Many Restaurants May Never Re-Open After Coronavirus
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2020
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The coronavirus pandemic is devastating the hospitality industry. Millions of Americans are in lockdown. Events are being cancelled. The day before the release of this podcast episode, New York City's restaurants and bars have been forced to stop sit-down service. In the midst of a crisis, the worst thing that could happen to the restaurant industry has happened. This week, we talked to restaurant owners in the Chinatown in Flushing, Queens. This is a thriving immigrant community, and food-lover’s paradise, that has been turned upside down by COVID-19. For restauranteurs already operating on slim profit margins, staying open during the shutdown was already near-impossible. The question is whether they’ll be able to reopen at all. Also on the show: you share with us your stories about stepping up to help others through the crisis, and they are seriously inspirational. Tune in for all sorts of strategies, big and small, for giving your community a helping hand.
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Mother Jones podcast. I'm Jamila King in Crown Heights. |
| 0:05.0 | I'm recording this again from my bedroom closet as I, like you or certainly someone you know, practice social distancing. |
| 0:15.0 | It's an increasingly lockdown nation. |
| 0:20.0 | Wherever you live, I bet your life has been disrupted in big ways and small ones. |
| 0:25.4 | Millions of Americans are in lockdown, and this is a fast developing story. |
| 0:30.9 | As you're hearing this, New York City's restaurants and bars have been forced to shut down. You can only get delivery or takeout. |
| 0:39.0 | In the midst of a crisis, the worst thing that could happen to the restaurant industry here has |
| 0:44.5 | happened. This week we travel to the heart of a thriving immigrant community in |
| 0:49.6 | New York City that's been turned upside down by COVID-19. The small businesses that are the lifeblood of economic |
| 0:57.1 | activity closed. Is this just the tip of the iceberg, stay tuned. Mother Jones reporter Noah Lenard joins us now. |
| 1:07.0 | Hey Noah. |
| 1:10.5 | Hey, Jamila, how are you holding up? |
| 1:12.1 | I'm hanging in there. So, Noah, for the past week, you've been looking into the effect that the coronavirus is having in a thriving immigrant community here in New York City. Which one? So yeah I went to Flushing |
| 1:24.5 | Queens which is a huge Chinatown. It's at the last stop of the seven train out in |
| 1:29.3 | Queens. But I think when people think of New York, they just think of the Manhattan Chinatown, |
| 1:35.0 | but the one in Flushing is in many ways more booming. |
| 1:38.0 | It's had more luxury condo development than all but one neighborhood in all of New York City. |
| 1:42.0 | A bustling place, but when producer... than all but one neighborhood in all of New York City. |
| 1:42.6 | A bustling place, but when producer Molly Schwartz and I went there on Saturday, |
| 1:47.4 | it felt empty, it felt like being in a small town, |
| 1:49.8 | much more like the strip malls that I'm used to |
| 1:52.0 | from growing up in suburban New Jersey. |
... |
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