For @newyorker, I wrote about the fallacies of NYC's return to indoor dining, and the lies we've been convinced to tell ourselves https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/the-uncertain-promises-of-indoor-dining-in-new-york-city

I went into this piece in search of some sort of path through the messy, conflicting messages being communicated about the health, safety, and survival of people, individual businesses, and the restaurant industry as a whole

After dozens of conversations with restaurant owners, workers, patrons, and non-patrons, the only thing that’s clear is that framing *anything* as a question of individual choice is misleading at best https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/the-uncertain-promises-of-indoor-dining-in-new-york-city

I miss restaurants as much as anyone. I grieve for the businesses that have closed, & will close. I‘m dreading the chain-heavy, consolidated future that’s emerging.

pushing 25%-capacity indoor dining in a dense city where COVID rates are climbing doesnt fix ANY of that. None.

It’s doubly brutal that the language we use to discuss businesses & industries is the same as the language we use to discuss people: keep them alive, see them suffer, see them die.

Businesses and people aren’t the same, but we’re told to conflate them —in fact, the system we live in forces this conflation. Without businesses there’s no employment, without employment there’s no income, without income there’s nothing. Obviously it doesn’t have to be this way.

We’ve been abandoned by our leaders. There is no minimum-acceptable level of loss. The correct response to this crisis isn’t cheerleading and boosterism — it’s rage. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/the-uncertain-promises-of-indoor-dining-in-new-york-city

I’m going to get shit for this but I don’t think it’s ~up to you~ to decide whether you feel comfortable eating at a restaurant right now. You shouldn’t do it. Yes, there are negative consequences to that. It’s still the right thing, and those consequences are not your fault.

tldr https://twitter.com/nicetryofficer/status/1315320864326520833?s=21 https://twitter.com/nicetryofficer/status/1315320864326520833