Chinese restaurant owner Po Yu is rolling pork wontons in the eye of what he describes as Lockdown, USA–the hyper-policed quadrant surrounding Madison Square Garden and the Republican National Convention.
He’s had a lot of time on his hands this week and last, and that’s not good. Never has business been this bad in his 23 years in the eatery trade, not even after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Oh, terrible. I will kill you!” says Yu, 42, with the delightful irony so favored by many New Yorkers, when he’s asked about life at the core of the convention site.
“If you come back tomorrow, you’re dead. I’m serious,” he adds with a smile, half-joking that he wants President Bush to cover his losses.
His Tao’s Garden sits on a street shut down by about 10 officers at the corner, a typical detail, shrinking his cash receipts to $400 a day, down from $2,000.
The relentless cogwheels of Midtown Manhattan–where the preciousness of efficiency helped spawn the New York minute–have encountered monkey wrenches in virtual police precincts stationed at 95 intersections surrounding the Garden, where President Bush will accept his party’s renomination Thursday.
From Wall Street to Harlem, New Yorkers offered opinions as diverse as the 171 languages spoken here on the honor–or annoyance–of being home to a Republican convention in a city so overwhelmingly Democratic.
As many as half of Midtown’s occupants, residents say, have already gone on vacation, foreseeing the thoroughfare closures, police checkpoints and buzzing helicopters. Even cabbies, a die-hard breed, were taking the week off. Many companies told their Midtown employees to work in another borough office.
“Fuhgettaboutit!” said Steve Kalas, 60, uttering the cliched New York angst when asked about the convention’s impact on his daily routine. He’s a part-time cook who has lived two blocks from Madison Square Garden for 40 years.
“There’s so many police here, it’s like a second Iraq,” Kalas said.
Some defy the crowds
A few people like Joey Cousineau, a blind Englishman, defied the pell-mell and partisanship with a mere slender cane tapping along the sidewalks bustling with protesters. Above him, a police helicopter flew unusually low, beaming its searchlight on a demonstration gone awry four blocks away.
“I’m just looking for restaurants. Can you help me out here?” said Cousineau, 24, of Liverpool, who has been working in upstate New York at a camp for adults with special needs. He was taking a break in Manhattan. “I’ve picked an awful time to come out, no?”
“There’s a brave guy,” remarked retired physician Larry Gifford, 67, of Manhattan, in awe as Cousineau passed an aid station on standby for any injured protesters.
Others, however, were pleased that Republicans were paying “respect” to a city that thinks of itself as the metropolis extraordinaire–as well as the site most devastated by the Sept. 11 attacks.
`Do you have a Bush button?’
On the sidewalks of Wall Street outside the New York Stock Exchange building, where police stood ready in packs as large as 60 officers, the captains of capitalism said the Republican convention’s arrival was long overdue–the first ever in New York, in fact, though the Democrats used the Big Apple for several of their conventions in past decades.
“I love it, I love it! The Republicans never had a convention here. It’s about time they did,” said William Barbour, 37, a stockbroker and third-generation Republican voter.
“It’s not as if we don’t have any Republicans around here,” he added, smoking a late-morning cigar.
But even he acknowledged that he was intimidated by the convention commotion uptown. “Do you have a Bush button?” Barbour asked. “I want to go to Midtown and get one, but I don’t want to go through that mess.”
In a different part of Manhattan, in Harlem, Rashad Gale, a security guard patrolling the Apollo Theater, said the convention hardly affected him, but its symbolism did. There were no extra police in an area now known as home to former President Bill Clinton’s office, located down the street.
“I guess it’s a sign of respect, being that we lost the towers,” said Gale, 27, referring to the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center.
“All the [officers] they have down there is a reminder: It’s not a negative, but it brings back a lot of bad memories,” he added.
Commute hampered
Passerby Stephanie Johnson, 45, a manager of mental health-care residential facilities, disagreed. The intense policing of mass transit delayed her subway and bus rides to Queens and Brooklyn by a half-hour per trip, she said.
“They got limos and chaffeurs, and the guys on the outside got nothing,” Johnson said. “It’s just chaos all the way around. I’ll be glad when it’s over. Tell them to hurry up and go home.”
Back near the convention hall, Lorna Dee, 47, and her 11-year-old son discovered that their bank was closing earlier in the day this week. So she and son had to walk to another branch a mile away.
Though distressed at the upheaval, she found one thing to be thankful for: Public schools won’t open until mid-September.
“Time is the thing in New York,” she said. “It’s a good thing that school is out because we’d be late for school.”
