Weather: Spotty showers and windy, with gusts up to 40 miles per hour. High around 60.
Alternate-side parking: Suspended through May 12. Meters are in effect.
De Blasio defends his handling of a crowded Hasidic funeral.
Mayor Bill de Blasio lashed out at Hasidic residents of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood late Tuesday after personally overseeing the police’s dispersal of a crowd that had gathered for the funeral of a rabbi who died of the coronavirus.
Mr. de Blasio warned “the Jewish community, and all communities” on Twitter that violations of social-distancing rules could lead to summonses or arrests. Dermot F. Shea, the police commissioner, said 12 summonses had been issued in the incident on Tuesday, including four for refusal to disperse.
At his briefing on Wednesday, the mayor defended his handling of the funeral and his use of the phrase “Jewish community” when he criticized the mourners.
“Members of the Jewish community were putting each other in danger,” he said. “They were putting our police officers in danger.”
Mr. de Blasio said the funeral, for Rabbi Chaim Mertz, was “by far the largest gathering in any community of New York City of any kind that I had heard of or seen directly or on video since the beginning of this crisis, and it’s just not allowable.”
[A Hasidic funeral is jammed by 2,500 mourners, creating a flash point for de Blasio.]
Transit plan addresses the issue of homeless people on the subway.
After days of public squabbling over the problem of homeless people taking shelter on New York City’s subway during the pandemic, transit officials on Wednesday announced new rules meant to address the issue.
Riders will not be allowed to remain in a station for more than an hour, and large wheeled carts, like shopping carts, are banned from the system, officials said.
As long as the public health emergency continues, riders will also not be allowed to remain on a train or platform after an announcement that a train is being taken out of service.
“I want to be clear the status quo has been completely unacceptable,” said Sarah Feinberg, the interim president of New York City Transit, which operates the subway and buses. “It’s my job to make sure everyone who rides our system feels safe and secure, and that our work force feels safe and secure.”
With the subway carrying fewer than 10 percent of its usual riders and running fewer trains, the number of homeless people who are effectively living on the subway has come into sharper focus in the past two months.
[Coronavirus in New York: A map and the case count.]
Daily deaths in New York held steady at 330.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo reported on Wednesday that 330 more people had died of the coronavirus in New York.
The one-day death toll was less than half of those the state was recording earlier in April, when there were nearly 800 virus-related deaths a day. But the fatality figures have remained stubbornly steady this week, with 337 deaths reported on Monday and 335 reported on Tuesday.
Mr. Cuomo also said the number of virus patients newly admitted to hospitals had risen for the first time in 12 days, if only slightly. “That is not good news,” he said.
Together Apart? How About Totally Losing It?
Want more news? Check out our full coverage.
The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.
What we’re reading
A man was fatally struck by a bus while biking in Brooklyn, making him the second cyclist killed in the city this year. [Gothamist]
He has worked in city restaurants for 25 years. “Are people going to come back?” [Grub Street]
A Brooklyn man was accused of stealing stimulus checks out of mailboxes. [NBC New York]
A Times virtual event: ‘Charity, Spirituality and Crisis’
How can faith help New Yorkers face the challenges of the coronavirus? How do people manage their desire to help others while maintaining their own safety?
At 4 p.m. today, join Ginia Bellafante, the writer of the Big City column in The Times, for an audio call with Father John Merz, an Episcopal priest in Brooklyn. Father Merz will draw on his disaster relief experience during Hurricane Sandy to share practical lessons on doing charitable work in times of crisis. He will also offer spiritual advice for helping loved ones.
R.S.V.P. here. You may submit questions at any time during the call.
And finally: City that never sleeps is sleeping in
The Times’s Henry Fountain writes:
The coronavirus pandemic has transformed the ebb and flow of daily life in countless ways. Americans are comfort-eating, cringe-watching and using their phones for actual voice-calling. And, in New York City, people are also staying under the covers a little bit longer.
That is just one of several changes captured by researchers studying electricity use in hundreds of Manhattan apartments before and after the city was locked down in March. People are using up to 25 percent more energy during the daytime as they work or go to school remotely, or cook or binge-watch more.
They even seem to be burning the midnight oil a little more. Weekdays are becoming more like weekends.
“You can actually see in the electricity data that people are home much more,” said Christoph Meinrenken, a physicist and associate research scientist at the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
The data comes from a study set up two years ago by Dr. Meinrenken and his colleagues that uses special electric meters installed in about 400 apartments to provide information on energy use every few seconds.
On normal weekdays, there is usually a quick ramp-up in electricity use from about 6 a.m. to 7:30. But now, Dr. Meinrenken said, with no commute to work or no need to get children ready for school, or both, the ramp-up is delayed. “People just seem to get up later,” he said.
On weekends, the start of the morning ramp-up is similar to that of pre-lockdown days. But daytime energy use is still higher than before.
It’s Thursday — catch some zzz’s.
Metropolitan Diary: Night at the opera
Dear Diary:
I was a junior in college, and I was on my way to a Wednesday evening performance of “Tosca” at the Metropolitan Opera.
I got off the subway at 66th Street, fixed my bow tie and checked my watch. Having some time before the performance was to begin, I decided to stop for a coffee.
As I waited to order, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. Glancing around, I noticed a man with frizzy gray hair staring at me while shaking his head disapprovingly.
My natural reaction was to look away and pretend that we hadn’t made eye contact.
As I was leaving, the man with the frizzy hair approached me.
“A bow tie?” he said. “On a Wednesday night?”
— David Daniel
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