Chickens in the City
Journal Day 4: My little corner of NYC in the age of the Coronavirus, Wednesday, March 25, 2020
This morning, my building management slid a memo under my door saying that someone in the building had tested positive for Coronavirus and was quarantined in their apartment.
That wasn’t surprising — it was only a matter of time — but it was still scary, especially since Cuomo said this morning that we are only three weeks away from the peak of the virus’ spread. I decided to ramp up my safety measures by at least a notch.
I almost didn’t take my walk today. It was feeling more risky to go down the elevator and through the lobby, and it was also a dismal gray day outside. But I remembered how much better I always feel after my walks and pushed myself to go. I was glad I did.
But first, I had to get to the Gardens. After my encounters yesterday with the spitter and the glove dropper, I was reluctant to take the 10-minute walk on Austin Street, so I took a route to the Gardens on quieter streets that went around the back. That had the additional advantage of keeping me away from the temptation of going into Austin Street’s stores and restaurants, where it is impossible to maintain a six-foot distance from other people.
I rarely go the back way, and I got kind of lost, so I was walking at random for a while. And then, in my wanderings, I found a chicken coop! I was excited because a year ago, while walking in the Gardens with a friend, I came across a couple of loose chickens crossing the street (just like in the joke), but I never found where they had come from. My pictures of the coop today didn’t come out very well, so I will go back some day if I can find it again!
More types of flowering trees were starting to bloom:
Yesterday, I mentioned that not everything in the neighborhood is beautiful. The worst sights are the mountains of garbage in plastic bags that apartment buildings, businesses, and restaurants pile on the street, thanks to New York City’s insane policies for garbage pick-up. When the restaurants on Austin were all fully operational (back in the before times), the garbage mountains took up half the width of the narrow streets and rose high into the air.
Here’s what it looked like today outside an apartment building:
Even in the elegant Forest Hills Gardens, buildings pile their bags on the street, although they seem to take some care there to stack them neatly:
On the way back, I took a chance on going via Austin Street, which was a mistake. There were a whole bunch of discarded used gloves on the sidewalk in front of one of the drop-in medical places. I didn’t stop to take pictures because I just wanted to get past there, especially since an ambulance was standing at the curb.
These days, I’m still watching Cuomo’s press conferences religiously but have been watching less of Trump’s. Last night, I caught only a few minutes. When I turned it on, Dr. Birx and Dr. Fauci were saying that New Yorkers who were fleeing the city were spreading the virus to other places and that they should self-quarantine for 14 days after they left.
For a moment, I had a paranoid fantasy that Trump would try to build a wall around New York City and lock us in to protect the “real people” outside. Then I remembered that Trump had said he wanted people to go back to work on the floor of the Stock Exchange, so I figured he wouldn’t want to destroy the city completely. He does love the Market even if he hates the rest of New York and most New Yorkers. We will be saved by Wall Street!
Yesterday, I was a little more productive. I wrote a scene for my story (which is about Greek gods coming down to modern-day, though pre-Coronavirus, New York) and did an assignment for a law firm for my other gig, content marketing. Got a “Wow, this is excellent” comment from the client, so that was encouraging.
The rest of the day seemed to disappear — talking on the phone, posting on Facebook, watching and reading the news. I’m still not getting enough sleep and, except for the walking, not enough exercise. I saw an ad today on Facebook for an exercise video featuring dance moves done to K-Pop. Looks like it could be fun if I can muster the energy.
