New York is looking for a home. Who are the protagonists of the post-pandemic rebirth

In pre-Covid New York, if you mentioned the name “Nathan” almost everyone associated it with a hot dog. Thanks to Nathan Handwerker, a Polish Jew who immigrated to the United States as a child, who in 1916 had opened a kiosk on Coney Island that had become the temple of sandwiches with the sausage symbol of America. “Nathan’s” is still there, amidst the roller coasters and attractions of Coney Island’s permanent amusement park. Indeed, now the kiosk overlooking the beach at the south end of Brooklyn is part of a global chain that bears the same name, present in 198 cities in twenty countries and with 13,000 employees. But if you say “Nathan” in Manhattan these days, many think of another Jewish immigrant, one who arrived from the Ukraine when he was fourteen, now a successful 63-year-old businessman. Why After the Covid years, New York needs to be reinvented again, for the umpteenth time in its history. And to do that, the person everyone is looking for is Nathan Berman.