Lines and Wine

Spring 2020

My Neighborhood in the Earliest Days of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Today I was thinking a lot about what it must have been like in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. Surely the nation would never see anything like that again, we all took for granted. But when I ventured outside to run an errand, the longest line of several lines in my neighborhood, related to the coronavirus pandemic and its devastating job losses, was the one for free food from the soup kitchen.

This scene was in a relatively gentrified area of southwest Harlem, within minutes of Central Park, that has million dollar apartments. They are mixed in with rent stabilized buildings that have visually changed only in the complexion of the Millennial tenants who thrived there just weeks ago. On one hand, many of my new settler neighbors who arrived in the last 5 years (at this time, I am beginning my 19th year in my apartment), who worked in tech and artistic industries, have temporarily left for other parts of the city and especially the nation, to weather the storm with parents who supported them through college. Those apartments are now strangely quiet, although the occupants loved the city, with its diversity and richness of cultural offerings, including their favorite but now closed restaurants, clubs and bars.

On the other hand, many of those who were already here in Harlem, even before me, never were a part of Future New York, only the past, for many reasons. For them and their families with limited incomes who lived in the projects, including blacks and Latinos who were relatively stable because of essential or striving jobs (grocery store clerk, barista, subway conductor, bus driver, preacher, fast food worker, clothing store worker), the new virus world has been financially devastating. For those who lived on the street, also just minutes away from me, life has almost not changed, except that their begging has become less of a source of money than ever in a world where everyone is super aware of distance.

Those of us who have no problem paying the rent and buying food, but are nevertheless not multi-millionaires in the 1%, with second and third and fourth homes, are literally in the middle of this intense new reality. We wear masks and gloves like everyone else and stand in line at the supermarket and pharmacy, at least here in Harlem, despite our being able to buy anything we want in the stores. We still venture out with knowledge, risk and the fear that someone might cough or sneeze within a half-block radius of ourselves. We worry about the food supply since stores are never close to being stocked. But we are still lucky, with income or financial resources unaffected by the millions upon millions of jobs wiped out and the long, unpredictable road to recovery. We might take a hit in the stock and bond markets, but if we had a portfolio that was prepared for the unexpected, we will still have more than so many others.

Today, in the middle of this pandemic, one that has also killed millions including health care workers, I discovered that the easiest product for me to acquire was wine (although I didn't drink anything alcoholic at all for most of the last 25 years), that I ordered online from a wine store a block away. I had them delivered to my fourth floor walk up apartment. The delivery fee was only $5.00. The young black male who delivered the wine, who was perhaps from a West African or Central American country, expressed true surprise and gratitude for the $20 tip I gave him. But I was grateful to him for his fearlessness and his enabling me to turn to a guilty glass of wine tonight, as I thought about the Depression and that long line I saw today for free food.