On Wednesday, 30 days after the attack on the World Trade Centre which shocked and traumatised New York, the Yankees and the Oakland As met at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx for an American League divisional play-off game. It was the first big baseball game in the city since before September 11th.
Fans arriving at the stadium were subjected to random security checks. They found police and National Guard troops with bomb-sniffing dogs ringing the sports arena. They were not allowed to bring in backpacks or beer coolers. The usual overhead advertising blimps were banished.
This is the reality of New York today. The city is on edge, worried about what comes next. And even that was before the latest anthrax scare yesterday.
It is still grieving for the 5,245 people who perished beneath the rubbble of the majestic twin towers, still in mourning for the towers themselves, untimely ripped from the Manhattan skyline. The strain is etched on the faces of subway travellers reading stories every day in the city newspapers of the individual human tragedies.
Pedestrians are drawn to street grottos to gaze at the photographs of the missing. The pictures are fading now, all hope of finding them alive gone.
But the Yankee Stadium game on Wednesday evening marked a turning point. Some 56,697 baseball fans - a sellout crowd - flocked to the Bronx ground to cheer on the local team, despite the apprehension about the possibility of a terrorist atack in a crowded place.
New Yorkers are coming out of their shock, beginning to resume their full lives after a lethargic period when many felt too numb to go to sporting events, even if they were not cancelled, and when some gave up their keep-fit routines, abandoned diets or took up smoking to cope with the stress.
The city has undergone a metamorphosis. People said before that New York was not America, rather it was more of an ethnic melting pot, a place with attitude where four out of 10 people are foreign born and only the fittest, most driven and talented could thrive.
Throughout the United States now, it has come instead to symbolise national defiance and heroism under murderous assault. American flags are as common in New York streets today as in any red-white-and-blue mid-western town.
At Yankee Stadium on Wednesday evening a face-painter who would normally be daubing fans' cheeks with Yankee colours was overwhelmed by people wanting the stars and stripes and "USA" painted on their faces.
Despite the absence of tourists, the long queues to get into high-rise buildings like the Met Life or the Empire State, the identity checks in hotel foyers and the soldiers at rail terminals and at river crossings, the city is slowly resuming the rhythms of its pre-September 11th life.
Attention is turning to the race for mayor to succeed Rudolph Giuliani. For the first time in a month local politics was back on the front pages yesterday with the news that Mark Green, the city's public advocate, had won the Democratic primary and will face Republican Mike Bloomberg in the election next month.
Bookings are up again for Broadway shows. The black-tie season is in full swing at the Plaza and the Waldorf Astoria. Traffic is being allowed in the Holland Tunnel and the Brooklyn-Battery Park tunnel, the last two crossings to remain closed since the disaster. The main artery of the city, its subway system, is operating at almost full capacity, with only seven stations still closed, though these are unlikely to reopen for two years.
Some things are even better. Crime is down. Street gangs are nicer to cops. People are more polite to each other. There is less shouting in the streets, less in-your-face. Kids are less obnoxious in schools.
New York has been in trouble before. It went broke in 1975 and was refused a federal bail-out by President Gerald Ford, prompting the famous Daily News headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead". But this time it has suffered on behalf of America and President Bush said, "Anything it takes to help New York." Money is flowing in from Washington and individuals, charities and corporate America have contributed $850 million in voluntary donations.
The most vibrant, energetic city in the Western world - and it still is despite all - does not have the resources to recover on its own. The economic crisis it faces today because of the attacks is worse than in 1975.
Comptroller Alan Hevesi estimates that the city needs $105 billion over two years to recover. Tough times lie ahead. New York was sliding into recession before what people now call the "event". Some 100,000 people will lose their jobs in the next nine months. Taxi business is down 50 per cent. There are traffic jams of empty yellow cabs.
The loss of the World Trade Centre has left the downtown area a blitz site. The ruins continue to emit acrid smoke and many people in the street wear dust masks a month after the attacks. Life goes on around Ground Zero's exclusion zone patrolled by the National Guard, but businesses in the vicinity are closing down, and financial offices relocating elsewhere.
The end of the first month marks the winding down of a period of unbearably poignant funeral services, too many and too hard to bear for public representatives. There were 15 on October 5th alone for fallen firemen. Rescue workers paused for a memorial service in front of the scorched Dow Jones building at 8.48 a.m. on Thursday, the precise moment the first plane struck the north tower a month ago. "The fire is still burning but from it has emerged a stronger spirit," said Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
The Mayor is truly ubiquitious as he urges the Big Apple to shine again.
He is everywhere. He was, naturally, at the baseball game in Yankee Stadium (The Yankees lost, 5-3) where he told fans that their presence was a sign that nerves were getting less jittery. The resumption of top-class baseball was important for the spirit of the city, he said.
"The fact that so many people showed up unafraid, undeterred, I think it's absolutely terrific."