On today’s segment of “What the fuck is happening in New York City?,” Andrew Cuomo just announced that live performances can come back again next month with limited capacity.
According to The New York Times, arts venues can reopen starting April 2 at 33% capacity, with a limit of up to 100 people indoors and 200 people outdoors. Of course, all attendees need to wear masks and be socially distanced. The limit of people allowed could increase if and when venues are able to test attendees for COVID-19.
In case you’re wondering, “But wait, weren’t there cases of one of the new COVID strains in NYC recently and isn’t there still a large number of people testing positive for COVID?,” the answer is yes! Fortunately, the vaccine rollout is gaining speed in New York City. Unfortunately, most of the population remains unvaccinated.
As much as we all miss live music and spending $20 on a mediocre drink while seeing a Broadway show from shitty seats, it definitely can wait. It would make more sense if venues only allowed attendees who’ve had both doses of the vaccine (or the newly available single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine), but that doesn’t seem to be the case. And if you want to support musicians, you can buy their music and merch. So, remember, just because venues are opening again, it doesn’t mean you should pretend the pandemic’s over.
114 Comments
As much as I want Broadway performers and other artists to be able to return to their venues and get to perform again, no theater owner/manager/producer/etc. is going to open a show with limited capacity if social distancing is in place.
Hey, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. It’s up to y-(collapses in coughing fit)
I don’t know. A few friends of mine went to an indoor concert last weekend here in Texas. They said they felt safe, and I trust their judgment. With reasonable precautions, I don’t see any reason why it can’t be safe to hold a show. Wear a mask (or two). Don’t get close to other people. Make sure it’s well-ventilated.My question is, at what percentage capacity does it become not worth it for venues to even hold events? I’ve been to a lot of poorly attended shows and have always wondered if the venue is taking a hit by there being nobody there (I tried to drink extra to help). Hopefully somebody ran the numbers.
Germany, Spain, and Netherlands have been running scientific studies for months that indicate holding indoor shows with limited capacity, social distancing, and face masks is safe.
https://www.musicfestivalwizard.com/primavera-sound-holds-safe-trial-concert-with-no-social-distancing/
There’s also almost no evidence, anywhere to suggest that sensibly spaced outdoor gatherings pose anything other than a miniscule risk of transmission.
The local Government in my area has placed restrictions on people going outdoors for exercise and leisure, but none whatsoever on going to the supermarket, which is insane.
Primavera also just cancelled the festival cos they weren’t sure it could be done safely this summer. Hopefully the trial proves that smaller events may work but yeah, the fact they did trials isnt completely the story
I don’t think anybody thought Primavera would happen the first week in June. I was just enthused to see a major festival partner with governmental agencies to conduct any scientific research on live events.
The problem is that in those countries I trust that they follow all the precautions and people actually do mask up and stay safe.I feel like the same can’t be said in venues in Texas.
What does it mean to “feel safe” though? My red state relatives all “feel safe” taking almost no precautions at all and acting like there never was a pandemic. I suspect they think friends, family and the bars and restaurants they like are inherently safe and you can only get the virus from strangers or something. I wonder what a lot of folks even think is “safe” and I can’t imagine for a second an indoor concert would really qualify even if everyone is masked— these masks we wear, even if doubled up, are great casual defense but hardly foolproof.
A lot of people in Texas seem to feel safe right now but I don’t know what that has to do with science.
Yeah if I hear “someone from Texas feels safe so let’s do it,” there’s a least a 51% chance that that’s a VERY bad idea.
And if you hear “Florida Man feels safe”, it’s probably a war crime.
Yeah, putting aside the fact that the virus is mutating and everybody’s touching the same surfaces and breathing at least some of the same air, what a lot of these plans seem to miss is that they’re calculated around everyone behaving optimally and scrupulously meeting all requirements.
But if you’re at an average concert in an average American city, 25% of the people are going to be angry Trump supporters performatively breaking the rules to own the libs, 25% young, healthy, and/or optimistic people who figure they’re low risk, 25% people who are way more into the band than they are into safety protocols, and 25% people who are too drunk or otherwise fucked up to pay close attention to details. The percentage of people whose top priority is following the guidelines and who also thought it was a good idea to come to an event like this is so low that it rounds down to zero. This is the same basic problem with school re-openings.
You suspect wrong.
Also, your comment was fucking smug and annoying to read.
Well thank jebus they FELT safe, since that is clearly what matters here.
Something less than 27%.- the 2019 Miami Marlins
Texans ‘feel safe’ enough to get rid of masks entirely so I won’t be trusting their judgement any time soon.
Sure, lump us all together with our idiot governor. See how far that gets you.
I, for one, cannot wait to enjoy a nice socially distanced mosh pit. Those things get hella busy.
Sure, the huge profit margins independent musicians, promoters and club owners have will make 33% capacity a no brainier win/win/win. Great plan.
i’m not super on board with what they’re doing, but i presume a lot of corporate money will be involved. these won’t be actual, old-school small venue shows this is gonna be like 100 trust funders watching playboi carti lip sync three songs brought to you by sprite and telus.
“It’s almost like the virus is another character in that film we call New York.”- Lazy Critic, Medium
Joke of the year in 2020 was Shaun Diston and Scott Aukerman, while discussing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, referring to New York as “sort of like the fifth turtle.”
What’s the joke?
There’s no possible way you’re responding to the right person here, bud.
So there wasn’t a joke?
Man oh MAN do I wish you’d kept the same response, now mine makes no sense.
None of it did.
I mean if your trolling style is looking like a clueless dunce then keep it up, you’re doing great kiddo.
So I take it you can’t explain where the humor was meant to be then, huh?
I can very easily explain it: it’s a riff on the hackneyed “New York is kind of like a character in the story” take on a story. And I would’ve done so much earlier for someone who genuinely wanted to know, but as you and I both know, that wasn’t your intent.Run along now, troll.
You think the best joke in an entire year was a hackneyed riff combining two other hackneyed cliches?I was honestly curious. Like, I got both that and the fifth Beatle association, but that’s so incredibly thin and trite that I kind of assumed there was actually a funny bit somewhere in there that I missed.Were you being ironic when you called it the joke of the year? Is that the joke?I’m still unsure that you know what jokes are.
CHRIST you’re boring.At this point I’m just fascinated by how lousy you are at being mean to strangers. Why even make the attempt? It’s already a shitty thing to do, but if you’re not even good at it then you don’t even get the satisfaction of a job well done.
CHRIST you’re un-self-aware.You’re the one throwing out insults, son. I was just trying to figure out what you were trying to say. It was a sincere question, and I’m only still here because you’re immediate turn to condescension and insult was perplexing. How is me continuing to question your premise while you’re throwing out insults a “shitty thing to do?”But if like 5% of a hackneyed dad joke made your year, I don’t know how you get off calling anyone else boring. I’m still pretty sure you don’t actually understand the concept of humor. What part of that was funny exactly? Substituting “turtle” for “Beatle?”
Yawn.
I didn’t get it either, and these replies are a little condescending. If you need to explain a joke, it isn’t funny anyway.
For the record, this person originally replied with a full non-sequitur (like, imagine if I replied to this by saying something like “You’re wrong, the tango isn’t originally French in origin”) then changed what they wrote after the fact, making this a very confusing conversation to read in retrospect.The frustration is that instead of changing the reply to something normal and continuing the conversation in good faith by pointing out that a change had occurred, this person changed their reply and then replied to me as if they’d never changed it.Hence the condescension on my end, dude’s a troll.
Hence the condescension on my end, dude’s a troll. Yep.
Got ya, sorry for the shitty reply on my part. You gotta love trolls.
No worries, without that background I for sure look like a condescending ass.
How am I a troll? Tried to get this sad little guy to answer a question because I was confused, and he insulted me a dozen times.You had the same response as I, except he didn’t attack you for it.
Have you really been attacking me all this time because Kinja gave you a glitch, little guy? That must have really harshed your incelebration.
You know exactly what you’re doing.(And if you somehow don’t and are sincerely unable to see why you appear to be a troll, holy moley are you one to talk about lack of self-awareness. That’s all, folks.)
You have to be fucking kidding me. You can’t have your corny ass uber nerd culture ouroborous “humor” questioned without attacking someone.Don’t interact with a lot of humans, huh? Grow up, you thin-skinned geek.
I understood all the elements. Just puzzled why someone would think that was funny or memorable enough to quote.
Coming to theaters this fall, Woody Allen returns to film in the animated classic Viruses.Woody plays The Flu. A neorotic low-self esteem virus who’s anxiety is pushed off the charts when a new virus, Covid-19(played by Chris Hemsworth) roles into New York and steals all the attention. With Diane Keaton as Chicken PoxCarlos Mencia as MumpsScarlett Johnassen as Bird Fluand Eddie Murphy as HPVWith Sir Michael Cain as Small Pox
It doesn’t really matter one way or another now that Texas has ditched their masks and will be packing stadiums shortly.Prepare for SuperSpreader 2.0!
Texas – the guy who shoots himself in the foot for attention.
“I took out muh gunand aimed at muh toesand then pulled the triggerand that’s how they goes.”Texas’ newest state song chorus.
Lol.
Listen, when your state gets ravaged by climate change induced freak weather patterns and your free market energy grid can’t keep up, the best thing to do to recover is to spread a deadly virus among the population more… FREEDOM
I think New York pretty much lost its luster by the mid sixties though it certainly was kind of interesting through the seventies. Between douchie posers, the outright human garbage rich people and the undeniable gentrification that has rendered much of the city virtually indistinguishable from any second rate strip mall (not to mention the insane cost of living), I think there are only a few final nails for that coffin. The city once had the most magnificent skyline in the modern world and now it’s littered with the shittiest, pencil thin aquarium-scrapers. Everyone I knew who moved there in the 80s and 90s fled years ago and none of them miss it.
Criticizing New York City on an internet message board. Where do some people get their courage.
Incisive point of view, tourist.
Not a tourist (necessarily), just old.
Also, white af.
I moved here in 1990, and it has every one of the problems you mentioned. New York City always has problems- always. How could it not?? But to casually dismiss the scope, vitality, and creativity of this city’s past 30 years because your friends could no longer find what they were looking for and you’ve convinced yourself every square inch of it is akin to a strip mall is some serious self-satisfied nincompoopery. By all means, enjoy not being here. I’m staying.
As someone who grew up outside the City and has been traveling in and out since the 70’s as a child, fuck the OP. People who talk about wanting ‘old NYC’ back don’t remember the fear of being mugged, robbed or possibly killed while driving through bombed out buildings with giant fucking holes in them. While reading graffiti everywhere.Do I dislike the mid-town Disney-ification that went on? Sure. But I don’t know if I want the Night of the Living Baseheads era of my teen years in the 80’s either.
As someone who lived in NYC for most of this current century, I never really understood the laments of the Disney-fication of NY, which always seemed to talk about how much Time Square changed. Like, who the F wants to hang out in Times Square? There are still plenty of terrible areas to make bad decisions in all over the city.
I get NY changes constantly, but isn’t that the appeal? The only thing that doesn’t change is that it’s expensive as fuck, and it seems like it’s the most fun if you’re young and broke or old and rich. Being solidly middle class and middle-aged just didn’t seem like a good time in NYC, which is kinda why I left.
All-time great American Dad line: “I would LOVE to move to New York. But that seems like the kind of thing you do if you have no money, or a ton of money and…I’m kind of in between.”
Never heard that one, but that is EXACTLY right!
Or they do remember that fear and want it, because once it went away, people with money started moving into the area and things got gentrified. And that’s worse than being murdered.
Can be a bit too easy to cast a rosy glow over something that can’t actually hurt you in the present day.
Yeah it’s a lot nicer than it used to be.
You managed to bait one of the borough dwellers, so kudos there.Seriously, though, I’ve never encountered another city that seems to reside entirely up its own ass like NYC.
This city has far more “luster” than whatever boring craphole you live in, tourist. Doubly so if you’re in LA, Houston, Miami, etc.
I remember my uncles taking me into NYC back in the ‘80s and it’s a hell of a lot nicer of a place to go these days.I refuse to drive in the city though, fuck that noise.
People using “tourist” as an insult is just plain adorable.“Yah, well my parents FUCKED HERE, so it’s GREAT!”
‘Part of that piss smell is from ME!’
I kinda yearn for 70s and 80s gross New York. The kinda place where you could film a Canon picture or Troma film.
I spent 15 months living there recently. I guess there is a balance to be had between character and physical safety. Researching the question, I watched Taxi Driver, followed by the Muppets Take Manhattan, and now I really don’t know what to think.
new york fucking rules.
Whatever one’s opinions on re-opening stuff, this site should know better than to re-hash nonsense scare stories about new super scary variants which are claimed to be more infectious or more resistant to vaccines, all based on zero evidence. All this stuff is doing is making people more reluctant to get vaccinated because they don’t see the point.
Okay cool take but what about for the variants where there is strong evidence that they are more infectious or incomplete evidence of the effectiveness of individual vaccines?
I haven’t seen any scare stories about the variants being resistant to vaccines. Most of the stories seem to say that the vaccines work against the variants.
There are signs of reduced though not zero effectiveness of the vaccines against some of the variants — the South African and Brazilian ones in particular, while the Kent variant is more infectious but no more resistant.
Everyone thinks music is so “cool” and “awesome” until they catch CancerAIDS and then they are all “Why didn’t you warn us that music is so dangerous!”And, I’m all like “Buddy, I literally looked you in the eyes and told you rock and roll is the work of Satan….” For the record, I wasn’t being a condescending dick: his name was “Buddy.”Bottom line: Ozzy Osborn snorted lines of fucking ants so that you dorks can hide under your fuzzy blankets until it’s “safe” to rock out with your guac out.
I got a Dawes notification for CancerAIDS?
wtf is covid lol
They let ‘rock n roll’ into NYC back in the ‘80s and I think we all know what happened:NeverAgain
Political crises in Texas…and now New York, equal restriction lifting? Seems kind of obvious.
Also saw they were easing restrictions in Indiana/Indy cause of the NCAA tourney.
Sorry, Governor. This shit isn’t going to come close to saving your sorry ass.
He’s pulling a “Newsom”.
I find myself saying “Newsom” the way Jerry Seinfeld would say “Newman”.
HEY, NEW YORK:
I live in New York and can get the vaccine because of my job…but given how damn-near impossible it’s been to land an appointment, I may end up getting it because I became a senior citizen while trying.
Saw the press conference today, looks like NYC is gonna have some places be open 24/7. He said something like, “I’m sure there will be people willing to come in the middle of the night to get the shot.”
So I guess keep an eye out for any overnight appointments.
Yeah, I saw that, too. If they do that, I’ll certainly go at midnight or something. I live close enough to the Javits Center to pull that off. Thanks for the tip.
The issue, from what I understand, isn’t the man power but still the limit to the number of vaccines places are getting each day and how many they can hold on to without spoiling. The J&J vaccine is going to change a lot of that since its storage requirements are not nearly as fussy and it being one shot means people are done with one. I have a feeling within a month it will be the vaccine most people getIts also built on more traditional vaccine approaches and does not use mRNA tech. Whether that is good or bad is up to debate but from what I have seen the J&J vaccine seems to have a lot less side effects.
http://www.turbovax.info and its twitter feed are your friend. I and everyone else were able to score appointments easily through that.
I wish there was one for the Chicagoland area
There may just be one. Check your local news blogs and local Twitter feeds.
I have and I have not seen any but I will keep looking.
If I see anything on my end relating to Chicago, i’ll let you know.
Well, NYC dwellers never stop letting us know how brilliant they are so I guess we’ll see how many folks show up. I don’t recall: does Ivanka like opera?
Well this NYC dweller is a dumbass, so it’s not all of us. (I will grant that there are a good number of New Yorkers who claim to be brilliant culturistas.) I’m definitely not gonna be attending any shows any time soon– so may I’m not so dumb after all. (Spoiler alert– I am.)
Also, Ivanka and her dipshit husband are Florida’s problem these days.
Once again, huge thanks to AVclub for telling me not only what happened, but exactly how to think about it.I’m not even saying you’re wrong, but Jesus. Can you *pretend* to be journalists, so I can keep pretending that dicking around here counts as reading the “news?”
We’re going to be dealing with the fallout from this for way too long because of America’s complete inability to make any sort of sacrifice whatsoever.
As a staff writer for an entertainment/pop culture website…do you actually think musicians are the only people who are losing out when live performances are cancelled? You understand there is a metric fuckton of people whose careers have been upended, including a whole lot of staff who make these performances run, right? I don’t know how comfortable I feel about indoors, in-person performances at this point, but it’s a lot more complicated than “durr hurr there’s still a pandemic stay closed forever.”
Oh cry me a f-cking river. Why don’t you write a column about it for your shitty magazine from your heated office
Cuomo added, “You know what else is open for business? THIS DIQ” and grabbed his crotch.
Way to make light of an alleged groper and abuser. Stay classy, San Diego.
This is a weird hectoring article. When did the AV Club become my mom?
Yeah, this article just feels callous towards the financial struggle a lot of people are currently going through. The pandemic has really fucked up a lot of different industries, and they’re going to need to reopen sooner or later. Not everybody’s privileged enough to just crap out clickbait from the comfort of their home!
Do w e want to see any performances Cuomo opens?
its just been going on too long. Eventually its gonna be like this everywhere, not just the red states. People are going to be like “fuck it, enoughs enough, we’re going back to normal, consequences schmonsequences.”
Same with Massachussets. It’s mind-boggling.
The tone of this article is all wrong. Live events take a long time to plan and they’ve been shut down entirely for a full year. There needs to be some advance notice of when events can resume, and these restrictions are arguably too strict for anyone to turn a profit. In April, nearly all vulnerable people in NYC will have had access to the vaccine and we’ll be vaccinating progressively younger and healthier adults. So, if those fully vaccinated people want to see a show… while wearing a mask… in extremely sparsely populated venues, now they have a roadmap for doing that.Trumpish responses to the virus were a literal atrocity, but the opposing hysteria we’ve all succumbed to is going to make it hard to ever exit the pandemic. The lockdowns forever, never-see-a-concert-again mentality is harmful in its own way.
…And ooohhhhh take me off of your mailing list
Of idiots who think COVID does not existMaybe I’m wrong
But you’re certainly not right
Theater = out of town rich people
Nice LCD Soundsystem reference 😀