INDOOR POOLS CAN OPEN AT 33 PERCENT
The mayor announced that indoor pools can now reopen at 33 percent as of Sept. 30, and the director of Asphalt Green, Maggy Siegel, told Gothamist that her members can expect to be swimming in a “sea of disinfectant.” “You should see the emails we have,” she said. “Nobody understood why the indoor pool couldn’t open sooner.” Pools have the benefit of chlorine and bromine that deactivate the virus. “You’re swimming in a sea of disinfectant. I think it’s the safest place on earth,” Siegel said.

COPS DRAW GUNS ON PROTESTORS
A couple residents caught this out their living room windows: Gothamist reports that the (small scale) march held last week calling for the abolition of ICE “hadn’t gone more than a few blocks through Lower Manhattan on Thursday afternoon when NYPD officers ran into the crowd, tackling marchers to the ground, and taking them into custody. Fewer than 100 people had set off around 5 p.m. from Foley Square, next to the federal building that holds the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office. During a demonstration against ICE the previous day, motivated in part by reporting that the agency is performing non-consensual hysterectomies of women in its custody, protesters had entered the federal building, where a security officer drew a gun on them.”

GROUND ZERO WORKERS HIT HARDER WITH COVID-19
The Journal reports that the roughly 400,000 New Yorkers—first responders, residents, workers, students and others— that were exposed to the 9/11 dust-and-debris cloud not only suffer from dozens of medical conditions, ranging from asthma to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancers, but those underlying conditions are now made worse by Covid-19. “Recent data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which tracks the long-term health of more than 86,000 Sept. 11 responders and survivors, show there have been more than 1,400 confirmed cases of Covid-19 with nearly 200 hospitalizations and 44 deaths. Those numbers only reflect a sample of the total population in the program.”

A CRITIC’S EYE ON SOHO GRAFFITI
The Times offers a critic’s tour of the art in Soho that emerged during the pandemic and the protests.