Photo Notebook #2 - 3/18/22
The audio version of this post is also available:
Friday afternoon into evening is a great time to walk around New York, especially when there are warmer temperatures. People let loose into the weekend. There's generally more happy and lively energy about town.
Yesterday, I took a walk with my girlfriend Alex. Together we do the What I Miss About New York podcast. Last night I brought along an audio recorder for our walk and will likely use some of the recordings for our show. I'm also experimenting with incorporating some clips into these posts.
You could almost hear the healing in a city hit so hard by the pandemic and pandemic rules. I shy away from actually saying we are on the way to recovery. Local news reports are excited with concern for the new variant, referred to as BA.2. The name sounds more like a college back-to-school special or an android model.
Our new health commissioner seems unwilling to consider removing the private worker vaccination mandate or masking rules for kids five and under in schools. I'm no doctor, but I'm not sure that whatever temporary mitigation gained from masking kids that young outweighs the permanently damaging developmental impediment introduced. I want to like New York again. But the city government keeps doing things like this to its residents with little outrage in response.
It feels like we are preparing to enter the next season of Variant of Concern. I am ready to move on and accept the endemic nature. It's painfully clear that can not be done in New York. And there are plenty of growing causes of concern beyond the next model of virus. My specific demographic of men in their 30s are being targeted in a series of chokehold robberies in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The "choking bandits" remain on the loose, another reason I don't feel safe walking around at night in areas I have so many times before. I have no confidence in the Mayor, his capability to reduce crime, or his selection for health commissioner. While it's nice to take in the evening air as New York opens up, I still have great concern for things getting worse on multiple fronts.