In force. I’m about to break a beer sales record for June/4th of July weekend. This week has been crazy work wise and the seasonal traffic is worse than usual.
And @ficuswhisperer this goes to what you’re saying as well.
NY officials have been promoting this. Early on Cuomo kept stressing that it was a great idea to go to parks and beaches. He kept state parks open against protest by Parks employees. Leading towns and counties to either shutter their beaches in the lead up to Memorial Day or operate them on a resident’s only basis. In an attempt to make seasonal tourist areas leas attractive. Forcing Cuomo to do the same at state beaches.
Di Blasio responded by describing this as discriminatory against NYC residents (the biggest source of tourism here). Even as he kept NYC’s beaches closed, making seasonal tourism areas more attractive.
Early on a large number of well off NYC residents off booted to these same seasonal areas in an attempt to avoid population dense areas. Every available rental place, air bnb, and operating was full within weeks. And rates and seasonal rents had purportedly tripled.
Cuomo downplayed it, variously saying it wasn’t happening or wasn’t spreading Covid to new areas until Eastern Long Island had the highest per capita infection rate in the nation. Once he switched to telling people not to do that, Di Blasio began decrying how the governor was blaming city residents for Covid.
Since talk of opening up began it’s almost exclusively been about summer tourism, which is a massive, massive industry in NY. Most areas outside the city survive almost exclusively on tourism and NYC itself is one of the worlds biggest tourism destinations.
Most recently the spikes around the country had led Cuomo to back off the “phase 3” opening scheduled for tomorrow. Which is what you should do given what’s going in. Di Blasio and leaders from upstate, who’ve been loudest about opening and tourism as they were hit pretty lightly suddenly began loudly pushing for my phase 3 as if it was already set in stone.
So even as yes Cuomo, and some of our local people did a good job getting a handle on it once they pulled the trigger.
Everyone always left an opening for tourism. And we’re actually accelerating the opening process as other parts of the country rocket off. Which is exactly how those states got where they are now.
I’m fully expecting NY to be closing down again by the end of August. If not the middle of July. The national spike should be driving us to tighten things up. Not to act as if we’re special and seperate so people can golf.
