsed from Central Park, the Empire State Building continues to be lit in the pulsing red of a beating heart. On rainy nights, which have been frequent lately, the red glow radiates through thick clouds, and is particularly ominous.

It isn’t altogether so surprising that Midtown is deserted. But the hush of its empty canyons on these pandemic nights is far beyond that of the brief stillness of New Year’s Day, or of Christmas. Pausing to listen, one can hear the skyscrapers emit a faint hum, as if murmuring to one another, like trees in a breezy grove. Empty buses flicker in the distance, and emerge gradually, like the headlights of an approaching car on a rural highway.

Times Square.

In Times Square, a lone musician busked. A man took selfies in the middle of Seventh Avenue. Video advertisements played to an empty house, enveloping a few teenagers occupying otherwise empty picnic areas in a weird phosphorescence.

Toward 34th Street, homeless men and women appeared in the darkness. Some stood in line near vans, where hot meals were being handed out. Others were camped in front of stores and restaurants that may never reopen. Forlorn streetlights blew in the wind.

In Union Square, a mask has been affixed to the statue of Mohandas Gandhi.

More than anywhere else, downtown is an empty theater experienced from the inside of the set. Rubbish is audible as it blows along an abandoned Bleecker Street. Signs creak. Banners wrinkle.

The presence of other solitary walkers, rather than reassurance, induces dread. Parts of the Village, more than anywhere else, feel post-apocalyptic, and it is in the Village that the reality of New York is made most vivid. This place is nothing—nothing—without its people. It is a husk, it is a shell, it is a ruin.


There are, of course, many other parts of Manhattan, and many other parts of New York City. But the pandemic has enforced a localism, for those of us who are not essential workers, and any walk beyond the borders of one’s own neighborhood is a voyeuristic expedition. What’s the purpose of doing something so frivolous, after all? New York City is the epicenter of a global pandemic.

But it’s important to see it, to hear it, and to bear witness. What the city is experiencing is the result of the decisions of the representatives we entrusted to protect us, decisions that were made at the local level, the state level, and the federal level.

People may say that this was unpredictable. It wasn’t. They will say that they did the best that they could. They did not. Cities just as large, just as complicated, and just as chaotic have fared far better than New York.

By the time you read this, more than 20,000 New Yorkers will have died from COVID-19, out of nearly 200,000 confirmed cases.

In late March, Molly Jong-Fast wrote a compelling account of her decision to remain in New York City—for one with the good fortune to have such a choice—as it became clear that New Yorkers were about to experience a catastrophe unlike any other in living memory.

“What I’m mostly struck by is the newfound silence of New York,” Jong-Fast wrote.

In May, with spring flowers fading into the iridescent green of early summer, that silence is no longer newfound.

Until you are sick, or until someone you love is sick, an urban pandemic is a quiet affair, characterized by its silence.

At night, it’s the only thing you hear.

Originally published in WSR, May 19, 2020.
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19 Comments
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Steevie
Steevie
2 years ago

The shutdown worked. The vaccine was not available until December, but the shutdown drove the daily fatalities way down.

7
Reply
S G
S G
2 years ago
Reply to  Steevie

And you know this how? The better course of action was to focus on the most vulnerable (pre-existing conditions, elderly, etc). The financial & psychological costs are way worse…especially for children.

9
Reply
Frank Risella
Frank Risella
2 years ago
Reply to  S G

Anti-lockdown fools like SG will never cease to amaze.

At the peak we had almost 1,000 people dying PER DAY due to COVID and the hospitals were totally overwhelmed.

EVERYONE was vulnerable to a virus that was at least 10x more lethal than the flu.

Lockdown was our only choice to prevent a total health system collapse.

1
Reply
Steevie
Steevie
2 years ago
Reply to  S G

According to the New York Times on April 29, 2020, 544 covid deaths were reported in New York City. By mid-May the death toll was one tenth that number. The shutdown began in mid-March. The vaccine was not available until December.

1
Reply
Ed(NY)
Ed(NY)
2 years ago

I started taking nightly walks of about three miles. There were always people out on the UWS – not a lot, obviously, but along with a number of stores being open there was a sense of combined calm and consistency. One evening I walked all the way downtown (to Katz’s on Houston Street) and remember passing the shuttered Broadway Theater in which that awful version of “West SIde Story” had been playing. I said to myself, well, that’s one good thing that came out of this shut-down.

4
Reply
Nani
Nani
2 years ago
Reply to  Ed(NY)

I agree with you, Ed (NY). Just before they shut everything down I had the displeasure of watching the new “Westside Story” premiere on Broadway. Horrible. Don’t miss that one. And I remember walking for miles too and enjoying the empty Central Park and the sunshine in my face. Never got sick!

0
Reply
Brandon
Brandon
2 years ago
Reply to  Ed(NY)

Broadway was closed a year and a half, leaving thousands out of work. Many had to give up and change careers. Dreams were broken, savings drained, lives altered. Please be mindful of that when taking glee in the closure of a show you didn’t happen to like.

11
Reply
Amos Olagunju
Amos Olagunju
2 years ago
Reply to  Brandon

The UWS was more lively than Midtown throughout pandemic era 2020.

2
Reply
Lisa Kava
Lisa Kava
2 years ago

Beautiful writing by the incredibly talented Michael McDowell. Chilling to read…then and now.

5
Reply
Chuck D
Chuck D
2 years ago

I missed all of this. I got it on March 11. Went to the hospital on March 23, and they were out of tests so I couldn’t get admitted. Stayed in my apartment until April 15th. I don’t remember the silence. I remember the near constant wail of ambulances.

6
Reply
Alix
Alix
2 years ago
Reply to  Chuck D

I feel this… I lived near a hospital at the time and developed insomnia due to the 24/7 ambulance sirens. Silence, pans, or sirens. Later, fireworks. I could feel the angel of death passing by.

1
Reply
Erica
Erica
2 years ago

Project Fear played out exactly as anticipated.

8
Reply
Linda
Linda
2 years ago
Reply to  Erica

Be sure not to miss today’s words from Steve Bannon, Fox News and Ole 34 Indictments.

1
Reply
Peter
Peter
2 years ago
Reply to  Linda

It’s ming boggling how people can’t accept that these measures weren’t necessary.

13
Reply
Yanis
Yanis
2 years ago
Reply to  Peter

Correct. They wish we were still under lockdown. It’s amazing how willingly and quickly some people give up their liberty.

Last edited 2 years ago by Yanis
9
Reply
Leigh
Leigh
2 years ago
Reply to  Yanis

No matter how anyone felt about the lockdown, no one would wish for that again. Even for those of us who agreed with it, it was horrible. It had huge repercussions for everyone, regardless of their view on it.

4
Reply
Kit
Kit
2 years ago

This is the best writing I’ve seen on our collective melancholia . Thank you, Michael. We have come back.

3
Reply
Leigh
Leigh
2 years ago

Thank you for this, Michael. Beautifully written. I’ve sometimes wondered how I’ll explain to my kids what it was like here then. I’m glad I’ll have this article to share with them when they’re older to help them understand. Thank you for writing this and for posting it again (I would have missed it otherwise).

2
Reply
mst
mst
2 years ago

Check out Feral City by Jeremiah Moss (author of the terrific Vanishing NY) which chronicles NYC during the Covid Emergency

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393868470

0
Reply

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