Why I’m staying in New York

The first “Why I’m Leaving New York” personal essay probably appeared in 1967, when Joan Didion penned her iconic “Goodbye to All That.” While Didion set the standard, more recently such essays have become so prevalent, they are a meme.

“All that” was before the pandemic. For the past several days, New York City has become a markedly different place. It doesn’t resemble the city any of those essays chronicled. Pedestrians are absent from sidewalks that would normally be overwhelmed in the early spring. Bars and theaters are dead. Offices are closed. Universities are shuttered; students have returned home. Those of us who are not deemed “essential” sit in our homes, watching the numbers. Total positive cases. Total tests. Growth rate. Hospitalization rate. Mortality rate.

I live with my wife and two children in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Apart from a daily walk — typically to Holy Cross Cemetery — we are staying inside. As the numbers grow and it has become clear that New York City is the epicenter of the American battle against COVID19, I’m getting plenty of text messages and emails from friends living elsewhere. Many are variations on the same basic question: “Have you thought about leaving the city?”

I get it. To the outside world, everything that happens in New York is on an impossible scale, just like the size of our population and the scale of our skyscrapers. There are now more positive COVID-19 cases in New York than there are people in the small Virginia town where I spent much of my youth. Twice the number of people have died here as attended my high school.

And of course, the images and stories are amplified because this is the media capital of the world. Pictures of crowded hospitals, of national guard troops deployed, of refrigerated trailers waiting to collect the dead. What a scene.

Plenty of people are indeed leaving the city. Many of them are wealthy, fleeing to vacation homes. Some rich financiers have sent their families away and are now faced with the unthinkable prospect of cleaning their own apartments. But in the long run, we may see more people at all income levels scared of the virus voluntarily come to the conclusion that it’s no longer best to go on living in such a big city.

I won’t be among them. This pandemic has reminded me again why I love New York — a city of strivers and survivors, of immigrants and ideas. It seems to me that in this moment of mortal fear,

New York City stands for life. It is filled with people and stories and genius. In days, it has built hundreds of new hospital beds, including an emergency hospital in Central Park; established its own local manufacturing supply chain for protective gear; and organized dozens of mutual aid efforts and resources.

And we have our own poignant urban moments — balcony singalongs (though some of them may elicit a

Bronx cheer), street weddings and even a first date via drone. At a time we must stay physically apart, I imagine how much we will appreciate being together again when the restrictions lift.

To be sure, there is a lot of pain and suffering ahead of us.

But like the experience of resilience and rebirth after the 9/11 attacks or the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, for many of us this experience will bind us even closer to the city, to our neighbors, to our families and to the experiment we are all engaged in here together. It seems to me that the true “golden rhythm” of New York — to commandeer Didion’s phrase — is not born of enchantment in its many pleasures but of the cycle of pain, loss and rebirth that we all endure together.

Like most New Yorkers right now, I’m sure of one thing: I don’t want to leave it.

Hendrix is executive director of NYC Media Lab. The opinions expressed here are his own.