A Small Business Finds Opportunity In Crisis
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2020
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A Hyde Park store owner supported his neighborhood through a pandemic this spring. The favor was returned during a summer of protests. But this winter will be tough.
Guest: Eric Williams, owner of The Silver Room.
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Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Danielle Hewitt, and Elena Schwartz, with help from Frannie Kelley.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I really didn't appreciate how absurd it must feel to be a small business owner right now |
| 0:09.2 | until I spoke to Eric Williams. |
| 0:12.1 | He owns a boutique on the south side of Chicago, a city that has been slowly week by week |
| 0:17.6 | shutting itself down, going into a kind of coronavirus hibernation. |
| 0:23.2 | I was noticing how just over the last week, the restrictions kind of ticked up a bit. |
| 0:29.1 | And all of a sudden, a business like yours, I think you're limited to 25% of capacity. |
| 0:34.1 | Is that right? |
| 0:35.0 | Technically, yes. |
| 0:36.2 | So what does that even look like? |
| 0:38.4 | Like, is someone sitting there with a counter in front of the store? Is there a line? So here's the real answer. So in the city of |
| 0:45.0 | Chicago, as a retailer, we don't get occupancy placards. Eric's store. It's called the Silver |
| 0:52.3 | Room. It sells books, sunglasses, bags, and jewelry. |
| 0:57.0 | The placards are owned for restaurants and hospitality. So as a retailer, technically, I don't even know what my, I can just even is. I don't know what it actually even is. So to say 25% means of what? Is it 30 people? Is it 50 people? I have no idea. |
| 1:14.2 | Now the state regulation says something different. It says it's five people per thousand |
| 1:19.2 | square feet. So that you can actually kind of figure out what that would look like. And for |
| 1:25.1 | us, that's around eight people. Does that include our employees? |
| 1:29.3 | Does that include X-Ly-Z? So the mayor came about the story yesterday. I saw your Instagram. |
| 1:36.0 | Yeah. So that was completely like a surprise. When she came in yesterday, she had, it was her, |
| 1:43.1 | it was a camera person, it was a staff member, and two security folks. So that's like five, six people right there. And then we had- You were like, we're full. Exactly. And then we had three or four staff in there, and I happened to walk in. There's another five, six people in the store. So it was probably 15 people. I'm like, I hope she doesn't shut it down. |
| 2:02.7 | Chicago's mayor, Lori Lightfoot, she was visiting the Silver Room to try to encourage city |
| 2:07.9 | residents to shop at black-owned businesses the day after Thanksgiving, in spite of COVID. |
| 2:14.3 | She's calling the effort Black Shop Friday. All over the country, mayors like Lightfoot |
... |
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