by Barbara Nevins Taylor
Live music bounced through our closed windows and it sounded like people were having fun outside. This wasn’t the muted noise we usually hear on weekends with the pandemic in full swing. We live in Greenwich Village and our street closes at noon on Saturdays because the bar at the corner sets up tables outside for food and drink.
Restaurants on the surrounding streets Bleecker, West Fourth and Cornelia have attractive setups outside too and we root for them to survive and make it past COVID-19.
But this music was different, more exuberant, and when I went to do an errand with darkness falling in the early evening I found out why.
Despite coronavirus, our neighbors had set up for a jam and a mini block party. Most of the band members wore masks, and some of the onlookers did, but others didn’t.
A couple of guys tended a barbecue grill. A little farther down the street a group that didn’t seem connected had set up an al fresco dinner party table. The folks who looked like they were part of it stood around with their masks dangling from their ears or tucked under their chins.
A guy I usually chat with came up to me as I took some photos and said, “It’s great, isn’t it? The music made me come outside.” I muttered through my mask, “Yeah. But look at the people not wearing masks.” He said quickly, “You’re wearing a mask and so am I.”
I nodded, but I felt out-of-step and like a kill-joy for worrying about the spread of coronavirus at a block party. I had to keep my distance from all. My 9/11 scarred lungs will be challenged by coronavirus and I, like millions of others, have taken care to protect myself.
My friend turned toward the dinner party table and said, “And look at that. It’s really cool, isn’t it?”
Really cool, in another era when a potentially deadly virus doesn’t drift through the air. I stepped farther away and took some more photos. A woman I know well sat hunkered down in a lawn chair. Something made her turn toward me and her eyes brightened over her mask. “Great fun, isn’t it? How are you?”
Her partner stopped working at the barbecue grill and came toward me. “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” he said. Just last week, he told me he worried about the party atmosphere on the surrounding streets.
But I guess COVID fatigue got to him and the others. I can’t blame them for wanting to be outside at the block party, to socialize and to have fun. So far in our zip code 419 people have tested positive. That’s a relatively small number compared to other communities. Here 29 people have died and that doesn’t come close to the suffering in Corona and Elmhurst and parts of the Bronx.
But we’ve gotten this far. Coronavirus rates are rising in other parts of the city. The coolest case for a block party would be to celebrate the end of the virus, when it is really gone. Until then, I’ll take a few photos from a distance, stay away and continue to feel that I am out-of-step.
