The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Trip to New York City an eerie feeling at times
Editor’s note:
⏩
There was plenty of room to spread out. Room to breathe. The rows of seats around me were all empty. So were those at the far end of the train car, and those in the car behind me, as the 5:30 p.m. Stamford-bound MetroNorth express idled in Grand Central minutes before leaving.
But from Grand Central to Rye, N.Y., I rode alone in the car. After a few minutes, and after the conductor checked my ticket, I felt comfortable enough to doff my mask.
The experience — riding public transportation and walking the streets during the tail end of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that rocked New York City and left more than 17,000 dead — felt almost foreign.
It’d been more than three months since I last set foot in the city, and when I last did, the weather was cold, the subway platforms were crowded and the sidewalks, restaurants and bars were busy with people.
But by the time of my trip last week, the scene had drastically shifted.
Despite the first phase of reopening, which the New York Times estimated brought as many as 400,000 people back to work June 8, the city felt uncanny — all the familiar sites were there, but without the usual throngs of people. It was an eerie feeling at times.
Mine, however, is apparently not representative of everyone’s experience.
One conductor on the 7:51 a.m. train from Stamford to Grand Central described people standing shoulder-to-shoulder on 5 and 6 a.m. trains, which he said was potentially a safety hazard. MetroNorth employees on the New Haven line — which is operating at only 60 percent service — have threatened to strike if management doesn’t start running more trains, which unions representing conductors and engineers say would help to reduce crowds.
“On earlier trains, toward the front, it’s standing-room only,” the conductor told me.
He estimated between 150 and 200 passengers daily have been getting off inbound trains at Fordham Station, in the Bronx, where he said traffic had been particularly heavy throughout the pandemic. The number is roughly the same coming out of the city, the man said. And while many are wearing masks, an alarming number are not or let them hang below their mouths.
How does that make him feel? “That doesn’t help me. It’s not good,” he said. “We want more service. These people shouldn’t have to sit on top of each other.”
During my morning trip into New York, I did not witness people sitting close to each other, or standing shoulder-to-shoulder. On my particular train (admittedly, near the end of rush hour), there was enough room, even in the busiest cars, for people to remain at least a row away from strangers.
A chill more pronounced than the stereotypical New York City iciness was palpable. Eyes visible over the hem of masks communicated suspicion and fear. Several riders declined to speak to me when I approached.
The vast majority of people wore masks, though, of those, a significant number allowed the fabric to hang on their chins, leaving their mouths and noses exposed and effectively defeating the purpose. One man without a mask was told by a conductor checking his ticket to use his shirt as a facial covering. Another drew the scornful side-eye of several passengers as he coughed and sniffled into his mask. Some pivoted in their seats away from him.
Others changed seats. I hurried past into a car with less coughing.
Just after 9 a.m., the train rolled into a ghostly Grand Central Terminal, in whose usually manic Main Concourse a small number of people were disembarking or traveling to their trains. Downstairs, in the food court, a handful of vendors were at work opening their stands. But any areas where people might’ve congregated to eat were closed.
“It’s been like this,” one police officer said as he paced the nearly empty lower level. “There are just a couple restaurants open. But it’s starting to pick up.”
From Grand Central, I boarded a 6 train to Union Square, where I transferred to an L and headed for a friend’s place in Brooklyn, where I’d spend the day until my afternoon commute home.
The subways, too, were far more sparsely populated than usual. Markers on platforms urged riders to maintain 6-feet from one another. Far from subway surfing, on every train I rode, I got a seat far away from the other passengers, even during rush hour when I traveled from Brooklyn back into Manhattan for the 5:30 p.m. train home.
And in Williamsburg — where my friend, Cody Benz, with whom I grew up with in New Milford, has lived for four years — the streets were remarkably quiet.
Some businesses were open, offering curbside pickup or deliveries.
“It’s definitely been strange,” Benz said. “For a city known to be so lively, to overnight become so desolate. Especially the neighborhood I live in, there’s not a lot of people who live here anymore who were born and raised. So a lot of people got out of here.”
Benz, a trainer at a Manhattan gym and a graduate school student, said he’s opted not to take any public transportation. Both work and school are remote. On rare occasions when he needs to get to Manhattan, he’s biked over the Williamsburg Bridge, though he said if work resumed tomorrow, he wouldn’t have reservations about riding the subway.
And though the sidewalks are more desolate and fewer restaurants and businesses are open, Benz said he’s seen a banding together of people trying to support each other and the institutions in the neighborhood.
“There is this feeling of everybody’s in this together,” Benz said.
“And while we’re inconvenienced, I haven’t seen people complain. There’s this sense of camaraderie. The sense of community has really flourished in the face of hardship.”