Empty midtown lunch counters, quieter subway cars, and struggling small businesses near office towers suggest something has fundamentally changed. Or is NYC just evolving the way it always has?
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Add your commentI've lived in Astoria my whole life, 43 years, and I'll tell you what changed and what didn't. Midtown? Yeah, sure, quieter on Tuesdays. But come to my neighborhood on a Wednesday night and you cannot get a seat at any restaurant on Steinway. The 'city is dead' crowd are people who only ever knew one version of New York — the 9-to-5 Midtown commuter version — and they're grieving that specifically, not the whole city.
Nostalgic. Full stop. New York has survived the 70s blackouts, crack epidemic, 9/11, 2008 crash, a literal pandemic, and somehow THIS is what finally 'hollowed it out'? Please. The city was 'dying' every decade and it never did.
Actually the real issue everyone is ignoring is that remote work didn't hollow out NYC — it hollowed out commercial real estate specifically, which then affects tax revenue, which affects city services. The MTA alone loses something like $600 million annually from reduced ridership compared to pre-pandemic projections. This isn't vibes, it has downstream consequences that hit everyone including the people in Astoria who think their neighborhood proves everything is fine.
my dad drove a cab for 28 years midtown was his whole income. retired just before covid so we got lucky but his friends didnt. one of them is 64 and basically had to start over. people keep saying the city 'adapts' like the city is some abstract thing. the city is people and some of those people got absolutely wrecked
ok but can we talk about the fact that my favorite deli on 47th closed after 31 years and the owner literally told me remote work killed his lunch rush. that's not nostalgia that's a real person who lost a real business he built from nothing. easy to say 'the city evolves' when it's not YOUR livelihood
Hot take incoming: remote work actually SAVED New York by breaking the stranglehold Midtown had on the whole city's identity. SoHo, LES, Bed-Stuy, Astoria, Jackson Heights — these places are THRIVING. We were always more than a giant office park for finance bros and now we finally look like it. The complainers built their entire social lives around their commute and that sounds exhausting honestly.
I moved here from Columbus in 2021 specifically BECAUSE remote work freed me up and honestly midtown being a little calmer is... nice? Like I can actually walk down 6th Avenue without getting trampled. Maybe the old density wasn't a feature, it was a bug lol
I want someone who actually lives here to correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard that office occupancy in Midtown is back up to like 90% on normal days — so isn't this whole debate kind of already settled? Hybrid work means Mon/Fri are dead but Tue-Thu are basically back to normal.
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