When the going gets tough… New York gets tougher
“Goddam! The 21 Club’s a gonner”; Covid-19’s latest, vicious bite out of the Big Apple. The iconic, former prohibition era speak-easy, for aeons a fashionable haunt of native New Yorkers and tourists alike, has shuttered for good. Drought on super-dry Martinis; 100 decibel cocktail hour chat at the crowded bar stifled; “After you with the Lobster Thermidor”, no more,
Is that George Clooney I see over there? No, it isn’t. It’s Fred Scuttle from Ramsgate with his brother-in-law Rex, prepping for their once-in-a-lifetime Broadway show experience over several Old Fashioneds. Point is, it could just as well have been George, defending his Nespresso from a local coven of predatory broads. The 21 was a gawper’s paradise.
Covid has been brutal to New York, especially Manhattan. The city that does everything big has racked up double London’s fatality rates since the outbreak began. For those who keep score: by end February 2021 – New York, 678,404 cases, 28,374 deaths; London, 684,794 cases, 14,719 deaths. So, 4.18% fatalities play 2.15% in the morbid Trip Advisor comparison handicap.
Can the city that Frank Sinatra thought never slept survive? Manhattan, hacked out over 400 years against the odds from three upended layers of the hardest rock, Manhattan Schist, Inwood Marble and Fordham Gneiss – that’s why skyscrapers don’t fall over, and Central Park took fifteen years to blast out of the bedrock – is one tough cookie. My money is on not just Manhattan island, but the whole five-borough metropolis bouncing right back.
In recent years, things have been so bad pundits have written New York off – twice. The 9/11 attack in 2001 and the financial crisis of 2008 had doomsayers inking the obituary columns. Premature. Within months of the Twin Towers falling, the grey, dust-shrouded figures fleeing Ground Zero were back at their desks. The Wall Street engine – substantially overhauled – roared back to life in 2009, chastened and better regulated, eventually absorbing the body blows of Lehman Brothers’ collapse and 8,000 plus Chapter 11 filings across the USA.
Sadly, no such reprise for the 21. The thirty diminutive, brightly-silked, model jockeys perched on the cast iron West 52nd Street 21 Club frontage have ridden their last race. Cracked their last whip. No longer a cheery grin for customers, or a disapproving leer for lushes ejected unceremoniously onto the sidewalk. Their racing colours of famous horse-mad families, including Rothschilds and Vanderbilt’s, will now grace some memorabilia auction house.
What the Untouchables goons of the roaring twenties could not achieve – closing down the hooch-sodden 21speak-easy – has been accomplished in mere months by a spiky wee protein-sprouting virus, only ten times the size of an atom. Twenty-five million of the tiny buggers would fit onto a 21 Club cocktail olive.
True, New York will emerge from Covid shorn of some well-loved dining haunts and watering holes. Some enterprises will remain shuttered for good. Broadway and the performing arts that stretch from downtown Soho across the Brooklyn Bridge to spiffy Williamsburg, have taken knocks. But the vibrant businesses, social whirl and arts scenes that make New York “a helluva town” will bounce back, if changed.
The city’s economy is deep and diverse, no longer reliant mainly on financial services. The tech industry is now prominent and flourishing. Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple have all recently made high profile commitments to increase their footprints in New York. The tech start-up incubators downtown thrum with activity.
Madison Avenue has evolved from Mad Men cult days and is still the preeminent creative advertising hub of the world. Media is strong – think Bloomberg – and healthcare provides a sound employment base, linked with top universities like Cornell, NYU, Columbia and The Rockefeller Institute. Stroll north up York Avenue from the Sutton East Tennis Club at East 60th Street to Gracie Mansion on East 89th and view a Rolodex (I used to have one of those – ed.) of excellence in US medical care.
Nightlife establishments alone employ nearly 300,000. In 2019, 65 million travellers came and went. The fashion industry – the mecca rooted in the Garment District – boasts 900 companies and 180,000 employees.
Paradoxically, there has been less of an exodus from the city during Covid than during the financial crisis. Flight to the Hamptons, upstate New York and Connecticut has been for the second home wealthy. The moves are likely not permanent. The CARES act has supported those suffering job losses and, importantly, rent payments are being supplemented.
Not only do the sinews of this diverse economy remain strong, but well-established players on the New York realty scene are also stepping up to the plate to protect their assets. They take the long view.
Just one example of how old family real estate moguls are responding to the crisis; the Rudin family controls one of the largest privately owned real estate companies in New York City.
Founded in 1925 by Samuel Rudin and his brothers, now led by the third and fourth generations, the Rudin Management Company runs 35 properties in New York City. Theirportfolio includes 17 residential buildings totaling 4.7 million square feet, 16 commercial office buildings totaling 10.5 million square feet, and 2 condominiums, totaling 241 residential units.They are big players, though not a household name.
Capitalist Scrooges? More like rapid responders. They have just offered an investment banker friend of mine a lease extension with a one year rent holiday. The same goes for their commercial retail lets. Not many examples like that on Britain’s devastated high streets.
Rudin apartment leases are fought over in Manhattan because the family business has a reputation for quality and fairness. They are responsible custodians, generation to generation. My friend was on the point of leaving Manhattan. Now she won’t. It’s an important tale, if anecdotal, probably being repeated across the city.
More anecdotes. New York Clubs are back in business. How they strained at the leash to comply with distancing rules, daily Covid tests for staff, hand washing in the foyer, hand wringing in the office.
A good friend called the Knickerbocker Club, a classy joint. I am not a member. “I suppose there’s no chance of dinner, George.” “But of course, Mr. X. You and Mrs. X. are always welcome. We can rustle something up in the dining room. Come on over.”
That would be the open-air Terrace dining room. Where the glow from the heat lamps played on the fresh paint of the rented snowblowers, the temperature had plunged to 20F and fellow dinners could barely be seen through swirling clouds of snowflakes. Trapper-hatted waiters swathed diners in thick blankets.
The blankets were crafted by the same company that provided Union soldiers with warmth in the Civil War – probably stored in the Knick’s cellars since an opportunistic raid on an army surplus sale in 1865. Snow proof? Bullet proof! One diner shook himself free, said, “I am just going to the rest room …… and I may be gone for some time.” He was never seen again.
I refrained from asking if his Italian Frappé Fritters were divvied up among the remaining terrace stalwarts. Maybe Cedric Oates of the west side Dakota Building will be in better nick in the spring, or perhaps found rigid in the duck pond in Central Park. Maybe he stopped off en route home for a sharpener at The Smith, 1900 Broadway, where Arctic Clad diners lined the sidewalk and two inches of snow fell between courses. Gutsy New Yorkers who gave two fingers to 9/11 terrorists are giving every sign of not kowtowing to a pesky virus.
Although the Arts have been literally dark, there are action plans a-plenty to not only ensure survival, but, emerge from Covid restructured. The Metropolitan Opera – if it ever gets over union wrangling – will also be more customer friendly. Peter Gelb, the General Manager, is promising earlier performances, fewer intervals, some cut-down productions and more ground-breaking works, such as Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones, slated to open the 2021/2022 season in September.
Audiences from further afield than Manhattan have been discouraged by late starts and midnight finishes. This should pull them back. The Met’s streamed Live in Concert series is leading the drive for global audiences, so far garnering 30,000 new supporters worldwide.
New stars have burst into life, thanks to savvy promotion of online shows and Zoom-friendly events. New Camerata Opera, a youthful company which combines ground-breaking productions with traditional repertoire, and focuses on education, has gone gangbusters during distancing.
The Sleuth Salon, an opera murder mystery gala; The Ives Project, featuring a portfolio of Charles Ives’ songs from their film division; and a period bodice ripper, Julie, based on the swashbuckling life of swordswoman Julie d’Aubigny, have brought new audiences, beyond the regulars at their Flea Theatre, Tribeca shows.
The Juilliard School; 92nd Street Y Theatre on Carnegie Hill; Carnegie Hall itself; National Sawdust, a cutting-edge venue in Williamsburg; and Beth Morrison Projects, pioneering new works and artists, are all champing at the bit, bristling with vigorous ideas. They are personal favourites and only the tip of the cultural iceberg that is Manhattan.
Make no mistake. The toll has been great. But, as Covid recedes New Yorkers will be keen to make up for lost time and reshape their great city, as they have done before. As formal restrictions are relaxed, they will be for the “off” – even though the sad jockeys of the defunct 21 Club find themselves unsaddling in the losers’ enclosure. You can’t win them all.