As Tourism Brightens, Times Square Hopes to Regain Luster

Pedestrians pose for pictures in Times Square, Monday, Nov. 15, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Pedestrians pose for pictures in Times Square, Monday, Nov. 15, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
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As Tourism Brightens, Times Square Hopes to Regain Luster

Pedestrians pose for pictures in Times Square, Monday, Nov. 15, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Pedestrians pose for pictures in Times Square, Monday, Nov. 15, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

David Cohen has been yearning for a return to the days when business boomed at his family's souvenir shop in Times Square.

While tourists have begun returning, foot traffic into Grand Slam souvenirs is still not what it was before the coronavirus pandemic, when hordes of global visitors crowded under the canopy of electric billboards just outside his door, The Associated Press said.

But the return of foreign tourists to a place popularly called the crossroads of the world may help hasten recovery for businesses like his — many of them mom-and-pop shops — that collectively employ thousands of people and serve as one of New York City's most important economic engines.

“We welcome them back with open arms,” Cohen said after the US began allowing vaccinated international travelers into the country this month. “We’ve got a long way to go."

Times Square has long stood as an emblem of New York’s hustle and bustle. But as Broadway theaters shut their doors and the city became an early epicenter of the global pandemic, 9 in 10 businesses in the area closed, according to a district civic group, The Times Square Alliance.

“We really were were a symbol to the world of the pandemic and the pause,” said Tom Harris, the alliance's president.

Three-fourths of area businesses have since reopened, bit by bit, as Broadway shows began reopening to vaccinated-only audiences.

Among those hopefully restarting are businesses that don't cater directly to tourists, but are part of the city's entertainment ecosystem.

Sam Vasili’s Shoe Repair reopened last month across 51st Street from the Gershwin Theater, where it had operated for three decades before a long pandemic closure.

Owner Sam Smolyar was all grins on a recent afternoon as he shared the news that a Broadway production set to reopen nearby had requisitioned his help. For years, he helped outfit the Rockettes with custom-fitted boots. “We rely on the theater, and on the businesses around here,” he said.

He hopes more people buying tickets on Broadway will mean busier times.

“It starts to get better,” said Vasili, who employs three people at the shop.

Just before the COVID-19 outbreak, New York City was posting record numbers of tourists — 66.6 million in 2019, including 13.5 million from outside the US Then the pandemic prompted severe restrictions on foreign travel.

A marketing blitz has been underway for months to remind Americans that New York City is again open for business and ready for the visiting masses. Now the city is expanding its outreach to those outside the US, who are especially coveted because they spend more time and more money during their visits.

While domestic travel accounted for 80% of visitors, foreign tourists account for about half of the city’s tourism spending and typically represent half of all hotel bookings.
Harris of the Times Square Alliance said the district is already rebounding. Since May, he said, the number of pedestrians counted in some places has grown from 150,000 per day to as many as 250,000 — still far below the roughly 365,000 people who tramped through the grid of streets before the pandemic.

“Between the return of Broadway, the return of international tourists,” Harris said, “we really expect to be at those pre-pandemic numbers sooner than most people predict.”

Those returning visitors included people like Marina Galan, who soaked in Times Square from the bleachers under a cascade of lights. She and her friends flew to New York from Madrid on the first day US borders opened to vaccinated tourists.

“When you come back to New York, this is what you want to see,” she said. “Everything is kind of back to normal.”

Her friend Pablo Leon said he was eager to return. The group took a risk last March when they bought tickets for the Broadway musical Hadestown, despite being uncertain about when they’d be allowed to travel to the United States.

“That was the true gamble because we bought the tickets for tonight, without any knowledge if we were going to be able to come here,” Leon said.

NYC & Company, the city’s tourism agency, is spending millions of dollars overseas to draw tourists back. It projects 2.8 million foreign visitors by the end of the year, a sliver of the 13.5 million who visited in 2019. With borders reopened, officials hope the number of visitors will steadily rise over the next few years and again reach record levels within the next four years.

“We’re hoping to do everything we can to accelerate that timeline,” said Chris Heywood, the agency’s executive vice president.

The campaign is initially focused on Canada, Mexico, Brazil, South Korea and parts of Europe, but will likely expand into other countries — possibly into China, a particularly lucrative market because Chinese visitors significantly outspend other nationalities.

Chinese visitors, however, may decide to stay put for now because of quarantining requirements back home — at least two weeks when returning from an overseas trip.

“Daytrips and domestic tourists are helping Broadway, museums and restaurants, but New York can’t reach our pre-pandemic level of visitors until international tourism returns in full,” New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said. “Reopening America’s borders is a big help, but other factors, beyond our control, make it hard to see when we’ll get back to the numbers we had before the world shut down.”

The return of annual traditions like New York City's big Thanksgiving parade and the Times Square New Year's Eve celebration could attract more visitors.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has also announced a $450 million initiative to help revitalize the tourism industry.

On a recent day, William Brownstein hawked comedy club tickets to passersby who might now be ready to laugh off the months of grim news.

“With all the crazy things going on” — with Republicans and Democrats, with pro- and anti-vaccine viewpoints — “you got to laugh about it,” said Brownstein, who returned from his unplanned hiatus in May, soon after comedy clubs were allowed to reopen.

“I think as time progresses, we will see a lot more people come,” he predicted. “It’s just going to take a little time, but they will be back like they were before.”



Movie Review: 'Eddington' Is a Satire About Our Broken Brains That Might Re-Break Your Brain

 This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)
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Movie Review: 'Eddington' Is a Satire About Our Broken Brains That Might Re-Break Your Brain

 This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)
This image released by A24 shows Joaquin Phoenix, left, and Pedro Pascal in a scene from "Eddington." (A24 via AP)

You might need to lie down for a bit after "Eddington." Preferably in a dark room with no screens and no talking. "Eddington," Ari Aster's latest nightmare vision, is sure to divide but there is one thing I think everyone will be able to agree on: It is an experience that will leave you asking "WHAT?" The movie opens on the aggravated ramblings of an unhoused man and doesn't get much more coherent from there. Approach with caution.

We talk a lot about movies as an escape from the stresses of the world. "Eddington," in which a small, fictional town in New Mexico becomes a microcosm of life in the misinformation age, and more specifically during the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, is very much the opposite of that. It is an anti-escapist symphony of masking debates, conspiracy theories, YouTube prophets, TikTok trends and third-rail topics in which no side is spared. Most everyone looks insane and ridiculous by the end, from the white teenage girl (Amélie Hoeferle) telling a Black cop (Michael Ward) to join the movement, to the grammatical errors of the truthers, as the town spirals into chaos and gruesome violence.

Joaquin Phoenix plays the town sheriff, a soft-spoken wife guy named Joe Cross, who we meet out in the desert one night watching YouTube videos about how to convince your wife to have a baby. He's interrupted by cops from the neighboring town, who demand he put on a mask since he's technically crossed the border.

It is May 2020, and everyone is a little on edge. Joe, frustrated by the hysterical commitment to mandates from nowhere, finds himself the unofficial spokesperson for the right to go unmasked. He pits himself against the slick local mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who is up for reelection, in the pocket of big tech and ready to exploit his single fatherhood for political gain. At home, Joe's mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell) spends all day consuming internet conspiracy theories, while his wife Louise (a criminally underused Emma Stone) works on crafts and nurses unspoken traumas.

Joe's eagerness to take on Ted isn't just about masking. Years ago, Ted dated his now-wife, a story that will be twisted into rape and grooming accusations. Caricatures and stereotypes are everywhere in "Eddington," but in this world it feels like the women are especially underwritten - they are kooks, victims, zealots and the ones who push fragile men to the brink. But in "Eddington," all the conspiracies are real and ordinary people are all susceptible to the madness.

In fact, insanity is just an inevitability no matter how well-intentioned one starts out, whether that's the woke-curious teen rattled by rejection, or the loyal deputy Guy (Luke Grimes) who is suddenly more than happy to accuse a colleague of murder. Louise will also be swayed by a floppy-haired internet guru, a cult-like leader played with perfect swagger by Austin Butler.

The problem with an anarchic satire like "Eddington," in theaters Friday, is that any criticism could easily be dismissed with a "that's the point" counterargument. And yet there is very little to be learned in this silo of provocations that, like all Aster movies, escalates until the movie is over.

There are moments of humor and wit, too, as well as expertly built tension and release. "Eddington" is not incompetently done or unwatchable (the cast and the director kind of guarantee that); it just doesn't feel a whole of anything other than a cinematic expression of broken brains.

Five years after we just went through (at least a lot of) this, "Eddington" somehow seems both too late and too soon, especially when it offers so little wisdom or insight beyond a vision of hopelessness. I wonder what world Aster thought he'd be releasing this film into. Maybe one that was better, not cosmically worse.

It's possible "Eddington" will age well. Perhaps it's the kind of movie that future Gen Alpha cinephiles will point to as being ahead of its time, a work that was woefully misunderstood by head-in-the-sand critics who didn't see that it was 2025's answer to the prescient paranoia cinema of the 1970s.

Not to sound like the studio boss in "Sullivan's Travels," trying to get the filmmaker with big issues on the mind to make a dumb comedy, but right now, "Eddington" feels like the last thing any of us need.