Mr. President, New York City is Not a Ghost Town

My father was born in New York City in 1930, just steps from Mulberry Street in Manhattan, the famed ‘Little Italy.’ To say he had a fondness for The City, as we New Yorkers call it, would be an understatement.

I wish he was still with us so I could playfully argue with him one more time that he was not, alas, the person who coined the phrase, “New York, New York. So great they named it twice.” (Nor was he the person who invented another famous tagline just because he would ask us every morning, “Got Milk?” when we sat down to have our cereal as kids. But that’s a whole other story.)

So it would have been with a raised eyebrow, a bit of bemusement and stirring anger for my father had he watched the final debate last week to hear President Donald J. Trump talk about NYC.

Trump was answering a question about the coronavirus pandemic when he said: “If you go and look at what has happened to New York, it’s a ghost town. Take a look at New York and what’s happened to my wonderful city. For so many years, I loved it, it was vibrant. It’s dying, everyone’s leaving New York.”

No, Mr. President.

With all due respect, New York City is not a ghost town.

It was, is and always will be the greatest city in the world.

Now, let’s be clear here. This is NOT a political column. This was said in the context of a presidential debate and could have easily been uttered by Joe Biden as it was by the President. I am neither on the side of Trump nor Biden here; I am on the side of New York City.

So while we might be knocked down at the moment, we’re not knocked out. And the tourists and locals alike will be back in droves.

Oh, there is a reluctance to travel right now. People are nervous. People are scared. They are afraid to get on a plane, to stay in a hotel, to eat at a restaurant. Yet those are the very reasons why they will be back.

There is nothing like New York.

Nothing.

People come because they want to take an express elevator that jets them to the top of gleaming, modern skyscrapers for a panoramic view, and then go back downstairs to walk amidst the quaint, historical streets that those skyscrapers cast a shadow on.

They want to stroll among the crowded sidewalks and listen to the ‘dirty water dog’ street vendors hawk their specials of two with mustard and a Coke, and then take a hard left into the oasis of Central Park and suddenly be transformed.

They want to traverse midtown and easily understand the numbered grid that much of Manhattan is laid out in, and then gaze at the arch entrance to Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village and realize they aren’t in Kansas anymore.

They want to have lunch at a hole-in-the-wall pizza place with slices the size of their first apartment, and then dinner at a place like ‘One If By Land, Two If By Sea,’ one of the most romantic restaurants in the world much less NYC. And then try to figure out how they spent $240 with no drinks.

They want to be awed by the Statue of Liberty in the morning, be moved by Ground Zero in the afternoon, and be smiling again at a Broadway play in the evening. They want to have a late-night drink at a place they didn’t realize was owned by Rande Gerber, Cindy Crawford’s husband, and that, oh crap, that’s Gerber’s best buddy George Clooney at the end of the bar. And maybe, just maybe, if they’re still hungry they can slip into any number of places that are still serving full-blown, sit-down meals at 2:30 in the morning.

New York City will be back, Mr. President. You, of all people, having made your name here and literally put it on several buildings, should know that. The City has survived stock market crashes, a Great Depression in the 1930s, a near-Great Depression almost 80 years later with the collapse of the housing market, riots, even the indifference of another President – which prompted the famous New York Daily News headline FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD. (Still second only to the famous New York Post headline of HEADLESS BODY FOUND IN TOPLESS JOINT. But that, too, is a whole other story.)

You know, my father was the son of two immigrants who met in New York City and fell in love, albeit my grandparents’ relationship was unconventional. You see, my father’s father was straight off the boat from Italy; my father’s mother straight off the boat from County Cavan, Ireland. The mix of Italian and Irish was taboo at the time.

But, like The City itself, my grandmother was dogged. Shunned by my grandfather’s family, she taught herself to speak Italian. Imagine? No online courses, no Google Translate. She taught herself although, truth be told, she said it was as much to fit in socially as it was to understand what they were saying about her.

But that’s New York City. Tough. Resilient. Loving. Compassionate.

It will be back. The tourists will follow. It is inevitable.

It is, The City.