New York is the epicenter of the corona pandemic in the United States. Everyone flits past each other like shadows, the streets are empty.
New York in a state of emergency: almost everyone is hooded Photo: Mark Lennihan / ap
NEW YORK taz | My favorite postman is finally wearing gloves. Only his right index finger looks naked out of the blue latex. “They only give us two pairs a day,” he says. Hundreds of his colleagues in New York are infected with the virus. Some streets haven’t received any mail for days.
I’m running out of food reserves. Substitute coconut oil for butter. Sew masks from old taz t-shirts. Exercise in the living room. Reassure my friends who call in waves after horror reports from New York. Do research by phone and computer. And am amazed at my self-sufficiency. Maybe I am good for life as a hermit?
I only leave the apartment on Wednesday. Then I get fresh vegetables that come straight from the farm. It is distributed around a table under a tarpaulin at one of Harlem’s loudest intersections. The squeal of the suburban train brakes and the honking of cars on 125th Street are usually mixed up there. Now even the sky is still because hardly any aircraft flies to La Guardia.
Someone drew rainbow-colored markings on the asphalt in chalk to keep us six feet apart. As soon as I have paid for my vegetables – with a credit card, cash is too dangerous – I am waved away. We are almost all hooded, some also wear a protective visor. “Do you have a quarter?” Asks a young man. What do the beggars live on now?
On my block (between Malcolm X and Fifth Avenue) there are front gardens, small walls, and steps to the doorways where neighbors come together. But now they flit through like shadows. Only the homeless are still on the street. “Are you okay?” One of them calls out to me in the morning when I push my window up. At the epicenter of the pandemic, a window that opens is an event. I am grateful to him if he wishes me a “blessed day”. I know that until the evening, when I make noise with neighbors for a few minutes at 7 p.m., I will only communicate on the phone.
When Trump banned Europeans from entering the country because it was supposed to help fight the virus, I was personally offended. And every time he talks about a “foreign virus,” I think about running away. When it seemed that he could cordon off this state from the rest of the USA, I got my bike ready as a precaution and printed out escape routes from Manhattan. But I have a job here, an everyday life, friends and an unobstructed view from the second floor of a small street on which life somehow goes on.
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