I blinked — and it was three years later

March 12, 2020

I was drinking with my friend Amy in a Welsh pub in Astoria called Snowdonia. It was pretty empty. We snacked on the Welsh sampler plate: cockle fritters, rarebit and so on. We both knew something was coming but I think we underestimated how much our lives were about to change. "See you on the other side," was the message when we parted. I didn't realize she would be the last person I'd hang out with, not counting my immediate household, for many weeks.

March 13, 2020

I visited Dear Irving, the cocktail bar on Irving Place, for the first time. There was only one other person in the bar. For the first time, I felt a sense of menace. Things were going to be bad.

March 14, 2020

I thought I should load up on books so I visited the New York Society Library where I have been a member for more than 20 years. The head librarian was turning members away from common areas and from the small study rooms which can be reserved in advance. She was visibly stressed. "You're doing a great job," I told her.

March 15, 2020

I was in Summit Bar on Avenue C. The only other people: the owner and a bartender. They were talking about how the city wouldn't close down bars. People need to get together and share a sense of community, especially when under threat. "Wishful thinking," I said to myself.

March 16, 2020

New York City has closed down. Mayor de Blasio bundled up my entire non-work life — restaurants, libraries, galleries, museums, theaters and concerts — and put it into storage. I can't say he was wrong.

March 17, 2020

The other shoe dropped. Goodbye bars. As the clock ticked towards 3pm, I stood at the bar in McSorley's. It had stayed open through the Civil War, two World Wars, Prohibition and Hurricane Katrina. It seemed the right place for a final toast.

Then memories of early morning ambulance sirens, the 7pm clatter of pans as people cheered health workers from their apartment windows. Masks, scrubbing groceries before putting them away, walks in suddenly deserted neighborhoods like Little Italy and Chinatown. 

Not only did this drag on for months; there was no clear time when it ended. A few bars started serving surreptitiously through open windows. Then there was the ludicrous period when Governor Cuomo, for no good reason, insisted we drink outdoors but only if ordering food. I remember a $1 processed cheese half-sandwich at a bar in Bushwick. Restaurants launched a jerrybuilt version of sidewalk dining. Theaters stayed closed for some eighteen months.

Did it ever end? In some ways no. And I don't just mean you can still catch COVID (I did, once, but fully vaccinated and boosted I scarcely had symptoms). What I mean is that changes visited our lives, then made themselves at home and stayed.

Here's my list of changes I will always associate with COVID, although I accept that some would have happened anyway — perhaps COVID accelerated their arrival.

New York Society Library re-opened.

Changes that stuck around

1. Remote working. Video calls. Virtual conferences. Seeing colleagues in the flesh maybe once or twice a year. Recording things I would once have presented live. No commute. No office. Interacting on tools like Slack. A less clear dividing line between work and leisure (doing the laundry during the working day, finishing up a piece of work outside normal hours). What do weekends even mean? (Note: This is an odd one because during the lockdown I accepted a job with a company that is natively remote. It was remote when nobody had ever heard of COVID and there is no office to go back to. I would be working remotely anyway. Nevertheless I will alway associate remote working with COVID.)
2. Nights on the town. Look back at my introduction. Four days in March, four different bars. That had been my life for decades. And I grew up in Europe, so I started young. Under lockdown? First, and for weeks, there were no bars open. Then there was outdoor drinking, kind of okay in the summer. For a long spell, while living primarily outside the city, the closest decent bar was a mile's walk away. I have never (so far) gone back to my almost daily bar visits. One reason: I knew intellectually that my drinks expendure was huge, but seeing the savings pile sky-high in my bank account was a whole different thing. 
3. The dining scene. Far fewer restaurant meals too, and along with that a relative detachment from the New York dining scene. The latter was underway before COVID. I was traveling so much on business that I did most of my restaurant-going in other cities. There was less excitement about going out when I got home. Anyone who knows the rest of the content on this blog will understand what a huge change this has been.
4. Who needs cash? This is one that was accelerated, I think, by COVID, when from high-end restaurants to corner delis touchless payment became a thing. I can go weeks now without pulling cash from an ATM. You just tap for everything, including buses and subways.
5. No commute. Most of my adult life, I've gotten on buses and trains to go to and from an office. My commute is now about ten yards and I don't need to bundle up for it. This does shave time off the normal working day (speaking of which, shaving and other ablutions don't always need to happen at dawn). Downside, I rarely take the 12 trips during the week after which MTA trips are free.
6. Time. I could write at length about this. Perceptions of time have changed, and probably in different ways for different people. Living those months and years under restricted conditions was a long haul. But looking back, the last three years flashed by like three months. Case in point: When I run into people I used to see frequently before lockdown, it's almost impossible to believe I haven't seen them in three years. It's like, we just pick up the conversation where it left off. Similarly, I sometimes think of places I used to visit a lot: When was I last there? Oh, wait, 2018? 2017?
7. A rigid routine. We all found our own routes through lockdown and those months of relative solitude and practical home confinement in 2020. Mine was to adopt a rigid routine, with activities meticulously assigned to small sections of the day. Some of that I've certainly abandoned, but some has stuck. It seemed very important in 2020 and 2021 to follow the local news, not least to track the course of the pandemic. Everything still stops at 5pm for me to check the local headlines and weather. I set aside specific times to read specific numbers of pages in my current books (I tend to read three at a time). I still do that. With the bars closed, I instituted a home cocktail hour. On the nights I don't go out (most nights; see 2. above) that remains in place.
8. Plenty dishes, little laundry. Thanks to remote working, no BEC on the way to the office, no steam table lunch. With fewer restaurant dinners, that has meant many, many days of cleaning up after three meals. And snacks. And tea and coffee. And cocktails. During lockdown, I was living with household members on completely different diets to me. That meant fewer shared utensils. On the other hand, if you don't commute; if you spend days indoors working in casual gear (and you know we do), look at how the quantity of laundry has plummeted. And dry cleaning? How are dry cleaners still in business?
9. Delivery and pick-up. I was an Amazon user before COVID but of course I was buying books, not groceries and household items. I went through an unprecedented period of having meals delivered rather than eating out -- partly because so many restaurants raised their delivery game. That's hardly necessary where I live now, surrounded by casual food options. But who gets take-out any more? By which I mean stopping by a restaurant, looking at the menu, ordering the food, then waiting for it to be prepared and schlepping it home. With the exception of a local Chinese place with no web presence, I never do that now. I order ahead and select a time for pick-up. And I use whichever online ordering service is currently offering me a discount.
10. Off the road. In 2019, I visited Las Vegas three times, San Francisco twice, Dallas twice, Boston twice, Orlando twice, Chicago twice, Austin, Denver, Miami, New Orleans and Philadelphia. Those were all work trips. I also flew to Barcelona for pleasure. That adds up to 19 trips. Of course travel was drastically curtailed in 2020 and 2021; it started returning last year. This year, I expect to make six or maybe seven trips. I don't believe it will return to 2019 levels in my working lifetime. It's a pity; I like travel.

Maybe you have additions to this list. Let me know: [email protected]