Post 107 - June 26, 2020

Day 107…

The Coca Cola sign in Times Square seems to be having a nervous breakdown.

In what appears to be an attempt to cover all bases, Coke has programmed their sign on a continuous loop of imagery. A bright red love heart, dissolves to a rainbow-colored bottle of coke and an array of the logo across the color spectrum for Pride, which, in turn, dissolves to a somber black screen exhorting us all to “share hope, do more, end racism.”

Just above Coke, Samsung is thanking Health Care workers and above them Prudential is bouncing back and forth between showing photos of front-line masked health practitioners and rainbow Pride images.

Throughout Times Square, the LED screens are all trying to pay tribute to everything that’s going on around us while, at the same time, doing what they are designed to do: sell us stuff.

On a much smaller level, at all the demonstrations around the city, you can now buy Black Lives Matter t-shirts and buttons from sellers on the streets. As some of the souvenir stores reopen, they, too, are starting to stock BLM shirts and caps.

In early days of the protests, there was a huge variety of different styles and designs available. The most popular of those designs are still available and being copied by different makers, while some of the others have fallen away.

We are watching, in real time, the market adapt itself to new conditions. Supply and demand economics in all its glory.

Restaurants reopening for outdoor dining are trying to figure out what consumers will go for and what they won’t. Some places are more conducive to setting up outside seating than others.

For years the city has been working to come up with the optimum traffic pattern that will allow Manhattanites to get to where they need and want to go most efficiently. More bike lanes have been added as well as more pedestrian areas. Predictably, it’s basically a big mess.

Just below Herald Square, there are blocked off areas that used to be streets that now have tables and chairs in them. The street in the block just below that, as a result, is not really accessible to traffic anymore. A restaurant situated right on the corner has now taken over a huge section of that part of the street with their tables. It looks like quite a nice place to eat. It’s away from the flow of traffic and protected from the sun by the high buildings surrounding it. I don’t know how popular the restaurant was before this, but it seems to be quite popular now.

In contrast to that, once popular restaurants along 9th Avenue and Columbus Avenue are trying to do the same thing, but their tables are ending up being right next to very busy traffic. Some of these places are putting up tents over their tables. Others are stacking crates to create walls around their seating areas. None of that, however, hides the traffic.  The tents billow up with each passing car. Exhaust gets added as an ingredient to every dish.

From what I can see, restaurants in areas like that don’t seem to be attracting a lot of customers. Bars, however, are. People seem willing to drink together almost anywhere. The traffic adds a kind of background excitement in the same way TV screens and music did back when people were drinking inside.

One place down on Hudson Street is building an entire wooden unit out on the street with three walled off areas, complete with a raised floor and a picnic table inside each space.  It seems solid and it also creates a separation from the traffic. I don’t know that a lot of these places are thinking about what could happen if a car crashed into them, but at least the place being constructed on Hudson would offer a little protection.

Restaurants that were popular with older customers are likely to have a much harder time getting their clientele to return right away than places that cater to a younger crowd. The people I am seeing eating out together seem to be mostly younger. Older folks must be staying home and eating there.

It seems inevitable that all of this is going to pretty radically affect the restaurant community in New York for years to come. Will the restaurants that are now seeing a surge because of the lucky happenstance of where they are located continue to be popular once we are fully reopened? Will the once popular restaurants on busier streets that are being negatively impacted now, be able to last long enough for people to be comfortable eating indoors again?

Much of the advertising we are watching on TV is also starting to embrace various causes. Nobody knows what the long-term changes are going to be on our consumer habits. Companies are doing their best to try and keep ahead of what they THINK we are going to want.

Using Black Lives Matter or LGBTQ or even coronavirus themes in advertising can work in some cases but backfire horribly in others. Different parts of the country have radically different feelings towards different things. What works for a company in one area will flatly not fly in another. That’s always been the case though. The majority of people who watched the show Will and Grace lived on one of the coasts or in a major city. The majority of the people who watched the new Roseanne show did not.

As I am writing this, the Vice President is on TV blatantly rewriting history. He is giving full credit to the federal government for their remarkable work in containing the COVID-19 virus.

What a rosy picture he is painting. Remarkable indeed.

Yesterday, we hit a new high in the United States. There were 39,327 NEW cases of the coronavirus reported.

California, Texas and Florida all set new records for their largest single day increases. Ever.

Texas is pausing it’s reopening. They have just re-closed their bars. Seven other states are also pausing. These are all places that began reopening too soon according to health care professionals.

The Democratic Mayor of Austin, Texas, Steve Adler is saying that just pausing is not nearly enough. Pausing in their reopening is not going to stop the spread. They need to go back and close down again.

Governor DeSantis of Florida still refuses to mandate the wearing of masks or to issue stay-at-home orders.

Florida, alone, registered nearly 9,000 new cases of COVID-19 yesterday.

DeSantis believes that this is a metropolitan issue at that Mayors need to deal with this in their own areas. He is doing exactly what the US President is doing. The attitude is, “Not my problem”. He is completely abdicating his responsibility to the people of Florida. While some of the larger cities in Florida such as Miami are, indeed, current hotspots, smaller migrant communities are also seeing alarming spikes in new cases.

Disney World, with 77,000 employees, is one of Florida’s largest employers. They are set to open again two weeks from tomorrow.

Cast members have been pleading with government officials as well as park officials to delay the reopening out of concern for the safety of both the guests and the workers. As of this morning, a petition on Moveon already has over 12,000 signatures urging them to stay closed for now. Plans are moving ahead anyway.

Disney World, in one of the areas of the country with the highest level of COVID-19, is planning on getting back to the business of attracting people into Florida from all over the country. These people will come from their home states and gather together in large groups in the Park.

At the end of their week of fun, they will head back to where they came from. Along with their Mickey ears and t-shirts they will also, potentially, bring home a nice case of the virus to share with their friends and neighbors.

Florida is sorely in need of competent leadership.

Michael and I are talking about going out and getting a frozen margarita somewhere.

To be fair, we have been talking about it for a couple of days. Nothing hits the spot on a hot humid New York day better than a frozen margarita. There was a great place right near us called Gabriella’s, but they closed sometime before the virus even hit.

We talked about it, but we didn’t go yesterday. I’m not sure we are going to go today either. It all seems to be a bit much to deal with at the moment. I’m not sure we are ready yet.

No matter what all of these businesses and corporations do in terms of how they market their products and services to us all, the ultimate decision of what we are going to want to buy and participate in is going to lie with us.

They are going to try everything that they can think of to make us buy what they are selling. As we all become clearer about what we want and what we are comfortable with, the market will start to take advantage of that and change to accommodate it.

Like the designs of the Black Lives Matter t-shirts, what becomes popular will sell and what doesn’t will fall away.

There’s a place near us, actually right next door to the old Gabriella’s that has outdoor seating. They have hung giant plastic sheets between each table. I think that would feel like we were eating and drinking in a HAZMAT tent.

I think the margarita might just have to wait a bit longer.

Maybe, tonight, instead, Michael and I will have a nice glass of chilled rosé at home.