Good morning. It's Thursday, and the year is almost coming to a close. Today we'll look at how the new Omicron-fueled surge in coronavirus infections is prompting shutdowns and disrupting life across the city. We'll also look at the uncertain fate of the Sandy Ground neighborhood in Staten Island, the oldest continuously inhabited free Black settlement in the nation. |
 | | Sarah Blesener for The New York Times |
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On Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that New York had set another unfortunate record: 67,000 daily coronavirus cases, beating out the previous record, set just last week, by almost 20,000. New York City set its own record — 39,591 new cases, according to state data. |
The pandemic, fueled by Omicron, is raging. It is leading to closures and shutdowns of parties, restaurants, clinics, subway lines, Broadway shows, libraries and more. And it may be just the beginning. |
"We're basically preparing for a January surge," Hochul said at a news conference on Wednesday. "We know it's coming. And we're naïve to think it won't." |
Much of the surge is being driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant. |
While Omicron cases seem to be milder than other variants, particularly for people who have been vaccinated and have had a booster shot, the sheer number of new infections is driving an uptick in more serious outcomes: Hochul said that Covid-related hospital admissions were over 6,700 — a 10 percent jump in a single day — and that deaths neared 100 for the first time in months. |
New York City overall reported on Wednesday a seven-day average rate of positive test results of more than 22 percent. In some neighborhoods in New York City, the picture looks worse: the average rate in Brownsville and Ocean Hill in Brooklyn and Breezy Point, Laurelton and Rosedale in Queens was more than 27 percent. |
Transit officials said one subway line — the W — was suspended on Wednesday and five others — the A, D, E, N and R — were running with delays because so many workers were out. |
Nearly one in three paramedics for the Fire Department are also out sick. Twenty locations of CityMD, where thousands of New Yorkers go to get tested for the coronavirus, were also closed because they did not have enough healthy staff members. |
Given the transmissibility of the Omicron variant, at least some component of the continuing surge seems inevitable. But officials are reminding people of all the known, successful strategies — wearing masks, getting vaccinated, getting booster shots and avoiding crowds, particularly indoors — to help keep the numbers down. |
The surge should cause people to rethink New Year's Eve celebrations. The chairman of the City Council's Health Committee, Mark Levine, urged Mayor Bill de Blasio to cancel the city's celebration in Times Square, but so far the city has resisted (the celebration had already been scaled back.) |
The Omicron-fueled surge has consumed the city, leaving many New Yorkers with a sense of anxiety. But 2021 has also featured a more optimistic story line: many of the Manhattan neighborhoods that lost many residents during last year's surge are slowly filling out again. |
In one of those neighborhoods, Chelsea, new and returning New Yorkers said they were drawn less by work and more by the restaurants and bars, interactions with strangers and the city's humming energy. |
Prepare for the chance of rain during the day and at night. It's a cloudy day with temps in the high 40s dropping to the mid-40s in the evening. |
In effect today. Suspended tomorrow (New Year's Eve). |
- Ghislaine Maxwell, the former companion to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, was convicted on Wednesday of conspiring with him for at least a decade to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
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The oldest continuously inhabited free Black settlement faces an uncertain future |
 | | Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times |
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The latest chapter in the long history of the Sandy Ground neighborhood on Staten Island is an inauspicious one: The preservation-minded Cultural Landscape Foundation named Sandy Ground to its annual list of "at-risk landscapes," essentially an endangered-places list. |
Sandy Ground, the oldest continuously inhabited free Black settlement in the United States, was one of 13 sites on this year's list, which focused on places associated with African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native peoples. The foundation contrasted Sandy Ground with Seneca Village, a 19th-century Black settlement that was razed in the 1850s as Central Park took shape. Seneca Village has been widely written about, the foundation said; Sandy Ground has not. |
"The perpetual telling of the story may be what's threatened," said the Rev. Jacqueline Nolton, pictured, the pastor of the Rossville A.M.E. Zion Church, which served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. "Sandy Ground should be preserved in the same way that any history should be preserved. It didn't just evolve. It came from the sacrifice of freed slaves with very little resources." |
But it has fewer connections to the past than it used to. Sylvia D'Alessandro, the executive director of the Sandy Ground Museum and Historical Society, said that "once there were maybe 150 families" in Sandy Ground. "Now there are about six families that are descendants of the original settlers. You can understand why they have it on the endangered list." |
Many of the freed people who moved there in the 19th century worked as oystermen. They prospered until the city banned oystering in 1916 during a typhoid scare. Then a fire in 1963 destroyed 15 houses. Some had belonged to descendants of early settlers, including D'Alessandro. |
In the fall, Hurricane Ida and a second large storm in September damaged one of two cottages owned by the church that was already in need of repair. |
"There's no guillotine blade ready to drop, as it were," said Nord Wennerstrom of the Cultural Landscape Foundation. "It's an accretion of things that is leading to its steady disappearance, including storm damage, vandalism, poor decisions, missed opportunities, neglect, lack of resources and aging out of the population." He said that "without attention and resources, Sandy Ground will steadily disappear." |
But D'Alessandro is not ready to give up. "The church is always going to be there," D'Alessandro said, "and as long as the church is there, our presence will always be in the community." |
A tale of two hot dog vendors claims the top spot in this year's best Metropolitan Diary item, outpolling four other favorites. Here is one of the finalists. |
I recently went for a run and ended up in Bedford-Stuyvesant. |
Just before turning to head home, I was stopped dead in my tracks when I saw a large piece of wood leaning against a bunch of trash bags. It was garbage night, but until this point I hadn't noticed the rubbish I was passing as I ran. |
This was not just any piece of wood. It was my desk. |
My father had built the desk for me in 2010 when I moved into what had been my second apartment, in Chelsea. I had used it for six years before selling it to a woman on Craigslist. I was moving to Brooklyn and it wouldn't work for me in my new apartment. |
Now, I thought, after four years, it must not work for her anymore either. |
After 10 years in existence, the desk — its wooden top separated from it rusted-pipe legs, which were nearby encased in clear recycling bags — was finally at the end of its life. |
I felt myself welling up. I FaceTimed my father and pointed my phone at the piece of wood. |
"Do you know what this is?" I asked. |
I said goodbye to the desk one last time, wiped away my tears and continued my run home. |
Glad we could get together here. See you Monday. — M.Z. |
James Barron, Melissa Guerrero and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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