What’s Not Going to Survive?

The virus will run its course but what will be left once it has?

Will Sammy’s Noodle Shop & Grill on 6th Avenue and 11th Street make it? Well before the virus came to town Sammy’s was usually pretty empty even on Saturday afternoons although they clearly do a bang-up delivery business. In all honesty, the food there is so-so, but it’s just one of those places we keep going back to. Now we might not get to.

Village Cuts where I used to have Richard do my fade just so; will it make it? It’s not an essential business and is shuttered for the duration where rents in the Village are obscene (begging the question: will they remain that way when no one can afford to reopen?).

New York City has been in a years’ long slide with business after business going out of business. Over a year ago the Upper West Side was facing a vacancy blight that prompted City Council to attempt legislation. In those simpler times, it was nothing more sinister than landlord greed keeping storefronts vacant for months at a time. Why bother with some interesting independent bookstore or knitting emporium that can only manage $10,000 a month in rent when Chase or Citibank or Wells Fargo could be wooed to plop yet another useless bank branch into that space to the tune of $50,000 a month or more?

Back in December (remember that other reality? wasn’t it wonderful?), when AleXander and I indulged in our traditional holiday walk down Fifth Avenue and up Madison to admire the holiday windows, we were appalled at how many empty storefronts we passed. Over a year ago, he began taking photos of the many empty spaces we regularly passed around the city.

All that now seems kind of quaint and even benign. It’s hard to even find statistics on how many businesses are shut down in the city due to the virus but I’m guessing that the majority of smaller businesses, including hundreds of restaurants and diners, won’t be reopening after the pandemic has been relegated to Where Were You conversations.

Will we even have jobs?

There’s a very 20th-century idea about “jobs” and “job creation” that the old white guys just can’t let go of.

But the truth is that there are fewer and fewer real jobs that offer a living wage and decent benefits every quarter. Getting one, as I did back in April 2018, feels like hitting the super lotto. For six months, as I ate a not-insignificant learning curve, I sent fervent thank you notes to the gods. Now we’d be ok. This after AleXander’s position with another hospital was eliminated after seven years of hard work on his part.

But then I found out that my job was a stop-gap and was slated for elimination in another year. Too bad, so sad.

What will our work world look like in a year? Will we all be gig workers? Will we all be dead? Capitalism has no use for cogs that aren’t generating revenue and we’re about to have a heap of cogs with no machine to fit into.

My Magic Eight Ball just keeps with the Outlook Unclear message and my tarot reader’s riding out the pandemic in New Haven (good luck with that, Cupcake), so I got nothing. For the immediate future, it looks like I’ll have an extra 13 weeks of unemployment benefits. I can’t even imagine how long we’ll be social distancing let alone what our strange new world will look like when we emerge from our caves like so many Rip Van Winkles.

Any theories?

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