Photo: Daryoush via Flickr CC
The past few days, New York City has been largely shuttered and locked up, as residents prepared for and endured Superstorm Sandy. The damage wreaked by the storm is incredible and still being added up. But Wednesday, October 31, saw the city coming back to life once more.
Slowly but surely, life is resuming in the Big Apple. Though some institutions are still clearing out damage and are unsure when normal operations will resume, the luckier parts of NYC began reopening—a relief to tourists and residents alike.
Some museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim opened their doors for one or more exhibits. So did the Empire State Building, Broadway theaters, and some retail stores.
But these indicators of normalcy are still juxtaposed with those sites that remain conspicuously closed; public parks, the 9/11 Memorial, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the Staten Island Ferry are all still out of commission.
Photo: Sarah Marriage via Flickr CC
Those attractions that were able to reopen so soon after the storm are benefitting from the lack of competition; unlucky tourists who were in the city for the storm have been largely isolated in hotel rooms since Monday. Many have not had a chance to see the city’s typically vibrant art and culture scenes and are hungry for those experiences before their vacations come to an end.
“We’re really upset,” Debbie Clinton of England said in a report from the Associated Press. She and her family will head back to England on Thursday. “We bought passes for all these attractions and we haven’t used them.
But some others are more optimistic, like Parisian Martine Julliard. “We are pleased because we are alive,” she said. “For the shops and the museums, we’ll come back another time.”
And hopefully when they do, the city will be back to normal.