On a normal day, Ikeem Jones says there are a dozen or more Showtime crews in the Queens Plaza subway station, hopping on and off the E, F, and R trains to dance for commuters. But on Thursday, as the coronavirus pandemic gripped New York City, the station was all but abandoned: only Jones and one of his friends, Tyke Turner, had taken the trouble to come out and dance that afternoon.
After a few rides back and forth between Queens Plaza and Forest Hills, it was easy to see why: even at 2 p.m., usually the best hour for subway dancing, there were hardly any people on the trains. Their routine was just as enthusiastic as ever, but in most cars they were performing for empty benches; when they reached out for fist and elbow bumps, many straphangers visibly shied away. In two round trips, Jones and Turner made two dollars between them.
“It’s simple,” Jones told me. “No people, no money. The virus has put the city that never sleeps to rest.”
“It’s been trash,” Turner agreed. “Just horrible. Everybody’s out of it, they’re not on the trains, and when they are, the fear is closing them off to us.”
As COVID-19 has spread through New York, huge sections of the city’s economy have shut down: the city has closed the school system and restricted the operations of restaurants and bars to take-out only. And as of this Sunday, 100 percent of the non-essential workforce must work from home, as part of Governor Andrew Cuomo's NYS on PAUSE plan, with mass transit running to serve essential workers. Even prior to this, there has been a historic decline in subway ridership over the past weeks, with millions fewer people riding the trains this week compared to the same time last year.
Jones, Turner, and other subway performers like them earn their living by appealing to New Yorkers’ public spirit and sense of community. With empty train cars, many dances have been deprived of their most reliable source of income, not to mention an outlet for their creativity; Jones, a veteran dancer and pioneer of the “litefeet” style, says he’s never seen the trains this bad.
“Things first started to feel weird when they locked down China,” said Jones, referring to the Hubei province lockdown that began in late January. “Then when it hit more places it started to feel weirder,” he said, describing the atmosphere in some subway cars as “pure fear.” He and Turner, who have both been dancing for at least ten years, agreed they’ve never seen the subways this empty.
“The musicians, the singers, they aren’t even coming out anymore,” said Turner.
Jones has two kids, ages 1 and 4, who have been sent home from daycare and preschool, which has left him with fewer hours to ride the trains, not to mention with less energy. His family is mostly outside of the city, but his mother works for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, where employees were recently sent home after one was tested for the virus. After swinging on subway poles for years, though, he and Turner say they aren’t worried about coming down with it themselves.
Jones makes a lot of his income through other dance gigs and by teaching dance classes online, so he can still afford to get on the train for an hour or so each day. For other dancers, though, the drop in subway ridership has meant they have to “move on to the next hustle.” Jones had planned to meet at least two other dancers that day in Queens Plaza, but one opted to stay at home with his mother and the other bailed at the last minute, saying he needed to find some other, more reliable way to make money.
“Some have probably saved up from doing it,” he said, “but some just make it day by day, so it’ll definitely hurt us.” Average daily donations, he estimated, had fallen by about half, such that now with few hours’ work he can’t even count on making $50.
“Any time there’s a terrorist threat or an economic problem, it gets harder to make money,” said Turner. “But this is way worse.” Still, he said, “hopefully it’ll be two weeks, three weeks, and it’ll get back to normal, it always does. If you let the energy affect you then you won’t be smiling, you won’t be entertaining people, you won’t be making money.”
As he finished his sentence, a fuller-than-usual E Train arrived on the opposite platform. “Hold on,” he said, “I gotta go get that one,” and took off running up the stairs.
