“It’s important for athletes to talk about mental health because it encourages everyone to talk about it and be more aware of it,” said Cameron Dobbs, a student assistant coach for the University of Miami Hurricanes volleyball team and a former player herself. “Also, athletes need to know they’re not alone and that it’s okay to struggle and learn along the way.”

After gymnast Simone Biles withdrew from some Olympic events and Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open because of mental health concerns and general stress, conversations were started about the importance of athletes taking care of their mental health. 

“I think there’s an under emphasis on mental aspects on the court, like how to focus on your game, but also the health side of things, like making sure you’re taking care of yourself,” said Alex Yang, the captain of the New York University men’s tennis team. “And all that stress off the court feeds into our performance on court, and as captain, I want to address it more on our team.”

Dr. Abraham Chileuitt, a sports neurologist that focuses on concussions in Miami, Florida, said many of his patients often come in with other mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, which could be worsened if they suffered a head injury.

“Everything they do is scrutinized, their performance, their game,” he said. “Unfortunately, a lot of times the scrutiny is more negative than positive.”

While this may be a new media discussion, the mental health problems of athletes have been happening for decades. During the pandemic, student-athletes had both their athletic and academic careers come to a standstill. 

“I got admitted to NYU three weeks before everything shut down in the city,” said Candice Saxod, a swimmer for New York University. “And it disconnected me from my normal life and routine, and for a year I didn’t have classes in person. So, having to go back to in-person is  really tiring, like today I had my first college exam in person, and I completely freaked out.”

But, Saxod is hopeful that things will return to normal once she has time to adapt.

“It’s just small details that you used to get used to again, and those things take time,” said Saxod. “There’s different ways of handling things, and it just takes time.”

Yang was considering quitting tennis earlier in his career to focus on academics and other interests. However, during the pandemic, he had a break from his sport and competitions for months. 

“It’s always good, I think, to get a mental break,” said Yang. “And I think in those four months, there was no stress, no pressure, and I actually grew to love the sport a lot more. The break gave me more perspective and reminded me that it is just a sport and I have to still take care of myself.”

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Nancy George-Michalson, who is the Executive Director at New York Therapy Animals, knows what it feels like to bring a smile to people’s faces with the help of trained therapy dogs.

 “When you are interacting with a therapy dog, it actually brightens the room when you walk in,” George-Michalson said. “The best part is seeing the reactions and knowing that you’ve made a difference just even for a few minutes with somebody.”

George-Michalson has been a volunteer for 19 years, working for and founding the non-profit organization, which aims to help people in places such as healthcare facilities and schools with the assistance of trained, licensed and insured therapy dog teams.

But the impact dogs have on mental health is not only felt with the help of these organizations, people all over the world are helped by their dogs on a daily basis with relationships built on trust, companionship and loyalty. 

In a survey conducted by For Better Mental Health 98 percent of pet owners consider their pet to be a member of the family and 74 percent of  pet owners  reported owning a pet led to better mental health. 

Lindsey Barton, 30, of Hoboken, New Jersey, embraces her rescue dog Marnie. Photo by Jose Balderrama

Maggie Donovan, 30,  described her dog Hope as “the best thing ever to happen to her.” As a person who has been battling through depression and anxiety for the past decade, building a relationship with Hope has really helped her daily routine.

“There is always somebody who is home and excited to see you, because I live alone,” said Donovan. “Especially during COVID too, just having a structure throughout the day and I think that really helped me, it kept me sane.” Donovan said. 

According to the ASPCA in five households adopted a pet during the pandemic, that’s 23 million households. Early in the pandemic there was a waiting list to adopt dogs from shelters.

Lindsey Barton of Hoboken, New Jersey, has also noticed the importance in having to go out everyday in order to walk her dog, Marnie, and attend to her needs.

“It gets you out of the house everyday, ” she said. “I’m forced to go out and walk her even though I’m still working from home and otherwise I probably would have just stayed home, so I think that’s actually a big help in terms of mental health.” 

Barton also said the love of a dog is pure and incomparable. She is amazed by the characteristics that dogs show which allow them to impact peoples’ lives.

“Unconditional love, they are very loyal creatures, she is very sweet, very docile,” Barton said. “She just wants to be happy, she wants everyone to be happy.”

George-Michalson said that the relationships between humans and dogs bring out the “Natural miracle drug for bonding,” Oxytocin. She said these bonds also facilitate other health benefits such as lowering blood pressure, decreasing heart rate, and lowering stress and anxiety levels. 

George-Michalson said that since the pandemic  began, 350 to 400 people have contacted her with an interest in being part of the organization. There is a lot of training involved.

“Their dogs have to meet the requirements and the human end of the leash has to meet the requirements as well,” George-Michalson said. 

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With the pandemic implementing additional restrictions on restaurants, local businesses, like Mitroni’s Celeste, have been forced to change their business models, adding more costs on top of already rising prices. 

“Food costs have gone up 40%,” Mitroni, 59, said. “I go to Home Depot and get wood [for plastic dividers], then there’s delivery. You have all these trays and paper and all this stuff. That’s gone up. All these things that you didn’t need before in mass quantities.” 

Carmine Mitroni, 59, has owned Italian restaurant Celeste, located on 84th and Amsterdam Ave., since 2002. Photo by Laura Studley.

Mitroni said before COVID, delivery was less than 3% of his business, but now it makes up half of the revenue, due to having only 20 tables at the restaurant. 

To offset costs, Mitroni said he wants to open earlier for happy hour, but there aren’t enough workers available to sustain longer hours. 

“We’re all short staffed,” he said. “There’s no personnel. Now, people can’t pay their rent, me being one of them. I’m able to make payroll. But I’m not making any money … I’m surviving, I’m keeping 18 people employed. That’s all.”

Now, restaurants are required to ask for vaccination cards along with a valid form of identification from every customer looking to dine in. The policy originally began on Aug. 17, but as of Sept. 13, businesses may be fined if they are not enforcing the mandate. 

“I’ve gotta be a bouncer,” Mitroni said. “You should have your license, it’s not enough to see your COVID vaccination. I have to actually see the photo ID. Either school, government, passport or driver’s license, how insane is that?”

And Mitroni is not alone. On Aug. 17, a group of small businesses filed a lawsuit against Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city of New York, in hopes to stop the vaccine requirement. 

“The Executive Order has rendered it impossible for anyone who chooses not to be vaccinated, for whatever reason, to work in the designated industries, wholly depriving them of their livelihood,” according to the lawsuit. 

Mitroni said the pandemic has made people “slaves” to the government, placing an impossible task on restaurants, noting that the regulations for businesses geared toward larger businesses and restaurant groups, something Celeste is not. 

“You can’t say we can’t serve anybody inside, but you’re allowing the cross town bus to be full,” Mitroni said. “There’s a dichotomy. I’m putting up barriers, sanitizing, cleaning everything, but people can have a private party in their apartment with 20 people and nobody’s going to enforce it.”

Data from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office from Dec. 2020 showed that restaurants and bars were responsible for 1.43% of COVID infection, the lawsuit said. This, compared to the 73.84% from in-home get-togethers. 

Celeste opened a year after 9/11 in 2002, a venture he called a “momentary lapse in sanity.” He intended it to be a model of a trattoria in Naples or Rome where customers had to move out of the way to let someone into their table. 

“Those days are gone,” Mitroni said. “I’ve lost customers because people are afraid to dine in.” 

Despite the COVID struggles, Mitroni continues his commitment to the food and the UWS community. Mitroni hopes that he will be able to have more personnel and business next May, but is uncertain. 

“I could be in Midtown where there’s no theatres or offices open,” he said. “It could be a lot worse.”

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And passersby got to watch four artists create their work.

“It’s a weird thing to be a performance,” artist Staver Klitgaard said as she painted while glancing at the people watching her. “This is like a new adventure for me.”

Art shows have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Exhibitions have been cancelled, galleries closed down and artists unable to show their work. As much as artists have been limited, people who enjoy art have also been affected.

“I’ve missed seeing stuff like this,” Manhattan resident Kristen Kasmai said as she watched an artist carry his finished canvas inside the Airstream.

This mobile exhibition is part of The Armory Show’s Off-Site project, whose purpose is to introduce “international contemporary artists to a wider audience and [inspire] dialogues around art,” as well as bringing back art fairs in a safe manner during the pandemic.

“While it was inspiring to see artists adapt and share their art through social media or online, not all art is made for the digital forum,” Kasmai said. “In-person allows the incorporation of textures, and interaction, and things that digital media inherently can’t display.”

The Armory Show is one of the largest international art exhibitions in New York that helps showcase both prominent and up-and-coming artists’ work from around the world. Since March 2020, The Armory Show has been unable to host their in-person events and have moved to a mainly online platform to showcase and sell their art now.  

As a result, Armory Off-Site was created this year and hosted four outdoor, interactive exhibitions scattered around Manhattan sponsored by galleries and artists from New York, Los Angeles and London. When The Armory Show first began their selection process for their Off-Site exhibitions, the Guild of Adventure Painters was sought out.

“The way we got here was the 1969 Gallery asked us to submit a proposal for them to submit to the Armory Show,” artist and co-founder of the guild Johnny DeFeo said. “And then The Armory Show selected our project.”

As a result, artists painted inches away from passersby next to a large silver Airstream in Astor Place. An older woman, holding a cigarette and a Four Loko Gold, walked up to Klitgaard’s easel.

“Wow,” she said. “This looks AMAZING! Wow. Great work.” 

As studio painters, none of the artists at Astor Place were used to having anyone watch their process or speak to them while they worked on their art. But now, crowds gathered around each easel, with strangers complimenting them and discussing color theory.

“This has been really fun,” DeFeo said. “Just the ability to have so many people walking by to interact with, so many different kinds of people and different kinds of things to paint here.”

Co-founder of the Guild for Adventure Painters Aaron Zulpo paints a nearby building next to the Airstream exhibit alongside other “plein air” painters. Behind him, the Airstream with art on display from previous days of their outdoor exhibit is shown. The art is not for sale, but artists are available to talk to anyone who walks up to the display. Photo by Michelle Ng-Reyes

The Guild of Adventure Painters was created in 2018 by artists Aaron Zulpo and Johnny DeFeo with the goal of taking studio painters, who mainly work indoors alone, outside of their studio and into nature to paint “en plein air,” or the act of painting outdoors without traditional rules or structure of studio and indoor painting. It is an “exploratory art residency” that focuses on outdoor explorations while also helping artists get out of their comfort zones and relate more to the art they create.

“It’s funny because all my paintings take place in nature, but I don’t go out in nature to paint them,” guild artist Caleb Hahne said. “I just use a catalogue of nature pictures. So thinking outside of my studio and putting me into an actual environment was really nice, and it’s made me rethink how I paint.”

Many other artists also find a new sense of purpose and peace while travelling to different states and painting outdoors. Its founders also hope it helps promote self care and mental health during an artist’s career. 

“It’s just sort of supposed to also really be a mental break,” Zulpo said.

The Guild of Adventure Artists co-founder Johnny DeFeo (left) adds brushstrokes to artist Staver Klitgaard’s (right) “en plein air” painting, at her request for him to “make a move” and add something to her art. Photo by Michelle Ng-Reyes

With the Guild’s focus on nature and outdoor landscape painting, having their exhibit and painters placed in the middle of the city, in a plaza with only a few scraggly trees, made the art-filled Airstream seem even more out of place.

“The Armory Show chose this location for us,” DeFeo laughed. “We knew that we would be in a park in the city, we just imagined it would be more like Central Park.”

But the location has pushed its painters to look for nature and art in different places than they normally would.

“It’s forced me to look for the moments of optimism that I find in the architecture,” artist Hahne said. “I noticed flowers growing out of bizarre spots, or even just these trees planted here in front of a bank, you know? I think that being in a city like this, when you have those little glimmers of beauty or hope it’s really hard not to grasp onto them.”

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When the pandemic hit and the city was taken by an uneasy silence, street musicians were the ones who kept the show going on what has always been their most eloquent and biggest stage: the city itself – and that means both above and below the ground. 

For many of them it was a matter of survival: without their gigs due to closure of the usual venues, they turned to streets and subway stations to keep playing their instruments and showing their art.  

That was a big turning point: many of them not only started making more money busking than playing in bars, theaters and festivals but also attracted new fans among the spontaneous crowd that now gathers around them. 

And, most of all, like that band that kept playing on while the Titanic was sinking, they filled the city with zest and hope amidst one of the darkest times of its history. 

Andrew Kalleen has been carrying his piano all over the city. Here he is on Washington Square Park, New York City. February 5, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Joe Mayer plays the fiddle in The Brooklyn Bards, a band that plays a mix of Irish musich and classic rock every week in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York. April 23, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Wayne Walcott playing jazz in the Broadway-Lafayette subway station, New York City. January 27, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Flutist playing in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York City. April 23, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Percussionist performing in the 14th subway station, New York City. February 19, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Haitian musican Alegba Jahyile and his band, Alegba and Friends, plays Latin music in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York City. April 23, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Robert Leslie is a British-born guitarist and songwriter who plays his own songs in many subway stations across the city. Here he is in Metropolitan Avenue station, Brooklyn, New York City. February 19, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Drummer Rob Montemarano, member of The Brooklyn Bards, a band that plays a mix of Irish music and classic rock every week in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York. April 23, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Trumpetist Fernando Ferrarone and bassist Bob Bruya playing jazz in the guitarist Marco Grispo’s band in Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, New York City. April 1st, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Saxophonist performing in Washington Square Park, New York City. February 5, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

Street musician playing the cajón and singing in Andrew Kalleen’s band in Washington Square Park, New York City. February 5, 2021. Photo by Xavier Bartaburu

The post And the band played on appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Passengers at Whitehall station wait for the next ferry, April 15 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

Passengers embark in Manhattan, April 15 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

Rules require passengers to remain masked at all times on the ferry, but riders don’t always follow suit, March 13 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

Commuters depart from Staten Island in the early morning, March 15 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

NYPD officers talk during the journey, March 15 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

Tourists take photos of the Statue of Liberty from the ferry, April 24 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

The Manhattan skyline from the Hurricane Deck, April 15 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

Passengers look out at the Statue of Liberty from the Hurricane Deck, April 24 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

A man looks out at the Statue of Liberty, March 15 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

There are 16 crew members aboard the ferry at all times, April 15 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

The Manhattan skyline disappears into fog, April 15 2021. Photo by Trish Rooney

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 Disappointed and shocked, he considered returning to Colombia, but he had come to America for new opportunities, and this setback wasn’t going to change his plans. He vowed to save enough money to one day buy a home of his own. In 2006, after six years of renting, Lopez had accumulated enough for a down payment and applied for a mortgage.  While he wanted to buy a co-op, the bank encouraged him to instead purchase a two-family house and take on a renter as an additional source of income. 

 Although Lopez didn’t want to be a landlord, the bank was adamant, so he bought a yellow, flat roofed duplex in College Point, Queens and looked for a renter. He remembers thinking that this was simply what you did in America. 

  “You purchase a house, a two-family house and rent one unit,” Lopez said. “That’s what middle class people do in America.”

 Eventually, Lopez started to see the house as an investment, and he took out a second mortgage so that he could move and start renting both floors of the duplex. The plan worked until both of his tenants stopped paying rent. Now, Lopez finds himself bracing for foreclosure. “It’s devastating,” said Lopez. 

  Single property owners make up only 13% of New York City landlords; according to Housing Preservation and Development data compiled in 2018, the average lessor in New York City owns 21 to 60 rental properties. When it comes to lost rental revenue, large landlords have experienced a greater total loss, but Mom-and-Pop landlords have been impacted more severely because they have less of an ability to weather a loss of rental income. “If you have a smaller portfolio, it’s probably less diversified,” said Furman Center housing policy expert Charles McNally. “There’s a much greater risk in terms of the stability of your assets.” 

 Additionally, small landlords are also more likely to rent to economically vulnerable tenants.  “Our early analysis showed that households that worked in industries likely to be shut down due to [Covid measures] were disproportionately concentrated in smaller buildings, which tend to be owned by Mom-and-Pop landlords,” said McNally. 

The average New York City landlord owns between 21-60 rental properties. Mom-and-Pop landlords are in the minority. Photo courtesy of JustFix.nyc

 Lopez’s tenants are among approximately 185,000 New York City households that are behind on rent. This estimate, which was based on a poll conducted by the Community Housing Improvement Program (CHIP), accounts for around half of the rental properties in New York City. While CHIP estimates that New York City renters owe $1 billion, the city-wide total is probably closer to two-billion. 

After Lopez’s tenant Claudia didn’t pay rent for a few months, Lopez hired a lawyer to serve her with an eviction notice.  The timing was unfortunate for him; a week after he’d filed his claim against Claudia, a city-wide shutdown brought New York City to a halt.  

 Governor Andrew Cuomo issued a 90-day statewide eviction moratorium on March 20, 2020. Suddenly, a tenant who had stopped paying rent before the pandemic was now protected from eviction indefinitely. By April, Lopez’s other tenant, Daniel, also started to withhold rent. Lopez pleaded with both tenants to pay their share. They claimed that they were unable to, but Lopez has his doubts.  “Claudia bought a new car; she has a better car than me,” Lopez said. “How can she say she doesn’t have money to pay rent?”

 The New York State legislature has extended the eviction moratorium each time it expires. The current mortarium is in place until May 1, 2021. The housing courts are technically open, but only certain emergency cases – eviction of violent tenants and hearings against landlords who lock renters out – are being heard. A huge backlog of cases is piling up. Meanwhile, landlords like Lopez are left with no income to pay a looming monthly mortgage. After more than a year of non-payment, Lopez has lost $47,600 of rental revenue. The loss comes at a difficult time. His hours as a sanitation engineer for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection were cut in April 2020. 

 He hasn’t made his $3,000-a-month mortgage payments in almost a year. While the bank gave him a six-month forbearance to delay a foreclosure, his debt is mounting.  He knows the bank will foreclose on him as soon as they are able. 

 While Lopez fights to hold onto his only rental property in Queens, a Brooklyn landlord is facing similar difficulties. 

 Clarence Hammer, 46, grew up in Brooklyn where his parents always owned a house. He witnessed first-hand the stability that comes with homeownership and wanted the same for his family, so in 2007 he bought a two-family house in Brownsville. For 12 years he lived on the bottom floor of the duplex at 618 Rockaway Ave. with his wife, son, and daughter and rented out the top floor. 

 In May 2019, keeping a promise to his wife that they would someday leave the city, they moved an hour north to Harriman, New York. Keeping the Brownsville apartment as an investment, they found a renter, Chantel, for the bottom floor of the red brick rowhouse.  Starting that summer, Chantel paid only half of her $3,250 rent. In September 2019, she paid nothing.

 Hammer filed for non-payment litigation in New York City Housing Court and had three court appearances: November 2019, December 2019, and January 2020.  By March 2020, Hammer was confident that he was nearing legal recourse. Then, the pandemic halted his litigation.

 Today, Chantel owes Hammer more than $58,500, leaving him unable to make his $5,000 monthly mortgage payments. Other financial obligations are falling to the wayside. Taxes and bills sit unpaid as he struggles to pay off what he can.  “I’m constantly getting harassing phone calls from the financial institutions that chose to lend me the money,” Hammer said. “And I don’t really even blame them, I understand. It’s really embarrassing.”  

 Hammer purchased his Brownsville apartment in an attempt to establish intergenerational wealth. “This was something that I thought I was going to pass on to my kids to establish financial stability,” Hammer said.

 In New York City, only 27% of Black households and 17% of Hispanic households own their homes, according to The Furman Center at NYU. 

 “Homeownership is a key wealth generation strategy,” McNally said. “In the wake of the foreclosure crisis [of 2008] we saw a huge destruction of Black and Hispanic wealth. That’s a real concern here as well.” 

 Black and Hispanic landlords are disproportionately affected by the Covid-19 housing crisis that is reaping havoc on their primary investment. As their eviction cases sit stagnant, these landlords are left waiting in limbo, hoping for financial relief, but dreading the inevitable. “I’m going to lose my home,” Hammer said. “That’s the reality.”

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But in March 2021, because of the pandemic, their growth came to a screeching halt. They now have three active leases – two in Montana where they’re headquartered and one in San Francisco. They significantly reduced headcount since turning off their office lights last March. Over 50% of workers were furloughed or laid-off, with only 20% of those who had been furloughed brought back in summer 2020. With studio doors shut, they were receiving little to no revenue stream. ClassPass’ physical workplace was shifting. 

Like many other companies, their employees have continued to work from home since the onset of the pandemic. What’s been lacking in company culture and social interactions, is made up for in working from the sofa, front stoop, and in the most comfortable leisurewear. 

Ashley Bolitho, a Senior Manager of Employee Experience & Workplace Operations at ClassPass, explained that late last year they conducted a survey. They wanted to get a better understanding on how their employees envision working in the future since for better or for worse, they had become accustomed to working from their homes. 

“Around 22% of the team responded they wanted to be in an office full time,” said Bolitho. “About 48% of the team said that they wanted to work out of an office part time and work remotely the rest of the week. And the remaining showed that they want it to be fully remote in the future.”

The pandemic has forced ClassPass, and many other businesses, to rethink the traditional landscape of the workplace. It has thrown the once hard and fast rules for work structure out the window. For most, gone are the days of the prescribed Monday through Friday office commute. In a survey conducted by Gartner, over 80% of company leaders plan to permit remote work after the pandemic. 

Bolitho clarified that there is no blueprint or a one size fits all for companies on how best to return to the office as COVID-19 loosens its grip. Having a better pulse on their employees’ preferences for returning, ClassPass ultimately decided on a choose your own adventure model, where employees will enroll annually on how they want to return to the office. Options are fully remote, full time in the office, or a hybrid model where employees will be in office some days and remote the others. 

“What used to work, no longer works,” said Bolitho. “We know people need some kind of connection and collaboration, and they are going to continue to need that. But now that folks have a sense of autonomy, we’re going to want to continue to give them that autonomy. That’s why we’re giving them options on how to return to the office”.

The streaming giant Spotify followed suit. Joining the ranks of other tech companies who announced they will shift to a flexible work model, Spotify will allow their 6,550 global employees not only to choose their preferred work mode, but have granted flexibility around location, choosing the city where they work. Spotify stated that their people live and work in different ways and the future of work of Spotify will be more flexible, effective and sustainable through their new model

With more companies leaning towards a hybrid approach, the question begs – how do you maintain an office culture, without, well, an office? Those face-to-face encounters in the kitchen when grabbing an afternoon pick me up will be slim, if not cease to exist. The last year has proved that human interaction is vital, and while digital gatherings help, they certainly cannot be substitutes. 

“Shopify has coined the term bursting,” said Shopify Designer Manager Katarina Batina.

“The idea is that at a certain cadence throughout the year, Shopify will support teams co-locating. We’re imaging a world where your team meets in a centralized location for a week of focused work and intention setting for the quarter or the year. ”

Batina always wanted to work at Shopify, but with headquarters in Ottawa, Canada, she wasn’t champing at the bit to move from her home in idyllic upstate New York. When she eventually joined in October 2020, the company had gone fully remote, or as they like to call it “digital by design”, helping in her assertion that it was the right time to join the team.  

Katarina said that the CEO Tobias Lütke always tinkered to move the company in this direction, even prior to the pandemic. Because of the size and aspiring scale of the organization, they saw this as an organic and fortuitous time to permanently take the company fully remote. One reason they decided not to support a hybrid model, is they’re weary of the divide it will create among the two class citizenry of people who are in the office and people who are not. Also, it would just become a logistical nightmare.

“It’s not going to be an equitable environment if we did a hybrid model,” Batina said. “When everyone’s on a Zoom call, it’s great. But when half the room is and half, the room isn’t, it just creates this dual class structure that doesn’t really work well. We want to create an equal experience for everyone once it comes to a work environment.”

Regardless of the position companies take, each will present their own unique pros and cons. For Batina, she’s enjoying the ease and frequency she’s gained from remote work with the five employees she manages.

“We’re not in a fishbowl of a conference room or in a coffee shop with a lot of distraction,” said Batina. “You can have a really open conversation, where if you’re in the office, and you’re having emotional responses, you don’t need to worry about someone seeing you.”

Not all Silicon Valley execs are on board for fully remote or a flexible approach work. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings stated last year that he expects his employees to return to the office once the majority receive the vaccine. No matter what approach companies take, one hope remains. That the formal office dress code never comes back, and the days of pandemic sweat-centric wardrobe reigns supreme.

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The streets  did slowly came back to life, but the city still lacks the energy that it’s famous for. 

Each photo represents a month of the pandemic, which so far has infected over 780,000  New Yorkers and killed 48,537.

APRIL, 2020

Time Square, New York is at a stand still with no tourists flooding the streets. April 7, 2020. Photo by Michelle Diaz

MAY 2020

Washington Square Park, New York pre-Covid is always filled with skaters and people eating outside. But not on May 13, 2020. Photo by Michelle Diaz

JUNE 2020

As the warm weather starts to take over New York, a woman cutting up mangos sell fruit up by the subway entrance. Brooklyn, New York. June 18, 2020. Photo by Michelle Diaz

JULY 2020

An empty subway car heading to Coney Island, New York. July 20, 2020. Photo by Michelle Diaz

SEPTEMBER 2020

People eat outside at That Diner in an outdoor setup that mimics indoor dining. Bowery, New York. September 9, 2020. Photo by Michelle Diaz

OCTOBER 2020

Path riders on route to the World Trade Center in New York. October 18, 2020. Photo by Michelle Diaz

NOVEMBER 2020

A sea of people crowd around Columbus Circle celebrating Joe Biden winning the 2020 Presidential Election. November 7, 2020. Photo by Michelle Diaz

DECEMBER 2020

People sit, socially distanced, to watch a video playing on a screen at the MOMA Museum. December 5, 2020. Photo by Michelle Diaz

JANUARY 2021

Broadway theaters remain shut down. Shubert Theatre, New York. January 18, 2021. Photo by Michelle Diaz

FEBUARY 2021

People wait on line to get vaccinated at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York. February 17, 2021. Photo by Michelle Diaz

MARCH 2021

During an in-person NYU journalism graduate class, Digital Newsroom, students wear masks and maintain 6ft apart rules. March 11, 2021. Photo by Michelle Diaz

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