New Year, Same Old City Council
Had you met me a year ago you would have met a man living the best year of his life. Optimistic, charming and happy to be here. A man who dressed up because he felt like it, and spent much of his time in the lobbies of NYC’s finest hotels. Whether it was working quietly on my laptop, on a date, or enjoying the company of close friends, you could normally find me drinking coffee while sitting by a fireplace.
The 2019 version of me would wake up ten minutes before my alarm clock, excited to start my day, and often went to sleep feeling a sense of accomplishment. Life back then was a symphony and I was the conductor. I had finally arranged all the little details of my NYC life in such a way where I didn’t want to change a single thing.
Having front row seats to watching the city that never sleeps get brought to its knees is an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Many people claim things weren’t that bad here, and they’re entitled to write their own opinion pieces. Although I can’t imagine an article about how great life in NYC was this year being very interesting, or very honest. Even Seinfeld wrote his piece from the safety of his compound in the Hamptons, not the Upper West Side. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
As a person who was in the West Village on the morning of 9/11, I am no stranger to tragedy. I had a car back then, and tried to escape Manhattan that day via the West Side Highway. The only cars heading towards downtown NYC that day were police cars, military and firemen from other states and cities. These brave heroes drove full speed into a city under attack as the rest of us fled what would later be known as the darkest day of our lives.
This year feels different though. 2020 was like watching a horrible play, but one where no one knows how many acts there would be. Every time we thought it couldn’t get worse, 2020 somehow always found a way. There seemed to be no point in watching dystopian movies about pandemics, or a new episode of Black Mirror because we were living in it. Articles about aliens landing even circulated the mainstream news more than once during the course of the year, and we were all so exhausted from our own misfortunes that no one even seemed to care.
As covid settled into its new home in NYC, my local coffee shop closed, my gym shuttered, and everything I loved was temporarily put ‘on pause’. A term that nine months later now feels like a cruel joke. None of us knew what we were facing back in March, or how long it would last. The streets became quiet, the city became still. All the sounds, the familiar faces, the busy restaurants, the daily rituals, the very pace of our existence slowed to a full stop. The silence was deafening.
The situation downtown felt unsustainable immediately for me, as the homeless and mentally ill flourished in my neighborhood overnight. Many of our cities residents fled our beloved city to safer suburbs and their second homes. After a night in the West Village where I saw men looting cars, and a gunpoint robbery happened by the West 4th train station, I thought about my options and no longer felt comfortable here. The idea of being trapped on an island where the government had the ability to shut down the trains and close the bridges worried me. I decided that I couldn’t do the lawlessness and my first pandemic at the same time.
I worried about the airborne nature of the virus, if it could spread easily via our subway system, and if it could work its way through our buildings airways or linger in public spaces. I didn’t feel great about not having any of the facts to make informed decisions and decided to spend the first wave upstate in a guest room at my family’s house where at least I didn’t have to worry about the crime.
Want to read this story later? Save it in Journal.
After spending three months in quarantine upstate I decided it was time to start putting my life back together in NYC. The idea of suffering through this time with my favorite people felt like a step in the right direction. Even if we didn’t have our bars and restaurants for an undetermined amount of time, at least we’d have each other.
I imagined my summer would be filled with long walks, bike rides on the west side highway and small gatherings on rooftops. I imagined we’d get over Covid, and that the energy of the city would come back slowly over the next six months. I was optimistic, loved my city and loved my life here with all my heart. I hopefully assumed most New Yorkers felt the same feelings that I did, and then the riots happened.
Now six months after NYC’s first wave of riots, I was clearly wrong about my hopes of returning back to the fast-paced yet wonderful life here that I once loved. Unfortunately the worst parts of 2020 now all seem to be the new normal, and many of the things we loved seem to not be coming back, at least for now.
Homeless people wandering the streets, businesses closed, rampant crime, protests, riots, random acts of violence and dangerous subways are all now completely normal parts of life in NYC. Before 2020 many of these things seemed unimaginable, but things are different now. The day I moved out of my Chelsea apartment a homeless man cut someone’s throat in a parking garage less than one block away as I packed the last of my belongings.
It offends me when people encourage me to toughen up, and remind me that NYC has always had crime. This is not normal, and we should not be downplaying the drastic changes in public safety we are all experiencing. People getting shot in Grand Central Station is not normal. Walking by a store in Flatiron as it gets robbed at 4pm is not normal. A one year old baby being shot in a stroller is not normal. Our safest neighborhoods now becoming dangerous for the first time in 30 years is not normal. While I went into summertime still optimistic about my life in NYC returning, I fear that it is now too late to stuff this genie back into the bottle.
As a person desperate for answers I took to Twitter to see what other residents were saying about life in NYC. What I found was New Yorkers of all backgrounds, desperately crying for help regarding quality of life issues. It seems many of us agree that the streets are no longer safe, and that the homeless-hotel deals bring crime to what was once safe neighborhoods. Random acts of violence happen daily, commuters are pushed in front of subways regularly, and no matter how loud we yell about our new societal problems, our elected leaders don’t seem to hear us.
What’s interesting about this group is that these are not internet-trolls, but a diverse group of New Yorkers ranging from young adults to senior citizens, from property owners to writers, some of which seem to know the inner workings of politics like it’s their job.
For the last six months I’ve watched these concerned citizens beg for help every day, all of which is completely ignored minus the occasions where one of us gets scolded for not being sensitive enough to the needs of the homeless.
This concerned crowd seem to be having a one way conversation with the city council, while the city council seems to be having a one way conversation with themselves. Patting themselves on the back for their progressive beliefs and a job well done.
The messages that do come from our city council seem to fall into fairly predictable categories of empty platitudes, systemic racism, weighing in on national politics, Trump, anti-police rhetoric or whatever projects they have been working on that somehow all got prioritized over public safety, a shattered economy, and a divided people.
NYC has reached such a state of disarray that if I was murdered today on my way to get coffee, many of you would not be surprised. A short story about it would make the New York Post and most of you would forget about my demise before dinnertime. After seeing stories like this every day since the George Floyd riots, this is no longer the type of story that even raises an eyebrow.
The ongoing dialog between what I have nicknamed ‘the sane center’ and our far left progressive politicians reads like the script of Groundhogs Day. Our politicians avoid answering quality of life questions at all costs, and once in a while they throw us a non-answer that reads something along the lines of “More policing can’t be the answer to everything”; which helps no one. While our politicians claim to care about our black and brown neighborhoods the most, these are the neighborhoods that have suffered the worst uptick in violent crime and gang shootings.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I don’t want to read about politicians beliefs and values anymore. I want to read about rock solid policy, plans and actions to solve our most serious problems. Now is not the time for ‘I have a dream’ speeches. If our politicians don’t get their act together soon, we won’t have a city left to save.
If life somehow manages to get back to normal within a reasonable amount of years, it’s not going to be because of bail reform, and prosecutors who think charging criminals is racist. Our beloved restaurants and small businesses are in financial free fall, our business districts feel like a ghost town. Being lenient on the homeless people who have taken over our streets and subways is not going to bring our beloved city back.
Progress on these issues is only going to come about when our leaders actually prioritize the city’s most important problems. A new park does the city no good if it’s not safe to take the train there, or walk home at night. Our current elected leaders are clearly not the right people for this job, as they have already proven so by ignoring these problems for an entire year.
