To many New Yorkers, there is a growing sense that the city’s inching back to normal - which includes the return of the summer hustle. New York’s boldest entrepreneurs hawk illicit cocktails on the beach, blow big bubbles at children in the parks for tips, and paddle couples in a Venice-style gondola on Central Park Lake.
Last summer the pandemic devastated the city’s economy, closing thousands of businesses and eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs. Less than a quarter of the city's usual amount of summer tourists visited NY but this year the estimation is much higher. Will the success of the summer hustlers be an indicator of how quickly the city's more established small businesses might rebound?