Last year started with the assurance of vaccines to come, along with confusing Covid guidelines put in place for bars and restaurants in the area. The warmer months saw a return to some sort of normalcy in the neighborhood, with the reappearance of major community events, including the Puerto Rican Day Parade and the Bushwick Collective Block Party. In November, we elected two new City Council members in the neighborhood, including Jennifer Gutiérrez and Sandy Nurse, along with a new Brooklyn borough president, Antonio Reynoso, a North Brooklyn native and former City Council member in the area. Soon after, the holiday lights returned to Bushwick for the first time since the 1980s. However, the holiday joy was quickly curtailed by the Omicron Covid variant.