(A year later, he was dead of COVID)
"After a summer unlike any other, the North End looks anxiously toward the fall; Many restaurant owners in the North End said that after the excitement of the reopening died down, so did the visits. If restaurants in the North End aren’t able to survive, then who can?" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, September 15, 2020
As restaurants began reopening in Massachusetts in early June, the North End quickly hummed back to life.
The city’s densest destination for restaurants — there are over 100 in just a few square blocks — seemed up for the challenges of the COVID-19 era. For the first time, patio tables sprawled into the street, and both the tourists and news cameras arrived to celebrate the neighborhood’s nouveau European appeal.
On a recent Sunday, everyone seemed to be making the most of a sunny afternoon: A tour guide pulled down her mask, momentarily, to offer a history lesson. Parents with freshly purchased university T-shirts, creases still visible, wandered side streets with their college students. At Strega, the throbbing bass of the house music blared, while servers in branded masks carried plates of Mamma’s famous meatballs to guests on the street.
Those working in the restaurants may put on a good face, but many servers and owners are grimacing behind their masks. Because there were no feasts this year. No games at TD Garden. The tourists were fewer, the corporate expense accounts nonexistent.
The troubles of the city’s most celebrated restaurant neighborhood are representative of what eateries throughout the region have experienced, and while the North End has the advantage of being a dining destination, that has its own drawbacks: Its intimate spaces may become too close for socially distant comfort as the chill sets in. Many eateries have struggled to make their takeout menus stand out in a sea of Italian fare, and as restaurant closures mount throughout the city, everyone wonders just how many will be able to weather the winter.
If restaurants in the North End aren’t able to survive, then who can?
And so, fears are mounting. After a summer unlike any other, life in the North End remains uncertain.
“The breeze is changing — it has the feeling like fall is starting to come,” Jorge Perez, a server at Artu, said as he placed a plate of pasta on a Prince Street patio table.
Perez lives in Chelsea, one spot where the pandemic has taken its hardest toll, but he said things have been relatively steady at the restaurant — or as steady as they can be right now. Still, he worries.
Related: Winter is coming. What are restaurants doing to get ready?
“A lot of people don’t like to sit indoors, it’s understandable,” Perez said. And as he thinks about the cooler months ahead, he said, “It’s scary. That’s the big question mark. Will people still go out to dinner?”
Many restaurant owners said that after the excitement of the reopening died down, so did the visits.
“I can tell you the first two or three weeks that they did allow us to reopen, every day was a Saturday night or New Year’s Eve,” said Nino Trotta, owner of Forcella and Libertine, the latter of which had just opened weeks before the pandemic shut it down. “People were like, ’We’re going to be rich!’ but I told my staff, ’Everybody is getting excited and it’s a great motivational scenario, but I don’t think it’s going to last.’ ”
It didn’t. In June, he was seeing 80 or 90 guests on a random Tuesday evening. Now he’s lucky if he gets 15 on a night in the middle of the week, and that’s hard, because he can see exactly what restaurants up and down the block are doing when it comes to social distancing — or not doing, as the case may be. He said it’s tough knowing he’s been following safety guidelines while others nearby are flouting them.
“I don’t know,” Trotta said. “You don’t have to go to MIT to figure out that 6 feet apart means 6 feet apart.”
He said his expected sales for the year are down 60 percent at Forcella, and nearly 80 percent at Libertine, which hadn’t had the time to develop regulars, and those numbers seem to be in line with restaurants up and down the North End’s streets.
“We definitely hit our peak the first week and that was it. It’s been the same, it hasn’t grown at all. We’re probably down 60 percent in total,” said Anthony Caturano, the owner of Prezza on Fleet Street. “I mean, each day you wake up and you kind of get ready to get your head kicked in,” and Carla Agrippino Gomes, who owns Terramia, Antico Forno, and Cobblestone Cafe, said she saw her numbers dip when Governor Charlie Baker put travel restrictions in place on Aug. 1.
“It broke everyone’s balloon," she said. "I think a lot of people who were going to come to Boston decided not to,” yet state Representative Aaron Michlewitz, who represents the North End and has lived there his entire life, said the neighborhood is faring better than most. Dine Out Boston promotions drew in some visitors, he said, and “the outdoor seating within the outdoor season has certainly been a tremendous help to keep them alive — not thriving, but alive."
On Tuesday, Boston extended its outdoor dining program from Oct. 31 to Dec. 1, and about half of the restaurateurs in the neighborhood own the buildings they occupy, he added, a far higher percentage than anywhere else in the city, Michlewitz said. “The renters are the ones we’ve very concerned about.”
Philip Frattaroli is one of the lucky ones. He owns the buildings that house his three restaurants, Lucia, Ducali, and Filippo, and he’s been able to keep them open. Some of his neighbors have gotten breaks on their rent, he said, but those payments will one day come due, because “a lot [of buildings] are owned by individual families who can’t afford to forgive rents like a big commercial landlord might be able to,” and with a lot of transient young people vacating their apartments in the floors above, that calculus becomes that much harder, he added.
Frattaroli compared the wave of closures across the city to “The Hunger Games,” the dystopian story where individuals battle to the death. “At the end of the day that’s exactly what our lives are like,” he said. “It’s people looking down the road and saying, maybe it’s just not worth it to be in this business anymore.”
It will be the survival of the fitte$t.
That was ultimately the decision made by Jose Duarte, who shut down Taranta at the end of August after two decades on Hanover Street. He said that even after getting Paycheck Protection Program funds, he still didn’t have enough to cover his rent.
“The only way I could have stayed in business is if I owned the building and was hands-on working with my wife in the front and me in the back, and maybe a couple of my kids serving tables,” he said. “I didn’t have enough economic support to stay open. We waited for a second round of PPP — that could have helped — and the Restaurants Act is still caught in Congress. But every month that passes is a month that I will owe and the debts will keep piling on.”
Agrippino Gomes has the same landlord as Duarte at one of her restaurants, and fears she is facing a similar fate. “I’m basically keeping my restaurant open to give my employees a job,” she said. “I keep pouring more and more money of my own into it and pretty soon that’s going to have to stop,” and so she’s begun a new ritual.
Since the pandemic started, she’s been heading to Mass each morning near her home in Dedham in the hopes of seeking salvation.
“I go every day,” she said, “and I pray.”
Considering the source, it's blasphemy and God will not $ave you.
You have to do that yourself by standing up to the devil!
--more--"
So how are those contract negotiations going, Janelle?
I'm sure the Globe won't let you go hungry, but if they $tarve you there is always work to be found at Fox.
Related:
Boston will allow outdoor dining for an extra month, until Dec. 1
You like dining wearing a jacket and gloves with a cold face?
Have at it, and when you get sick they will call it COVID.
I lost my appetite for the rest:
It won’t be long before jobless benefits begin to run out
Edelman blames the Republicans for not having the Treasury have the Fed print up more money as Pelosi's House blocks checks to Americans for larger goals. Chump change checks that will facilitate more trillions to Wall Street banks and corporations to keep the markets up. Let's face it, we all know that is where the aid goes.
I didn't buy a printed paper today. I had already previewed it and decided it wasn't worth it and the deciding factor was I didn't want to don the mask to enter the store.
What goes up, must go down:
State to head up contact tracing at Boston College amid COVID-19 outbreak
The Clinton contact tracers are being brought in because Catholics are slow to get on board. That's the why the swim team was shucked.
High school parties send school districts scrambling in the age of COVID,
Can't even go for a walk in the park anymore as the Globe gives you the buyer’s guide to avoid feeling dead inside this winter and will swiftly help you climb the ranks.
Mass. reports 286 new confirmed cases of coronavirus, 6 new deaths
All their fancy graphs making you wonder why we are still locked down as criminals Baker and Walsh pat themselves on back for great job they have done despite high death rate, etc!
7 coronavirus-related deaths now connected to Maine wedding
It's nothing but bullshit after SATANIC BULLSHIT in the Globe.
One name that is not in Woodward’s latest book is Breonna Taylor, as the bad air from West’s fires seeps under doors.
I'll bet the Globe wishes Trump would resign and clear the way for a successor like Abe as they ignored the in-your-face signing of the peace accords because Trump’s Mideast deals tout ‘peace’ where there was never war. They instead sail to Hong Kong on the Mayflower.
President Trump with UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (left), Bahrain Foreign Minister Abdullatif al-Zayani (second from left), and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (center) (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images).
I stand corrected and the smile says it all, even when under the mask.
Not only that, the lack of distancing and masks really shoves the entire fraud in your face.
He's got the key to the White House, which means he can come and go as he pleases.
I guess the marketplace of ideas entitles hijackers to a platform since Israel did 9/11 (with some help from others)?
What the country really needs is school disciplinary reform as Maine mulls dumping Susan Collins for failing to meet the moment even as she is trying to desperately trying to distance himself from his failed presidency.
Meanwhile, Wu has started her campaign for mayor to put an accurate face on the communi$m coming to Bo$ton and replace that hack Walsh.
Baker could now name the entire SJC
That's after the death of Gants, who fought for equity, as well as justice, and the tyrant Baker will soon control the courts.
MBTA joins other transit systems to seek more federal aid to replace lost fares
Gotta keep that train of political patronage and favoritism running even with reduced ridership and no need!
Amazon ramps up hiring of warehouse and technical workers in Mass.
We and Bezos benefitting from price-gouging, yay!
Chambers of commerce complain about state’s $2 million ‘buy local’ campaign
It would seem like a sure thing, but rub is the newly created website does little, if anything, to directly promote the Main Street businesses that are the mainstays for these chambers. Instead, its map directs visitors to separate websites for the state’s regional tourism councils.
Still, the campaign has plenty of fans. They note that reminding consumers to shop locally is never a bad thing. Massachusetts only spends about $10 million a year on tourism promotion, so this represents a significant increase. The pandemic prompted the state tourism office to shift focus: This campaign is aimed at people who already live here, instead of the usual out-of-state targets.
That is NOT tourism!
Federal stimulus funds, approved through the CARES Act in March, will provide $1.5 million, with the state’s tourism budget covering the rest. The project was put out to bid in July, said Keiko Matsudo Orrall, the head of the Massachusetts Office of Travel & Tourism, and Boston marketing firm ThinkArgus won the primary contract.
So which well-connected folks got the wasted tax loot?!
Governor Charlie Baker unveiled the multimedia campaign at the Belmont Wheelworks bike shop, in advance of the sales tax holiday weekend on Aug. 29 and 30. Digital ads are already running, but state officials are waiting to run TV spots until after the November elections when the prices for airtime should drop.
Based on his devilish grin, there is nothing more to say regarding the failed holiday.
Mike Kennealy, Baker’s economic affairs secretary, said input from the chambers has been enormously important throughout the pandemic. “We launched this campaign pretty quickly,” said Kennealy, who currently hosts twice-monthly calls with leaders of chambers and other business groups. “It’s going to evolve as we go from here. Engaging with the chambers is a really critical part of that,” but any tweaks until now seemed like minor concessions to several of the chamber leaders. One key component that some say is missing: adequate messaging to persuade consumers it’s safe to shop or dine indoors again.
PFFFT!
Bob Luz, chief executive of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association, likes the campaign so much, he’s already told Orrall that the state should double down by allocating nearly another $2 million from a largely untapped fund created in 2019 to help the restaurant industry. “I think it’s a very important message,” Luz said. “I know everyone thinks they know best how to market, including me, but at some point, I think we need to trust the marketing professionals.” The Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, which doubles as the Cape’s tourism council, has asked members to use the logo in their social media accounts and websites, and to hang flyers in their businesses. Chief executive Wendy Northcross said the biggest need expressed by her members, after more grants and loans, is marketing help. “What the state basically did was send us a toolkit,” she said. Jon Hurst, president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, has been preaching “buy local” for decades. So for him, this campaign is long overdue, and more important than ever.
It's SCRAPS from the TABLE, but gobble them up anyway!
At least part of a $330 million federal settlement involving a private loan program will pick up the check!
