During the holidays, it takes Minnie Seo half an hour to plow through the masses of people between 40th and 46th streets in Times Square.
Kimi Norman, who lives a block from Rockefeller Center, sticks out her elbows and stares people down as she barrels through crosswalks.
Nick Sciacca, meanwhile, laughs at the notion of going to a museum or show at this time of year, now that the city has come roaring back after the pandemic.
“No, that’s for tourists,” he said, chuckling when asked whether he takes advantage of New York City’s marquee cultural offerings around the holidays. “I can do that anytime. No, that’s for tourists. I don’t do none of that.”
Gothamist recently interviewed dozens of New Yorkers from Central Park to SoHo, who said although the city has clearly recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s also gotten louder, more congested and less civil.
Available data shows in many ways the Big Apple has nearly — but not fully — swung back to normal, suggesting the pandemic might have given New Yorkers rosy memories about what the city was previously like.
Hectic streets, yet lower subway ridership
Christine Pedi, who describes herself as half-blind, usually walks holding a white cane out in front of her. But people have taken to stepping on it amid the holiday swarms.
So now she taps her cane hard on the ground, “like in the old movies,” to fend off crowds around her.
“I broke one because I tapped it and tapped it because people have to have the audio to go with it,” she said while visiting SoHo. “They’re just not looking. Sometimes they’re staring at me, but they’re not paying attention.”
Pedi, an actress who’s lived in Hell’s Kitchen for 22 years, said she’s waiting until January before she ventures back into the Theater District, where the crowds have gotten “thicker and crazier” since the pandemic.
Recent data indicates those crowds have bounced back, just not entirely.
Pedestrian counts tracked by the Times Square Alliance, a…
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