Tracking the Losses
TWO CENTS | DEC 28, 2020
Tracking the Losses
Closings have come so fast and been so voluminous that it’s hard to stay on top of them anymore.
Like so many other traditions that had to be canceled or severely altered this year, New York magazine swapped out its annual year-end Best of New York issue featuring its favorite cacio e pepe, kids’ painting class, and “woke wellness studio,” with a contemplative obituary featuring 500 local businesses that closed during the pandemic.
The list includes everything from humble corner bodegas to corporate bigs like Neiman Marcus and Century 21. Mostly they’re independent bars and restaurants, but also nail salons, gyms and even a gun shop. They’re ordered from oldest (Lord & Taylor, 1826) to the three unlucky newbies that attempted to set up shop early this godforsaken year.
Paging through the send-offs, I gamely partook in the grief: anguished surprise that one of my favorite after-work dives was counted in the fallen, bittersweet appreciation that the hair salon my friend helped start in a Greenpoint garage made the cut.
I texted a friend “Noooo” at the sight of the Little Italy karaoke bar where we shared many a drunken night. I chuckled at the memory of being kicked out of B Bar after falling asleep at one of the courtyard tables. I even texted my ex a teardrop emoji with a snap of the listing for the Lower East Side cocktail bar where we had our first date.
Mourning shuttered bars and restaurants has become a serious sport in New York City. “The rent is too damn high!” “I had so many good memories there!” The kvetching reached its apex with the 2017 publication of Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost its Soul, a compendium of blog posts chronicling the closures and demolitions of New York institutions that just couldn’t quite hack it in the glammed up, de-gritted Sex and the City era.
Before the pandemic, small business failures were rare enough that they would come as a shock, followed by a period of collective hand-wringing and nostalgia. New York lifers would burnish their credibility recalling the good times at the Four Seasons, Limelight, Dean & DeLuca. Occasionally, news of a rent hike or an imminent shutdown elicits enough public outrage or generosity to keep an old favorite afloat. After Superstorm Sandy, devoted patrons famously kicked in over $100,000 to help inundated Red Hook stalwart Sunny’s Bar reopen.
But in 2020, the closings have come so fast and been so voluminous that it’s hard to stay on top of them. And with so much else going on, it’s hard to pay attention. I felt myself going sort of numb sifting through New York mag’s listings, cynically reminding myself that it wasn’t so bad because I haven’t even heard of most of these places anyway.
With temperatures dipping and indoor dining once again off the table, we often can’t make that one last pilgrimage to show our support. And between lost income and donations to candidates in the most expensive election year in history, how can we possibly keep up with all the GoFundMe campaigns to keep our local watering holes in business?
I always thought the sentiment behind a project like Vanishing New York a little precious. Neighborhoods change. Ideas and innovations are brought to life, and many have an expiration date. Businesses close, businesses open. That dynamism is what makes great cities great. Decrying that Chase banks and Dunkin’ Donuts are replacing mom-and-pops up and down Manhattan is almost as old a refrain as the island itself. But last year, the “State of the Chains” report published annually by the Center for an Urban Future found that the number of chain stores in the city actually dropped by 3.7% year-over-year, the biggest decline since the nonprofit began its tracking.
Of course, this year’s closures fell victim not to changing tastes or ruthless landlords (well, partly also that), but to a raving pandemic that made our favorite boozy, shoulder-to-shoulder, kiss-the-chef go-tos into potential superspreader ground zeroes, and by government inaction and indifference to their plight.
In Europe, early government stimulus packages focused on paying employers to keep their staff on payroll and at home, rather than the direct payments to taxpayers that were the center of the first stimulus effort here in the United States. A friend of mine argues that if a similar move had been enacted here, more small businesses like our favorite happy hour bar could have been saved.
But part of me wonders if New York City will necessarily be much worse off without a Champagne bar serving a $40 caviar & Lay’s potato chips appetizer, or a thousand different (but really the same) third-wave coffee joints. That is not to say I favor a kind of dog-eat-dog capitalist Darwinism that lets the most Instagrammable ramen bowl win, but 2020 has brought a giant magnifying glass to our society’s injustices, and a lot of those have to do with how we keep each other fed.
Dining and drinking out is an enormous privilege, one that most humans don’t get to regularly enjoy. While food insecurity is spiking worldwide, a certain subset of city-dwellers has been forced to cut out the bottle-popping, expense card-tossing lifestyle in favor of – if not always cooking – at least thinking more about where food comes from, and the human and climate costs of bringing that bowl of guacamole or bottle of Prosecco to the table.
Diners in New York City may have noticed a “COVID surcharge” tacked onto their bills since October, part of a City Council attempt to help restaurants weather increasingly onerous restrictions. It can be seen as a revival of a long-simmering movement to abolish tipping and ask customers to pay enough to support a living wage for staff. In May, the New Orleans-based cook/artist/activist Tunde Wey published an essay wondering if we wouldn’t be better off letting the restaurant industry–responsible for so much environmental waste, racial abuse and gentrification–just die.
But there’s still a lot to cheer for. Already underpaid, overworked and overlooked, the immigrant bicycle delivery worker can be regarded as one of COVID-19’s great heros. (I was struck that New York mag’s roundup didn’t once mention the fate of the thousands of staff who were affected by these closings.) And just as their employers were letting them go, food service workers everywhere sprung up to mix home-delivered cocktails, organize grocery delivery and mutual aid groups, and distill hand sanitizer.
Hannah Goldfield, the restaurant critic for the New Yorker (whose column I follow religiously), has made a point this year of sticking to reviews of eateries offering take-out or delivery. (She made one exception for an outdoor Martini at the Tribeca people-watching haven Odeon.) At first I found this overly cautious, especially for someone who’s dedicated her career to the joys of being cooked for and waited on. But 2020 may be showing us that restaurant food enjoyed outside a restaurant doesn’t have to be limited to pizza and chow mein.
Goldfield even found a handful of eateries (Burmese in Jackson Heights, chilaquiles in Greenpoint, and Persian delivered all over the five boroughs) that opened mid-lockdown and are thriving on a mix of delivery, take-out and word-of-mouth. Nationwide, it seems the pandemic has proved a convenient time for entrepreneurs of all stripes to push forward with new business ideas, from pickles to online exercise classes. Similarly, the pandemic probably accelerated what was inevitable for many of the shuttered businesses; we just had too many so-so restaurants.
Early on in lockdown, I was scrambling to support as many of my local independent businesses as possible: snapping up to-go cocktails, avoiding delivery apps with their extortionate fees, even contributing to a GoFundMe here and there. But it was exhausting. Deep down I knew they appreciated my support, but even if there were throngs of similarly concerned customers, COVID-19 has just ushered in a different world completely.
Food delivery start-ups have ridden the same stock market wave that has propelled tech companies this year, benefiting from consumers largely confined to their homes. Industry leader DoorDash listed on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month at a valuation of $72 billion, or about five times the size of Olive Garden parent company Darden Restaurants. Over the summer, Uber Eats snapped up Postmates, heating up an already ruthlessly competitive market. So-called cloud kitchens, some with dubious health accolades, have popped up to sate demand.
I’ve since settled into a more or less consistent pattern of shopping at a combination of the farmer’s market and the big-box grocery store, ordering the occasional delivery when I have a hankering or just need something easy, and supporting local businesses when it’s convenient. But I’ve continued to try to wholeheartedly support one tiny downtown natural wine bar, avidly following its newsletter updates, amazed at their resilience and dedication. It wasn’t even a spot I frequented all that much, but it has felt good to connect (even through masks and the internet) with folks who care as much about the weird wines and food as I do.
No New Yorker, no matter how committed a foodie, can reasonably mourn all the bars and restaurants that have closed this year. But if we all really commit to that one good spot, there may not need to be 500 more. Sometimes we need that friendly face on the other side of the bar/phone as much as they need our business.
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Alexander McQuilkin is a full-time bureaucrat in New York City’s housing agency, and a part-time writer and wino.
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