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| Canalside, Buffalo, 1:30 PM Friday, May 15, 2020. insanely quiet. |
As I previously stated in this series, driving to where I park on my way
to work, and walking the rest of the way in downtown Buffalo to the Rath
Building for my job at the Erie County Department of Social Services, remains
scarily quiet. Not only is there way less vehicular traffic and swaths of empty
parking spaces, but barely any pedestrian traffic when I walk from my parking
to work at about 7:55-8:20 AM, depending on my promptness. I can basically
cross against the light at any intersection I walk across on my 3/4-mile walk
(I could shorten it but enjoy the exercise), something I wouldn’t consider
doing during pre-COVID-19 times. It is exactly the same on my walk back to the
car at the end of the day, about the only interruptions of normalcy the
construction work at the proposed grocery store/residence/mixed-use development
on Clinton Street next to the Buffalo and Erie County Public Libraries main
library and NFTA Metro buses, although they have way less passengers. The Metro
rapid transit line, which I cross on my way to work, also remains at about
10-20 percent of its normal passenger load.
Depicting this remains difficult, as I previously wrote, because it is
hard to show if these occurrences are just off-times or weekend events or
actual desolation during the coronavirus, But as the weather improves and my
lunchtime walks increase in distance and variety, I am finding other ways to
try to show people this. Last week Wednesday and Friday, I changed my walk
route to go toward the water (Lake Erie) and ended up at Canalside at the foot
of Pearl Street. Canalside has somehow, despite Buffalo’s reputation for
previously not being able to utilize a natural setting such as a Great Lake,
become a destination and the site of the Buffalo Naval and Servicemen’s Park,
featuring ships, aircraft and other military items, as well as the Explore
& More Children’s Museum, a skating rink and a summer concert series of the
same name.
My Wednesday visit really surprised me, because I was expecting at least
a good number of walkers or runners to be at Canalside or at least the streets
leading to it. But Canalside itself was basically deserted; I counted two
people on the massive grounds and less than 10 runners or walkers going to and
from it. This was despite temperatures in the upper 50s or lower 60s and no
rain. When I returned Friday, I went to the first area I visited Wednesday and
it was deserted again, but I went further into and around Canalside, and it
remained a ghost town. I took the accompanying photo during Friday’s visit,
with no worry of it being interrupted. I found two people sitting at opposing
ends of a bench at one of the walkways near a drained canal, kind of just
staring at the water.
As deserted and strange as things are, I was more than glad to see
Canalside empty, because I believe that things are not even a tenth of the way
back to normal, with way too many people being sick and dying of COVID-19, as
well as about to get sick. Some idiots are endangering everybody, from doctors,
nurses, medical professional, police, firefighters, EMTs and other first
responders, by not wearing masks and not staying home when it’s not necessary
to be out. Being “essential” personnel myself and still seeing clients/the
public as well as conducting other aspects of our job, I am glad we have a
mandatory face mask policy at Erie County/the Rath Building. This does not mean
that the policy is not violated at times; I was trapped on an elevator for three
floors with two workers not wearing masks/not wearing them properly last week
when my glasses were fogged up and I couldn’t see this right away; my mask was
fortunately properly on. Nobody wants to see businesses and workers hurt and
out of jobs/losing money, but I don’t want to see anyone contract COVID-19 and
die in a rush to return to “normal.”
My across the street neighbor, who I won’t name for good reasons, made a
wise comment last week: “I can’t stand this term, the ‘new normal.’ I don’t want
this to be normal; we shouldn’t have people dying, people getting sick and
having to take all of these precautions forever and closing businesses forever.
But we have to take this all seriously and flatten the curve, at the very
least.” He and his wife were in home quarantine for 14 days in late March and
early April because his wife, an ICU nurse at a well-known and regarded local
hospital, came into direct contact with a patient who has COVID-19.
Fortunately, she, he and their young child all tested negative for COVID-19.
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