Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll see how a market in a subway station is faring. We’ll also get details on skyrocketing cases of the flu in the New York area.
Tom Gelhaus opened a kiosk in the Turnstyle Underground Market in 2021, selling vintage toys and collectibles. He lasted through the pandemic, and when a noodle shop went out of business, he moved into its storefront, a few steps away.
“I’m doing OK,” he said, selling items that are difficult if not impossible to find elsewhere, like a Beatles wig from 1964 in the original packaging, a Chucky Good Guys doll and cereal boxes he acquired from a collector who had 600 of them. “In a world of dying shops, mine beat the odds.”
But his shop can be hard to find if you don’t know how to find it inside the 59th Street-Columbus Circle subway station.
The lack of visibility from the street is a problem that Turnstyle has struggled with since it opened as a mall and food court nine years ago. The property manager who has overseen Turnstyle since 2021 said its location is, at best, surprising: “No one expects to walk into a subway station where you see boutique shops and food.”
These days, some of the vendors say that fewer people are walking in. Remote work has changed the crowd that rushes through, with fewer office workers stopping for coffee, a quick meal or some shopping, they say.
Starbucks had a space when Turnstyle opened. So did Dylan’s Candy Bar. Both have since left. A pizza shop that opened in 2018 lasted three months, with the owner saying he was so frustrated by the lack of business that he left everything behind, even the pizza ovens.
Then came the pandemic. It hit the remaining tenants hard, and some vendors say that Turnstyle has yet to bounce back. At noontime on Monday, several food shops had no customers. The employees behind the counters were scrolling on their cellphones.
Agnes Kanga, who runs the clothing shop Agnes Design in a space she shares with two other vendors, said that she had expected to see more tourists this year, but that they did not find their way to Turnstyle. “Last year was better,” she said after describing business as “up and down.”
‘Nov. 25 to 30, zero’
Luis Monsalve, selling glassware and jewelry, had the same answer when he was asked how business was. He said he had gone weeks without a sale.
“Nov. 25 to 30, zero,” he said, reading from the little book in which he records transactions. “Dec. 2 to 4, zero.” The first week included Thanksgiving. But there was no bonanza from the crowds that took the subway for a glimpse of the Thanksgiving Day parade along Central Park West and Central Park South, both of which arrive at the station.
Jay Velotta, the property manager of Turnstyle, said things were “improving.” He said that eight spaces out of 34 were vacant — double the vacancies he and his team saw when they arrived in the fall of 2021.
Velotta said that he had addressed deferred maintenance on “systems that were starting to fail,” as well as a “homeless problem,” at the market in an effort to “turn it back into a retail thing.” He said that he had hired a security service for the passageway and that his team had worked on rent restructuring for tenants.
“Wishfully,” he said, he would like office workers to return to their desks — and to Turnstyle. “But remote work still seems to be the way things are going.”
Monsalve picked up a wineglass that he said would have cost $180 in a gallery that he ran in the West 20s before the pandemic. He pointed up, indicating the city above. “Millionaires. Billionaires,” he said. “Here it’s people in maintenance, construction and cleaning. I’d sell this for $40, but $40 is difficult for many people.”
Weather
Expect a sunny day with temperatures near 31. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 26.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
Suspended for snow removal.
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Flu cases skyrocket
Flu season is here, earlier than expected.
Dr. Michelle Morse, the city’s acting health commissioner, said that flu cases were “skyrocketing.” New York City — along with Long Island, Westchester and nearby counties, as well as northern New Jersey — had some of the highest levels of flu-like illnesses in the United States as of Dec. 6, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Morse urged people to get flu shots.
But the dominant strain of the flu virus circulating this year has acquired mutations that could help it evade the body’s disease-fighting system — and could reduce the effectiveness of a flu shot, which is designed to step up the immune response. Still, early data from Britain, where the flu season arrived even earlier and hit hard, provided reassuring indications that the vaccine would still help prevent hospitalizations.
Flu experts in New York told my colleague Joseph Goldstein that it’s too soon to know if this would turn out to be a particularly bad flu season. “The jury is still out on whether it is more virulent,” said Peter Palese, an influenza expert at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, referring to the virus that is circulating.
Last week Poly Prep Country Day School, a private school in Brooklyn, closed its Dyker Heights campus for two days after at least 200 students were absent or had to be sent home with the flu or flu-like symptoms. “The number in such a short period played a part in our decision,” said Jennifer Slomack, the school’s senior director of engagement and communications.
So far, the flu does not appear to have dented attendance in the city’s public school system.
METROPOLITAN diary
Too quiet
Dear Diary:
I had been awake since 5 a.m. thanks to the baby. It was still dark out, so we stood by the window watching the twinkling subway cars chug by. She clapped each time one passed.
My son woke up at 6, and the next two hours were a blur of doling out toast, cereal and chunks of fruit. At 8, I wrangled them into a wagon, and we headed out.
Park Slope was full of Halloween decorations, and on our walk we admired the giant spiders and webs of cotton stretched across windows.
At the day care, I hiked up three flights of stairs with the baby, now weighing 20 pounds. It wasn’t even 8:15, but I was already exhausted from the schlepping.
A few minutes later, I waved my son into school and felt the sweet relief of being child-free. I got on the F, put on my headphones and enjoyed the quiet.
The man next to me had sweat beading on his brow. He was staring at a picture on his phone of a smiling toddler. He zoomed in on the child’s chubby face, then flipped to a picture of the child laughing on the same swing set my daughter played on the previous weekend.
I was so relieved not to be caring for my children in that moment, but suddenly I missed their soft little bodies. I started scrolling through my own photos.
The man and I sat side by side, looking at pictures of the children we had just dropped off for the day.
— Samantha Mann
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
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