The bakery La Antioquena VII, in Flushing, Queens on Wednesday, is ready for customers as the city opens up.Credit...Sarah Blesener for The New York Times
New York City’s reopening — a milestone longed for over the last 14 months, aloud among friends six feet apart or in frustrated silence, waiting in line in the rain to enter a store — arrived at last on Wednesday. It was less a grand gala than a soft opening, a finish line at the end of a long race that no one wanted to be the first to cross.
Four hundred and twenty three days since the city shut down, on a Sunday in March 2020, when it accounted for half the nation’s coronavirus cases, its first day fully back in business was messy and inconsistent and confusing. It short, it was New York City, and a single set of new rules was widely superseded by the personal comfort levels of its millions of residents.