Maybe it's an artistic statement on how a beautiful city may exist before your eyes but if you can't afford it then it may as well be a mirage.
If you're using NoScript the image is blurry until you allow newyorker.com
I'm on my phone in Chrome (so no extensions) and it's super blurry.
I'm on Chrome (iOS) as well. It remains blurry for ~5 seconds and then gets up to normal resolution.
It's blurry for me unless I disable uBlock (ad blocker) and I don't use NoScript. It does still pop up the full clear version if you click on it. That's a new 'reason to disable ad blocker on our site' though without something pointing it out not sure if it's doing any good.