Backstreet's Back, Alright

Tuesday afternoon, the governor of New York announced that all COVID-related restrictions in New York were repealed, effective immediately. Rather than offer a Tim Cook and announce the latest thousand-dollar paperweight six months before actually selling it, he took a lesson from Oprah. Everybody check under your seat! A few lucky winners will find a crowded bar with pompous clientele! You get a bar! You get a bar!

In typical government fashion, this press conference arrived a few days late to announce something the general public had already decided. Like a frustrated father declaring “it’s not over until I say it’s over,” the governor tried to rebuild the illusion of control he so deftly projected a year ago. The people are supposed to have the power, so maybe it’s good he didn’t declare us back until after we had already done so ourselves.

The phrase New York is back, baby! popped up almost hourly over the weekend. I overheard the five words, always together with the emphatic baby, shouted, muttered, and even whispered. Each inflection carried a different meaning, whether in response to the excitement of a Strokes concert, the despair of a long bar line, or the surreptitious cutting of the line at Joe’s Pizza.

Rules governing the phrase’s usage emerged. It was uncouth to use it unprompted. Nobody would say “Oh so you like you’re new place? Yeah that’s terrific. By the way, New York is back, baby!” The phrase required a trigger event, an interruption to acknowledge something outside of the conversation that, like pizza rat, cannot pass without remark and signaled a return to indecent health standards.

Saturday evening, the Strokes, a band with more t shirt logos than good albums, played a fundraiser for the mayoral candidate Maya Wiley. The volunteers wore cheeky shirts with “MAYA” in place of the band’s name. Taking a page out of the Bernie playbook, she’s trying to achieve first-name status and endorsements from bands that nobody should recommend on a first date. The show was purported to be one of the first of its kind to return to the city, and at a minimum was the first performance at Irving Plaza in over a year.

Maya is unlikely to win the nomination, and less likely to achieve lasting first-name status. Early voting has kicked off, though there was still one last debate. To my knowledge, no candidate rescued their respective reputation as a buffoon, New Jersey citizen, DeBlasio flunky, sexual harasser, or anything else. Though Maya is carving a place for herself as the most left candidate, she remains far from the front of the pack.

I am too young to have known this moment, but I’ve read enough music blogs to understand that the Strokes are alleged to have represented a real sensation in early 2000s New York. They were at the forefront of a rock n roll resurgence where people detected a shadow of the energy that accompanied punk, CBGB, and musical responses to 70s urban decay.

It came therefore as no surprise that the first people to say New York is back, baby! unprompted and without evident cause were loitering on Irving Place wearing their Maya t shirts, waiting to catch a glimpse of anybody at all after the concert.

Tickets went on sale at noon on Wednesday June 9. I logged on immediately but found that $120 would only get me a spot on the waitlist. By Saturday morning, prices floated around $800 or more on the resale market. I haven’t done that much homework on the candidates' supporters, but my understanding is that anybody spending $800 to pretend it’s 2002 is voting for Ray McGuire.

I imagine that many who went to the concert will trot around in their new t shirts so that, in a couple months or several years, they can talk about how they were there “when New York was back, baby.” To be fair, the people at the record store will be eager audiences. That a band comprised of people who attended a for-profit Manhattan private school, a Swiss boarding school, or both represent the eight million people in this hellhole strikes me as dubious. 100 of the 700 people in the world speaking Seke live here. I’m not convinced that they listen Room on Fire often. I loved the last album, I did, but I don’t think this band speaks for everybody.

The elite, scarcity-oriented version of the city they do embody was on display earlier that evening at bar where we couldn’t sit down. As the bartender opened the cheapest tallboy on the menu for me, I entered a regrettable conversation about how $10 for a rum and coke was “pretty good.” On the other side of a low barrier, a group danced in such a way as to imply that they wanted the people watching them to believe they thought nobody was watching them. One wore an Hermès scarf around her head, prepared for a hippie-themed fundraiser in Amagansett.

Space comes at a premium all over town, so we tried to sashay to the other side of the barrier. We were informed that “Alison” had reserved it. We backed off. A few minutes later, the VIP section cleared out. We snuck in and reveled in a few minutes living the fabulous life of Alison. As we were escorted out a second time, we remembered that New York is back, baby.

Nobody, not Cuomo, not Maya, not the Strokes, initiated the return. Some would maintain the buzz and energy never even left. The return feels less like a choice and more like a series of obligations. All of a sudden, we’re waiting for a table and our subway is stuck on the bridge, and we've bumped into somebody we forgot to invite to a party. Just as most people filling Brass Monkey past capacity in 2019 would claim they didn’t want to be there, and everybody using a dating app claims to be sick of it, nobody seems to be trying to do anything differently this time around.

For a moment a year ago, highfalutin magazines argued that maybe we could fix some of the stuff we all hate. Maybe they were just trying to sell subscriptions, but I thought they might be on to something.

The Coyote Ugly Saloon had been closed and locked up since I moved to the neighborhood, but Monday evening I looked in, saw the lights on, and saw the bartenders boogie atop the bar. Up to that point, I had been certain dancing bartenders would stay in 2019. Boots made for walking around Manhattan do not belong atop a bar.

I have no actionable suggestions for what to change. The people who live here are so sure that there’s no reason to live anywhere else that we have slid into complacency. We will complain, but only about the things we are allowed to complain about. Tourists? Hate em. Apartments? All terrible. Too much trash in front of gazillion dollar Fifth Avenue buildings? If you don’t like it, then you can move to Connecticut. Nobody’s changing anything.

Declaring anything “back” is a dangerous business. Discourse has begun to stray into declarations of victory, absurd in the face of 600,000 dead and millions of lives disrupted. Just because something ends does not mean that we have won. We did not “defeat” Hurricane Sandy. Plus, this isn’t actually over.

Nevertheless, there’s an excitement in the air. People are out and about, chatting with strangers. I viewed an apartment for a friend this afternoon. Some 30 people had arrived early for the 5:00 showing. We all fawned over the natural light in this fifth floor apartment in a walkup without laundry. The bathroom is through the kitchen, so whoever defeats the other 29 suitors and signs it will shit where they eat. It would be crass for me to include the price, but some sap has already signed because it’s impossible to find any decent one-bedrooms anymore because New York is back, baby!

In May, a couple friends and I went to the first Knicks playoff game in ages. We sat shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers in the vaccinated section. We cheered, we laughed, we cried. Immanuel Quickley, the happiest guy in basketball, hit a three from the MSG logo on the floor. Elated, I high-fived the stranger next to me, and I murmured to myself New York is back, baby.

Nobody gets to take credit, but just in case, I made my declaration at that Knicks game, way before you did, before it was cool.