American Ingenuity At Work

Zero Hedge posted an article today about a New York City pub owner who has had enough of Governor Cuomo’s shutdown orders that have closed his business.

The article reports:

In what is a hilarious bit of irony for Democrat politicians in New York, a pub that had its liquor license yanked due to Covid rules has now declared itself an “Autonomous Zone” and is continuing to do business.

The bar, called Mac’s Public House in Staten Island, said publicly: “We refuse to abide by any rules and regulations put forth by the Mayor of NYC and Governor of NY State.”

They also painted “AUTONOMOUS ZONE” on the sidewalk outside the bar and put signs in the windows claiming “As of November 20, 2020, we hereby declare this establishment an AUTONOMOUS ZONE”.

The pub had its liquor license revoked by the state and was slapped with thousands of dollars in fines after defying New York’s latest move to “orange zone status” (whatever that means) thanks to the very huge brain of “Emmy nominated” Governor Andrew Cuomo. 

Co-owner Danny Presti told The Post: “At this point, we’re OK with it, because we’re not paying it. [The Sheriff’s Department] is issuing us $1,000 fines, so they keep coming back. We’re still here. We’re not letting them in.”

Co-owner Keith McAlarney said in a recent YouTube video: “We’re not backing down. You think you scared me by . . . saying I don’t have a license now to serve liquor now? Well guess what? That liquor license is on the wall. If that liquor license is gonna come off the wall, it’s gonna be done by Cuomo. You wanna come down here and pull that license off the wall?”

To me, the interesting thing about the lockdowns is who they impact. Many small businesses have been forced out of business while big box stores and Amazon are making huge profits. Most of the people who frequent bars are not in an age group that is at high risk of complications from the coronavirus.

My husband and I have recently recovered from the coronavirus. We have no idea how or when we became infected–we wore our masks when required and we not generally in large groups of people. We continually interacted with the same ten or so people that we generally interact with. No one in that group of people has been infected by the virus. When we began feeling like we were coming down with a cold, we went into isolation because we didn’t what to share whatever we had. We didn’t find out it was coronavirus until five days into it. However, during those five days, we self-isolated. Closing down businesses is an overreaction. Years ago when I took a course on food safety, one of the things mentioned was that if a restaurant employee showed up at work with a cold, he could be assigned to chores that did not involve food preparation or interacting with customers. A little bit of common sense would solve a lot of the spread of this virus.