Delecious Food: How Times Square bars bounce back from COVID
By MAGNUM HERMOSA
March 7, 2022
On a dreary Monday afternoon in mid-February, Times Square was looking a little gloomy. By staring at buildings, you could practically calculate how many desk lamps were lit, but you would likely be shocked by the number of lamps lit. Two tourists were having a great time with Naked Cowboy, but at about 1:30 the lunch business in the area seemed sluggish. I counted four customers at John’s Pizza, three at Carmine, and maybe a few dozen at Junior’s. Some of the lunch spots seemed fine, with construction workers crammed into Cuban joint Margon, and about 20 inside Los Tacos #1 – “We’re fine, better than expected,” says co-owner Kyle Cameron – but all the hot dog stalls are halal. Which I’ve experienced, there was only one customer ever.
“There are a number of things that come together and cause a fairly big drop in everyone’s business,” says Adam Glenn, who owns the beloved dive bar Jimmy’s Corner. Business on a recent Thursday was relatively busy around 6:30, but there were still some seats open. Glenn adds: “Before COVID, if you came in at six you might not even be able to get in — we would be a full bar, one or two deep, every table in the back, and people still looking forward to coming.”
Jimmy’s, which has been open since 1971, is one of the most popular bars in New York, and places where you don’t recognize the names have had more problems getting into the business. O’Donoghue’s pub reopened this past March, and owner Fregal Burke says it wasn’t until November that he began seeing any real business — which then dried up once Omicron swept the city. “New Year’s Eve, at 11:45, everyone went outside to see the ball fall and no one was in the doors anymore,” Burke recalls. “We got nothing in January—nothing at all. It was very quiet.” The business was picking up again—”we got quirks and quirks”—but without the office workers, who make up the bulk of O’Donoghue’s clients, he says. “We are in serious trouble.”
The effects of the pandemic have been particularly acute in this part of the city, known mostly for chains targeting tourists, but with a strong ecosystem of independent operators who also serve New Yorkers who used to spend time around 42nd Street. These owners now say they are starting to feel more out of hope but struggle to adapt when work is, at best, frustratingly inconsistent.
For his part, Mayor Adams recently launched a solo campaign to bring workers back into offices, lift various restrictions related to the pandemic and berate anyone still working remotely, telling them, “You can’t stay home in your pajamas all day.” At a news conference in Times Square to announce the end of the city’s vaccine mandate, Adams continued to push, lamenting, “We’ve gotten so boring as a city,” adding, “I want to become a thrill city.” There are early signs that people be I started to come back. last week, Tis the city He noted that office occupancy in New York “finally returned” at more than 30 percent. The metro’s one-day ride rate also rose to its highest level since mid-December.
The question now facing business owners in this part of town is: When will that be enough? Absentee office workers aren’t the only thing hurting restaurants and bars. Tourism isn’t expected to fully recover until 2025, and both Broadway and hotels saw their numbers plummet in December and January. Hotel occupancy in New York fell in mid-December, from 81.5 percent of total capacity in the week ending December 11 to 62 percent during Christmas week. “Occupancy in the city as a whole in January was 40 percent, the lowest in several decades except last year,” said Vijay Dandapani, president and CEO of the New York City Hotel Association. He notes that downtown hotels comprise “approximately 20 percent” of hotels across the city, adding, “I don’t think their occupancy was better than the citywide average” but would probably be lower, perhaps “by a significant degree,” As Dandabani says.
In mid-January, total box office sales on Broadway, New York times She mentioned, she was “falling off a cliff.” Some shows are temporarily closed due to COVID cases; A number of others closed permanently. Capacity increased during January, and totals rose in February during the last week of the month, but nonetheless remained below pre-pandemic levels.
“As you know, we are primarily a theater restaurant, so we are married to a theater,” says Sardi’s owner, Max Climacius. After nearly two years of closing, the restaurant reopened in late December. He says business in January was about half of what he’s seen in 2019, but he’s on a tone of hope: “Starting in March, April, there’s a lot more to open. By then, I hope I can Be prepared and be able to deliver what is expected of us.”
I stopped at Rum House – the Edison’s famous cocktail bar – at 6pm on a Thursday and counted about 30 customers. “Do they make you go back to work?” I heard the waiter ask one patron. She answered, “No.”
When I asked how business was, the waiter said it felt like a typical Thursday. “It was jam-packed; Broadway just pumped, pumped, pumped,” he said. “Not just on Broadway, but hotels.” Owner Kenneth McCoy says that at the end of 2021, things were starting to get better — “we were actually doing the same numbers we were doing before COVID, and I was shocked” — but Omicron broke the party. “These last two weeks of 2021 were just,” he pauses. “We were dead. We were dead.”
But again, there are glimmers of positivity (occupancies in hotels have risen to pre-Omicron levels, for example), and once again softened by the difficult reality of doing business in the city. “The line started again,” McCoy told me. “It’s basically back to pre-COVID, but our costs have gone up.”
This is how things are going now, Glenn explains: “I don’t think it’s ever going to be 100 percent what it was, but I hope enough things come together and get pretty close.” His business is also coming back and getting better every day. “We see things heading in the right direction,” he says. “But there is still a long way to go.”