Days before the long-delayed national deadline for travelers to show “REAL ID compliant” identification to board a domestic flight, people lined up outside Room 133 at a city building on Lafayette Street just north of City Hall, anxious to enter the Office of Vital Records.
People wait in line outside the city’s vital records office in Lower Manhattan, May 5, 2025. Credit: Haidee Chu/THE CITY
“What are you purchasing today?” a staffer asked Chris Morrissey, 60, who was nearing the top of the line, in front of a new mother and her 2-month-old daughter in a stroller. “A birth certificate,” he responded, eagerly unfolding a copy of a plane ticket to Los Angeles scheduled to depart next week.
“They told me because this is an emergency that I had to bring my flight information to get an appointment. Otherwise they didn’t have an appointment until May 20,” said Morrissey, who was assigned the walk-in ticket number A419.
The Department of Health received 31,877 birth certificate requests this April — a 79% increase compared to the same month last year, according to spokesperson Shari Logan.
“Online requests, in particular, have reached unprecedented levels and staff is currently assisting around 500 customers each day at our offices,” Logan added. “We are now averaging about 1,000 online birth certificate requests per day in May 2025.”
On especially busy days, a security guard at the building said, the line has sometimes spilled over into the street and around the block.
“First it was when Trump started talking about citizenships and stuff like that and a lot of people started to come. Then it turned into income tax season, and now, REAL ID,” the guard said. “It’s been nonstop, especially since last month.”
Morrissey, a Bronx-born resident of Rockland County, said he had driven two hours into the city to get a birth certificate on Monday because he needed to apply for a REAL ID in time to visit his stepson in L.A., whom he initially said “isn’t doing too well” — before finally admitting the truth.
Sullivan County resident Chris Morrissey traveled two hours to Lower Manhattan to get his birth certificate before taking a flight to Los Angeles, May 5, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“That’s what I told them. I gotta tell them he’s not doing well because I don’t have an appointment,” Morrissey said, smirking. “But I’m going out for his birthday.”
Once inside, Morrissey waited patiently in another line to be assigned to a computer where he could fill out an application, before settling down in the waiting section to be called to a counter, where his birth certificate would be printed.
Sitting across Morrissey was Reign Hudson, 56, who was also urgently in need of a birth certificate to apply for an ID — in her case, to fly to Atlanta on Wednesday to celebrate her mother’s 90th birthday.
Reign Hudson traveled from Brooklyn to Lower Manhattan to get her birth certificate, May 5, 2025. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
“I’m getting this just in case because I got to wait for my Social Security card — I lost it,” said the Jamaica, Queens native. “But I have a Pennsylvania license, so I’m praying I get this today, so I can run to Pennsylvania and come back.”
Hudson, who also lost her passport at some point, said she hadn’t known about the REAL ID requirement until her sister told her about it after hearing it on the news last week.
“I was like, ‘If not I might have to drive,’” Hudson said. “Ninety? I’m not gonna miss that.”
Also heading to Atlanta was Bed-Stuy native Karen Frederick, who plans to travel there in August for an annual girls’ trip with her 35-year-old daughter. She said she was worried that the copy of her birth certificate she obtained in 1985 might be too old to meet the DMV’s requirements — but was otherwise excited for the food and party scene in Atlanta.
“It’d be my first time on the plane. I’m 56 and I’ve never been on a plane. That’s embarrassing,” Frederick said, laughing. “I’ve never gone through TSA, had people check my ID, but I’m ready for that. I get to do all that.”
Several feet away, Dante Garcia, 28, was waiting to be called up to a counter with a birth certificate in hand — albeit one with jagged edges resembling bite marks.
“My dog ate it,” said Garcia, a grade school teacher, referring to Mochi, his 4-year-old Shiba Inu.
He had taken the day off school to apply for a new birth certificate, he said, so he could get a passport in time for a spontaneous trip to Canada with his fiancée.
“I literally feel like one of my students — like, ‘My dog ate my homework!’” Garcia said. “He’s a nosy little guy, and he decided to go into the office and he made a mess out of a whole lot of things that day. I just laughed, and looked at him, and he looked at me like, ‘Are you going to say something?’”
Sitting across from Garcia, 62-year-old Mohmed Mizan was waiting to apply for yet another death certificate for his mother, who passed away during COVID.
“When I came here, they made me buy one,” said Mizan, referring to the Consulate for Bangladesh, where he and his mother are from. But now, he said, “the same copy, they made me buy another one.”
“The system,” he said, referring to the bureaucracy around life and death, everywhere in the world, “it’s just a messed system.”
Still, said Garcia, “That’s what’s really cool about New York. You never know what you’re gonna bump into.”
He continued: “This is one of those moments where I’m planning a trip when someone’s here looking for a death certificate. It’s always up and down.”
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The post The Dog Ate My Birth Certificate and Other Tales From the Real ID Rush appeared first on THE CITY – NYC News.
