Gauging Our Return to Office and the Subways, One Tip at a Time

(NYT) It has been over a year since buskers, and their music, returned underground, and their slightly fuller tip jars and instrument cases suggest things may be looking up. Subway ridership hit a pandemic-era record on Oct. 27, with close to 3.9 million people — the most on a single day since the pandemic struck, but still just 67.5 percent of a comparable prepandemic day. Now some of the artists who perform underground each day — playing steel drums and Chinese erhus, singing operatic arias, squeezing accordions and coaxing ethereal sounds from musical saws — are seeing the difference in their tip jars and expectantly open instrument cases.