An article about Manhattan changing forever that I didn’t appreciate.
One of the reasons why I decided to form this block association in the first place was because of a nauseating uncertainty about all manner of things, including whether the pandemic has changed the city forever. Well I’m here to tell you today that the New York Times has answered my nightmares and posited that, yes, Manhattan may never be the same. From the article:
In recent weeks, major corporations, including Ford in Michigan and Target in Minnesota, have said they are giving up significant office space because of their changing workplace practices, while Salesforce, whose headquarters occupies the tallest building in San Francisco, said only a small fraction of its employees will be in the office full time.
But no city in the United States, and perhaps the world, must reckon with this transformation more than New York, and in particular Manhattan, an island whose economy has been sustained, from the corner hot dog vendor to Broadway theaters, by more than 1.6 million commuters every day.
Remote Work Is Here to Stay. Manhattan May Never Be the Same. So the basic idea is that because daily commuters are keeping the city’s economic ecosystem alive, and because they’re just going to Zoom it in from Westchester or Long Island or wherever from now on, the rest of us won’t ever be able to go to a coffee shop again. Ok.
That brings to mind an E.B. White quote about the three New Yorks:
There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
…Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion.
Who couldn’t use a little less tidal restlessness anyway?
I’ve mangled this quote before and I’ll mangle it again: the eulogy of New York has been written many times before, and it’s always been wrong.
