If they can't throw cops at it, city officials are never prepared
You're better off counting on your neighbors, because city officials will never see it coming
Contrary to its literal meaning, the concept of “normalcy” is always changing: often when people talk about a return to normalcy, they’re talking about early March 2020, before the pandemic upended everything. It's a time so long ago that Michael Bloomberg was still in the race for president, so ask yourself for a second if that was really the kind of normalcy we need to go back to.
When you pay enough attention to New York City public life, you see the lust for “normalcy” also means something different. Eric Adams would bathe in normalcy if he could, or gobble it up like a fat plate of branzino on one of his apparently numerous vegan cheat days. The normalcy he’s after is based in the dream that everything was peachy keen before the coronavirus landed, when the city had an endless need for office space. It's also based in a bigger desire for a world where the events of recent years never happened, the one that says we’re not under constant threats of floods, wildfire smoke, pandemic surges and any number of serious — but ultimately very predictable — threats to our city.
