5 years since lockdown in New York City
The good, the bad, and ugly from Covid in ground zero
Every day for the last couple of weeks, my iPhone’s been telling me I’m out of storage.
Which is always perplexing, because the phone itself has plenty of space.
But apparently I need to pay for even more space in the IT heavens to avoid losing recent pics and videos.
Like any dutiful person, I went on a mission to back up things that sparked joy and cull those that didn’t, among a massive photo library.
I was pretty ruthless, deleting left and right, but also, why did I take pictures of so many random things?
After deleting everything before 2020, I came upon the year all hell broke loose.
Lockdown year.
Covid year.
I spent my entire lockdown in New York City.
Boy, how quickly things change from happy travels in January through early-March 2020…
To cooking, baking, indoor workouts, Zoom calls, and escapes to the wilderness from mid-March and later.
Coincidentally, last week The New York Times also released a fascinating visual story of Covid in 30 charts.
Here are a couple that stood out to me:
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Things got weird for sure.
I was lucky to not have spent lockdown alone—though I secretly envy people who had personal time for creative flows and breakthroughs.
In fact, I spent lockdown with three men: my ex-partner and his lovely boys—one was then in college, the other in his senior year of high school.
If you can call it that. His senior year was pretty much stolen from him; even prom was canceled.
Because my partner was considered an ‘essential’ finance worker, he still went into the office most weekdays.
So instead of all of us decamping to Florida, our second home at the time, most days looked like me running my business, one kid taking University of Chicago courses, and the other in high school, all running our lives online.
The nearby Whole Foods modified its hours; the first hour was reserved only for seniors to shop, and then everyone else was allowed in on a limited basis.
The floors were lined with arrows to indicate the direction of shopping; if you forgot the avocado 2 aisles back, fuhgeddaboutit!
Early on during lockdown, people stood on their balconies around 7pm, clanging pots and pans and cheering for medical and other essential workers.
Bless them for their tireless efforts.
Walks and bike rides in eerily empty Times Square and Central Park were life imitating art, à la ‘I am Legend’ when Will Smith emerges in a post-apocalyptic Washington Square.
But even before lockdown, I’d begun feeling that my time in New York City (specifically, Manhattan) was coming to an end.
After all, I was nearing a full decade of living, hustling, and moving between neighborhoods. I was ready for a change of scenery, more space, a car to drive around, to touch grass.
Experiencing Covid in the epicenter was the final straw, and I relocated to Florida in early 2021.
I’ll never say never about living in New York again full time (and I’d definitely have a car 2nd time around) but for now, regular visits scratch my itch for the big city.
Despite it all, I’m grateful for the whole experience, the good, the bad, and ugly of lockdown in New York City.
The good
There were incredible meals and good times
At first, we had a lot of fun cooking, and even drinking.
I should mention my ex-partner is Italian and an excellent chef, so there were fantastic, creative, and over-the-top meals.
I re-discovered a passion for baking
In a house with 3 men (who could still act very much like boys, as most women with houses of men can attest) I found my sanctuary in baking.
My partner commandeered the kitchen while cooking meals.
But no one was interested in baking, so that’s where I found my quiet and alone time.
I baked a lot of banana bread, experimented with different chocolate chip cookie recipes, and a whole lot of cakes.
Then came the cycling
Of course after realizing we couldn’t just rot indoors and add inches to our waistlines, we took a once in a lifetime opportunity to bike around the streets of New York, completely free of pedestrians, tourists, and traffic.
I dusted off my Specialized road bike and rode it more than ever, up and down avenues, across streets, and around Central Park.
With gyms pretty much closed and operating at very limited hours, we were avid cyclists, with cycling becoming our primary form of exercise.
Business was thriving
I was extremely fortunate that my business at the time, a financial content agency, already operated 100% remotely.
When I started the company 3.5 years prior to Covid, I was intent on a fully distributed company.
We were ahead of the curve on Zoom, and didn’t lose any time shifting online or figuring out remote work culture; it was engrained in our way of work.
And, our corporate clients actually relied on us even more to generate research and client communications via newsletters, blogs, and research, so we ended up with our best year ever up until that point.
The bad
The violence
Yes, there were violent attacks on Asians in response to racist and xenophobic blaming and shaming as the starters and spreaders Covid.
It was pretty sad and disgusting and made walking alone in the city as an Asian female even more of a hyper-vigilant exercise, as if being alert and aware of your surroundings wasn’t enough.
The city became even more dangerous and dirty
There was looting, rioting, and protests, and by late spring when restaurants were reopening and building outdoor sheds, the homeless situation was exacerbated, with people living in the sheds and outdoors.
The ugly
It was a stressful and emotional time.
What was particularly ugly to me (in addition to the disintegration of society outside) was how we reckoned with ourselves, when left to our own mettle.
Struggling with cabin fever, sucking it up and being stoic, being the unofficial housemaid, practicing restraint instead of confronting tough conversations to avoid rocking the boat, breaking down and crying when you could no longer handle simple tasks, being overly sensitive about remarks and comments…underneath the pretty pictures was a woman struggling with the stress of balancing the personal and professional.
We all had our mental fortitude tested—by each other and circumstances outside our control.
Nevertheless, we did manage to get away from the city, with road trips to friend’s houses in New Jersey and out east to the Hamptons.
And we shopped and traveled again, once things started opening up.
Though things were weird and bad for a long time, the city, like most of its citizens, is resilient.
It will always, always have my heart and was an essential place for my personal and professional growth, and it’s pretty much back and better than ever, 5 years on.
I’ll always have these pictures to look back on, now that they’re stored in a place with plenty of digital space.
What about you? Care to share your lockdown experience?
I’d love to know.
Reply or comment below and please like or share this letter when you get a chance. It means a whole heckuva lot.
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Until next time,
Shindy
On Instagram + TikTok
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I loved this! Incredible. As always, I learn so much from you each week. Loved all of the photos!