With the tourists gone, we were able to experience the beauty of New York properly

New York in the summer, filled with tourists is exhausting, but this year with the tourists gone, we were able to experience the city as they saw it, and it was very nice indeed, writes Holly Baxter

A uniquely quiet boat excursion felt like an exclusive trip for those in the know (Holly Baxter)

Most New York City attractions become hellholes the second tourists descend on us in summer (which, non-coincidentally, is the same time there’s an exodus of the wise and the wealthy to Montauk, the Hamptons, small-town Connecticut and the rest of upstate New York from the crowded apartments of Manhattan.) Going outside in the soupy air of July and August is a challenge in itself; most of us who are not wise or wealthy stay glued to the face of the AC unit blasting frigid air into our box-sized studios, and occasionally take turns to crawl to the nearest grocery store for sustenance. Nobody wants to battle the crowds of eager, sun-starved Brits on top of that, the ones who’ll happily climb up the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building in hundred-degree weather, their “I <3 NY” T-shirts soaked in sweat and their faces puce with effort.

I was one of those Brits once, just happy to see a bit of sunshine after seven months of grey rain, starstruck by the towering high-rises and knocked sideways by the quality of the Mexican food. Then one day I woke up and I was a New Yorker: last year I travelled back to the UK for three months in August and actually uttered the words, “I love how cold and rainy it is.” A few days ago, I told my fiance I thought it was “nice and overcast”. Such phrases should be alien to anyone who grew up on the rainiest island since Ireland, but they quickly become part of your repertoire when you live in the Big Apple.

 But that little slice of somebody else’s New York normality was surprisingly lovely. We’re just keeping the seats warm until global travellers return

The heat isn’t the worst thing, you see — it’s the heat combined with the crowds. Up and down midtown Manhattan, tourists give off a searing heat while you’re just trying to find a spot of shade while you moodily order your third iced coffee. How we complained about them when they crowded the parks and snapped Instagram pictures by the landmarks last year. We didn’t imagine that in 2020, we’d wander through an empty Times Square and a deserted Penn Station and wonder where all the yellow cabs were in the centre of the busiest city in the world.

The pandemic has hit New York hard: that much is obvious. Seeing restaurants and bars close down with alarming frequency has been especially sad. But some parts of it have been bittersweet: while the tourists have stayed away, we have suddenly been able to experience our city as they do. And it turns out they may have been on to something.

Last weekend, for instance, I booked a table on an architecture tour boat run by the prestigious Classic Harbor Line, which leaves from midtown and chugs around the entirety of the island of Manhattan. The boat was less than a third full, and everyone on board was a local. The architect who gives the tour — who faithfully describes pretty much every single building floating past, from Harlem, the Bronx and the surprising forests of Inwood in the north to Wall Street, the Lower East Side and the warehouses of southern Brooklyn — was able to pepper it with in-jokes about living in NYC. We all wore masks, of course, and there was no competition for an excellent view of Lady Liberty as we sailed past. Onboard helpers jumped to sanitise any part of the boat that anybody touched and people talked among themselves about their favourite cafes on the Upper West Side and who was doing the best coronavirus-friendly outdoor dining. It felt like an exclusive trip for those in the know; in reality, it simply represented the currently available clientele for such excursions, which would usually be booked up weeks in advance by tourists from across the world.

Speeding along the Hudson River — where we saw hardly any boats, and the occasional kayak — it felt like a slice of the life those wise and wealthy people get upstate, when they take their yachts and abscond from a crowded summer. The circumstances are, of course, very different. But that little slice of somebody else’s New York normality was surprisingly lovely. We’re just keeping the seats warm until global travellers return, but doing so sparks a little joy in a time of hardship. I’d encourage anyone else who’s read that notorious (and wrong) op-ed about New York being “dead forever” to get out there and support such local businesses to prove the doomsday predictors wrong.