In NYC, I’m fine without tourists

A city without so many tourists is so much more livable...

You’ve read how empty New York City is these days. In the midtown core, restaurants are easy to get into, fewer pedestrians walk the streets, hell, even the subway cars feel roomy.

57th Street and Sixth Avenue, 9 a.m. Tuesday May 4 2021

That trend has continued even though tens of thousands of office workers have been ordered back by the city’s local government, the banks and real estate firms—all of whom have a vested interest in keeping New York as New Yorky as ever.

So what gives? Why do I feel like I can still breathe? Why is the city still not as crowded as it was pre-Covid? Sure a lot of office workers are missing and working from home but there’s something else going on—the utter lack of most domestic and all international tourists.

And I find that a big, fat relief, thank you.

It’s hard to understand the impact tourism has on NYC unless you know how many tourists visited us pre-Covid. Have a guess? The answer is 65 million tourists in any given year. No wonder the street were so crowded! I think about that number whenever I walk around a city that, these days, is so much more livable.

It’s true that tourists stoke the local economy into overdrive and it’s good for a lot of businesses (like the hotel industry that has been devastated) and obvious tourist attractions like the statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and, of course for Broadway.

No doubt the return of tourists will help Broadway and Times Square and that’s nice but, speaking from an admittedly selfish point of view, I don’t notice if Broadway is open or closed because I don’t go very often. I figure if I want to hear someone shouting at me for two hours, I’ll take a ride on a subway. And if I want to hear someone break into song and dance, again, I’ll take a subway ride. It’s cheaper for sure.

Politicians of course disagree with me. They want to pack as many tourists as they can into restaurants and bars but what does the average New Yorker get out of it?

The past few weeks, as NYC has reopened, it’s been lovely because it’s not crowded. The city reminds me of my younger days when New York was far less crowded and far more egalitarian. In high school and college, I would sit on the rocks above the Wollman Rink and get a pretty clear view of the musicians performing down below at the Schaeffer Music Festival. I almost never went in, even though the price of admission never rose above $3 to watch the likes of The Allman Brothers, The Byrds, and my personal favorite Melanie. The action was outside where you could drink Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine and flirt with the girls.

Melanie…remember her?

I wish today’s New York was as open to everyone as it was back then. But it does feel better. Subtracting 65 million people will do that, even in a city as large as New York.

Maybe Trump was half-right. We should build a wall but only to keep all tourists out. Except there’s a major flaw with my plan—I like being a tourist in other cities. I can’t wait to return to Paris or London and would love to visit Japan. I want to walk around wide-eyed and buy dumb souvenirs.

I can’t really justify keeping tourists out of my burg if I want to go to their burg. So I’ve no choice but to welcome everyone with open arms in hopes that they’ll do the same for me. So in the spirit of international tourism, I welcome all of you tourists back but perhaps a few million of you can stay home. Is that too much to ask?