Not long after 9/11, I went to Manhattan to do a story on the Chrysler Building. There was a burning smell in the air and something else — the smell of fear, hurt, dread. But New Yorkers being New Yorkers, they did then what they always have done: They went about their business.
There was something of that same unease in the air when I visited last Friday. Now as then, the city seemed quieter, less bustling. There was the same sense of uncertainty among waiters and clerks. And yet people remain grimly determined to carry on. Perhaps more than anywhere else, in New York you are what you do.
The coronavirus is making it hard for people to be what they do as conferences and events are cancelled or postponed until summer. The virus is driving down the stock market — more correctly, our government’s inept response to it is driving down the market. And more than any other city, New York lives and dies by the market.
And yet, the Big Apple soldiers on — choreographing foot traffic to create space among people; offering PSAs on the transit system regarding hand washing; sanitizing subway cars and other public places, the one good thing to come out of the virus.
In the absence of real leadership out of Washington, D.C., it’s up to the states and local governments to fill that vacuum. That’s something New York understands all too well and is prepared to do as the city of reinvention reinvents itself once again.