https://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/...banks-ran-cash-knew-time-get-letter-lockdown/
By Sarah Kennedy New York 18 March 2020 • 4:58pm
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'New York feels like a disaster movie waiting to happen at the best of times and I was beginning to get a creeping feeling' Credit: Getty
We live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a leafy, green neighbourhood. Buildings are nicely spaced and our stretch of the 1 line, the subway running down Broadway from top to bottom is only ever packed during rush hour.
Then, last Monday March 10 our local news blog began reporting cases of Covid-19 in the neighbourhood. I took my own weights and signing-in pen to SoulCycle – which was born on West 72nd Street, while wondering if cramming into the sweaty studio for a hard workout less than two feet away from my co-cyclists was wise. The world was so different one week ago.
Fast forward to Tuesday and Wednesday, when local stores were suddenly full of people buying potatoes, pasta, bananas and smoked salmon. “Odd” remarked my neighbor Gail, who I met in a checkout queue, “Because nobody knows how to cook all that stuff.” This is New York after all, everyone eats out. The nail bars on my block were already shuttered, though the 24-hour dry cleaners held its ground.
By Thursday, the doorman’s luggage trolley in my apartment building was piled high with cleaning products and crates of water destined for the apartment of one of the city’s most prominent magazine editors. Everyone had become a hoarder.
On Friday, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who lives opposite me and who I used to share a dog walker with, tweeted “getting hand sanitizer/Clorox wipes is impossible… stores are selling out of toilet paper… and yet the restaurants are busy, the streets are full. It’s a bizarre feeling.”
SoulCycle, like other studios in New York, has temporarily closed Credit: Dave Benett/Getty
Checking my SoulCycle app to book a last weekly blast I reached a blank page for my studio bookings, meaning only one thing - they were closed. Time to get out of Dodge. We all have our own barometers for normal life, OK?
My husband and I decided to up sticks to our weekend cottage in Connecticut and work from home for the foreseeable future. Extremely lucky to have this option, we joined an exodus of the similarly grateful heading upstate and out east. Traffic was dense and we queued in jams on the West Side Highway along the sparkling Hudson River with more patience than usual and less impatient horn-blasting. We Whatsapped with friends on different routes and arranged some country meet-ups in the coming weeks if quarantine allows.
New York feels like a disaster movie waiting to happen at the best of times and I was beginning to get a creeping feeling. When we first moved to the city in 2009 we knew people with blow-up dinghies and outboard motors stashed in their apartment storerooms, so traumatized were they by the bridges and tunnels closing, cutting off Manhattan on 9/11.
While my husband, younger son and I hauled supplies of er, Heinz Baked Beans, Yorkshire Tea and kitchen rolls up north last Friday, we didn’t bother to get any cash. It wasn’t until we were clear of the city that we heard from friends on the Upper East Side how the cash machines in their neighbourhood had run out. In true apocalypse style, the New York Post began reporting on a run on the banks of Park Avenue.
Now we are hunkering down in Connecticut where numbers for Covid-19 are rising but not so fast. I stopped by the bank machine for cash this morning and the clerk came out to clean the keyboard as I pulled up. “We don’t have any cash” she said, “Sorry.”
All I could think of was how fortunate it is to have such luxuries as debit and credit cards that work, instead of relying on a cash withdrawal from a weekly paycheck. Empty store shelves and bank machines make one feel as if things - cash and comestibles - are running out. America, which has always seemed like the safest place in the world, is wobbling. Spare a thought for the tired, the poor and the huddled masses please everyone.
By Sarah Kennedy New York 18 March 2020 • 4:58pm
Premium
'New York feels like a disaster movie waiting to happen at the best of times and I was beginning to get a creeping feeling' Credit: Getty
We live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a leafy, green neighbourhood. Buildings are nicely spaced and our stretch of the 1 line, the subway running down Broadway from top to bottom is only ever packed during rush hour.
Then, last Monday March 10 our local news blog began reporting cases of Covid-19 in the neighbourhood. I took my own weights and signing-in pen to SoulCycle – which was born on West 72nd Street, while wondering if cramming into the sweaty studio for a hard workout less than two feet away from my co-cyclists was wise. The world was so different one week ago.
Fast forward to Tuesday and Wednesday, when local stores were suddenly full of people buying potatoes, pasta, bananas and smoked salmon. “Odd” remarked my neighbor Gail, who I met in a checkout queue, “Because nobody knows how to cook all that stuff.” This is New York after all, everyone eats out. The nail bars on my block were already shuttered, though the 24-hour dry cleaners held its ground.
By Thursday, the doorman’s luggage trolley in my apartment building was piled high with cleaning products and crates of water destined for the apartment of one of the city’s most prominent magazine editors. Everyone had become a hoarder.
On Friday, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who lives opposite me and who I used to share a dog walker with, tweeted “getting hand sanitizer/Clorox wipes is impossible… stores are selling out of toilet paper… and yet the restaurants are busy, the streets are full. It’s a bizarre feeling.”
SoulCycle, like other studios in New York, has temporarily closed Credit: Dave Benett/Getty
Checking my SoulCycle app to book a last weekly blast I reached a blank page for my studio bookings, meaning only one thing - they were closed. Time to get out of Dodge. We all have our own barometers for normal life, OK?
My husband and I decided to up sticks to our weekend cottage in Connecticut and work from home for the foreseeable future. Extremely lucky to have this option, we joined an exodus of the similarly grateful heading upstate and out east. Traffic was dense and we queued in jams on the West Side Highway along the sparkling Hudson River with more patience than usual and less impatient horn-blasting. We Whatsapped with friends on different routes and arranged some country meet-ups in the coming weeks if quarantine allows.
New York feels like a disaster movie waiting to happen at the best of times and I was beginning to get a creeping feeling. When we first moved to the city in 2009 we knew people with blow-up dinghies and outboard motors stashed in their apartment storerooms, so traumatized were they by the bridges and tunnels closing, cutting off Manhattan on 9/11.
While my husband, younger son and I hauled supplies of er, Heinz Baked Beans, Yorkshire Tea and kitchen rolls up north last Friday, we didn’t bother to get any cash. It wasn’t until we were clear of the city that we heard from friends on the Upper East Side how the cash machines in their neighbourhood had run out. In true apocalypse style, the New York Post began reporting on a run on the banks of Park Avenue.
Now we are hunkering down in Connecticut where numbers for Covid-19 are rising but not so fast. I stopped by the bank machine for cash this morning and the clerk came out to clean the keyboard as I pulled up. “We don’t have any cash” she said, “Sorry.”
All I could think of was how fortunate it is to have such luxuries as debit and credit cards that work, instead of relying on a cash withdrawal from a weekly paycheck. Empty store shelves and bank machines make one feel as if things - cash and comestibles - are running out. America, which has always seemed like the safest place in the world, is wobbling. Spare a thought for the tired, the poor and the huddled masses please everyone.
