Crown in den USA
Bicycle boom and Instagram restaurants: This is what New York looks like a year after the lockdown
The way is clear for US President Joe Biden’s $ 1.9 trillion corona aid package. After the vote in the Senate, the so-called “American rescue plan” took the last parliamentary hurdle in Congress on Wednesday. The Democrats prevailed in the House of Representatives with 220 to 211 votes. Biden spoke of a historic victory for the Americans. Seven weeks after taking office, he can book his first major political success as president. The Republicans, many of whom had supported massive aid programs under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump, were united in opposition to the project. They fear that the US debt mountain will continue to inflate. Biden’s bailout plan includes one-time checks of $ 1,400 for nearly all Americans except high-income earners. In addition, financial injections are planned for the states and municipalities, for schools and kindergartens. Families with children receive tax rebates. Unemployment benefits will be topped up until September. And more money should flow into the corona vaccination campaign. Shortly after the package was passed in Congress, Biden announced an initiative to increase vaccine production with the heads of US vaccine manufacturers Johnson & Johnson and Merck. First, they made sure that Americans were taken care of. “But then we will help the rest of the world. If we have a surplus, we will share it with the rest of the world,” Biden told journalists. Biden has made fighting the corona pandemic an absolute priority in the first phase of his presidency. The United States is by far the hardest hit by the pandemic in the world. More than 528,000 deaths related to Covid-19 have now been registered there.
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Exactly a year ago, New York had to close overnight. The metropolis became the corona epicenter in the USA. How much the lockdown has changed life there – and why some things are better than before.
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In March 2020, almost no New Yorker could have imagined that the historical exit restrictions in the world metropolis would result in a whole year of emergency. Everyone would have to stay at home from now on because of Covid-19, said Governor Andrew Cuomo on March 20, 2020. “These are the most drastic measures we could take.”
At that time, the tickers of the US news channels still indicated that a total of 196 people in the US had died of Covid-19. With more than half a million corona deaths in the United States, New York will go down in history last year. There has been a lot of suffering and pain, a lot has changed – but not all for the worse. An overview:
The gap between rich and poor
“Corona affects everyone equally,” was the saying at the beginning of the pandemic in New York, or: “We’re all in it together.” It quickly became clear that this was not entirely true: many wealthy New Yorkers – including from Manhattan – left the city at least temporarily and settled in the country or on the beach – rented or owned, in any case with more space keep your distance.
Meanwhile, the number of infections has exploded in neighborhoods in Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn with lower average incomes, where the majority of people are also mostly ignorant and cannot work from home. The pandemic seemed to widen the gap between rich and poor while at the same time making the differences open. But the willingness to help was and remains huge. In addition, rents have fallen somewhat in some cases – and hope has risen that disclosing the problems could lead to changes in the future.
Home-Office-Kultur
Even if life – and at least partly tourism – comes back to New York bit by bit in 2021, many companies and employees expect to work from home for a long time. Many city dwellers like the home office, and their employers in the towers of Manhattan have noticed that it works without open-plan office control. More flexible work could also become the new standard in the commuter metropolis of New York. Some think further: Companies could save with smaller offices, employees would have the opportunity to work from the surrounding area – or elsewhere.
Outdoor dining and pedestrian areas
New Yorkers got a taste for outside dining. Many streets in Manhattan or Brooklyn have been lined with (heated) wooden outdoor terraces for months. Sometimes they are brightly painted or decorated with flowers and – as long as no snowstorm sweeps the city – they are well attended. For some residents, the new street flair with restricted-traffic zones even reminded them of street restaurants in Europe – and it could stay: “I want us to adopt this model and make it part of the life of New York City for years and generations,” said Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Instagram-Restaurants
In addition to traditional restaurants, the pandemic in New York has given rise to another gastronomy branch: numerous cooks and bakers have relocated their work to the Internet, in so-called “ghost kitchens”. They do not have a shop, but cook or bake either at home or in a special kitchen and then deliver the food or have it picked up. Many were able to secure their livelihood in this way – and some even became gastronomic stars, such as the 27-year-old Kimberly Camara, whose donuts, shaped by her Filipino roots, are regularly sold out via Instagram within minutes.
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