The Briefly for March 16, 2020 – The "A City Without Restaurants and Bars" Edition
Today - Low: 42˚ High: 47˚
Partly cloudy throughout the day.
Everything is being canceled and it sucks, but it's also the right thing to do. (Ben Yakas for Gothamist) "States cannot build more hospitals, acquire ventilators or modify facilities quickly enough. At this point, our best hope is to utilize the Army Corps of Engineers to leverage its expertise, equipment and people power to retrofit and equip existing facilities — like military bases or college dormitories — to serve as temporary medical centers. Then we can designate existing hospital beds for the acutely ill." -Governor Cuomo, making the case for the Army to step-in during this national natural disaster. (Governor Andrew Cuomo for NY Times) The city will shut down bars and restaurants on Tuesday morning. Bars, restaurants, venues, and nightclubs will close completely for an undetermined amount of time. Think about where you would want to go to eat or drink and ask if they have gift certificates. Give them money now without physically going to those locations. (Ryan Sutton for Eater) Seamless has deferred commissions from independent restaurants, but is that enough to actually help restaurants? (Erin Hudson for The Real Deal) The city's schools are closed until April 20. That doesn't mean there's no school, as remote learning is set to start on March 23. (Eliza Shapiro for NY Times) Weed dealers are cleaning up now that everyone is staying home and freaking out. (Matthew Schneier for The Cut) The Food Bank for NYC has a GoFundMe page for people who want to help, but don't knowhow. (Food Bank of NYC) How to talk to kids about COVID-19, from Dr. Rebecca Berry, PhD, an NYU professor who is an expert in child and adolescent psychiatry. (Isabelle Bousquette for New York Family) Videos: Here's how the MTA is cleaning the subways. (Michelle Young for Untapped New York) Jing Fong in Chinatown, the city's largest Chinese food restaurant, is temporarily closed. With the CDC recommending limiting nationwide gatherings at 50 people, there isn't much place for a restaurant that seats 800. (Georgia Kromrei for The Real Deal) Record Store Day has been postponed from April 18 to June 20. Let's all hope it doesn't need another postponement. No one wants to have to wait that long for their Britney Spears – Oops!…I Did It Again (Remixes and B-Sides) vinyl (Bill Pearis for BrooklynVegan) "For the most part when I talk to my colleagues they realize that, yeah, this has the potential to be really serious on a systems level. All in all though, I’d say there’s a calm acceptance about how crazy it's going to be." An interview with an ER doc. (Jake Offenhartz for Gothamist) Last week late-night shows had plans to continue without audiences, but as of this week, nearly all of them are off the air. The exceptions are the shows filmed in Los Angeles. (Ben Yakas for Gothamist) Utilities in New York have suspended power, heat, or water shut-offs through the end of April. (Samantha Maldonado and Marie J. French for Politico) Airbnb is allowing coronavirus-related cancellations without penalty. (Sophia Chang for Gothamist) Welcome to the Park Slope Food Coop: a COVID-19 "petri dish." (Matt Troutman for Patch) So the event you had tickets to was canceled, what now? (Shaye Weaver for Time Out) The city's libraries are closed to you in person, but there is plenty to be done online. (Jennifer Schuessler for NY Times) The headline is "how NYC restaurant workers are getting help so far," but I'm not naive enough to say that the entirety of the city's 325,000 workers is actually getting help. (Ryan Sutton for Eater) Catholics have had their obligations to attend mass waived by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio. (Robert Pozaryski for amNewYork Metro) "This is a moment we all knew would come. That doesn’t make it any easier." -Bill de Blasio on the first New Yorker to die due to COVID-19, an 82-year-old woman from Brooklyn. (Mary Frost for Brooklyn Eagle) State Assemblymembers Charles Barron, who represents East New York, and Helene Weinstein, who represents Canarsie and Flatbush, were diagnosed with coronavirus Saturday. (Adam Nichols for Patch) The Queens borough presidential election has been postponed from March 24, with a rescheduled date to be announced. (Christian Murray for LIC Post)
These YouTube walks through the city, like this one through Central Park, might be a good way to seem like you're going outside without actually having to go outside. (ActionKid) ICE has expanded its inhumane arrest patterns as part of Operation Noble Guardian and is now making arrests at JFK airport. (Maxx Katz for Gothamist) The Metropolitan Opera is dark but they'll be offering free HD streams every night for a week starting on Monday night. (Jasmine Ting for Paper) Meet Jacqueline VanDusen, who wants to bike every street in Brooklyn. (Kevin Duggan for Brooklyn Paper) This might have been a list of restaurants with openings in the spring. Now it's a list of restaurants that might open sometime soon. (Eater) Typhoid Mary, New Yorker. If you don't know her story, this seems like the perfect time to read up on how isolation can prevent the spread of disease. (Noah Sheidlower for Untapped New York) Want a distraction from COVID-19? How about bed bugs? What do you know about them? Do you know things? Let's find out. (StreetEasy) Black city residents are jailed on Rikers Island for alleged state parole violations 12 times more than whites, while Latinx people are accused of parole violations nearly four times more. Just some of the gems in a new report issued by Columbia Univerity's Justice Lab on the New York state parole system. (JB Nicholas for Gothamist) A look at New York's former quarantine islands and hospitals. (Michelle Young for Untapped New York) How screwed up is our healthcare system? If you need further evidence beyond "look around," New York hospitals sued their patients 31,000 in the last four years. (Caroline Lewis for Gothamist) The first signs of real spring, migrating birds, are here. (D. Bruce Yolton for Urban Hawks) Do starter homes exist in NYC? (Localize.City) A look at Edgar Allan Poe’s farmhouse on the Upper West Side. (Mike Mishkin for I Love the Upper West Side) Subway ridership is down 20%, but CitiBike riding is up 70%. (Alexandra Alexa for 6sqft) RIP Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, avant-garde music legend and industrial pioneer. (Andrew Sacher for BrooklynVegan)