Missing from Manhattan

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2021

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last spring New York looked like the epicentre of the pandemic with boarded up shops, makeshift morgues in refrigerated trucks and the constant wail of ambulance sirens echoing through the deserted streets. This summer, as America’s biggest city emerges from the coronavirus crisis, what has changed? For Assignment, Lucy Ash focuses on the most dramatically affected area – the Midtown section of Manhattan – and goes on a hunt for the missing people in this once dynamic, densely populated part of the Big Apple. She talks to those who have fled for the greener pastures of New Jersey where property prices have spiked and she meets a Broadway star who became a florist when theatres went dark. Lucy also finds out what happened to tens of thousands of Midtown cleaners and restaurant staff who couldn’t work from home and were abruptly laid off with no safety net. As undocumented migrants, most didn’t qualify for any state aid.

New York producer: Guglielmo Mattioli Editor: Bridget Harney

(Image: A view of Midtown Manhattan and Bryant Park. Credit: Reuters/Carlo Allegri)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading this podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:04.1	New York City is my favorite city on the planet.
0:08.0	It always puts me in a good mood to go there,
0:10.5	stand at the crossroads and see the walk-don't-walk signs, and all the bustle of people
0:16.9	from all over the world walking in lots of different directions.
0:20.3	It just feels so dynamic. and like millions of others I was so horrified by what
0:27.7	happened to this great metropolis last spring in the pandemic So I wanted to go back and see what had changed.
0:39.4	Welcome to the BBC World Service and assignment from the streets of New York I'm Lucy Ash.
0:47.2	If you were to walk with me last March or April or May, you wouldn't see anybody around.
0:53.8	I mean nobody, like if I took my daily walk,
0:56.3	I would be the only person on this street a lot of the time.
1:01.1	I'm with Nicole Galinas, who lives in a neighborhood called Hell's Kitchen on the west side of midtown.
1:06.4	She's writing a book about New York's subway system and she studies urban economics.
1:12.4	It's right after 5 p.m. right now on a week day
1:15.0	you would have difficulty making your way through all of the pedestrians.
1:20.0	Office workers walking back to the trains, people rushing to go out to eat before they would go to the theater.
1:27.2	This level of foot traffic is probably about 20% of normal.
1:33.2	20%?
1:34.0	Yeah.
1:36.0	You see retailers, restaurants, very difficult for them
1:41.4	to pay their rent and make their payroll without the normal
1:45.1	foot traffic that they're used to. And here as we start to enter into Times Square
	...

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