This day has been an emotional rollercoaster. And you all know I don’t use that sort of terminology lightly. The gut punch of learning that there would be no Burning Man 2021 upset me way more than I thought it would. As I was grappling with that all afternoon, I forgot everything else I was supposed to be accomplishing.
As each day gets us closer to “normal,” my patience continues to wane and my sanity keeps slipping away. Tonight I’m gonna get a massage and refrain from killing everyone on the interwebz. I’m gonna PARTAY tomorrow, friends!
How my day started: sawing off a jammed lock.How my day ended: finding the exact garbage can that I needed to replace in the bar bathroom after someone broke it, and that I couldn’t find at any of my local places, in my building’s “free box.”
The dire New York Post headline sums up my general mood. And given the stress we are all under, it’s easy to believe that bells are, actually, tolling.
On my way home tonight, I passed by what sounded like an illegal party, loud music behind closed gates, while I sweat every second I’m open and have to police people to not stand at my bar to talk or order or…stop for even a second… I force people to pay for food they don’t want — and don’t eat — while people wait in line for hours to get food they desperately need.
The incessant worry is taking its toll. I try so hard, every day, to tell myself this will all be over soon. Friends, it better be. Or I will either become completely homicidal or suicidal, neither of which will end well. I simply cannot take this bullshit much longer. No sense, no science, just bullshit arbitrary rules made by people who appear to have never actually been to a bar and who certainly have never run a business.
What can we do to end the incessant threat of surprise inspections and excessive fines? Why are our leaders hell bent on driving us out of business? And why are bars — the city’s living rooms — being vilified? I sure do wish I had an answer to even one of these questions. I just want this shit to end. If only it were as easy as finding what I need in the free box.
I feel like we are all struggling with lockdowns and crazy politics and boredom and despair. I need a distraction. Let’s fantasize!If tomorrow were magically pandemic-free, what’s the first thing you’d do or want to do?I’ll start:I would be hosting a party at Lucky, helping one of my staff (which usually means being in the way while helping myself to PBR and maybe doing dishes), hugging everyone, singing along to the jukebox and, ideally, introducing friends to new friends.How about you?
Photo of graffiti art in San Rafael to provide a bit of comic relief.
Hello! As of December 14, Lucky is closed for the Winter. We couldn’t justify — or afford — the expense of building an outdoor structure, buying heaters, paying the exorbitant ConEd bills, and exposing our staff to condensed virus (not to mention the increased scrutiny of a dozen state and city agencies) that would’ve been necessary to remain open through the colder months. All of which wasn’t even taking the increase in cases under consideration. In the interest of safety and fiscal security, we made the decision to hibernate for the next few months. Please stay safe, friends. Do your best to enjoy your holidays, usher in what we hope will be a FAR better New Year, and keep each other healthy and sane! We want to see your smiling faces again very soon, ideally and eventually without masks (when conditions improve, obviously). These next few months will likely be the most difficult, even more difficult than the initial lockdown, so we are sending you all strength and hope. Let’s visualize a beautiful, breezy summer day in our back yard, toasting our collective fortitude and resilience! Cheers!
Happy Hanukkah! The accompanying photo is from last year, when we were able to gather and light the candles. I’ll admit, I’m having a pretty tough time. I came out to CA to spend time with family. We had all sorts of festive holiday plans. Those plans have all been cancelled due to the Bay Area being locked back down. And my mom is still in the hospital, with something unknown causing a backslide and much concern. (No, STILL not covid…she’s had multiple tests.) The bar will be open today, with Tracie to take care of you, but these will be the last few days before we button up for the winter months. My hope is that we will reopen in March, when things are somewhat more optimistic. I don’t suppose I need to say that optimism isn’t all that easy right now and given my current circumstances, even less so. I’m not one to ask for prayers or fucking hippie vibes, but if you have a few to spare, please send them my way.
Sometimes so many things pile up that it’s difficult to deal. Last night’s fire on Second and 7th that gutted the Middle Collegiate Church is devastating in a year that has delivered a staggering amount of loss. We watch, helpless, as our beloved venues, bars and restaurants close their doors for good. It becomes overwhelming. We wish we had more words of solace and reassurance. The looming vaccine seems like a light at the end of a very long and torturous tunnel. It would sound self-serving to say, “But there’s booze!” Yet we are embarrassed to admit that booze has been one of the ways we’ve been coping with this madness. Booze and each other, honestly. And in a time when gathering in our homes with friends is not only forbidden but literally life-threatening, what’s left? Shivering at outdoor tables. We have yet to spend the $10k necessary to “winterize,” for numerous reasons, not the least of which is the possibility of another lockdown, as the restaurants in California are currently grappling with. More money….down the drain. If you stretch your legs to maintain your sanity today, stop by and say hi to Tracie. She will be opening around 3 and sticking around as long as there are customers, against our better judgement. The one thing we have learned through all of this is that offering an opportunity for people to meet, commune, talk to someone other than a pet or a TV, can really be a lifesaver. Please accept our apologies for the darkness of this post. None of this has been easy. And please, stay safe, stay sane and hold on until Spring, when we hope to have a brighter outlook.
I’ve recently made a few decisions. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t classify them as difficult, but since this pandemic went down, just about everything I do feels like an enormous chore. Getting out of bed. Going to the bodega. What to eat. I’ve been putting off doing my laundry for over a week now. I feel paralyzed by the slightest choices. But the plane ticket has been purchased. I’m going to California to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family.
As if deciding to up and go wasn’t tough enough, every day I doubt myself anew, hearing the media and our local “leaders” advise us not to travel. Not to spend the holidays with our relatives. Not to visit family. Or gather indoors. I’m doing it. All of it. Yes, I will be doing it safely. Well, as safely as is possible. I got tested less than 48 hours before my flight. And I’ll get tested again on the other end. I’ll limit my human contact and wear a mask. But I’m also staying with my mom. Mind, you, I went through all of this back in July, when I went out to the Hamptons. I was way more worried than my family was. And everyone was fine. This time, I’m the one flying — in addition to my cousin and her kids, who are also traveling from NYC for Thanksgiving — and I’m a fucking wreck.
Making the decision to travel was a partial cave to pressure; my mom has been wanting me out there since March. Her summer visit to this coast was nice. But she wants to have me on her turf. I don’t have a problem with that in the abstract. It’s packing that I’m struggling with. As well as the idea of being 3,000 miles away from my entire life. That and, you know, killing her.
So along with deciding to head west for a while, my other major decision was to close the bar for the Winter. My staff wants to keep making money “as long as we can.” And my landlady, who has been pretty understanding thus far, is concerned about my closing; she will be missing out on rent, obviously. “I am surprised by your decision. Why don’t you wait at least till the end of December?” she asks. “Aren’t the holidays a busy time for you?” Well, yes, usually. But given that no one is allowed to sit at the bar and it’s likely to be too cold to sit outside, the holidays won’t be busy for me this year.
Yes, people will still want to socialize. Were I to opt for 25% indoor seating — a number that can be changed at any moment, as the new 10pm curfew tells us — I couldn’t meet my costs. Which is why I haven’t bothered thus far. That coupled with our unseasonably warm temperatures. We’ve been lucky (heh) so far but the warmth isn’t gonna last. Already, this week, it’s feeling a lot more like Winter than Spring. As for building a structure for outdoor dining, even if I had the thousands of dollars to invest in construction, buying the heaters, upgrading the electrical system and paying the exorbitant ConEd bills, I would likely still be losing money. And that is assuming we don’t wind up in another lock down.
What is making any usual thought process so incredibly impossible is that there is truly no way to wrap my brain around this much unknown. Will Biden recommend that the whole country go into lock-down mode? Will there be a vaccine soon? And if one becomes available, will everyone take it? (The quick answer: no.) Probably the worst of all: are our elected leaders doing what is best for our health and well-being? That answer thus far has been a resounding NO. From the White House all the way down. Because if any of this shit — ANY of these rules and laws and executive orders — had been for the greater good, we would all BE good. But we aren’t. They can keep blaming it on the bars and restaurants because blaming it on mob stupidity doesn’t play well to the masses. All of you who’ve been hunkered down and safe? There doesn’t appear to be any respite for you. Those of us who’ve been following all the rules and worrying like crazy about harming people? No respite for us, either. Just more arbitrary rules.
So here I sit, avoiding packing because I can’t figure out what I’ll need. And then just randomly throwing things into my suitcases. Yes, suitcases. Two. When I’ll probably wind up wearing the same outfit for the next two fucking months. California is more locked down than we are so there’s really nowhere to go. Shit.
Here are a few of the NUMEROUS articles about why we shouldn’t be seeing our relatives for the holidays. I’ll spare you all the stupid memes…
Rainy days and Mondays, eh? I’m not going to open the bar today because there’s a 90% chance of rain for pretty much the entire time I’d be over there. I’m gonna take the day to rest up after the weekend. I gotta admit, my sanity is somewhat in question lately. I’m unable to be pleasant…unable to be PRESENT. I am either weeping or ranting; those seem to be my only two settings left on what was once at least a slightly more nuanced dial of emotions. My constant struggle to balance staying in business with staying sane hasn’t been very successful…and for all my joking about “nothing makes sense anymore,” I’ve been feeling this so acutely that my grip on reality is slipping. Watching the “sports news” on TV would have me believe there’s no pandemic at all. Watching the coverage of the Supreme Court nomination hearing reminds me of just how little control any of us have over anything, with most control wielded by alarmingly old and out-of-touch white dudes who truly do not give a shit about anything but their bank accounts. And hearing about the selective neighborhood closures due to COVID spikes is reminding me that aside from life being painfully unfair, NYC is a few more positive test results away from being forced back into lockdown. The inability to make plans has been an inconvenience since March but is now imperiling what little is left of my ability to cope. I just don’t want to do any of this anymore…
Well, it’s been a bit. We re-re-opened almost two weeks ago and it’s been…a lot. I belong to a “text tree” comprised of local bars that alert each other if the SLA shows up. Last week it seemed like they were bothering someone every night. Thankfully I wasn’t one of the visited establishments but it’s only a matter of time. The news tells us that Cuomo is sending out 400 more cops to make surprise inspections. I can tell you that this only adds to an already off-the-charts stress level.
Tomorrow, they’re finally allowing restaurants to seat people inside at 25% capacity. I won’t be jumping onto that bandwagon for a while; I’ll let everyone else test the waters. And pay the fines that will likely result when their air filters aren’t deemed fancy enough or someone makes the mistake of standing up to go to the bathroom without pulling their mask up first. I gotta say, it is so disappointing that our government is working this diligently to fine us instead of helping us to do what’s best to keep people healthy. Believe me, there’s nothing we all want more than to keep our customers — our friends — alive. It wouldn’t be worth staying in business if we were literally killing people. I guess we’ll see how long it all lasts, what with NYC’s numbers silently crawling up again. I don’t doubt that bars and restaurants will take the blame if we break the 1.5% threshold.
Anyway, I was quoted in yet another article about all this on GrubStreet:
The East Village dive bar Lucky was in the news in August after its liquor license was suspended. Owner Abby Ehmann had been outspoken about her opposition to New York State’s food mandate, which requires that, in order to operate during the COVID pandemic, bars must serve food with all orders. (The SLA has pointed out that bars in New York State have technically been required to serve food since 1964.) She started an online petition to reverse the law on July 27. Her bar was shut down by the State Liquor Authority on August 3 — and critics were quick to draw a line between the timing of those events.
Lucky is open again, but only after Ehmann says she was forced to pay a fine, initially set at $35,000 — an amount that she says is more than her bar has ever made in a single month. (She says her bar once brought in $31,000 one month last summer.) “It was extremely substantial,” Ehmann says of the fine. Although her lawyer, Wylie M. Stecklow, was able to argue the fine down to $10,000, it was still a tremendous amount of money for a small-business owner to pay in the wake of a citywide shutdown. “If I had not applied for back unemployment, I wouldn’t have been able to pay it,” Ehmann explains. “The government put $10,000 into my bank account one day, and the next day I wrote this check to the SLA.”
Ehmann is not alone. The business of selling alcoholic drinks to New Yorkers has transformed dramatically over the past six months, and increasingly, operators say the host of new COVID-related SLA regulations can be difficult to navigate. Furthermore, Hannah Treasure, who works as a server in the West Village, says customers regularly ask to be the exceptions to the rules, frequently trying to order drinks without food. “That’s kind of discouraging,” Treasure says. “You want to put us at risk of losing our liquor license, or getting fined.” In fact, in the the opinion of some operators, it seems that the agency’s inspectors can appear to be more focused on punishing businesses in violation than they are on working with operators to ensure business runs smoothly while everyone remains as safe as possible.
“I think it’s fair to point out that when the governor opened outdoor dining in NYC, that’s what it was,” says SLA spokesperson Bill Crowley. “It wasn’t outdoor bar scene, it wasn’t outdoor drinking. So, sure, I mean, based on CDC guidelines, alcohol served with meals is a lower-risk threshold than simply a bar being open.” When asked about Ehmann’s allegation that the inspection was retaliation for her petition, Crowley responds, “That’s absolutely not true. We conduct probably a thousand details every night in New York City and on Long Island, so that’s the only reason why we were there.”
Over the past few days, the rate of infection in New York City has begun to creep up — there’s been a 43 percent increase in cases over the last two weeks, and the daily positive test rate rose from 1.93 percent yesterday to 3.25 percent today, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio — and the people who spoke to Grub Street for this story all made it clear that they are aware of the danger that comes from loosening restrictions too much. “I’m scared as fuck of COVID,” says the DJ Herbert Holler, who is behind the long-running Freedom Party NYC. “If you’re a venue operator, it’s really hard because on the one hand you’re facing homelessness and starvation or major, major financial duress. But on the other hand, if you’re just going to open and want [the SLA] to be more lenient you could end up killing people.”
Instead, owners say they are confused by the nature of some of the new rules, which do not seem designed for the sake of safety, and some owners expressed concern that the SLA’s fines suggest exploitation of struggling bars to compensate for budget shortfalls. “I get it — the government is broke,” Ehmann says. “But they’re making money off the backs of people who can ill afford it.”
The SLA, for its part, disputes that the COVID rules are informed by anything but safety and containment. “It’s the only reason these rules are being instituted, because we’re in the middle of a global pandemic,” Crowley says. “It’s about getting the coronavirus under control, which New York State has done an incredible job of and is continuing to keep it under control.”
In late August, a group of venues and bars sued the state over a new law that bans ticketed live events, arguing that the rules have been “constantly changing and unworkable,” and that the restriction on advertising specific acts that will play these events is a violation of free speech. “There’s nothing about hearing music that makes coronavirus more likely to jump from one person to the other, right?” says attorney Jonathan Corbett, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the New York chapter of the National Independent Venue Association, a group formed to help venues weather COVID-19, and eight venues across the state including Tralf Music Hall in Buffalo; the Rapids Theater in Niagara Falls; and Birdland Jazz Club, Littlefield, and the Turks Inn in New York City. Corbett has also filed another lawsuit, Columbus Ale House v. Cuomo, arguing against the midnight curfew for restaurants. In the suit, Corbett argues that the state is “regularly fining establishments thousands of dollars at a time for hyper-technical violations that did not exist days earlier,” and that the midnight curfew exists “despite the fact that coronavirus does not behave as a vampire, infecting others only when the moon is out.”
Still others see more alarming trends related to where enforcement is heaviest. State Senator Jessica Ramos — who represents Queens neighborhoods including Corona, Jackson Heights, and Elmhurst — held a press conference on August 19 and rally on September 3 to bring attention to these concerns. “At this point, they’re trying to extract half a million dollars out of my district, which was the epicenter of the epicenter during the pandemic,” she told Grub in August. “I am deathly scared that they are going to use the pandemic as an excuse to advance hyper-gentrification.”
In July, Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams spoke at a gathering of minority-owned hospitality businesses, saying, according to newsreports, “I believe this is a well-organized plan of closing down Black and brown businesses because of gentrification.” (The SLA told ABC News at the time that it “has zero-tolerance for discrimination of any kind and only takes action when restaurants or bars break the law or put public health at risk.”)
Steklow, the attorney representing Lucky and its owner, is sympathetic to the difficulties that the current situation presents. “We believe there is a need to protect the city, that the governor and state are acting mostly appropriately,” he says, adding that the state’s representatives with whom he’s dealing “are intelligent, established — they’re not there because they want to be doing something evil like kill small businesses.” Instead, he, like the owners, wants a review of the current rules, and clarity on how and when they’ll be enforced: “I’m not saying, ‘This is insane, why are they doing this?’ We get why it’s happening … I’m just saying the rules all have to make sense, and they don’t all make sense.”
Yesterday the weather called for a hoodie. I ate a bucket of blueberries as my only meal. And I OPENED THE BAR! It was a soft, quiet re-reopening and it was FANTASTIC! Lucky hosted Burning Man Happy Hour and we celebrated Michael Seto’s birthday. The back yard was at capacity (well, once Zero made it immaculate) and everyone who popped by was SO EXCITED to see me open. I am beyond grateful for the heartfelt enthusiasm. Seriously. This whole shitshow has been extremely taxing, both financially AND emotionally, and the only way I’ve gotten through it has been with your love and support.
It wasn’t easy getting my “sea legs” back and serving “food.” I didn’t even have time to change from my “summer” menu. People were gobbling up the pizza bagel bites so maybe they’ll be on the permanent menu. I’ll be experimenting more as the days go by. WARNING: Unless you’d like to come and actually serve your food suggestions, please keep them to yourselves. It’s stressful enough! MANY MANY THANKS to everyone who stopped by! And to the BMHH continigent of Abby’s Pandemic Survival Crew! HUZZAH! I hope to see more of your fabulous, familiar faces in the days to come!
Welcome to My Words! 