Abbey Road restored to original glory while everybody and their cameras are stuck indoors

Is there a more famous traffic crossing on the planet than the one on Abbey Road? (No, seriously: Is there? We’re trying to come up with one, but we’re totally drawing a blank.) The site of one of the most iconic photographs of all time—and then tens of thousands of other, far less iconic photographs taken by pretty much every Beatles fan to ever make a pilgrimage to London—the famed bit of pavement has seen its share of wear-and-tear over the years. It is, correspondingly, a surprisingly difficult spot for the local government to keep maintained, on account of, well, all the people trying to walk across it, not looking at traffic, and just generally getting in the way.

So while we might generally consider the nigh-total shutdown of human civilization these last few weeks to be, on the whole, kind of a bummer, it has had a small silver lining: Per Consequence Of Sound, the lack of tourists in London right now has finally given the city’s government a chance to restore Abbey Road to its former glory. And while this just feels like it’s begging for some sort of very depressing cinematic jump cut—like, the camera fades out, only to show animals walking across the pristine-painted crosswalk, because humanity’s no longer around—it also offers a little bit of hope. Things might be hard right now, but soon enough, we’ll all be able to make assholes of ourselves in public all over again. (And in other news—but on a similar note—reports that Drake has taken the opportunity to touch up his own Abbey Road tattoo, which he got after beating some of the Beatles’ sales records, remain unconfirmed as we go to press.)

All that being said: Even in a global pandemic, some things never change.