NEW YORK, NY — Much as the dolphins have returned to the canals of Venice, the human quarantines necessitated by the Coronavirus pandemic have netted other, unexpected benefits. Among the most surprising is the return of open solicitation for prostitution in New York City’s Times Square.
The unintended consequences of shutting down much of humanity’s activity for weeks at a time include a drastic drop in air pollution in Northern Italy, cleaner, clear water in China’s Yangtze River and a tenfold diminution of noise in Madrid’s infernally loud tapas bars. What perhaps no one anticipated was the revival of the world’s oldest profession in the “world’s most exciting city,” New York.
In the 1970’s, New York City in general was a hellhole of crime, drugs and sex work. The value of life was daily eclipsed by the value of heroin, hand jobs and homicide. Alliteration, of course, was equally rampant. Or really rampantly rotten. Whatever. The daily reality was one of the most utterly failed cities in America, surpassing the misery of even the famously and rapidly failing metropolises of late-70’s New Orleans, Detroit and Washington, D.C.
The epicenter of degradation in Manhattan was Times Square, that once flashy chunk of midtown centered on Broadway and 42nd Street. What had earlier been the heart of the Great White Way had, by the ’70’s, become a warren of porno theaters, strip clubs and hundreds of streetwalkers accosting locals and tourists alike with offers of quick, if sketchy, satisfaction.
Through luck, good government and plain old investment, New York came roaring back by the end of the 1980’s. Its old center of vice, Times Square, became the antithesis of its old self when Disney and other companies pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into turning the old real estate into a sort of Vegas East, minus the gambling. The hookers were chased off to wherever gentrification had not yet arrived, replaced by high-profile chain retailers and family-friendly tourist traps.
But, suddenly, things changed. As the Coronavirus drove New Yorkers into their apartments and tourists stayed away, the air cleared. The exhaust fumes dissipated. The saliva dried up on the sidewalks. And then, the birds came out. And so did the hookers. A few, at first. Tentatively offering a massage here and a blow job there. Soon, however, the peace and quiet drew hundreds, then thousands of these “working girls” and the Times Square of old was magically reborn.
Now, less than a month into the pandemic, one can relive Times Square’s glory days with a “french and lay” from any number of enterprising sole proprietors. Prices are in the $100 to $200 range — plus the room — and, depending on the gullibility of the customer, can also be had for the price of a couple of rolls of decent toilet paper or one’s entire wallet and wardrobe.
Crack cocaine, which had been virtually wiped out by the dual threats of gentrification and methedrine, has also made a quick and welcome comeback. With unemployment exploding, the ability to make extra income selling a bit of the rocky diversion has been a godsend for those who had been marginalized by the fancification of midtown Manhattan.
The downside, of course, is that with the quarantines, potential customers are few and far between. The hookers can only offer each other their services for so long, so perhaps the dolphins in Venice’s canals can team up with the polar bears lately trapped on ice floes by global warming and somehow they can all find a way to Times Square. It is, by all accounts, the new land of opportunity, and even dolphins and bears — so we’ve been told — need to relax.