Author: Eric T. Styles
Phase One
A Vieux From Toulouse
Art by Eric T. Styles
Does anyone who endorses this closure realize that if it continues for much longer, we won’t have any jobs to go back to?
Each business is still paying tens of thousands in rent every month. Commercial landlords are not cutting any breaks to our employers, the water bills are still ridiculously high for empty buildings and there is still insurance, taxes and 12-month licenses that need to be paid for.
The only aid the Federal Government is offering to small businesses is to cover payroll for employees not laid off. That won’t help if your rent is $20,000 a month. The big bankrolls made by local businesses during Mardi Gras are eaten up by staying afloat over the long, slow summer months.
Now, that money is quickly being depleted before we even hit June. We now have a number of establishments that are gone and will never reopen. Every week that ticks by will add to that number.
“Let me sit out the summer collecting unemployment and stimulus checks, COOL!!”
A short-sighted, selfish and stupid objective. We in the service industry struggle over the course of the summer; it’s the nature of the beast. A smart Quarter Rat does the same as their employers, saving up money from the busy times for the slow times. Longtime service workers down here know that simple strategy. Any one who wants to see the closure to continue probably is hoping for a permanent universal basic income to result from all of this. A complete lack of understanding for simple economics will place them back in their parent’s basements.
FUCK TRUMP!
Let’s not ignore the effect of a heated and wide chasm of political divide in all of this. “The worst the economy gets, the worst Trump’s chances are for re-election. If he tweets open it up, I’ll scream keep it closed.” I hate the Captain of this ship, I hope it sinks. In fact, let me poke holes in all of the life rafts so he’ll look even worst. I would expect that from his political adversaries, Governors and Mayors whose lives really won’t be impacted very much by an economic collapse. They can exploit such hardships for political gain. It’s easy for a Hollywood celebrity to say keep the world closed from their $20 million mansion. It’s not a rational idea from the vast majority of paycheck-to-paycheck Americans.
The big corporate places may have the capital to tie them over for several months, but the mom and pop places WILL go under. We see the crowds and we ring up thousands of dollars every night for our bosses believing that they are rolling around in piles of money in the back office.
Rent, payroll, insurance, utility and supply costs per month is more than most of us make in a year. So when all of the free stimulus money from the government goes away, go look for your next job. All that will be available will be the huge corporate establishments who will treat you like shit and be able to do so because there are two dozen other Quarter Rats wanting your job.
Please spare us the posts about how much you can’t wait to return to work and then post later about how dangerous the virus supposedly is. Every time you share a hyperbolic fear meme about COVID-19 is, or an orange man bad narrative, you are digging your own graves.
A Vieux From Toulouse
The Vieux Carre Commission drives around the Quarter searching for a business throwing a coat of paint on their front door. They stop, take a photo of the work being performed without a permit, writes a violation, levies a fine, and demands that the person appear before them and grovel for the next permit.
A VCC inspector strikes fear into hearts of French Quarter businesses in the same way the East German Stasi police would as they rolled up to a Berlin bookstore. If a comedic version of a dystopian future was to unfold, it would be those who are in charge of preservation who would the rule the future with a historically accurate iron fist. An all powerful and omnipresent bureaucratic blue-haired lady with a clipboard, no mercy.
The same City Hall houses city engineers (building inspectors). Evidently they are the more elusive of the two entities. They’re able to sign off on permits without even being in that part of the city and, at times, they’re able to perform the duty from the comfort of their very own living rooms.
An 18-story building under construction, a house of concrete cards being assembled by dozens of workers; its collapse aided by steel towers spinning over one of our busiest intersections. If the paint color of wooden shutters are so precisely and staunchly regulated, then this site must have a city official on premises daily, waiting to pounce on the most minor infraction.
“Want to pour a 100 tons of concrete? With dozens of workers on site? Sure go ahead. We won’t even pop by to say Hello.”
Two different departments, both in City Hall. If the city engineers had been even half as zealous, half as tenacious as the VCC, the Hard Rock Hotel would probably be completed by now.
