Seen & Heard: Indoor dining in time for Valentine’s Day

JUST IN TIME FOR VALENTINE’S DAY
The governor took a 17-degree day to announce that indoor dining will reopen on Valentine’s Day. More than a few local restaurants are already offering specials, and I hope this means a reopening for a few — Walker’s, L’Angolo, Marc Forgione, Tiny’s — who shuttered for the season. Of course, there’s no rationale from the governor about why the wait for two weeks, nor is there a rationale for why the city is at 25 percent when places like Nassau and Suffolk County are at 50 percent with higher covid rates…

AN OFFICIAL WORD ON ECCO!
A PR person for The Mill in Greenwich sent a note confirming that Ron Rosa will not be re-opening in Lower Manhattan. He opened Ecco! in 1980 and Campagnola on the Upper East Side in 1981. In 2000, he moved to Connecticut and opened Polpo – and now The Lion, which will open this spring. “He invites everyone to come to Greenwich and see some of the same staff from his NY restaurants who are still cooking and running the dining room today, some of whom have been with him for over 40 years!” she wrote.

CITY COUNCIL RACE HEATING UP
With the presidential race out of the way, the race for Margaret Chin’s seat is underway, with five candidates running: Maud Maron, Jenny Low, Tiffany Winbush, Christopher Marte and Gigi Li. I plan to speak to each of them and want to give them each the same Q&A. Email questions to tribecacitizen@gmail.com or comment here on the neighborhood issues that matter to you and I will start compiling a list of questions.

MARGARET CHIN ENDORSES YANG
And in other political news, Margaret Chin endorsed mayoral candidate Andrew Yang. And at his visit to Chinatown on Wednesday, he returned the favor and endorsed Gigi Li, Chin’s chief of staff, for her City Council seat.

 

6 Comments

  1. re margaret chin: she is a career politician. why not let her go out into the real world and get a job like the rest of us and let someone else be on the city council. these positions were not created with the intentions of having someone serve as a career!
    its time to drain the swamp!

  2. The racial politics of these endorsements trouble me in general, and especially for a neighborhood that is not primarily Asian. Also, Chin has long been a political hack who favors developers and is not responsive to any but her Chinese constituents. Do we really want that to continue?

    I’m wildly disappointed in Yang if this is what he’s about. We lived through problematic ethnic politics during the Dinkins administration – I don’t want to see a return to those bad old days.

    Diversity is good, ethnic politics is a day whose time has long passed.

  3. Yang makes Deblasio look good! Yang is laughable! we need change, we need Law & Order in this city. We need people to be accountable when they commit crimes. Not bail reform. Our city is not safe anymore. Its so sad. Yang moved away in March with his family living upstate. We need change!! not the same. I am not sure if anyone is running that shows any positive change. I just know This Mayor is a disgrace to this city.

  4. Opening our businesses on Valentines Day is a joke. Its a Sunday, so the governor doesn’t care about small businesses in this city. We need to pay property taxes, rent! He actually laughed about it in the press conference the other day. We need to come together and not allow this man to destroy our livelihood anymore. We have all safety measures in place. Spend so much money on our outdoor seating. He don’t care about our businesses. Its sad how the rest of the state is open and you can cross the water and eat inside. We can’t stay this way going forward, we will have nothing left.

  5. This is off subject, but does anyone know what the near constant helicopter buzz overhead is about? I thought during the BLM protests that they were a response to the protests — news etc. But they persist most days and nights.

    • There is a new tourist helicopter service out of Newark (FlyNYON) with drastically reduced prices. I finally was able to track them down through an aviation site. They run nonstop, and just circle the WTC. It is so annoying.

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