Spring is in the New York air – the snow is likely behind us for the year, and the city is poised to begin emerging from the long coronavirus winter. To be sure, we’re still a long way from “normal,” but as the thermometers rise New Yorkers have gotten a strong feeling from state and city officials, to say nothing of businesspeople and patrons, that there is reason to hope for light at the end of the Covid tunnel.
The first splash was marked by the NHL’s New York Rangers, which became the first local sports team to play before live spectators on February 26, after state officials announced that sporting events and music venues would be allowed to host spectators at 10 percent capacity. That was followed by the reopening of restaurants, which were permitted to open at 35 percent capacity on February 26 and are scheduled to expand that number to 50 percent on March 19.
Movie theaters, too, are back, albeit also on a limited basis: Cinemas got the okay to operate at 25 percent capacity on March 5, with no more than 50 people per theater. In Brooklyn, singer Patti Smith performed on March 9 at the Brooklyn Museum as part of the NY PopsUp festival.
John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, acknowledged that it would likely take many months for the industry to recover from the long hiatus, but other industry officials also said they preferred to view the proverbial glass as half-full.
“I don’t look at 25 percent as being not good enough. I look at it as better than 0 percent,” John Vanco, senior vice president of the IFC Center in Greenwich Village, told the AP.