A Small Business Owner's Dilemma
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2020
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Georgia has confirmed more than 24,000 cases of COVID-19 and tallied close to 1,000 deaths from the disease. However, Governor Brian Kemp is still allowing a number of the state’s businesses to reopen this week, citing an increased capacity for testing and hospitalizations. Employers, for their part, have been left in a lurch. How do small business owners reopen? Should they? And, if an owner chooses to remain shuttered, can it count on the government for help?
Guest: Christopher Escobar, owner of the Plaza Theatre in Atlanta.
Slate Plus members get bonus segments and ad-free podcast feeds. Sign up now.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | When I called up Chris Escobar, he was at work in downtown Atlanta. |
| 0:09.3 | He owns an old movie theater called The Plaza. |
| 0:11.8 | It's got one of those big marquees and a neon sign. |
| 0:15.5 | But right now, there's no one buying popcorn. |
| 0:19.1 | No projector flickering. |
| 0:22.3 | Where are you sitting? |
| 0:30.5 | So I keep oscillating between, I'm sitting at a little high boy table in front of the bar area, just past the concession stand. |
| 0:39.4 | But I'm walking around a little bit as I tend to do while I'm having conversations about this whole situation and I pace and I'll walk up and down the aisles of the empty auditorium. |
| 0:42.0 | This whole situation is the coronavirus, of course. |
| 0:45.9 | The plaza's been closed for more than a month. |
| 0:49.0 | It feels like the room misses people to be here, honestly. |
| 0:54.0 | Yeah, it feels like you miss people, too. |
| 0:55.9 | I do. I really do. |
| 1:03.5 | I heard the theater's known for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. |
| 1:07.1 | We are. So we're not just known. I mean, it's become an Atlanta tradition. It's on the bucket list. |
| 1:11.2 | Like, of all the things you need to do if you're in Atlanta, it's come to Rocky Horror. |
| 1:14.6 | And I like to say for people whose religious movies, the plaz is their temple and services in Sunday mornings, |
| 1:19.7 | it's Fridays at midnight for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. |
| 1:22.6 | This theater sells more tickets to the Rocky Horror Picture Show than any other theater in the country. |
| 1:28.4 | At least 100 people are in the audience every week, four times that in October. |
| 1:34.0 | They all dance along with a live cast who are doing their own synchronized floor show. |
| 1:38.8 | Nothing messes with Rocky Horror Picture Show ever, but apparently the coronavirus tried to. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.