People enjoying a restaurant meal outside now feels strangely taboo

New York has been in lockdown for four months, so it felt both quaint and terrifying when I came upon the peculiar sight of a couple at my favourite local eatery, writes Holly Baxter

Business not-as-usual in New York (Getty)

A day few of us in New York City could have imagined in April, when ambulances stopped in the streets outside our apartments and wailed from dawn to way past dusk, arrived this week: lockdown began easing on Monday.

Phase two of our state’s reopening plan means that restaurants can now serve food to outdoor diners, as long as they’re two metres apart, and hair salons can start taking socially distanced customers if they’re wearing masks. Clothes stores are also planning to gradually reopen for browsing; though as I meandered through the streets of Brooklyn on Monday morning, it didn’t look like many had taken up this option — except for Kith, the achingly cool and extremely expensive designer store a few doors down, which had a modest queue outside at midday and bouncers on the door.

Kith is the kind of place that mainly sells white T-shirts with plain black lettering and charges more for the pleasure than you’d pay to save your firstborn from the jaws of certain death. At the front, it also has an overpriced cereal cafe that will sell you a “commuter bowl” of Lucky Charms with milk for about $16 – which may say something about its client base.