I'm sure many of you have also noticed the changes to cities right now. I won't call it "post-pandemic", given that we are clearly still in the midst of it, whatever state or country we are in. But perhaps, "post-2020 and -early 2021" or "post-pandemic onslaught."
Yesterday, I returned to Duluth for the day, since I am really only in the midst of a discernment process for a new living situation and I needed to go "home" to do some important things. How strange it was, almost as unsettling as the museum outing. I don't completely remember pre-COVID Duluth downtown reality, because, hey, when things are ticking along normally you don't really notice all the details, do you? Then for 15 months, I was in retreat/hermitage/self-quarantine mode due to living with friends who are at high-risk. With the exception of twice-monthly early morning visits to the post office and grocery store, I was an auto passenger through the city center only a few times, and never took the bus. Everything seemed closed, but I am sure that wasn't completely the case.
Now, there is a semblance of a return to normal, yet when you scratch the surface, it isn't back to "normal" at all. How could it be? Restaurants that used to open every day from 11 o'clock on may only open at 4 or for part of the week, due to being short-staffed. Many storefronts are shuttered completely. Clearly tourism is out in full force after a dark year, and Canal Park seemed to be booming on a hot July day. Hospitals are expanding. Car traffic seemed fairly heavy. But downtown foot traffic was lighter than ever.
The bigger cities I have seen in the last few months seem equally hollowed out. People must be working from home, and/or a certain economic Darwinism has allowed only the fittest smaller businesses to survive. Are residential and business skyscraper plans still going forward? The notion of hopping into an elevator to the 70th floor (as I used to do when I worked in Manhattan's Citicorp building) seems unimaginable now. Looking with COVID-opened eyes to many public spaces and businesses/former businesses is sobering, even, I assume, for people not weighed down with my sort of assumptions about the future. We need time to assess what has changed, but many planners may not have that luxury. Spot yes-no decisions about what to go forward with must be common.
A certain coffee chain provided me with welcome "normalcy" while I waited for my bus. Even I found it comforting to walk in and say, "Good, this, at least, looks familiar." Still, once I settled down, I felt the tide of surreality rising. There were two guys straight from 1990's Hollywood central casting ("geeky" and on their computers, not talking). There were several large family groups, with small shorts-and-tee-shirts-clad children loudly demanding fancy (and presumably expensive) fruit drinks. I remember the rare occasions when my grandmother would take me to bustling downtown Schenectady in the early 1960's. I had to be dressed in, yes, a dress, and be extremely well-behaved. If a meal was in the cards, it was at the cafeteria of one of the three downtown department stores (this is pre-mall, of course!) I would probably have a hot dog or a tuna salad sandwich and a milk or ginger ale. The most surreal thing that happened on these excursions was that Grandma's white glove-wearing friend would surreptitiously dump all the sugar and salt/pepper packages into her purse at the end of the meal. I somehow knew intuitively that this was one of many occasions when I was to be seen and not heard. (As in, "Why on earth is your friend doing that, Grandma?")
Life does go on. Sometimes changed, and sometimes not. That's the deepest I can get on this very hot and smoky day.
