When we reopened our doors on August 1, I knew there was a possibility we would close again at some point.
As Central New York worked through it’s phased reopening, I understood COVID-19 cases might spike as our citizens began moving around more. We could have opened our doors at the end of June, but I thought it made more sense to hold back and see how it all played out.
We decided to begin a cautious reopen on August 1 after being shuttered for 4.5 months. Our Coronavirus numbers still looked good and with enhanced unemployment coming to an end, we didn’t have much of a choice. The extra $600 a week allowed our staff and the artists we employ to stay home and stay safe, and the money I was receiving personally under the PUA program was keeping the bar afloat.
We faced an impossible choice.
Remaining closed means slowly draining our bank account to cover fixed expenses and eventually losing the business.
Reopening is expensive and potentially puts everyone involved at a greater risk. Not to mention, there is no guarantee anyone will show up.
But with no new unemployment plan on the horizon, reopening seemed to be the lesser of the two evils – so we reluctantly began the process of opening the doors again at the end of July.
We have an unusual business model. We have a full-service bar, but we aren’t really a bar in the normal sense. We serve food but don’t have a full kitchen and we don’t consider ourselves a restaurant, though that’s the category we fall into for tax purposes. We are a live music venue, but we’re unusual in that our shows are seated, listening room style affairs. Because we don’t fit neatly into any normal category, I was in regular contact with Empire State Development about the guidelines we should be following.
We reimagined our entire business. Our funky upholstered living rooms went into storage, replaced by tables and chairs that could be more easily cleaned and distanced. We added more tables and chairs to our patio, knowing that outdoor space was going to be critically important, and went the extra mile with plants and fun decor to make the area more appealing. I set up a pop-up tent on the sidewalk so we could avoid a bottleneck at the door as our guests filled out health declarations, got their temperature checked, and gave us contact tracing information. We switched to 100% table service in order to keep guests seated during their visit, so we added trays, tray stands, aprons, waiter books and a portable contactless Square terminal to our arsenal. I switched all our shows to pre-sale or reservation only. We went above and beyond with our health and safety precautions, which you can find outlined HERE.
We started slow, open just one day the first week, and two days the second week. We put a lot of new systems in place and we knew we were going to have to make adjustments. In week three we did three nights in a row, and while it was still pretty grueling, we felt like we were starting to figure things out.
We only booked shows through the end of August because we wanted to see how it was going to go. It’s impossible to make a profit running at less than 50% capacity, but it was better than being closed with no income coming in and allowed our staff to make some money.
On August 16 we decided it made sense to stay open and started to work on booking into September. We began moving more shows outside and figured we could take advantage of the last 4-6 weeks of good weather before things slowed down.
On August 18 Ty Marshal at The Center for the Arts in Homer forwarded an email he received from the NY SLA and my heart sank. The SLA clarified some murky guidelines that were already in place and declared that while live music IS allowed, it cannot be advertised and you can’t charge for it.
“Currently, only incidental music performances are safe and permissible. Incidental music is non-ticketed, unadvertised performances that accompany and are incidental to a dining experience; i.e., patrons have come to dine, and the music provided is incidental to the dining experience.”
I reread it a dozen times, but it still didn’t make any sense. Incidental music? Whaaat?
Did we work our asses off to make The 443 as safe as we possibly could only to be cut off at the knees?
A friend put me in touch with Sue Stancyck, who is the Chief of Staff at County Executive Ryan McMahon‘s office. She told me it was brand new language and immediately went to bat for us with the SLA, arguing that we deserved some leeway due to our small size and the nature of our shows. On Wednesday morning she put me in touch with her SLA contact directly and I talked to her at length about the guidelines.
I was on the phone for nearly an hour, and the bottom line is this –
THEY ARE NOT FUCKING AROUND
Live music IS allowed, but cannot be advertised or mentioned in any way. If the SLA sees a bar advertising live music and they refuse to cancel the event, the SLA will pull the liquor license immediately. You cannot charge for live music. This is significantly more aggressive than it is in non-COVID times, where you would be investigated and maybe receive a warning.
I hung up the phone and dissolved into a puddle of tears, the first time I’ve cried since all of this started. This would have been our first almost-full week. With four shows and a beautiful weather forecast, it would have been a big step towards some financial breathing room…and just like that, it was gone.
A few minutes later, Don Cazentre from Syracuse.com messaged me and asked for a phone interview. The news was spreading like wildfire on social media channels and he wondered if I had any comment. I pulled myself together and we talked for a bit, you can find that article HERE.
I decided that we would go ahead with our Wednesday night event because it happened to be a free show outside on our patio and the tables were already fully reserved. I pulled the plug on our remaining events because they weren’t full and I didn’t have the ability to promote them, and/or there was a ticket charge. Canceling our August 22 show with Griffin House was especially painful – it would have been our first touring artist in the room since early March, and Griffin is a favorite of ours. His show at the legendary Caffe Lena in Saratoga the night before ours was canceled as well.
Griffin House
The rest of the day was a mad scramble, as we prepped to open and I tried to scrub any reference of live music off our social media channels and website. I also had to contact everyone with a reservation for Wednesday to let them know that while the Facebook event had been canceled, the real-life event was still happening. As word spread, my phone was blowing up, the phone at the bar was ringing off the hook and I was trying not to completely stroke out from the stress. Eventually, I had to just turn my phone off and put it away.
We managed to get the patio pulled together and the food and bar prepped for the night. Channel 9 News called about bringing a camera crew over, then Spectrum News. It was madness, but it ended up being a truly beautiful night, and a fitting way to close an unexpectedly short chapter in our story.
Peg Newell at The 443, August 19, 2020 – Photo by Neil Daley
On Thursday I was nursing a mild hangover as a result of not stopping to eat for 24 hours and consuming an unreasonable amount of wine after we closed up shop the night before.
I got a call from Bernadette Hogan from the NY Post, she had seen the Syracuse.com article and wanted to do a piece on the new rules. The county executive’s office is still trying to help from their end and Assemblyman Al Stirpe waded into the fray as well. I also received an email from an attorney working with NYIVA (NY Independent Venue Association) who is looking into a class-action lawsuit on the grounds that not allowing us to advertise something that is legal to do obstructs our right to freedom of speech. A Change.org petition has begun to circulate.
Now that I’ve had time to absorb everything, I have a few observations.
If NY does not deem it safe for bars and music venues to open – and there is a decent argument for this – then don’t allow them to open. We will happily sit 2020 out, but only if we have the safety net to do so. If the alternative to opening is risking our business and the livelihood and well-being of the people we employ, we’re going to open. You can’t expect people to go without income indefinitely.
Remaining closed to keep everyone safe is fine, as long as we have some assistance. Seriously, we’re happy to do it. But the “you can kind of open (but not really), we’re going to change the rules regularly and not let you actually succeed” situation we’re in is complete bullshit.
Opening and closing our businesses again is piling more financial strain onto an industry already hanging by a thread.
The real concern seems to be trying to control mass gatherings…and I get that. But the “no advertising, no charging” rule is a clumsy, awkward solution to a simple problem. The SLA agent told me they don’t want businesses to attract a crowd…so why not just cap the number of people? If we are limited to gatherings of no more than 50 people, the same should hold true for a venue hosting live music. Set a different number for outdoor venues if that makes sense. It’s easy to police and anyone in violation should be fined.
Do I think we should allow mass gatherings? Of course not. I’ve watched in dismay as photos and videos of bars flouting the rules have surfaced on social media. Full bands, packed dance floors, no masks, hundreds of guests and everyone milling around…I had a feeling it would result in a crackdown, and now here we are.
The irony is, ticketing and reservations are vital tools for controlling a crowd. Like a lot of other changes we’ve made due to COVID-19, strictly controlling who comes to our events is something that will serve us well long after this is over. Plus, paying for a show tends to weed out guests who are going to be a problem. Taking away the ability to charge doesn’t decrease the risk, it actually increases it.
We have enthusiastically rolled with every change that has come down the pike. We’ve reimagined, pivoted, tweaked and pivoted again.
The controversial “you have to order food if you want to drink” rule isn’t even a big deal…why would you be mad about your guests placing food orders they might not have otherwise? It’s an inelegant solution to keeping people seated, but it isn’t completely terrible.
Finding innovative ways to adapt is our super-power, but the most recent SLA updates don’t allow for that.
We’re all trapped in a sucky low-budget reboot of “Footloose” – because, by the way, dancing isn’t allowed either.
I’m seeing a lot of “creative” marketing on social media today, riddles and “wink-wink” comments about where someone may or may not be playing or what is being offered at a venue. We absolutely refuse to play that game. In my humble opinion, you are making yourself a target…and the SLA is famous for not having a sense of humor. (See above: THEY ARE NOT FUCKING AROUND)
The only real solution is to get the guidelines adjusted to something that makes more sense. We have a handful of elected officials on the case and perhaps the class action lawsuit will make a difference. But what happens to us in the meantime? We have just 4-6 weeks of good weather left in Central New York and every day we’re closed we lose more of that precious time. I’m dreading what happens when the weather turns colder because a lot of our guests are only comfortable in an outdoor setting right now.
We – venue owners and artists – should be part of the discussion about how to open our businesses safely. Our very existence is at stake. We are not asking for a free-for-all green light, just realistic guidelines that make sense for the industry. We are creators and innovators, and we are the ones with skin in the game. We can come up with better solutions than this and we deserve a seat at the table.
