I will send out bookplates for any book buyer with this. If you have any questions you can use the q a function at the bottom. Your screen and bill will take your questions at the end of the event. Let me introduce roz and bill. Roz chast grew up in brooklyn. Her cartoons began appearing in the new york in 1978 where she ascends publish more than 1000 and she wrote and illustrated the number one New York Times bestseller can we talk about something more pleasant, National Book critics circle award and a finalist for the National Book award. What i hate from a to z and her cartoon selections the party after you left and the reason everything. Bill hayes is the author of insomniac city among other books, and a forthcoming history of exercise to be published by bloomsbury. He is a recipient of a guggenheim fellowship in nonfiction and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. His collection of his street photography had new york breaks your heart was published by bloomsburg. He has completed a screenplay for insomniac city and he is also a coeditor of oliver sacks posthumous books of new york. Ive painted over. Thank you. Hi, billy. Hey, roz. Hi, everyone. Welcome. Hi everybody. Its great to see you, billy. Very excited about this. We are here to talk about your upcoming book, how we live now, and we certainly do. I guess i want to stop asking you, when did you first realize start by asking this wasnt just like another news story about some virus but it was actually something that was going to change the way we all live . Probably towards the very end of february, beginning of march as i read about it in asian and europe, and just felt like it was almost like a tsunami approaching our shores. And sure enough by the first week of march at that hit the u. S. Im actually surprised in a way because, its actually kind a a great because i think for me i was very naive, you know. There were so many stories i hear on the news about of virus here, a disease here, and i dont know, like the mosquito thing. I just never really thought, i never took it seriously. I never thought there would be lord knows why, you know, lies a about it but it never thought there would be an Ebola Outbreak in the united states. I never gave much thought to the mosquito west nile virus, any of that. I was much later to realizing the seriousness of it, and that it was here. Well, how can one ever imagine what this would become . Yes, i sort of felt like it was coming and its going to be serious, and perhaps because i lived through the aids pandemic in the 1980s, i lived in San Francisco in 1985 and experience that entire ending of which of course has been devastating and continues to this day. There still is not an aids vaccine. So many people around the world have died of aids. I think, i remember how in the very early days it spread via just basic air travel, International Air travel. But, of course, i never could have imagined it would become the Global Pandemic it is become and that we would be an lockdown and stayed home, and that our lives were changed virtually overnight. The thing with aids, you and i talked about this a little bit, is that they figured out how more or less how it was spread. Not at the beginning because in the beginning there is so much paranoia, like could you get it from sharing food with somebody . But here we still dont even really know with this. We know its respiratory but do remember at the beginning when they talked about washington groceries and stuff . Yeah, yeah. Its amazing how much has happened in the past explants, isnt . Yes, and also how little. And also how little, true. Its a very, very i think we are all sort of feeling that, i remember something one of my kids said in may. He said in talking about how sort of shrunken our lives have all become, like we dont travel, we dont eat out the way we used to hear we dont go into stores. And this was back a couple of months, but going to the Grocery Store was like you i really need that . Or maybe i wont go to the grocery picky set its like we all got old at the same time. Thats really a good way to put it. Yeah, yeah. In some ways i think thats what i try to capture in this book, how our lives changed virtually overnight in ways we never could have imagined. For me to try to capture in real time what it has been like. Yes. I wanted to ask. You kept a journal, right . I do, at the behest of my late partner oliver sacks, god bless him, who really when i first met him in person i wasnt really writing much in those days and he said you must keep a journal. I followed his advice and started a journal in 2009. I still keep it, maybe not as judgment or have gone through stages but i do keep a very close to going defendant and lots of material from the book came directly from those journals. Are you still keeping it . Sure, yes. Still making notes. Thats how this book started just with notes from a journal, things us noticing, things ive hearing or not hearing, how our lives are changing so. At what point did you realize this might become a book . Well, i have to give credit to my editor nancy miller whos also your editor at our friend whom we share an amazing, brilliant editor nancy miller. Believe me, i had no idea that a write a book about the pandemic in 2020. And, in fact, at the end of january i completed a draft of a different book, a very different books on history of exercise called sweat, which had been working on for years. I sent that into nancy at the end of january, i also in finish this screenplay for insomniac city so i i thought i would st back for a few months and relax. This would be the year of my book on the history of exercise. But not long into the pandemic after his the u. S. , a be the second week in march or so i was posting some things on facebook, little vignettes about things ii sync my neighborhood rmi bookstore. As you know i was chief photographer, so posting photos. Nancy arrange for a face timing and i thought it it would be a meeting about talking about this of the book, sweat. And is that she said what would you think of writing a book and photographing a short book about the pandemic . I was sort of taken aback, but i immediately said yeah, yeah, that is a great idea. In retrospect it feels like a great gift. It was a gift to have this book to her tour especially in those early days when we were in lockdown, and i live alone and it kept me from climbing the walls. Wow, thats fast for a book. I know you and i do books also, and that is fast. And its wonderful, wonderful book. I love especially the way it combines pictures and words, and that to me is one of the reason why i love cartoons and while of graphic novels and also what ie this book so much because there isnt this wonderful its not just images. Theres like a story, whole stories here and its not just separate images and thin descriptions of what you were seeing. Its the images that play alongside this narrative, very moving in a way. Can you talk and a little bit t looking out your window . Sure. I mean, the cover of the book shows eighth avenue which is right up there. I would turn the computer monitor if i could, completely empty. I think i took the photo april 1. This is a very, very spooky and unusual site. Because what i was using qac eighth avenue clogged with traffic. In fact, i found a very beautiful. I would look out at lets at 6 00 nca eight avenue just a sea of red lights of brake lights in traffic lights, just hear from central park. The first photographs are window one of the first photographs is a eighth avenue december 2019. A few pages later is followed by eight avenue completely empty. The wrap the book theres this sort of before and after, photos and stories of new york before the pandemic and after, and so those two photos sidebyside really tell that story. I think photos that tell stories as well as books. Absolutely do. Thats why for me they appeal so much because they do tell stories. All of your photos tell stories. A lot of them tell stories of another thing you and i have them, which is our love of this amazing city, new york. There are people who i think are more, they move around and about the places they are in but they dont, they dont have that extreme love for a place. And for me new york is this sort of magical place. I moved out of the city when i had my second kid and we raised our family out in Public Schools and law and usual, and also the lack of the funds to bring up to kids in the city. But every time i came into the city can every time i cut into Grand Central it was like, thank god, you know, i can take off this hat. I can take off this little suburban hat and just be myself. You were there throughout this whole thing. Another thing people talk a lot about anything to mention in your book was the sound, how quiet it was in march and april. I just talked about seeing eighth avenue completely emptied out at rush hour what would normally be rush hour. But just as theory but in a certain way kind of beautiful south quiet it became. So quiet i could hear birds singing. Instead of traffic in horns honking and people. I could hear birds singing. I could hear a single voice on the street. I could hear some at the gas station kitty corner from me talking on a cell phone. So that was extraordinary. Its been a tragic and frightening time but there have been moments of real beauty and grace. That is also what i tried to capture in the book. You did. Seen pictures of the city empty, seeing the city from outside his first couple of months where i didnt come in at all, but it was really very scary. Your photos also of the subway. I mean, did you take the subway at all and when did you take it and what was that like . I remember so clearly the last time i took the subway which was before the lockdown, march 15, friday and had to go pick up some prints. I have my photos printed at a fine arts printer in Long Island City but its a really nice scenery subway ride on the e train. But by that time things are getting spooky. I thought about taking a taxi or an uber and i thought it such a quick subway ride. But the mood inside the car was unlike any ive ever experienced. There was this tension, and keep in mind this is before people were Wearing Masks. But there was a sense that everyone wanted to keep away from one another. I remember feeling glad when i got back home. And then i i didnt take the subway again until, gosh, maybe late june or something. It was a while. But i did good debt into the subway stations and into trains just to take photos. That was probably one of the stooges things ive ever done because i went deliberately at rush hour when the subway stations would be, normally be so packed and trains would be so packed, and they were just empty. Thats so scary. Those with the images those were the images that got me so much when i would be watching on tv or whatever, pictures of the city in march and april, especially in april. It would be like this is the train at rush hour, and they would be like nobody on it. Right. It was really creepy. In fact, do you want to look at some photos . Yeah, i would love to. Im going to play a little slide show. Its real quick. Bear with me. At there we go. Yeah, those before and after pictures of eighth avenue, thats amazing. And there was one subway shop there in the book itself theres a shot into an l train, and as you know the l train especially a rush hour can be so packed. It goes from here to brooklyn and back. I think there might have been three people in the entire line of a train that was idling. I went in and it took a bunch of pictures really fast. I didnt really want to go on the ride, and ducked back out. I did the subway photos over a couple of weekends, and we spent hinges picked the very best ones for the book. Well, they are wonderful. Its funny, i think the subway is probably pretty safe right now. We talk about that the other night. You and i had dinner on the upper west side, dinner outdoors and distanced. Its one of the very few upsides to the soul then pandemic is ts Outdoor Dining during the summer. Summer. We both talked about how the subway feels very safe. Ive been writing and it went this past and socially distanced and it has ever been cleaner. I do feel that the subway is not where im going to get sick. But i wonder about come what ive heard from people is that midtown is still pretty empty because people havent got to work. Right. Do you have any feelings about, or any intuition about how this will play out . Do you think people will come back to offices . You know, its hard to know and things have changed so quickly. That question really depends upon in some ways depends upon treatment and a vaccine. And yet at the same time it has been amazing to see how new yorkers have adapted very quickly to this new normal, whether any book store or restaurant or a shop. Have you seen any light things, like during, that it just inexplicably made you just we be . We be. Sure. One thought that comes to mind is there was that moment, i write about in the book when theres a headline in the New York Times that said Something Like that was the time to make your own facemask. Because before that authorities were sort of hedging and saying no, only for from frontline workers, dont hoard them. Dont wear a facemask. Now theyre saying what a facemask and theres all these videos about to make a facemask. I couldnt find a bandanna scarf or Something Like that. [laughing] so i improvised and first i tried a vacuum cleaner bag. [laughing] knew, i hope. Yeah, clean, a new one. [laughing] it was so thick i couldnt breathe. And then i found this in a drawer this morning. This is like going into my time capsule but i made a facemask out of a cloth napkin with shoelaces. That has a very that is a lot of connotations to me. Like what . Like what . When i see that i think of, like, pioneer women and sanitary napkins. [laughing] its just not good. Its just not good at all. It might have worked better with a cloth napkin. Not a touching moment. Like a weird touching or can be something that is inexplicably, like reached you. Ill tell you what happened to me. In march, mustve been about the third week in march and i was already feeling very fragile about all of this. I started thinking about, this will sound insane, not papaya king, not mr. Papaya. One of those like, its a papaya king like place at the corner of 72nd grace papaya, thats it, grace papaya on 72nd and broadway. Probably like once a year i buy a hot dog dare come if that. Its not like i always go to grace papaya. No. You know, but it has always been there. Its a new york institution. I new york institution. It was there in 1978 when he moved into my apartment, when i moved back parttime to the city come back to the upper west side. It was still there. It just made me happy for some reason to see it. I started to sort of imagine that is going to go out of business, and i got like hysterical weeping or collect thousands of people die from coronavirus, no. Grace papaya disappearing . Thats what made me cry. It was like hysterical crying. It was like for me it symbolized what new york was going to lose and what would not come back. Im happy to say that grace papaya is doing very well. Checked that one. I know, i know, im telling you, who knows . Check that were off my list. I i think that something i tried to caption is this sort of before and after and what we have lost probably. Some cases we have probably lost. Hopefully aspects of new york will come back, but as you read the book that are recollections about subway rides or experiences in crowded bars or in restaurants. For a taxi ride, you know . Yeah. All the things we did without really thinking, and it does seem like, i mean, do you think of it is like the before times kind of, like before corona, bc . I think so. I do think new york will come back. There is no place like new york and new yorkers, for sure, but it will be a different city but it will come back in a different way. Yeah, yeah. I worry about some places that scene, and its one of the things i love so much about new york which was going down some weird sidestreet in midtown and running into some shoe store that made orthopedic shoes, and like everything in the window was covered with dust but they still were operational and they had this would like polio shoes and stuff. I wonder, ical is that store going to come back . You know, it wont come it wont. One of the things that makes new york so special is this sort of layering. You have this super deluxe condo or very freshfaced store for some kind of cosmetic youve never heard of, next to the orthopedic shoe store that is been there since, i dont know what, and its all mashed together and all different eras and a store that just sells doilies from the 1950s, doily supplies, whatever. Its almost time to take some q a if you are ready. Carl asks, what with a typical journal entry be . For me, a typical journal entry might be, well, a couple of things. It might be a story of an encounter i had on the street. In fact, there are a lot of those in the book. Its part of my practice just to, even before the pandemic, just to go for a walk, open myself up to chance really with all the green lights with no destination in mind. If the light is green i will go that way, or i could go that way with my camera and see what happens, see who i meet. So in the course of working on this book, for example, one day meeting three very young doctors from nyu who were sitting on the stoop. This was early in the pandemic, having dinner and drinks on their stoop. It was at a moment where no one else was doing Something Like that. So of course i do stop and say hey, guys, can i take your photo . They said sure. We started talking. It turned out all three of them had had coronavirus early in the pandemic, like in january and recovered quickly. And told me that almost everyone in the department at nyu had gotten sick, that it just blowing through their department. They did know at the time it was covid19. They just thought it was a terrible flu. [laughing] that was the first time i heard. It was really good to hear a story about people recovered instead of about death, and their experience of it, what it was like. I came home and i wrote down that story, that encounter including a dialogue ahead with these young men and i take a photo of them as well. Other times a journal entry might just be some integral part i have sitting here in this apartment. I remember lying on the couch one day and just realizing how very, very, very quiet it was and that i could hear a bird singing. That just struck me and usually my journal entry start with jotting on a notepad, and then i go to the computer version of it. This new york journal which i started in 2009 must be Something Like,