After a long pandemic year, a changed New York shows renewal
NEW YORK » Pamela Puchalski still remembers how frightening it felt when the coronavirus upended life in her New York City neighborhood last March.
With terrifying swiftness came the first infections, the first restrictions and the first deaths. There were no answers to be found, only dire warnings: Stay away from work, from school, from restaurants and bars, from shops and theaters — and especially from each other.
“It was that feeling ... like you can’t trust your neighbor,” Puchalski said.
A year later, the nation’s largest metropolis — with a lifeblood based on roundthe-clock hustle and bustle, push and pull — is adapting and showing new life. The renewal is evident in the stream of customers waiting across the Plexiglas-covered counter at Artuso pastry shop in the Bronx; in laughter wafting from outdoor dining sheds built on the streets in front of restaurants; in the parks filled with picnics, birthday gatherings and dance parties, despite the winter chill.
“What is the alternative? Just close the doors and stay home?” asked Gloribelle Perez, who opened a restaurant with her husband in East Harlem only months before the pandemic hit.
For weeks after the virus descended on New York, the strictest warnings held sway. Businesses shuttered.
Thousands of people fled. The only sounds in the streets were wailing ambulance sirens. Many saw it as a death knell for the city, a tearing of fabric that might not be repaired.
It’s still quiet, borderline moribund, in some neighborhoods, especially tourist-dependent locales in midtown Manhattan and in the financial district, where companies have made a wholesale shift to remote work. For-lease signs and boarded-up storefronts scar commercial strips all over the five boroughs.
But New York is no “ghost town,” as former President Donald Trump called it in October.
On multitudes of front stoops and sidewalks, people now lounge with friends, masked and 6 feet apart. Businesses are welcoming customers back after putting up sheets of plastic to protect cashiers and laying tape on the floor to keep patrons socially distant.
The just-passed $1.9 trillion federal COVID relief package gives reason for hope, too, with city officials saying it will offer almost $6
billion in direct aid to New York, as well as money for public transportation systems and funding to help restaurants survive.
Perez and her husband have scrambled to keep their Latin- and Mediterranean-inspired restaurant, Barcha, afloat by cutting staff and changing the menu to make the kitchen more efficient. They’re also hustling a few extra dollars by offering pandemic necessities like disinfecting sprays, wipes and toilet paper for sale along with dinner deliveries.
“I didn’t get this far, just to get this far,” Perez said. “I didn’t, and so we’re just going to keep going until the wheels fall off.”
Not even snow on the ground has kept Zeynep Catay away from the weekly
dance session she now holds outdoors in a Brooklyn park.
The clinical psychologist and dance movement therapist started the sessions in the warmer summer months simply as a way to meet up with a friend and get some physical activity. The gatherings grew and became a way to mark the passage of time, distorted by the endlessness and isolation of the pandemic that has killed more than 530,000 people in the U.S.
“It never occurs to you that one can endure all of these conditions,” she said with a laugh. “I think this is what New York is about ... really creative solutions” and “the freedom in a way of thinking about these possibilities.”
The city began passing a
number of grim anniversaries this week.
Friday marked one year since Broadway theaters closed and mass gatherings were banned. The city’s roughly 30,000 pandemic victims will be memorialized Sunday in a virtual ceremony marking a year since New York’s first known COVID-19 death. Tuesday marks a year since public schools closed. They have since reopened, but with a majority of children still learning remotely from home.
There are still new coronavirus cases, about 2,500 per day on average, and about 2,900 COVID-19 patients
are currently in the hospital. But it’s nothing like that first terrifying surge in April, when more than 12,000 people were hospitalized and 3,100 in intensive care on the worst days. During a 10-day stretch last April, the city averaged 750 deaths per day. This week it has averaged 61 deaths per day.
The city’s cultural institutions and organizations sought solutions as the pandemic disrupted a year’s worth of concerts, festivals, performances and special events.
Puchalski joined the effort,
as the executive director of Open House New York, which normally offers tours of landmarks and other behind-thescenes looks at city architecture.
They shifted to virtual tours, which had the benefit of allowing people outside New York City to take part, and added events like scavenger hunts, to give people an experience they could do themselves and be socially distanced.
“We have learned to adapt,” she said. “I don’t feel that threat that I felt last year.”
BOSTON » Chris Kreider scored his team-leading 14th goal, Artemi Panarin had an assist in his first game back since leaving the team, and the New York Rangers beat the Boston Bruins 4-0 Saturday to halt a threegame losing streak.
Panarin left Feb. 22 after a
Russian tabloid printed allegations from a former coach that he attacked a woman in Latvia almost a decade ago, which he denies. His return clearly provided a lift for New York.
“You put him in the lineup and then it looks like we have more swagger,” Rangers coach David Quinn said.
The Rangers went 4-5 while he was gone.
Keith Kinkaid stopped 18 shots for his first shutout since 2018. Ryan Strome, Pavel Buchnevich and K’Andre Miller each had a goal for New York, which lost 4-0 in Boston on Thursday. Mika Zibanejad added two assists and Kreider had one.
“It was definitely a huge boost getting him back,” Zibanejad said about Panarin. “Not only for the game but for the locker room.”
Jaroslav Halak made 29 saves for the Bruins, who have dropped eight of their last 12 games.
“You see a game like that and it’s: ‘Are we tired or are we out of shape?’” Boston coach Bruce Cassidy said. “At the end of it, I think there’s a number of things. But it’s unacceptable, the effort
has to be there everyday. That’s the most disappointing thing about today was the effort.”
The Rangers called the story about Panarin fabricated and designed to intimidate him for his political views against Russian President Vladimir Putin. His former coach in the Kontinental Hockey League, Andrei Nazarov, said he was motivated to speak about the alleged incident because he disagreed with Panarin’s criticism of the Russian government.
Playing in just his fourth game this season, the 31-year-old Kinkaid was hardly tested as the Rangers got to most of the loose pucks, limited the Bruins’ break-ins and ability to control the puck in the offensive zone.
At the end, a Rangers player could be heard yelling: “That a boy, Keith!”
Recalled from the taxi squad on March 6 when Igor Shesterkin was injured, Kinkaid played in relief Thursday, stopping all
13 shots. On Saturday, he saw just 11 on goal in the first two periods.
“I’m just happy to be able to get some NHL games again to prove myself,” he said, smiling.
Boston forward Jake DeBrusk, who had a goal Thursday after being benched and called out for his play this season by Cassidy, missed the game because he was in COVID-19 protocol.
Coming off a lackluster effort when they were decidedly outplayed on Thursday, the Rangers were ready from the start, hitting the Bruins early and controlled
most of the first two periods.
“We’ve got to find a way to string a couple of these games together,” Zibanejad said.
Miller’s wrister from the right point ricocheted into the net off the far post, making it 1-0 just 3:06 into the game.
“I think right away we couldn’t sustain our game,” Boston forward Nick Ritchie said. “We couldn’t tilt the ice. It made for a long game.”
Kreider’s goal made it 2-0 in the second period when he one-timed Zibanejad’s pass from the right corner after the puck slid through the slot just past the stick of Jarred Tinordi’s diving attempt to block it.
Halak Highlights
New York’s 1-0 edge after one period would have been more without two stellar stops by Halak. He made a left pad save on Alexis Lafreniere’s bid from the edge of the crease at the end of a New York power play, and stopped Kevin Rooney’s open shot from directly in front.
He also robbed Kreider’s two close chances on a Rangers power play midway into the second.
Tuukka Timetable
Cassidy didn’t have any update on No. 1 goalie Tuukka Rask’s potential return during his morning videoconference with the media. Cassidy just said if Rask couldn’t travel that Halak would not play both games of a two-game trip to Pittsburgh.
Rask suffered an undisclosed injury at the end of last Sunday’s loss against New Jersey, reaching for his back as he skated quickly to the bench for an extra skater in the closing minutes.