With tight restrictions in place, the city offered scenes that might follow a blizzard, overlaid on a sunny spring Saturday.
Everywhere, gates lowered. Bar stools stacked upside down. The boutiques of Soho, the specialty shops of Greenwich Village — for chess, for board games, for records — all locked away and dark. Little Italy’s signature sidewalk tables for alfresco dining had been hauled inside, leaving Mulberry Street just like any other street.
New York City’s new face under coronavirus showed itself under bright, blue skies on Saturday. It was a shuttered streetscape stripped of commerce and the jangled rhythms of footfalls, honking horns and even people’s voices, a scene that might follow a blizzard, overlaid on a cool spring day.
Some New Yorkers ventured out from isolation, alone or in twos or threes, for a peek around, filling the stillness with their own narrations on a city’s mood.
