Times Square it ceased to be the crossroads of the world.
Matt, originally from Congo and 19 years old as a New Yorker, is idle in the early afternoon in his souvenir shop on Seventh Avenue, at the intersection of 40th Street. His income depends on tourists, especially international ones, and these they evaporated in March. Seen and unseen.
Actually, Matt has many hours of leisure. Almost all.
“This year is a disaster, it is difficult to survive if there are no people and New Yorkers are not interested in this product,” he says in a place full of pots, with a section dedicated to the president Donald Trump (cardboard cutout, lighter, keychain, decorative magnet).
“Some bought them as a joke, but there were no lack of admirers, they sold many,” he sighs longingly. For the earnings, not for the character.
“So far I have had three clients. In a normal time, they would have entered at least 30 to 50 ”, he clarifies. “If we made $ 500 a day, now only $ 100”, illustrates. Get your smile back in the hope that it will rebound in three months with the coronavirus vaccine.
Empty tables on the side of a restaurant in Manhattan. Tourists and residents disappeared from the gastronomic centers. Photo: REUTERS
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This should be peak season for trading. Citizens from all over the planet were attracted by the Christmas display. It is estimated that only in this limited period some ten million visitors entered.
Twelve months ago, on these holiday eve, when the words coronavirus or Covid-19 were unimaginable, Times Square was a conglomerate of humanity in which you almost had to ask for a number to walk.
Hit to tourism and employment
Although local writer John Podhoretz defines the pre-pandemic Times Square as “one of the most irritating and harrowing places in the Western Hemisphere,” the truth is that it had a decisive participation in the economy of NY, due to its status as the main attraction for tourists, the epicenter of the boom in this industry in the last 25 years.
From an enclave of perdition in the seventies and until the mid-nineties – drugs, prostitution, violence, pornography – to its transformation into a crowded theme park. Lights and families.
New York reached a record 66.6 million visitors in 2019 and a great majority printed their trail in this area. Official forecasts emphasize that this level will not be reached again until at least 2024, an issue that affects the entire financial fabric of the Big Apple.
New York’s economic crisis is among the worst nationally. Unemployment rose to 13.2% in November. The unemployment rate in the country is 6.7%. The prognosis worsens after the decision last Friday of the governor of the state, Andrew Cuomo, to return to prohibit that the bars and restaurants serve in his interior by the rebound of infected.
A saleswoman of Latino origin, on a street in Brooklyn, New York. Sales plummeted this year. Photo: AP
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They only had 25% of the space, so Cuomo considers that this loss is compensated by the reinforcement of the terraces and the extension of the moratorium to avoid evictions.
The sector is trilling. Today they are still saved by how benign the weather is, which means that in the middle of December the terraces –or spaces on the sidewalks– continue at full capacity. But if the cold turns with all its elements, there will be no stove to save it.
A survey by the NYC Hospitality Alliance, the employer’s association, revealed that 88% of the city’s food industry was unable to afford full payment of rents in October. The city had about 24,000 bars and restaurants at the beginning of 2020, with around 320,000 workers. Although 11,750 jobs were recovered in November, the total remains at 59% compared to February.
More than 1,000 bars and restaurants have closed permanently. Forecasts indicate that this figure may reach 12,000 in the medium term.
Catastrophe in hotels
Hotels don’t fare better either. Occupancy is at 34%, one of the worst records in decades, which offers a dimension of the catastrophe. If you look at December 2019, the occupancy was higher than 91%.
According to the Times Square Alliance, 108,000 people pass through this area every day. That amount was 380,000 before the Covid-19 outbreak. Without the theaters of Broadway, which contributed 2,000 million dollars to the city, employed 90,000 people and moved millions of spectators, the atmosphere is different, only evoked by the posters stranded on the facades.
An immigrant from Ecuador collects bottles to recycle and get some cash to pay the rent in Brooklyn, New York, days ago. Photo: AP
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In the environment, those dressed as Mickey, Minnie or Transformer are bored. The sellers of places for the tourist buses are silent, the establishments of all kinds look empty, the beggar who begs for alms with a sign in which he demands money for “grass” – “why tell lies” he adds – looks with a poker face when asking about the collection. He ironizes that, without so much strolling, he can’t even afford to buy the paper to make cigarettes.
Traveling through this nucleus illustrates how few things tremendous mutation that the virus causes in the city, with 25,000 dead, and specifically in Manhattan. “This situation is a perversion of urban life when you go down the street and avoid people,” says author Michael Greenberg.
“New York is a tourist city, but it is nothing anymore. She is dead, ”says Gerardo Vital, a 47-year-old Mexican.
A civil engineer by training, Vital settled in 2006 in the Jackson Heights neighborhood, a Hispanic settlement in Queens, escaping the corruption and violence of his country. He sold his transport company and came to look for another future. He had various jobs until he entered a company as a tour guide in Spanish. Then he opened his.
New York was one of the cities in the United States hardest hit by the coronavirus and accumulated thousands of deaths. Photo: AFP
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“A year ago there was tranquility, the income was good and you didn’t worry about paying the rent,” he recalls. He had two cars. The Mini has been sold to meet expenses. Suddenly, March and the closing of U.S. 95% of clients were Spanish. “I had reservations until September, so not only did I not enter, but I had to return money,” he says.
“Everything collapsed. It’s like starting over, like when I arrived 14 years ago, but then there was work, whatever it was, but today there isn’t, ”he insists.
Vital, married and the father of two children, started selling tacos near his house from nine at night to two in the morning. “Most of my clients work in restaurants in Manhattan, in Queens, but they are given fewer days of occupation, so they don’t have the money to eat on the street either,” he adds.
“I am in the red, I am four months late in paying the rent,” he confesses.
Lines to order food
While many neighbors face the tragedy of being left on the streets, in the absence of federal aid, frozen in Congress, the real estate sector, which many accuse of having kidnapped the real New York, has lost its luster. For the first time in a long time, rents in Manhattan dropped from the average $ 3,000 a month. The stock of apartments to buy is much higher than the demand.
Here we like to queue. In the pandemic they have gone to more, even to visit the Rockefeller Christmas tree. The most visible are, however, those of food banks. There is hunger in the city of plenty. The virus has deepened social inequality.
A line to receive a box of food from a humanitarian organization, in the Harlem neighborhood. last october. Photo: AFP
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“We have gone from 175 people who came to collect food to about 350,” explains Andrea Salwen Kopel, executive director of the National Council of Jewish Women, who deliver food every Monday on West 72nd Street.
The line almost went around the block every time. “We have been surprised by the high number of those who had never visited a food bank before the pandemic,” he stresses. “The economy is decimated,” he reiterates.
Where there is no queue is in the stores on Fifth Avenue. In a famous clothing brand it is reported that only 175 customers are allowed inside. Discounting the employees, 172 are missing.
It is also true that some are doing business. “We sell 30% more”, admits Ben, a Vermont resident, who since the end of November has been in charge of a fir tree stand typical of these dates.
“There is more demand because people stay at home and because they want to forget so much shit,” he illustrates.
By Francesc Peirón, La Vanguardia correspondent in New York
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