The Briefly for April 1, 2020 – The "Biggest Jerk in New York City" Edition

Today - Low: 40˚ High: 52˚

Partly cloudy throughout the day.

Praise of the calming ritual of the cocktail hour, and a recipe for a gin and tonic. (Adam Platt for Grub Street) "Despite the logistical isolation and the very real physical distress, however, there were moments of connection that kept me from feeling truly alone." -How Kelli Dunham fell ill to COVID-19 and lived to tell about it. (Kelli Dunham for HuffPost) How to safely order restaurant delivery and takeout. (Bao Ong for Time Out) The MTA is struggling to maintain a full staff, as 2,200 subway and bus workers are in quarantine. Even if they wanted to expand service to reduce congestion, they couldn't. (Mark Hallum for amNewYork Metro) Meet Baruch Feldheim, a complete asshole. Baruch faces five years in prison and fines of up to $350,000 for price-gouging N95 masks and personal protective gear. When the FBI came to arrest him, he claimed to have novel coronavirus and tried to cough on them. (Sophia Chang for Gothamist) Photos: "But the thoroughfares have been abandoned. The energy that once crackled along the concrete has eased. The throngs of tourists, the briskly striding commuters, the honking drivers have mostly skittered away." This city was not meant to be empty. (Corina Knoll and photographers Bryan Derballa, Mark Abramson, Diana Zeyneb Alhindawi, Gabriela Bhaskar, Marian Carrasquero, Juan Arredondo, Jonah Markowitz, Stephen Speranza, Gareth Smit, Sarah Blesener, Victor J. Blue, Jeenah Moon, Desiree Rios, Jose A. Alvarado Jr., and Ryan Christopher Jones for NY Times) Looking at Dr. Anthony Fauci's Brooklyn roots. (Jessica Parks for Brooklyn Paper) The city is extending its car-free pilot program through Sunday but won't expand the number of streets closed off to vehicular traffic. (Gersh Kuntzman for Streetsblog) St. Patrick's Cathedral will be closed off to the public on Easter and Palm Sunday, but you can catch them both on WPIX and on YouTube. (Robert Pozarycki for amNewYork Metro) The Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows is going to be converted to a temporary 350-bed medical facility. The original plan was to house non-COVID-19 patients, but the final plans haven't been made. (Joe Pantorno for amNewYork Metro) Photos: The Central Park COVID-19 field hospital. (Michelle Young for Untapped New York) Job searching is tough enough without a global pandemic. Here are a few things to do to help your search. (Mindy Stern for amNewYork Metro) It's a seven-course $600 dinner party, but you have to cook it yourself. This is what fine dining looks like in 2020. (Erika Adams for Eater) New York state's restaurants lost nearly $2 billion in revenue in the first 22 days of March. (Tanay Warerkar for Eater) This pandemic may be troubling us humans, but this expectant mother goose in the Gowanus Canal is living her best life. (Pardon Me for Asking) When you go to the grocery store or order food, please remember that the people working to provide you that food wants to be infected just as little as you do. (Daniela Galarza for Grub Street) Photos: A dramatic black-and-white Carroll Gardens, bereft of its usual life. (Katia Kelly for Pardon Me for Asking) Actor and comedian Paul Scheer (The League, Veep) on his quarantine diet. (Paul Scheer for Grub Street) An interview with Deborah Feldman, the subject of Netflix mini-series and New York Times bestseller ‘Unorthodox,’ who left her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community for a new life in Berlin. (Marisa Mazria-Katz for NY Times) Video: The NYPD is using unmanned drones to monitor physical distancing, or the lack thereof. (Ben Yakas for Gothamist) 10 Bronx restaurants to take out from during COVID-19. (Alex Mitchell for Bronx Times) What Time Out's editors are reading while staying physically distant. (Will Gleason for Time Out) RIP Michael Sorkin and William Helmreich, two of the city's most prolific walkers. Helmreich was the author of The New York Nobody Knows walked 6,000 miles in an ongoing effort to walk every street in New York and Sorkin was the author of Twenty Minutes in Manhattan, which detailed a walk from Greenwich Village to Tribeca. Both taken by COVID-19. (Jake Bittle for Curbed) Parks@Home is here to bring the city's parks to you. The new series features virtual walks in the park with Urban Park Rangers. (Jamie DeJesus for The Brooklyn Home Reporter) The state hired more than 700 additional people to answer unemployment-related phone calls, with hundreds more being hired and trained, and they're still having trouble keeping up with the demand. (Ryan Sutton for Eater) The city shut down ten playgrounds throughout all five boroughs, because, as a city, we remain poor at physical distancing. The city's Human Rights Commission is investigating the firing of Chris Smalls, the Amazon worker who organized a strike outside of the company's Staten Island facility on Monday. (Sydney Pereira for Gothamist) The City University of New York is scrambling to distribute as many as 30,000 computers to students, after delaying online classes designed to keep coursework going after coronavirus-prompted campus shutdowns. (Gabriel Sandoval for The City) Photos: Inside Woodhaven's 95-year-old Schmidt’s Candy, making handmade candies for Eater. (James and Karla Murray for 6sqft) The MoMA is offering free online art courses to help you finally answer the question "is this art?" (Howard Halle for Time Out) Nine tips on how to create the quintessential NYC balcony garden. (Shaye Weaver for Time Out) Thanks to Micah Eames for today's featured photo from Crown Heights!