“It’s in the blood of the people who work on Broadway that the show must go on,” St. Martin said. “We were hoping there would be some magic bullet or medical treatment, and we would have opened, but that didn’t happen.”
St. Martin has stayed home, on Fifth Avenue near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, throughout the pandemic. Lots of her professional contacts have left, but she’s hopeful they’ll return.
On the Upper East Side, Christina Roden is less chipper about the immediate future. Sure, the city will endure Covid-19, just as it persisted through its near collapse in the ’70s, AIDS, 9/11 and more recently, Hurricane Sandy. But the 69-year-old writer and dog trainer said the reopening has lulled too many into a false sense of security, making them too cavalier about the deadly virus.
Like many New Yorkers, she’s lost most her income and fallen behind on rent. She routinely clashes with other residents who don’t wear masks and has nothing but harsh words for President Donald Trump. As for those who ran for the suburbs as soon as the pandemic struck? Well, good riddance.
“Die-hard New Yorkers are not going to leave,” she said. “The people that are leaving are those who probably would have left anyway. I don’t think we’ll miss them.”
--With assistance from Amanda L Gordon.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.