Broadway had never before closed for a year, not even during the 1918 pandemic the mask mandates, even then, were not so extensive. So much that seemed impossible has happened, and yet as each thing happened it registered as merely the next thing happening. Adjusting to the unprecedented, we have instant amnesia for the unimaginable. Much of what was taken for granted then-the breezy confidence that life would be normal again by, well, maybe June?-has faded from memory. Grand Central Terminal, still busy as that weekend began, was nearly empty by the following Tuesday. Birdland Jazz Club, open on a mid-March Monday night, with a singer nervously bathing his hands in Purell, had closed a week later. When the city shut down more than a year ago, a walker within it could track the oncoming withdrawal and hibernation, block by block, and even-as people walking dogs moved farther away from each other-tautening leash by tautening leash. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
