THE INDOOR/OUTDOOR SHED
This is what happens when government tries to fix messes of its own making.
For those of you still wearing a mask, and practicing social distancing . . . outside . . . in 90 degree weather . . . alone . . . an anecdote about the "outdoor" dining, uh, shed.
Should fortune smile upon you and cart your behind to some fair weather enclave such as California (just kidding) or Florida, count your proverbial blessings.
Okay yes, the weather is still nice in the Golden State (Hah!).
The government hasn't figured out a way to muck CA up completely. Though wildfires, brownouts, and droughts are man-made efforts to destroy weather patterns.
But if season changes are the thing, the Northeast, and Midwest, is home.
Enter the big, therapeutic hand of incompetence.
The government.
Their solution to the cratering service industry designed by the Dopes in Charge?
The "outdoor" dining shed.
Not lifting of the useless Covid restrictions. Couldn't do that.
That would be logical, and effective. Two things the state is not.
During the Summer of 2020, these rat-infested, gimcrackery, homages to bureaucratic incompetence sprang up in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx like acne on the face of a hormone-clanging twelve-year-old.
Within seconds, the rodent population of Gotham took down the virtual For Rent signs on these human popsicle storage garages and moved in on a long-term lease. Their foot soldiers, the two-inch cockroach, sublet any leftover space.
Like everything else the government turns to stone with a single look, these disease traps are here to stay.
The joke is customers sit in unventilated suffocating petri dishes as opposed to well-ventilated RESTAURANTS with air exchange systems, higher ceilings, and more cubic footage to disperse bacteria and germs.
RESTAURANTS have heating systems as opposed to the portable blast furnaces employed by desperate owners during Winter months. These stand-alone burn factories have a range of six millimeters. Customers either lose eyebrows or invite hypothermia, the difference being two millimeters.
Yet, there we were, on a cold February night, dining "out" at an Italian place on the Upper East Side. Traffic shot by within a few feet of our table. A rat used a tiny revolving door to run underneath the shed.
I made up the part about the revolving door.
Many thanks to Warren Wilhelm. His qualifications for Mayor of the greatest city on Earth?
He's tall.
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