New York City Is A Concrete Casket
A few days ago, I decided to take take a last-minute trip to New York City for fun. I know… if you’re a fellow conservative, you’re probably thinking, “Fun???? In NYC? Now?” What can I say? I like taking risks and to be honest, I had no idea what it was going to be like. I obviously heard about how the city was completely different after being thrashed by an unprecedented pandemic and extremely liberal lockdown policies. Still, it was one of those things I wanted to see so I could believe it.
I knew the city would be different, but I wasn’t prepared for HOW DIFFERENT it truly was. The first thing I noticed was how completely dead LaGuardia Airport was. I have flown into that airport many times, and it is always body-to-body packed with people from all over the world. Shockingly, the airport was almost completely empty. In some areas…totally silent. Sidebar – the airport has gone through some recent renovations which are beautiful, by the way. I’m just sad there are hardly any people traveling to the Big Apple to enjoy them. As I was descending the escalator to catch my Uber, I was abruptly greeted by a military man in fatigues yelling, “WELCOME TO NEW YORK. YOU MUST QUARANTINE FOR 10 DAYS. IT IS THE LAW. YOU HAVE UNTIL MIDNIGHT TO FILL OUT THIS FORM AND YOU WILL BE CONTACT TRACED. ENJOY YOUR STAY.” Then he handed me a form (that I would not be using). Kind of terrifying, not gonna lie.
I asked my Uber driver what traffic has been like. He laughed and said, “Traffic? There has been no traffic for a year.” He was right. I couldn’t believe it only took about 15 minutes for me to get to my hotel. The streets were almost completely empty, and a lot were. It seemed like there was less than half as many yellow taxis and people honking their horns. In fact, I have never stayed in New York City where you could get a completely silent night’s sleep, but right now, it would be easy to mistake a New York City hotel in midtown with a bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin.
It was hard to find places to eat. We went through lists of restaurants online only to discover that almost all of them were closed permanently or closed early, even on a Saturday night in the city that never sleeps. I was able to get multiple pictures with either no one behind me or barely anyone behind me. There was no line in Rockefeller Center to do the Top Of The Rock. Broadway was eery. In Times Square, there was enough room that I could’ve done a roundoff back-handspring and not have hit anyone. Waiters and waitresses were so happy to have any customers at all and greeted us with the hospitality one might find at a southern mom-and-pop diner.
One particularly sad and disturbing event happened though. We were at a restaurant celebrating the city’s new 50% capacity rule. They hired a DJ and it had almost a club-like feel. No club is complete without a drunk person who can barely walk and that was certainly the case with one belligerent woman who was sobbing uncontrollably and screaming at the top of her lungs that she had ‘been in quarantine for a year’ before crashing into our table and breaking all of our wine glasses.
The city is broken, but so are the people. They’re cracking. I’m not sure the city will ever fully recover. Embracing extreme liberal lockdown policies has turned NYC into a ghost town. You’re more likely to get an NYC experience in Tampa of all places at the moment. After doing some investigating and talking to the people I saw out, the rumor is that most people have either totally left the city for good or are brainwashed and terrified and literally haven’t left their apartments for a year. Imagine living in a 400sqft box for over 365 days. You’d crack too.
