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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to our latest Time Capsule Call-In, businesses lost during the pandemic year of 2020, 646-435-7280. Mark in Flatbush, you're up first. You're on WNYC. Hi, Mark.

Mark: Hi. I own a tour guide company called The Levys' Unique New York!. We specialize in student [unintelligible 00:00:35] from all over the country, Canada, and Europe. Within a week of March 12, March 12 is known as Red Thursday in the tour guide business, all of our tours in the spring got canceled. For tour guides, the spring is like retail is to December. We make all of our money in the spring, most of our money in the spring. We lost hundreds of tours that got canceled and we basically were wiped out.

Brian: Did you tell my screener you got a PPP loan?

Mark: Yes. We got a PPP loan. It wasn't for much. What we needed to do was to give refunds to our clients who had already paid for the tours, but then had to cancel them. That disappeared in no time. All of my guides, and we got the greatest guides in New York City. We got the greatest tour guides. They're all freelancers. They really hustle and they work for other companies doing great, fine by us. The hardest part of this whole thing has been them losing that work.

Brian: What does a [unintelligible 00:01:43] tour guide owner do for a living now?

Mark: Excuse me?

Brian: How do you transition to other work while you wait for the tour-?

Mark: I'm basically retired. I'll turn 70 next year and I have some other resources, but my son who's my partner in the business is doing a cocktail business. I'm personally okay, but my tour guides are really struggling.

Brian: I hear you. Mark, thank you for calling in. I appreciate that and your concern for your employees. Mendel in West Hartford, Connecticut, you're on WNYC. Is it Mendel? Hi.

Mendel: Hey, Brian. Glad to be with you. Thanks for having me on the show.

Brian: Tell us about your business.

Mendel: We're called Ivan Mohawk Custom Fabrication. I did all kinds of work, stonework, backyard, historical restorations of entryways, all that kind of stuff. We realized that the school systems were not taking good care and we decided to just move immediately. I just eradicated my business from Brooklyn and I have had to completely restart here in West Hartford, which is where I grew up.

Brian: What's next?

Mendel: What's next is rebuilding the business, I guess, Brian.

Brian: Mandel, good luck out there. Let's go to Fernando in Franklin Square, Long Island. Fernando, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Fernando: Hi, Brian. Great to speak with you. I had a wedding business. New York Newlyweds is my company. We've been in business for about 10 years, and this industry got crushed by the COVID. We normally would have 150 to 300 people at a wedding event and now it went down to 20, maybe 30. All the events got canceled and postponed and some just totally couldn't shoot anymore. That pretty much hurt the industry and my business.

Brian: Do you have prospects for coming back after COVID or how do you fill that gap of time?

Fernando: All right. Believe it or not, I took another-- I started working for recruiting agents, believe it or not, so it's something totally-- I had to completely reinvent myself and go into a different industry. It's just been tough. I'm hoping that people will call back and see if they can reschedule for next year, but a lot of people canceled. I think that industry, the photography industry, really got hit because you're in contact with so many people. I guess, it's one of the most important days in people's lives and for them to have it in this situation, they would I guess rather wait for next year.

Brian: I'm sorry for that loss of your business, Fernando. Thank you for checking in with us. By the way, broken down by industry, we're seeing in New Jersey, the vast majority of businesses that closed this year were leisure and hospitality businesses at nearly 46%, 30% of the businesses that closed were health and education services, 23% were retail and transportation businesses, and 20% were professional and business services. There are just some categories of businesses that truly couldn't work this year, in a totally unforeseen way and we're hearing some of those stories on the air for sure. Here is Ruggiero in Yonkers, our next caller. Ruggiero, you're on WNYC. Hi, there.

Ruggiero: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking the call, a big fan here. I'm a jazz musician, originally from Brazil and I've been living here in the New York area for the last 15 years. The last week or so we heard the bad and terrible news that one of the most beloved jazz clubs and great restaurants here in New York City, the Jazz Standard, announced that they're not going to be reopening.

Brian: I did not know that. That's news to me, the Jazz Standard is closing.

Ruggiero: Exactly. A place that I had the pleasure to play many times and more than that, it was such a community-building place because we would go and watch our friends play. They were always so amazing in treating everybody. I think it's one of the only major jazz club in New York that you could go and not be asked to buy anything or to consume. In the last six months, they didn't open. They even established a no-tip policy for the workers there, so they were covering their salaries and their-- with living wages.

It felt we were just, "Oh, you don't have to tip because we always used to do that." It's just a big hit in the jazz community and arts in general because I was telling the screener that we all moved here to New York because of the jazz scene or the music scene or the art scene, and now it's so sad to see it all gone. I think it has a lot to do with the real estate business because I think they couldn't come to an agreement with the owner of the building.

I have something to just throw in the air here since I have this platform. My daughter, actually, who's also a musician, she was thinking about if the city could make efforts to buy real estate and to let jazz places or art, in general, use the space because this was a very successful club. It was not like they ran out of business because they were doing a poor job on the very contrary. If the city could give them structure, proportionate real estate for them, not to have that problem, and if that business goes down, the next one comes in, and they still have that place. If it flourishes, it just stays, there is no fight. It's so unfair and so many other places are facing that kind of situation now and they're affected.

Brian: Why do you think as a jazz musician, and of course, the entire music industry has been hit so hard, like theater and dance and related performing arts. I will say this is news to me and coincidentally, I was just before the pandemic hit, looking to see somebody at the Jazz Standard. I had recently discovered the young composer Miho Hazama, who leads a band there sometimes.

Ruggiero: Amazing. Sure.

Brian: I was looking for the next date that she was going to appear at the Jazz Standard and then the pandemic hit and boom. Some of the other clubs are holding on, they're doing live streaming events that they charge a little bit for. Do you have any sense of what kinds of music venues can hold on and what can't hold on? Is there any rhyme or reason to it?

Ruggiero: I think the ones that are surviving and they can, are the ones that have the real estate situation settled. For instance, The Village Vanguard who-- one of the ones that are doing on Friday and Saturdays, they're doing live stream, only streaming, no public, they have a contract for the next 10 years. The owner understood the importance of that tempo of jazz, the history, they're there for more than I think 75 years or so. I think that's a big part of the-

Brian: It's so real estate dependent?

Ruggiero: Yes.

Brian: Ruggiero, thank you so much for calling in. Good luck. I wish I could offer something other than good luck to everybody listening now in the performing arts, so devastating. Hopefully, you have whatever stop-gap measures until things return, hopefully, in 2021. B in Syracuse you're on WNYC. Hi B.

B: Hi Brian. Thank you so much for having me. Out in Baldwinsville, there was actually a really wonderful restaurant that I used to go to, me and my family. We spent a lot of money there. Unfortunately, they closed down due to the pandemic and due to rent prices rising just like the gentleman before me was saying. It really is about real estate now.

Brian: What's the name of the place?

B: Dani's Dessert and Wine Bar.

Brian: Dani's Dessert and Wine Bar didn't make it through the pandemic. B thank you for checking in from Syracuse. Natalie in Asbury Park, you're on WNYC. Hi, Natalie.

Natalie: Hello. I'm here.

Brian: Hi there. I'm here too.

Natalie: Hi. [laughs]

Brian: We're here.

Natalie: [laughs] Very weird. I'm on my phone in my car. Anyway, so I had a business, and our business would have been okay however I did not have good child care. I have five-year-old twins. I'm a single parent. I had to take care of my kids and so I couldn't do both.

Brian: Wow. That has been such a struggle for so many parents. If you had a job that wasn't a business that you owned, do you think it would have been different?

Natalie: I'm not sure. I know that one of the reasons why I have-- why I've kept my own business was because of the flexibility with having small kids that require a lot of time and effort. They were in daycare from when they were five months old full-time until March 14th or whatever that day was. They were in pre-school last May. They were in before care, aftercare and now they were home 24/7.

It's really hard to get any work done when you're taking care of two small kids and then not having any break and not being able to find a babysitter. I tried a couple of babysitters, it's really difficult. Even with me lowering my expectations down to nothing, it's very difficult to even have babysitters at this point. On top of the fact that it's COVID, so they are in school. They're back in school five days a week but only half days and it's COVID so things change where they are in school for a week and then they're home for a week and they're in school for a week. It goes back and forth. Having child care-

Brian: The hybrid, the unpredictability as well and so much harder for the parents of the world. Natalie thank you for sharing your story. Thanks to all of you who called with the businesses you lost in 2020. It will be part of our WNYC 2020 Time Capsule.

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