Kicked to the Curb

News of the indoor dining shutdown has put New Yorkers on tenterhooks about the all-but-imminent closures of other non-essential businesses throughout the city. With tryptophan — and perhaps COVID-19 — coursing through our veins from recent advised-against Thanksgiving holiday travel, it’s time to prepare for the future, when our bodies may have to join our minds there in the gutter to conduct everyday activities.

Here’s what to reasonably expect next from Cuomo’s “New York: Tough” Pause orders, tips on how to ease into Do Not Enter, and making quarantine more than just a joyous occasion for shut-ins and agoraphobics.

For your own sake, take a moment to look at the bright side of outside and acknowledge how much of normal daily life is already street-established. With a prevalence of outdoor dining and retail, long-standing street vendors will be referred to as “middle-of-the-street” vendors and re-locate into oncoming traffic effective immediately.

No need to be leery about dining al fresco. Just cuddle close — but not too close — to your “curbside pick-up,” and order your salad with dressing on-the-side-street. Furthermore, please note: the Soup of the Day every day from now until herd immunity — Gazpacho, gazpacho, gazpacho. It’s festive red and green and white and served chilled. It’s like it was made for outdoor holiday pandemic dining!

To those who mistakenly hear “Out of Dewers,” please, keep your sweatpants on. Liquor stores (unlike hospitals’ supply of PPE) have a surplus of spirits and, as essential businesses, will remain open during the holidays in an effort to further bolster a reported 14% increase in alcohol consumption nationwide by those thirty and older.

Hand-washing — the other kind. With laundromats closed or deemed high-risk venues, households without a washer-dryer will be allowed to hang hand-washed laundry on lines across avenues. So, along with holiday lights and fanfare you can expect to see a proliferation of elastic-waisted athleisurewear and wife-beaters.

Good news! United Airlines-chartered flights carrying Pfizer vaccines which must be kept at 94 degrees below zero will store the precious cargo where it is really cold — inside New York City public schools.

With the winter months upon us, you can thank God for hot flashes. While you’re at it, take a moment to thank Con Edison. Their lax response to fixing shooting steam from manhole covers across the city means free outdoor esthetician-approved facials.

As we get into the darkest days of winter, it will also do us well to remember that we’ve been here before. And as history repeats itself, don’t be surprised to hear vernacular coined more than 100 years ago during the 1918 Flu Pandemic. For example, “cold feet” will be commonly discussed while walking by those giving and/or receiving pedicures and podiatry procedures in Bryant Park and the like. Similarly, proximity to outdoor diaper-changing stations and colonoscopy tables will give rise to overtures of “freezing one’s ass off,” just as they did a century ago.

Rest assured, the holiday season will go on for New Yorkers, with chestnuts roasting on open fires in sinkholes, and Jack Frost nipping at your nose and unmentionables.

So, chin up, mask on, fingers crossed that the vaccines take — and glasses raised as we ring out 2020.