[ad_1]
For Peter González, this week’s return of regular customers to Johnny’s Bar, the well in Greenwich Village he owns, was a hopeful milestone for a neighborhood union that has clung to the past 30 years: a through gentrification, the 9/11 crisis, the fitness boom and more. However, it was also disorienting.
“It’s very uncomfortable for people to sit in the bar right in front of you because we’ve gotten used to distancing ourselves,” Gonzalez said.
This week’s easing of restrictions on bars is another sign New Yorkonce the proper reopening of the Covid enclosure has become a head gallop.
As infections continue to fall, Mayor Bill de Blasio recently declared July 1 as the target date for the city’s full reopening. Not to be missed by his bitter political rival, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced this week he wanted most shops, restaurants, museums and the like to be close to full capacity on May 19, considering it “a milestone for New York State and a significant time of transition.”
Although Broadway remains closed, tickets have been on sale this week for shows expected to resume in September.
Meanwhile, there are other signs of reactivation of life, even if it does not necessarily return to a pre-lived normalcy. One executive noted, for example, that his spin cycle class has become agglomerated again. Like herself, she guessed, people may not be in Manhattan five days a week, but sometimes she’s there more and more. The Lincoln Tunnel, as clear as a nun’s arteries a few months ago, is once again clogged.
On Wednesday afternoon, Le Bilboquet, the Upper East Side bistro, was also packed inside, as was the new row of outdoor seats. The crowd of glamorous patterns waiting at the door and in the rain, it seemed rebut the claim that everyone with the media had left New York City for Palm Beach in Florida or the Hamptons on Long Island.
“It’s quiet,” the master joked with a Gallic euphemism as the crowd boiled around him.
However, these scenes are still irregular. A few blocks away, in Midtown, where many office buildings are still empty, were the bars. A porter at the Park Hyatt hotel, for example, on the so-called Billionaires’ Row, said he would not reopen his salon until July. The Italian restaurant Marea pulled people away from its amber bar overlooking Central Park and asked them to return on Friday.
On Monday, the night the bar restrictions were lifted, the scene was turned off at the Corner Bistro, a cozy fixture in the West Village. There were only three customers sitting in a corner of the bar, next to a not-so-cozy Plexiglas sheet.
“Until you get back to business travelers and tourists, it’s all a neighborhood union,” said the waiter, who is now an expert at not only mixing drinks, but also reviewing employers ’vaccination cards. He looks forward to the day when the next High Line elevated park will once again be full of foreign tourists, some of whom could grab a burger and a beer.
Johnny’s, on the other hand, has always looked after the locals. It is a highly efficient drinking establishment: a slender undergrowth that has little more than a bar so narrow that users can practically reach for the bottles, a blackboard to record the drinks left to friends, a pay phone , an incomplete toilet, a few. filaments of Christmas lights and of course a record box.
On a recent night, the songs ranged from Wu-Tang Clan, The Police and Jamiroquai to Weezer’s performance of a Muppets ballad and then Billy Joel’s “Scenes from a Italian Restaurant” stage. . A few men sitting at one end of the bar were arguing over who was the greatest songwriter in history. Two women were taking shelter and drinking whiskey. Another complained of his hypertension. A Puerto Rican gentleman was dressed as a cowboy and looked like he had come out of the dusty plains.
“New York bars are familiar,” said Gonzalez, who came to the Village years ago from Corpus Christi, Texas, and fell in love with a group of dancers. He stood still. “A lot of people in New York don’t have a family.” It was Johnny’s – “or go see a shrink.”
Like other bars and restaurants, Johnny has adapted to a set of ever-changing circumstances since the city closed in March last year. After they started serving takeaway drinks, passersby were so grateful for their survival that they would slip money out the front window, one of the waiters said. “People feel safe here,” he added.
He set up a pedestrian tent and was also forced to serve hot dogs – “Blasio’s dogs,” as many now call them – to meet the Covid-era requirement that any establishment serving alcohol must serve food. with him. In a hopeful signal, Gonzalez removed the hot dog machine from its place above the empty bar on Sunday and took it home. Now the food standard no longer needed to be dismissed.
Still, things are not normal. Those now sitting at the bar must sign a logbook and the entire show ends at 11pm, not the usual 3am or 4am.
“Some say it will take another year to get things back together,” said Oscar, a 29-year-old drummer who kept his martini company with a beer last night. He longed for the reopening of nearby jazz clubs. In the meantime, he had spent much of the last year alone, he said, and, like other New Yorkers, “self-medicated.”
Now he has Johnny’s.
[ad_2]
Source link
