UNDER COVID, PT. 36: MASKS, VAX, AND HACKS

The face missed by millions returns in all its
glory.

Almost a year ago, I noted that life in New York seemed to be getting back to
normal. 

Boy, did I speak too soon! For it's only now that the city is starting to feel like its old self. Once Dr. Fauci gave the OK for vaccinated folks to remove the masks, faces became visible on a scale unseen since March of last year. 

A trip last week to Lincoln Center's latest outdoor installation -- AstroTurf covering its entire plaza, including the chairs -- showed dozens of New Yorkers' faces full-frontal nude. Whether you liked what you saw was another story.

Thank God -- traffic jams on the FDR
once more!

For a guy who was concerned that going barefaced would be a difficult challenge, I was delighted that it felt good to walk around the city more or less as I did for 40 years until COVID reared its bat-infected head. As easy it was to adjust to masks and quarantining, it was equally easy to revert to pre-pandemic ways.

And I'm not the only one. Take a stroll around the Upper East Side on a warm spring day and you'll see restaurants with their outdoor seating completely full, with lines waiting for (75% capacity) indoor tables. Uncomfortable dining experiences: success!

So there's some irony that the nightly BLM marches around our block on East End Avenue have ended. There was a time that you could set your watch by it: every evening at 7:25, you'd hear the rhythmic cries of the protesters, interrupting our Jeopardy! viewing. Darn kids!

The 2021 version of the Sharks vs the Jets.

But once Derek Chauvin was found guilty of the murder of George Floyd, the marchers apparently thought that their job was done. Fortunately, the current state of the Mideast has given them new demonstration opportunities. I hope they found time to get vaccinated between causes.

 

What have we done to deserve this?

Just to make those shots more enticing, the city of New York has been offering free beer, cheesecake, donuts, french fries and hot dogs -- all the stuff that can kill you -- by showing proof of vaccination. 

Our Idiot Mayor, Bill de Blasio, has been promoting these giveaways during his daily press conferences. Last week, he chowed down on a Shake Shack burger and fries for breakfast on live television. With any other mayor, this would have been amusing. But for de Blasio, it was just another example of misreading the room.

Yo! It's DJ Blazzy Blas goin' mad cowing, flying bananas,
and just plain wackydoodle.

It took only a week to for de Blasio to make a bigger fool of himself by hawking free tickets to local pro basketball games while wearing a Brooklyn Nets shirt and hat. 

Again, it could have been funny in the way your junior high science teacher doing something similar if the class passed final exams with at least a B+ average. But Our Idiot Mayor gets a D- in not only wit, but running the city. 

The way we were... and might be
again.

Or maybe it's just his way of diverting our attention from the fact that the rise of violent crime is making the city look like the 1980s again. Just now I received a notice on Citizen App that someone in Greenwich Village was stabbed. That would have been unthinkable even a year ago. 

But so are all the other stabbings, shootings, and general mayhem that's become part of New York life recently. If the Republicans had someone like Mike Bloomberg, or even the pre-Trump Rudy Giuliani, he'd likely be a shoo-in.

Instead, we're likely to elect one of the nearly dozen Democrats who are running ahead of the June primary. You can't turn on your TV or open your mailbox without seeing ads for all of them. 

One of them, professional political hack Scott "Why Won't You Fuck Me" Stringer, has made a career of running unsuccessfully for Mayor while running the Office of Comptroller, a job that nobody can successfully describe. Others, like Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales, believe that defunding the police will lower crime. So they've got the teenage-to-22 year-old pothead vote tied up.

Then there's Andrew Yang. Five years ago, he was running for president on the give-everybody-a-thousand-bucks platform. Running for mayor of New York might be seen as a comedown, but not if you're aiming for the White House some time in the future.

He likes me! He really likes me!

While his ads, filmed in the winter, show Yang walking around the city masked-up, he's now pounding the pavement with his face au naturel. Last weekend, he was in my neighborhood pressing the flesh and posing for selfies with potential voters. Like me.

I've seen many politicos in person in my lifetime, going back to JFK. Shook the hands of New York mayors Ed Koch, David Dinkins, and Mike Bloomberg. And now I can add Andrew Yang, future Mayor of New York (if he gets the nomination) to the latter list.  

Well, actually I did a fist-bump, although he offered his hand. Old habits -- or at least those of the past year -- are hard to break. 

PS: As I look at that selfie, it's becoming shockingly clear how my lips are thinning as the years go by. Maybe I should rethink that no-mask thing -- permanently.

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