It’s fitting that the stoop should emerge as an important piece of social infrastructure during an uncontrollable pandemic, given its origin as a piece of physical infrastructure designed, in part, to protect humans against something beyond their control. They’re an airlock of sorts, something that seamlessly connects a home with the city while offering at least a tiny buffer from it. In many ways, they may be better than a home office, extra bedroom, or even a backyard. Not quite public but not quite private either, stoops have afforded at least some New Yorkers a bit of breathing room between them and spouses or roommates working from home, or children engaged in remote learning. They’re serving as an understudy for the “third place,” those spots that are neither home nor work, but are vital for forging social connections and maintaining happiness. With bars and coffee shops closed, stoops are having a moment. On Park Slope’s Sixth Avenue, a trio of musicians-roommates or family sheltering in place together, I hope-had set up on a stoop, playing songs to a small audience of folks who were respectfully and safely keeping their distance. I saw sets of people sitting and talking to their neighbors across adjacent stoops.

Last Saturday, during a bike ride through Park Slope, Gowanus, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens, I noticed that nearly every other stoop seemed occupied by someone checking their phone or reading a book. Will it be crowded? What if a runner passes me too closely? What happens if my kids make a break for the playground equipment and I don’t have any hand sanitizer?īut there is one urban amenity that’s made for this crisis-one that, at least from my anecdotal observations, has seen a big uptick in use: the stoop. The simple act of going to one-something that typically takes no more thought than, “Let’s go to a park”-is now fraught.

What happens to a city’s soul when people who are used to connecting with and bumping into other people (sometimes literally) can no longer do that?Įven parks, still open and perhaps more active than ever, have a different feel to them. These closures haven’t just devastated individuals’ livelihoods they have abruptly, but hopefully not irreparably, destroyed the social vibrancy and spontaneity that makes New York so special. Bars and restaurants-at least those that aren’t offering takeout or delivery-have shuttered, with more closing their doors by the day. The COVID-19 crisis has upended life in New York in many ways, some bad, and others really bad.

Nyc lockdown