New York City in 2022: A Travel Log Featuring Tyler, the Creator

New York City in 2022 was a bit of a surreal experience. After two years of isolation and quarantining, the bustling streets of the city felt like a dream. It was as if the place was post-Covid. It was truly strange to behold. Masks were few and far between, the crowds were shoulder-to-shoulder, and concerts, parties, and events were in full swing. There was a palpable excitement in the air, a frenzied eagerness to be back to it all. New York City was one of the hardest hit areas in the world at the peak of the pandemic, at some points resorting to such dystopian measures as mass graves to handle the deaths. Now, it is as if this trauma was a distant memory, far in the rearview mirror. These people were ready to move on and starting living again. It is a city that is hard to sedate.

My first stop, the Empire State Building, was what triggered this realization. The building was flooded with tourists, according to the staff, even more than was usual. A little anxiety began to set in going up to the top in the elevator. We were packed in like sardines. I could feel hot breath on my face, putting my thin cloth mask to the test. At the top, the view was breathtaking. A silence fell over the crowd at the top as we took it all in. It was apparent from there that the city was alive and awake. A sea of people filled the grid-work of the city. Binoculars at the top revealed little slices of life, a street performer playing the saxophone, street-side markets, and a wedding in a park. It was clear to me why these New Yorkers were so insistent on returning to pre-Covid times. There was much to miss, and after awhile I became enchanted with it all, becoming more lax about masking and social distancing as I soaked up the magic of New York. I would come to regret this decision.

My plan for the trip, after going through the more touristy areas of the city, including the Empire State and Times Square, was to see a concert. After quarantining and being diligent with social distancing and masking, I thought that I had earned something like this. It would be the first event that I had attended since the beginning of the pandemic. The rational part of my brain had been almost entirely shut off due to the anticipation of the show, which would be held in the famous Madison Square Garden. The artist was one of my personal favorites, Tyler the Creator.

After wandering around the city, it was time for the show. That palpable excitement to be back to any sense of normalcy, the feeling that had been thick in the air of the city seemed to be concentrated in the venue. The place was packed, and masks were rare. It was as if the attendees of the concert were living in their own bubble, a fantasy land fueled by their favorite artist and a shared contract of Covid-denial. I write this not as a critical, partial observer of this behavior, but an active participant. I will fully admit that I became sucked up in this whirlwind, and after a few hours of the show, I was somewhere else. The music and performance was fantastic, and it all contributed to transporting me to a place where Covid had never happened, where the realities of the world were distant echoes, and the only thing that mattered was that one slice of bliss that I was existing in.

Tyler said nothing about Covid, instead preaching about the wonders of the city, and how lucky he was to be performing at MSG. It felt like we were all just as lucky to be witnessing it, and to be there, despite everything, and to be living it. The concert came and went, and the next day I returned home with an afterglow.

It was only a few days later that I tested positive for Covid-19. Reality had come back, or it had never really left, and it had barreled toward me in the form of a sore throat that still lingers with me now, a fever, and a loss of taste and smell. There is a moral to this story. While it may be tempting to return to the worry-free land of pre-Covid, it is simply not reality. As yet another wave of Covid approaches, most likely due to the willful ignorance of people like me, it is important to remember that nothing is in the rearview. If we do not hunker down and wait this thing out, and if concerts and events continue and tourists continue to flood the streets, we will never be free of this. Let myself be a cautionary tale, do not delude yourself into thinking this is over. Take the necessary precautions so that we may have a time of true, pandemic-free, living, and not the artificially created time that we are currently living in.