Let's go out to eat tonight

  

 

Queens Chronicle

Patricia Robinson’s husband worked in Giordi’s Joint, a bar on Jamaica Avenue in Woodhaven, for 30 years before they bought the business in 2018.

“It’s been a rough winter, but we’re thrilled that we’re going to be reopening Friday,” she told the Chronicle.

New York City restaurants will be able to open indoor dining at 25 percent capacity on Friday rather than waiting until Valentine’s Day on Sunday, as Cuomo had initially announced. Cuomo, who last week hinted at the move based on any progress against Covid-19 over the weekend, made it official in his Monday morning press conference.

“We were planning to open the restaurants in New York City to indoor dining on Valentine’s Day, but they’ve made the point that they’d like to open a couple of days earlier so they can prepare for Valentine’s Day,” Cuomo said.

Among the numbers touted by the governor was a new seven-day positive testing rate of 4.38 percent in the state.

Queens, at 5.61 percent, has the second-highest rate in the five boroughs.

“It’s high, but it’s coming down,” he said.

Cuomo said with Valentine’s Day expected to be a busy restaurant day, the two-day head start should help eateries do a little better. But he also said things could change back if the numbers take a turn for the worse.

“The future may change that,” Cuomo said. “If the enemy changes tactics, we have to change tactics.”

Loycent Gordon, owner of the historic Neir’s Tavern in Woodhaven, said the timing highlights what he calls a disconnect between Cuomo and the restaurant industry.

“He really needs to communicate more closely with the restaurant industry on ways to keep businesses viable and, of course, keep people safe,” Gordon said. “We’ve known from the start that indoor dining was not the source of the spreading. This is just one more thing we should have had already, one more frustration after a [Dec. 14] shutdown that never should have happened.”

Just the facts, Sfaccim!

Today, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that as of Monday, restaurants in NYC will be closed for indoor dining. Why? Because 1.43% of COVID cases in the entire state have been contact traced to them. Countless NYC restaurants are expected to permanently close because of this and unemployment will skyrocket again.

Restaurants in the rest of the state, where numbers per capita are a lot higher and there are fewer hospital beds, may continue indoor dining. This is supposedly because NYC hospitals are being overwhelmed, however, upon checking the NYCDOH data, it appears that at the height of the pandemic, when we folded up tent hospitals and shooed a US Navy ship away, hospitalizations were >12,000. Currently, they are less than 15% of that rate.

YOUR ELECTED OFFICIALS ARE DOING NOTHING ABOUT THIS STUPIDITY.

Faculty and students are guinea pigs for the city's indoor dining policy

Eater

 Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed Thursday what some NYC restaurant owners have suspected all along: A return to indoor dining is contingent on how the city’s schools perform when they reopen on September 10.

When a reporter pointed out to the mayor again Thursday that a return to indoor dining had been postponed indefinitely, de Blasio was more measured in his response than earlier in the week when he indicated that indoor dining might not return until next year.

“As more and more people come back to work, as schools begin, you know, we’ll get to see a lot about what our long-term health picture looks like, and that’s going to help inform our decisions going forward,” said de Blasio referring to the administration’s wait and watch approach on making a decision on indoor dining.

While the rest of the state has allowed indoor dining to proceed at half capacity for the last two months, New York City restauranteurs have been waiting indefinitely, despite the fact that the city has largely brought the spread of the COVID-19 largely under control. Still, New York leaders like de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have expressed concern due to the city’s density and population. 

The Blaz is a sick mofo.