From The Bronx, to Astoria and Long Island City in Queens, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Chinatown, and Battery Park City, the streets and parks were pretty full but with mostly everyone in masks and practicing social distancing as best as you can in a crowded city of almost 9 million.
But the scene was shockingly different when I arrived at the Christopher Street Pier in the West Village along the Hudson River.
Small and large groups of people sitting together mostly with barely 2 to 3 feet apart. Out of clearly over a 100 people only perhaps 6 or 7 wearing masks.
Besides the utter disregard and disconnect from the crisis we are still living in with over 13,000 confirmed deaths due to the coronavirus pandemic and another probable 5,500 deaths yet to be determined, the glaring difference was that there was zero NYPD enforcement of social distancing.
Meanwhile just a few miles over in the East Village, cops brutalized three Black men for not obeying social distancing.
[...]
I went back yesterday to see if the crowds would return and arrived around 2PM and sure enough it was already starting to fill up.
But this time, because of the outcry that my photo sparked, there were about a dozen NYPD cops patrolling the scene. Eventually most left but about 3 or 4 and instead of encouraging social distancing they just handed out masks to the sunbathers. Not summonses, not dragging them across the street like the NYPD did to the Black men in the East Village.
[...]
Not that we want that to happen to them but it just goes to show how differently, how literally BLACK AND WHITE it is to live in NYC.
