UNDER COVID, PT. 5: YOU'RE HAVING ENTIRELY TOO MUCH FUN!

Maybe the designer of the lululemon logo can use their downtime
to prepare for a lawsuit from ABC-TV.

As "non-essential" businesses closed their doors over the weekend, the full force of what life has become finally hit New Yorkers square in their faces like a fastball gone awry. Since when are burnt $6 Starbucks coffees and $98 lululemon leggings non-essential items?!

You tell Frank Palumbo and Frank Sinatra not to eat
regular spaghetti.

Some restaurants, otherwise closed to sitting customers, are no longer providing take-out or delivery service. What are we, Kansas? Grocery stores stock only white bread instead of oatnut. Outrageous! Next thing you know, we'll have to go back to drinking -- gulp! -- cow's milk! 

And if you think you'll be chowing down on gluten-free tricolor pasta, you might as well get that out of your head, pronto. All you can find is the old-fashioned white wheat kind that was good enough for your parents and is good enough for you, dammit! 

Or just picture my COVID-ravaged body lying
in front of you.

Even the local Saturday farmer's market has been affected. No longer could we choose apples and yams ourselves -- the dealers handed them over, having roped off the produce from customers. Customers, by the way, who dutifully stood six feet from each other in line -- just like they were doing at yesterday at Bed, Bath & Beyond, thanks to the helpful signs along the checkout line.

Oh, forget about the composting station at the farmer's market for the next few months, too. It seems that people ready to save the world have suddenly gotten squeamish about collecting rotten bananas and uneaten Brussels sprouts. (Are there any other kind of Brussels sprouts?)

They can't keep the crowds away.

But the city wasn't going to let us down. While walking to the grocery store yesterday morning, I passed by a mobile composting center just blocks away. The front part of the truck was jacked up, as if to discourage hardcore composters from taking it all for themselves. It's unlikely that this ambulance for swill will remain in place, so for the time being our scraps will go into the garbage can where they belong.

Unfortunately, people outside will be able to see you.

There's been an uptick in real ambulances speeding through the neighborhood, sirens blaring and lights flashing, which shouldn't come as a surprise. As of last night, there were over 11,000 cases of COVID-19 in New York City, forcing the Jacob Javits Convention Center to serve as a field hospital. Since the Javits Center has hosted porn industry conventions, I certainly hope they've given the place a good scrubbing.

New Yorkers are putting up with an unprecedented disruption in their lives, even more than 9/11. So when the temperature zoomed up to a summery 77 last Friday, they flocked to the city parks as they did again the following day. You could almost feel everybody's relief, however brief, from our near 'round-the-clock home imprisonment. 

"The beatings will continue until morale improves!"

Gov. Cuomo didn't feel the love, however, as he made clear during his Sunday press conference. Calling our behavior insensitive, self-destructive, and disrespectful, Cuomo hectored us to go back home where we belong. 

If we had to prevent going entirely stir-crazy, he added, maybe the city could take advantage of the lower traffic and open some of the streets to pedestrians. I could have sworn that parks were wider than streets, thus lessening the chance of spreading the virus, but I never was a math genius.

As the screenshot shows, reporters at Cuomo's now-daily press briefings are kept several  feet apart, making some questions sound as if they're coming from a bathroom down the hall. Reporters doing man on the street interviews keep a more than respectful distance, as do friends chatting outside apartment buildings. The City That Never Sleeps has become The City That Never Touches. It's wonderfully ironic, then, that over the weekend Harvey Weinstein was diagnosed with COVID-19 while in prison rather than engaging in his touchy style of job interviews.

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