Hope nobody is tired of carnival!
The West Indian Independence Parade (with the standard live show following) wrapped up a week of celebration.
It’s much, much easier to maintain physical distance from others when viewing a parade, than while in a small portion of a park, trying to watch people dance as everyone else crowds trying to do the same thing.
This is simple math. The parade route was about one mile this year, with options to stand on either side of the roadway. This meant that I never needed to stand closer than about 12-15 feet from anyone else viewing the parade.
While I understand the panic of 2020, canceling parades still seems silly when it’s not that hard to make changes that would keep everyone reasonably safe like having fewer people on floats and spacing out dancers or others in the parade. It’s just a matter of people abiding by those restrictions.
Maybe silly is not the right word, but in 2020 and 2021, I still see decisions being made in the name of Covid that have nothing to do with public health. For instance, there are businesses that will allow people to shop, but keep their restrooms closed. If it’s safe enough to allow people indoors to take their money, why is it not safe to allow someone the dignity of using indoor plumbing? These restrooms are single stall, so the concern of being within six feet of another person for a few minutes is not there.
It’s a bad look. Other establishments never closed their restrooms, or reopened them awhile ago.
If you simply do not want to make your facilities available to the public, don’t hide behind Covid as the reason.
And, I see other institutions keeping their lockers off-limits, which basically puts up an obstacle for patrons who are arriving by any mode of transportation besides public vehicle. It makes sense to not allow patrons to carry water through a museum, but then, provide a space for us to stash our water bottles. Looking at you Wadsworth Atheneum, and in New Haven, the Yale University Art Gallery. Do you imagine patrons to be licking the inside of the lockers, or coughing all over the doors?
On a recent trip to New Haven, I did some shopping. All these items would have easily fit in a locker that normally I would have been able to access. I even checked in advance to see that lockers would be available at the museum. But when I read the e-ticket reminder a few minutes before my scheduled gallery visit, I learned they had chosen to exclude people who are not car-dependent. The snubbing from Yale is fine. I expect that brand of snobbery from them. But from the Wadsworth? Where they are no longer requiring reservations or doing temperature checks at the door? What is this policy really about?
Meanwhile, in New Haven, there’s a line about 25 people deep at a popular vegetarian restaurant. The line is stalled. There’s no physical spacing between parties. This is while all the tables are full of people eating their meals. This offers more risk than any possible cooties my bags might catch from the locker that may have contained one other person’s bags earlier in the day.
On public transportation, some people continue to ignore the mask requirement, despite canned announcers’ threatening remarks about breaking federal laws. I watched someone very lightly snack from New Haven to Hartford, obviously as his way of thwarting the mask policy. On buses, it’s common for people to pull masks down as soon as they’re seated, or when they decide to have a phone call. Enforcement only happens if the driver decides it will — there’s no consistency.
It’s one thing to be like “we didn’t have much information in March/April 2020, so we did the best we could at the time,” and it’s another to ignore both the developments since and the ways that we continue to allow actual risky behaviors.
The other day, there was another party on my street. Both sides of the street were lined with cars, it was that large of a gathering. People were sharing cigarettes on the sidewalk. These are tiny yards where spacing for this kind of a crowd is impossible. I don’t know what the vaccination rate is for my block, but I can tell you that I am in an area where they send the public health outreach folks because our numbers were that low. The telling dry cough can be heard a few houses away.
This is not a post of despair. I don’t have time for that. While in New Haven last weekend, I saw something else. BAR — which announced they were requiring proof of vaccination for people to eat indoors — was not hurting for business. If you read all the comments they received about this policy, you might have believed they were doomed. Instead, their line was too long for my patience. Last week, several arts organizations had the guts to begin requiring proof of vaccination. TheaterWorks quietly announced. Then, the Bushnell.
As the High Holidays approach, I’m learning of at least one area synagogue requiring people to be both fully vaccinated and masked if attending in person; Zoom services are provided by those unable or unwilling to do those things, or for people not comfortable gathering indoors.
This — not closing restrooms and lockers — is the reasonable thing to do.
Eventually, the loudmouths dragging their feet will need to get with the program if they want to fully rejoin society. (And for those not merely being obnoxious conspiracy theorists slash selfish holdouts, employers could help the remaining folks by hosting vaccine clinics at the workplace, during work hours, without docking anyone’s pay)
Dispatches from the Alleged Ghost Town (Volume 37)
Hope nobody is tired of carnival!
The West Indian Independence Parade (with the standard live show following) wrapped up a week of celebration.
It’s much, much easier to maintain physical distance from others when viewing a parade, than while in a small portion of a park, trying to watch people dance as everyone else crowds trying to do the same thing.
This is simple math. The parade route was about one mile this year, with options to stand on either side of the roadway. This meant that I never needed to stand closer than about 12-15 feet from anyone else viewing the parade.
While I understand the panic of 2020, canceling parades still seems silly when it’s not that hard to make changes that would keep everyone reasonably safe like having fewer people on floats and spacing out dancers or others in the parade. It’s just a matter of people abiding by those restrictions.
Maybe silly is not the right word, but in 2020 and 2021, I still see decisions being made in the name of Covid that have nothing to do with public health. For instance, there are businesses that will allow people to shop, but keep their restrooms closed. If it’s safe enough to allow people indoors to take their money, why is it not safe to allow someone the dignity of using indoor plumbing? These restrooms are single stall, so the concern of being within six feet of another person for a few minutes is not there.
It’s a bad look. Other establishments never closed their restrooms, or reopened them awhile ago.
If you simply do not want to make your facilities available to the public, don’t hide behind Covid as the reason.
And, I see other institutions keeping their lockers off-limits, which basically puts up an obstacle for patrons who are arriving by any mode of transportation besides public vehicle. It makes sense to not allow patrons to carry water through a museum, but then, provide a space for us to stash our water bottles. Looking at you Wadsworth Atheneum, and in New Haven, the Yale University Art Gallery. Do you imagine patrons to be licking the inside of the lockers, or coughing all over the doors?
On a recent trip to New Haven, I did some shopping. All these items would have easily fit in a locker that normally I would have been able to access. I even checked in advance to see that lockers would be available at the museum. But when I read the e-ticket reminder a few minutes before my scheduled gallery visit, I learned they had chosen to exclude people who are not car-dependent. The snubbing from Yale is fine. I expect that brand of snobbery from them. But from the Wadsworth? Where they are no longer requiring reservations or doing temperature checks at the door? What is this policy really about?
Meanwhile, in New Haven, there’s a line about 25 people deep at a popular vegetarian restaurant. The line is stalled. There’s no physical spacing between parties. This is while all the tables are full of people eating their meals. This offers more risk than any possible cooties my bags might catch from the locker that may have contained one other person’s bags earlier in the day.
On public transportation, some people continue to ignore the mask requirement, despite canned announcers’ threatening remarks about breaking federal laws. I watched someone very lightly snack from New Haven to Hartford, obviously as his way of thwarting the mask policy. On buses, it’s common for people to pull masks down as soon as they’re seated, or when they decide to have a phone call. Enforcement only happens if the driver decides it will — there’s no consistency.
It’s one thing to be like “we didn’t have much information in March/April 2020, so we did the best we could at the time,” and it’s another to ignore both the developments since and the ways that we continue to allow actual risky behaviors.
The other day, there was another party on my street. Both sides of the street were lined with cars, it was that large of a gathering. People were sharing cigarettes on the sidewalk. These are tiny yards where spacing for this kind of a crowd is impossible. I don’t know what the vaccination rate is for my block, but I can tell you that I am in an area where they send the public health outreach folks because our numbers were that low. The telling dry cough can be heard a few houses away.
This is not a post of despair. I don’t have time for that. While in New Haven last weekend, I saw something else. BAR — which announced they were requiring proof of vaccination for people to eat indoors — was not hurting for business. If you read all the comments they received about this policy, you might have believed they were doomed. Instead, their line was too long for my patience. Last week, several arts organizations had the guts to begin requiring proof of vaccination. TheaterWorks quietly announced. Then, the Bushnell.
As the High Holidays approach, I’m learning of at least one area synagogue requiring people to be both fully vaccinated and masked if attending in person; Zoom services are provided by those unable or unwilling to do those things, or for people not comfortable gathering indoors.
This — not closing restrooms and lockers — is the reasonable thing to do.
Eventually, the loudmouths dragging their feet will need to get with the program if they want to fully rejoin society. (And for those not merely being obnoxious conspiracy theorists slash selfish holdouts, employers could help the remaining folks by hosting vaccine clinics at the workplace, during work hours, without docking anyone’s pay)
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