The Basketball Hoops Are Gone, my Dog is Exhausted From All The Walks, And Only One family at a Time is Allowed in my Building’s Elevator

Life in New York city right now is scary—I’m not gonna lie. Last night my son dropped a heavy flash light on my toes and as the pain exploded in my brain, my first thought was: I’m not going to the hospital. If something’s broken, I guess I’ll just walk with a limp from now on.

I’ve begun to move around more carefully in the apartment. When I open tin cans, I go slowly. We can’t afford to bleed either. Our health care providers have enough to do without dealing with our own carelessness. And honestly, I don’t want to go to a hospital for a broken toe or stitches and come out with Corona.

They are predicting that NYC alone could have 10,000 deaths by the time this is all over—as many as 800 deaths a day during the apex of our curve—which is looming in the very near future, by the way. Maybe as soon as next week. So I go slow and hope for the best.

I still use the elevators in my apartment building. Maybe I shouldn’t, I don’t know. My uncle called today and advised against them. But the building’s tenants (the few that still remain) have been good about not crowding into them. They give everyone their own elevators. “I’ll wait for the next one,” we all say with as little exhalation of breath as possible while staring down at the floor, afraid to speak. Afraid to breath in anyone’s general direction. So now everyone gets their own elevator. It’s a little curtesy we’ve all adopted. Everyone except my children, apparently. Last night my daughter went down to the lobby to get an Amazon package and she told me that a woman in the elevator on the way back up was giving her funny looks. ‘Uh oh,’ I thought as my daughter proceeded to laugh at the ridiculous outfit she’d worn down to the lobby, sure that was the reason for the woman’s reaction. “Did you get in her elevator?” I asked. My daughter stopped laughing and stared at me, perplexed. “Yeah. So?” “We aren’t supposed to share elevators anymore,” I told her.

I walked the dog this morning to the playgrounds in my neighborhood. I wanted to see for myself how the city physically closed them. (Cuomo closed all playgrounds yesterday) There were padlocks and chains on the perimeter fencing and the basketball hoops were gone. The backboards and the poles were still there—just the hoops were removed. There was a tennis court at the last park. Its net was removed, but someone had dragged a short free-standing barricade-type fence into the middle to act as a net. For what, I wondered? Were they scaling the fence to get in and play until the cops chased them away? It was a strange site. Last week in central park, we walked by a playground that was not yet closed, but had a sign that warned: “Enter at your own risk. This playground has not been disinfected.” It was full of kids and haggard looking parents.

My dog is 11 pounds and exhausted from all the walking. I walk her as an excuse to walk myself, of course. I’m going to start carrying her around soon. Take her out for an “airing,” instead of a walk. Is that still considered social distancing? I don’t know. Nobody ever addresses the dog issue here in the city. We’ve all got them. And people have to walk them. Yet the only thing they ever tell us is to stay inside. Only leave for food and the pharmacy. But what about the dog? Speaking of which…. it’s time for a walk.

Takeout 101 in NYC, During the Time of Corona

I’ve gotten many questions regarding ordering takeout during quarantine in NYC, and I wanted to let you know how we do it. Like I said in my previous post, many of the more established delis, pizza places and diners have stuck around to feed us during quarantine. We are very grateful.

For the 1st week, nobody in my family was on any kind of schedule. We were just cooking every meal, processing what was happening to the world, adjusting to our new realities, and hitting our electronic devices hard. The second week, as we became saturated with Youtube videos, Facebook posts, Tik Toks, and Instagram, we started to raise our heads and look around. We walked the dog the four blocks to Central Park, we stopped to admire the blooms on the trees lining the streets, suddenly fascinated by nature. We all fought to go on the weekly food run to the below-ground grocery store a block away. In general, anything to do with the outside world (that was Governor-approved) became overwhelmingly appealing to all of us just as Cuomo was deciding to shut the city down. The subways were closed to non essential personnel, Madison Avenue was a ghost town…and the parks? Not closed…not just yet. I hold my breath in fear of Central Park closing. I heard that Cuomo closed all of the playgrounds yesterday. It makes sense. It’s necessary, I know. No hard feelings. But Central Park feels like a lifeline to me right about now, and I just can’t think about it closing.

So here we are in the 4th week of quarantine, and the take-out ordering has really been ramping up lately. Neil’s Coffee Shop is our favorite. They are at 70th Street and a favorite of Amy Schumer’s, we’ve heard. We call them directly, instead of using the super popular food ordering app, Seamless, and they get the food here, hot, within 20 minutes.

The doorman calls us on the house phone when the delivery person arrives and someone goes down to the lobby to get the food. (Before Corona, the delivery person was sent up the elevator to our apartment.) I put the bags down on one area of the counter, which I will later disinfect, and I transfer the food from the plastic containers to our own bowls and plates. I throw out the bags and containers and wash my hands and clean all the surfaces. I even lysol wipe the ketchup packets. I don’t microwave the food at all. I don’t believe we can get sick from the food. And so far so good.

Sticking to a daily schedule of showering at the same time each day and eating meals (or calling for take-out) at the same time each day, has helped us all feel more normal. I’ve read that certain prisoners have relied on routines to keep their sanity and ward off a sense of impending doom when the near future looks uncertain. Sounds familiar, right? So we’re doing it. Sticking to our schedules, doing our work, washing our hands. Doing the best that we can and…so far so good.

Living in New York in The Time of Corona

Times Square is deserted. No cars, only a few curious people walking up Broadway. Only essential workers are technically allowed on the subway these days. My children are home from school indefinitely. These are the days of the Novel Corona Virus, otherwise known as Covid-19. And this is my daily story of Manhattan life here on the Upper East Side.

I’m not a New Yorker. Not yet, not really. I’ve been told you need to live here 10 years before you can call yourself that. And I get it. New York isn’t the easiest place in the world to live. There is a lot of noise and congestion, a lot of honking, a LOT of trash. It’s fast-paced, and it's expensive as all-get-out. People come here from all over the world trying to make a new life. Many leave after a few short years. So it goes to say you must put in your dues before you get to officially belong. And it makes sense. They want you to earn it. Being a New Yorker isn’t a title to be taken lightly. It’s a hard-earned title that should be just that—earned. Earned by years of enterprise and effort, patience and fortitude—acting fast, and thinking faster. If you pause too long to catch your breath here you could quite literally get swept away in the crush of humanity rushing past you on their way to work. You have to be on your game here, always. And you have to learn to walk fast.

We moved to New York city from the west coast just before July 4th, 2019, so we’d only been here 8 months before COVID-19 first struck. New jobs, new schools, making new friends —relocating is hard no matter where you go. Add in a global pandemic in the largest city in America, and the move takes on a whole new level of adjustment.

Living in the Upper East Side, in our now half-empty prewar building (many having fled the city for family and second homes in Long Island, NJ and Connecticut) we have workstations set-up at the dining room table. We’ve finally caved and bought extra toilet paper and Clorox wipes and have hunkered down to ride out this storm. The kids are learning via laptops in their small bedrooms. We are learning which local restaurants and deli’s are the best, because the mediocre ones seemed to have all closed their doors temporarily, unable to sustain themselves without the foot traffic. Only the tried and true institutions like Neils and Polls, Tal Bagel and the Pastrami Queen have stayed, relying on their reputations and delivery service to feed the neighborhood. We’ve never eaten so well.

So many things here are changing so fast now: increasing death tolls, the USNS Comfort sailing into New York Harbor yesterday to take care of us, federal support coming in. The country is turning its eyes to New York in concern. It’s frightening, but it’s all very heartwarming at the same time. Nothing unites us like tragedy, after all.

The other day on 3rd Ave, a women’s bag ripped open and her groceries spilled out onto the sidewalk. Two people rushed to help her—still keeping a respectful social distance—and one offered a new bag. It made me proud to be a New Yorker. But wait…I’m not a New Yorker. Not yet. I still have 9 years and 4 months to go before I earn that title. Or do I? I’ll have to check, but I think that maybe, if you stick with New York through a global pandemic, you can skip the line.

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