we just have a traditional unit, not a swamp cooler. but those are popular here too.
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I havenât heard any obese females singing, soooâŚ
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Bars and restaurants will not be allowed to serve alcohol and must close by 20:00
Rules like this always perplex me. Thereâs a good reason you shouldnât feed mogwai after midnight, but whatâs the reason for this? Do they think Covid suddenly gets more contagious at 8pm - but only in bars and restaurants? Do they have outbreaks scheduled at 8:10pm in pre-assigned locations or something?
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How about they need time to clean up the common areas where the public spends most of its time? From the condiment containers to the chairs and tables to the floors and bar, itâs allllll gotta be sanitized. And that shit, as every domestic engineer knows, doesnât happen in a nanosecond.
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I think the idea is to hurt nightlife in general. Every person who decides not to bother and stays home makes the world a safer place.
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You know how long it takes to deep-clean a bar? A lot longer than it does oneâs kitchen.
I only briefly worked at a restaurant long ago, but we had to clean after closing anyway, even if there wasnât a pandemic, and we didnât close early for it.
As for sanitizing everything, and deep-cleaning, that would take a bit longer, but if theyâre open all day having customer after customer without doing that, then doing it at closing so that itâll only be clean during the night when theyâre closed and there are no customers doesnât do much. And isnât recommended for preventing covid since the risk is so low.
I guess it makes sense that might be what theyâre doing anyway though.
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It also gives the employees more of a rest, I guess? I mean, Iâve waitressed on and off through my adulthood and it was stressful without a pandemic and political problems.
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I feel vindicated!
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Journal of the Corona Year
07/08
I went to a movie in a theater last night. I cannot remember the last time I went to a theater or even what I saw.
For the past few weeks I have been walking past posters in the 95th Street station advertising âSummer of Soul.â Whoever made these posters failed miserably. They were not intriguing. They were entirely ignorable. There was no indication that it was a movie or what the movie was about.
On Sunday, the old 4th of July, I happened to hear an interview on NPR with Questlove. He was describing this very project. Summer of Soul. A documentary. Now I finally knew what it was.
So I sent a message to a friend who I knew would be interested â âDo you want to see Summer of Soul?â
On Tuesday afternoon he finally responded. Yes, he would be interested.
His timing made things difficult. It was only showing at Village East Cinema and Thursday was the last day. We agreed on Wednesday at 7:00.
All Village Eastâs sales are now done through their website. Around midnight I went to order my ticket. It was all normal until I had to pick a seat. It was like ordering an airline ticket. There was a color-coded seating diagram indicating which were sold and which were available. I assume this done for reasons of social distancing â so people can stay in their own groups and avoid other peopleâs groups.
Only one seat had been sold. I realized there was no practical way we could synchronize our seating choices. So I picked two seats near the aisle and ordered both. I figured once the lights went down we could relocate as necessary.
Village East is kind of a dump. But an interesting dump. Thatâs where I recently saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, which you might recall me writing about at the time.
On Wednesday evening entered the theater, a QR code was scanned off my phone and we proceeded to auditorium 2. The seats I ordered would have been pretty good if the theater was crowded. We were the only two people there. We immediately found better seats directly in the center of the room.
During the trailers a group of three other people came in. And that was it. Iâm not sure if this is due to the on-going pandemic or no one else could figure out the poster either.
Three trailers were shown. Anthony Bourdain has a movie coming out. Itâs about himself, believe it or not. There is a biopic of Aretha Franklin coming soon which looks entirely predictable, even the title. And then there was âThe Duke,â which turned the British quaintness levels up to 11.
The theater was nice. The seats were uncomfortable, but the air wasnât too cold and the sound wasnât too loud.
So how was Summer of Soul? Overpowering. Overpowering in a good way. Itâs the kind of movie we were still discussing the next day. We were both very glad we saw it on a big screen. For example, there is a tight close-up of Mahalia Jackson singing an impassioned âTake My Hand, Precious Lord.â Her 30-foot tall face will haunt me forever.
As we walked out in the hot evening, my friendâs topic of discussion eventually drifted to lamenting how New York has changed. And how the pandemic accelerated these changes. This is a popular topic with him lately.
The conversation continued as we walked west on 14th Street. Fortunately I looked up in time to avoid a man using the street as a public toilet. I think he was actually done and was proceeding to the wiping phase, but I did not linger on the situation. He lively sidewalk was giving him plenty of space. I pointed out to my friend that he should find this encouraging: some things in New York will never change. That was classic New York.
As we passed by the Walgreens a friendly young man without any front teeth was smiling and nodding his head saying âKonnichiwaâ to everyone he passed. Inexplicable, outgoing, slightly crazy and very pleasant. That is classic New York too.
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I hadnât heard about that, nor wouldâve expected it. Thatâs one that my family and I will want to watch. We were watching his shows every night at dinnertime at the time of the incident, and then one night we had to decide whether to keep watching. We did. It just seemed right to do so, to see what else he had to say.
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I put this here, since it was the lockdown that got him going.
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I quit going to to movies long before the pandemic. Mostly due to not being able to afford it, but also because of MJR theaters stupid chanting process (if there were only ONE person in the theatre, theyâd STILL yell it out). And because I just canât justify in my mind - even though I know how the economics of the motion-picture industry works - someone getting paid $20 million dollars to pretend to be someone so others can enjoy it, while the crew making the film doesnât.
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Yell what out?
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They donât have MJR theaters in NYC? The lines in parens are the ones chanted. And thereâs clapping.
I put this right up there with folks excreting in the streets, btw, except this is more easily avoided.
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For a number of reasons, we also stopped going a couple years before the pandemic. We went back recently (still before) to see Interstellar, only to find the fairly comfortable seats had been replaced with what are essentially La-Z-Boys. Our (fairly short) bodies did not fit those new chairs. I squirmed the whole time. It accentuated my wifeâs (usually quiescent) back problems.
To heck with it. We have a TV and an internet connection.
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AAAHHHH!!! Thankfully, no.
But then I havenât been to a chain theater since seeing âSweeney Toddâ in 2008.
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It might have been a trailer for Iron Man 4. It was hard to tell.
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I used to attend midnight screenings every couple of months or so.
Usually a spur of the moment type thing, as I live within walking distance of two mutiplexes.
Will I resume? Iâm vaccinated, the theaters werenât crowded before, so I guess it would depend on me being interested in the film. So far I havenât been.
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Same here. I think the last movie we saw in a theater was Frozen (2013.) We have a 75" tv, most of what we want to see is in 4K, and the snacks and drinks are free, relatively speaking.
Movie studios can pivot and reform their business, or die. I donât care which. Pandemic has accelerated that? Good.
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