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This Fourth of July, Iyabo Boyd did two things that she said would have been unthinkable a year ago. She went to a barbecue in a stranger’s yard, and she met new people.

Reading on a blanket in Franz Sigel Park in the South Bronx on Monday, Ms. Boyd, 36, said she had kept mostly to her pod during the pandemic. Finally, over the weekend, that changed. “Getting to know people again was really lovely,” Ms. Boyd said. “It was like, ‘Hey, maybe we can be friends.’”

In Times Square, Ryan Bowen, 28, was making his second pandemic-era visit from Tampa. Last October, he said, he and his girlfriend found little to do because everything was shut down. Now there were restaurants, fireworks, the tram to Roosevelt Island — not exactly a return to old times, but a distinct step in that direction.

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“It feels great to be out,” he said.

It was once possible to envisage the city coming back entirely. Now, whatever lies next for New York feels more like a giant collective improvisation, a city taking shape on the fly. The holiday weekend was a time to rediscover what New York was, and glimpse what it might become.