As it says Jake Dodkin, editor of Gothamist, Real New Yorkers will always stay in town even if go back to hell days from the 1970s, when crime and drugs scared off tourists. The comment is not accidental. The pandemic caused a mass leak. It is estimated that half a million residents fled the great metropolis. Those who gave up leaving it, however, took over the parks and discovered new things, like eating in the fresh air.
The coronavirus, in fact, was presented as a unique opportunity to establish a new order on the street and eat up space from the car. Pay parking on the avenues Amsterdam Y Columbus, in the Upper ManhattanThey were taken over by restaurants with their tables, chairs and tents as soon as the restrictions were lifted at the beginning of the summer. In a few weeks, 9,000 businesses signed up for this initiative that spread rapidly throughout the city. Chelsea Market, a commercial space that was always full of people before the pandemic, just set up 115 tables on the street. The clients they can order food in about twenty stalls and serve five restaurants.
The same print is repeated above in Koreatown, on 32nd street between Broadway and the madison avenue, also in Manhattan, or in the one baptized as ‘Belmont Square’in the borough of the Bronx, which is closed to traffic Thursday through Sunday nights. The program Open Restaurants, combined with the closure of streets, thus became a kind of antidote to a key industry in the economic recovery of the vertical city. And as more details become known about how the virus is transmitted, more New Yorkers embrace the idea of doing more things on the street to socialize in a safe way. The initiative will be in force until mid-October and will be repeated next summer.
“It’s an oxygen balloon for the survival of many small businesses,” he says. Andrew Rigie from the NYC Hospitality Alliance, “is the only light in an otherwise very bleak outlook for hospitality companies and their thousands of workers.” The program, he adds, “is reinventing the street by turning parking lots into cozy gastronomic oases.” But fall is coming and still in the air when restaurants will be able to serve indoors. New York was already before the pandemic one of the most complicated cities in the world to operate a restaurant, due to competition, criticism and the high cost of rent. The coronavirus, however, acts as an invisible enemy and the uncertainty begins to create panic among the owners. It is estimated that about 1,300 restaurants and bars closed permanently in a period of four months, about a total of 2,800 small businesses that disappeared.
Is the luck that ran The Fat Rasih two months away from its tenth anniversary. The indefinite postponement of service in the interior was the death letter. It is estimated that one in three restaurants will never reopen. There were 26,000 establishments serving food before the pandemic. Among those that operate, less than half enter than a year ago. 87% cannot pay the rent and 37% did not pay it directly in July. 60% of employees are out of work.
Fred´s operated during lockdown to serve the requests of the New Yorkers left behind. Even the premises on the Upper West Side caught fire, but firefighters managed to save the kitchen. “It was a question of survival not only for me but for the entire community,” says David Honor, “this business works both ways.”
The delivery is the formula that the reputed Wallsé in el West Village. Coffee Art it was converted into a supermarket. The pattern of Café Sabarsky, located in the corridor of the museums along Fifth Avenue, prefers to be closed while the city does not authorize the service to customers inside. In his case, in addition, it affects him that the tap has been completely turned off for tourists and that a good part of the Upper East Side customers left the city without much intention of returning. Given this situation, from the association led by Andrew Rigie, they demand a clear plan from the city: “The economic health of our industry must also be paramount,” he declared at a press conference.
Honor, for her part, views the arrival of winter with concern. “I’m not very hopeful,” he says. You could put heaters on curbside serving tables and keep pulling home deliveries until spring. But it would not be enough and you will need some financial support to compensate for the loss of income you expect. The Mayor Bill de Blasio show off every time you get a chance at the success of the Open Restaurants program. He also says that he wants them to return to service inside the premises “as soon as possible.”
But look at the evolution of the virus in Europe and fear that it would put “all health dynamics in New York at risk”. “Where it was allowed during the last months without control,” he explains, “there is a resurgence of infections. You have to take it very seriously.” David Honor and other employers understand this logic. But they also see that the message from both the mayor and Governor Andrew Cuomo indicates that the uncertainty in operating their business will continue until there is no vaccine or treatment against the virus. The return to school will also be decisive. It is this lack of clarity and consistency on the part of local rulers that restaurateurs and their distributors criticize the most.
And above all this, what worries them most is imagining what New York will be like a year from now without the human mass that before Covid-19 invaded it daily. It is true that eating in the fresh air, something that was previously reserved for lunch on weekends, became much appreciated after the claustrophobia of confinement. But the most shared fear is that those who left never come back if the city has to close a second time.
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