In the initial episode of (the original) Twilight Zone, the main character finds himself to be the last person on earth.
It’s unsettling, walking around a place that was made for people, yet entirely devoid of them.
This is what Bushwick, the Brooklyn neighborhood of New York City where I lived during the outbreak of Covid, felt like on the evening of March 17, 2020. It was the first day of “lockdown,” where bars and restaurants were prohibited from operating, at least for walk-in traffic.
“Holidays are for spending time with loved-ones, disasters are when you spend time with strangers,” a wise lad once told me at Pearl’s, one of my beloved Bushwick haunts, during the onslaught during Superstorm Sandy of 2012.
Covid hit differently for New York though. The residents were deprived of the public gathering spots that gave the city its rhythm, its refuge. Like a zombie, I prowled the neighborhood on the evening of March 17, my footsteps instinctively leading me to my usual stops, only to find them locked up, devoid of merriment.
I’d stay in New York for several more years, but by then my chapter in New York was ending, at least in the Joan Didion sense. More comments in the photos below…
Three Diamond Door. You know things are bad when 3D closes.
No manbuns were cut asunder from Boobie Trap this day.
The world-acclaimed Reberta's pizza joint. The outdoor seating was by far the best.
I used to call this outdoor patio of the Cobra Club the "Beer Jail." I asked my friend Wayne, who was once incarcerated,
why he liked drinking there. Didn't it remind him of the joint? It was exactly why he drank there.
Outside the Cobra Club, for when you need those late-night twenties really quickly.
Bushwick's Wyckoff Heights had the first U.S. causality of Covid. By March, the hospital was lining up trailers
outside to haul off fatalities. This onslaught sickened the neighbors such that they asked for temporary shields to be put up around the trucks
so they wouldn't see the bodies being loaded into them.
Dromes for the fruity drinks.
El Santo for the vegan tacos
Heavy Woods for the cajun brunch
House of Yes was as fabulous as everyone remembers, especially (for me) the weddings.
Plus, it brought the late-night food trucks (including the city’s first Birria wagon),
so I could walk down there at 2 AM in on a sleepless night in my pajamas and put my order in right behind a
pack of Disco Queens.
Good times.
It was funny, I never got Covid, though it was clearly in the neighborhood. Here was my supermarket getting
flushed out after a contamination...
...And my laundry, which didn't close for anything.
A big bar in a little room, Little Whiskey was formerly the much-beloved Cain's Tavern. On the night
Lot 45
Mad Tropical was the gay dance bar that would invariably end up being better than whatever dance club everyone was actually planning to go to
that night anyway
Pearl's was where the magic happened. Can't explain it any better than that. Met some of my best friends there.
We used to troll people by telling them it was the best bar in
Williamsburg.
Pearl's
Sea Wolf
This was all before masks, by the way, which people didn't start wearing until April. Our Korean market
started selling them early so I picked up a bunch for the apartment. My roommate asked me what they were for;
Three weeks she admonished me for going outside without one.
Later that week, we took a drive around the silent city. Throughout, people were nowhere to be found...
The Walmart in Secaucus across the river had little in the way of food.
Troutman Street, Bushwick.
The evening prior, I went to Union Pizza on Troutman Street. It was run by an Italian family, who took pride
in carrying their recipes over from the old world. When I spoke to one of the managers he was
worried if the place would survivve ths shutdown.
...So my last meal out, for the forseeable future, would be the pizza at Union Works.
...And the Kale salad was to die for. It'd be the last one I'd ever have here.
