B6 N THE NEW YORK TIMES BUSINESSTHURSDAY, JUNE 25, 2020
VIRUS FALLOUTOn Monday, I had lunch at
Veselka in the East Village. Nor-
mally I wouldn’t bother you with
this fact. I’ve done the same
thing at least a hundred times
before. But this lunch, I’m pretty
sure, I’ll remember for the rest of
my life. It was the first restau-
rant food I’ve had since March
that didn’t come out of a paper
bag.
When I say I had lunch at
Veselka, I don’t mean that I sat
inside, of course. I was seated at
one of the eight tables spread out
along the East Ninth Street
sidewalk, the one just below the
neon sign that says “Open 24
Hours.” Veselka’s dining room is
still a dark, empty cavern. Like
many others in New York City, it
remains off limits to customers
in an effort to tamp down the
local Covid-19 outbreak. But on
June 18, Mayor Bill de Blasio
announced that starting Monday,
restaurants could start serving
outdoors, where the risk of trans-
mitting the virus is lower.
Restaurants had been waiting
for this decision — calling for it
with mounting desperation, in
fact. The mayor’s announcement
still caught them off guard,
though. They had just three days
to get special city authorizations
to place tables, at least six feet
apart, on sidewalks and in curb-
side street-parking spaces.
By Tuesday morning, more
than 4,100 restaurants had been
approved. But shortly after noon
on Monday, when I began
searching the streets of China-
town, the Lower East Side and
the East Village for a place to
eat, not many had outdoor seat-
ing yet. Wu’s Wonton King was
dark.
A few doors down East Broad-
way at Mission Chinese Food,
Kate Bolster, a manager, was
helping to put finishing touches
on a new planter box, five feet
tall and clementine-colored, that
had been fabricated over the
weekend. It was going to be
installed at the edge of a triangle
across the street called Straus
Park. Along with five identical
boxes, the planter would cordon
off a small dining area where
customers could bring kung pao
pastrami, mapo tofu and other
items from the Mission Chinese
Food canon, all packed in takeout
containers.
“It’s been 48 hours since the
command came down the line,”
Ms. Bolster said. “It’s been fun,
but it’s been some late nights.”
But the first lunch service
wouldn’t take place until
Wednesday, and I was hungry
now. I headed for Orchard Street,
in ordinary times one of the most
promising stretches on the
Lower East Side for anyone
prospecting for a good meal.
Some restaurants were closed
because it was Monday, others
because they never serve lunch,
but tape measures and power
tools were out in front of Regina’s
Grocery and Cheeky Sand-
wiches. It was takeout-only at
Russ & Daughters Cafe. Contrair
— the ad hoc merger of Contra
and Wildair that takes online
pickup and delivery orders for
crab congee, chipotle-braised
tripe and bottles of far-flung
natural wines — was still empty.
At the corner of Rivington, the
Roman sandwich shop
Trapizzino hid behind plywood.
Katz’s was doing a brisk take-
out business, all things consid-
ered, but there were no tables
out on Houston or Ludlow
Streets. Ludlow Street is blocked
to cars and trucks under a city
program, called Open Streets,
which has temporarily given 43
miles of pavement to walkers
and cyclists. It would be a good
spot to eat a knoblewurst or two,
but outdoor dining won’t be
expanded to the Open Streets
blocks until July.
There was more plywood
along Avenue A. Sheets of it
were being unscrewed from the
windows of TabeTomo, a tsuke-
men specialist across from
Tompkins Square Park. There
were tables outside — a two-top
and a four-top, each with its own
patio umbrella. The afternoon
was warm and getting warmer,
and the prospect of a plate of
chilled noodles and cold dipping
sauce in the shade held a power-
ful attraction. But TabeTomo, like
a number of other restaurantsaround the city, had set up out-
door seating for its takeout
customers earlier this month,
before it was officially allowed. I
admired the enterprise, but I
wanted to eat at a table that was
just seeing its first action of the
season.
In the end, Veselka came
through for me as I knew it
would, as it had so often over the
years for me and anybody else
who needed a dose of Ukrainian
hospitality. The East Village
never feels more like a village
than inside Veselka’s walls,
where people reading Ferrante
sit across from people reading
Polish newspapers, where soli-
tary types can hide and new
couples can pretend to hide,
where young men dress like
roadies and old men dress like
retired cardsharps, and all of
them drink coffee.
That was more or less the
scene yesterday, although it took
place outside the walls. Veselkahas had a sidewalk cafe for sev-
eral years, and had been packing
food for takeout and delivery for
some time. So when Monday
arrived, all it needed to do was to
install the metal pen around its
outdoor space and leave more
room than usual between the
tables.
Restaurants in Midtown and
the financial district that rely on
office workers may not find the
new outdoor dining rules very
helpful. Places targeting out-of-
towners are in a tough spot, too.
But coffee shops, sandwich
joints, pizzerias and other main-
stays of residential areas are well
positioned to take advantage of
outdoor dining.
“This is a time, in some cases,
where if you’re a neighborhood
restaurant and you rely on peo-
ple who live in the community,
you may fare a bit better,” said
Andrew Rigie, the executive
director of the New York City
Hospitality Alliance. Mr. Rigie,
whose group rarely sees eye to
eye with bureaucrats, seemed a
little astonished on Monday.
Ordinarily, acquiring a sidewalk
cafe permit takes around six
months and costs roughly $5,000.
In a single weekend, thousands
of restaurants had been cleared
with no application fee.
“I’ve been fighting bureaucra-
cy and red tape for a long time,
and this program really cuts out
the red tape and costs for restau-
rant owners,” he said. “It’s really
remarkable.”
Polly Trottenberg, who as
commissioner of the Department
of Transportation is overseeing
the new approval process, was
almost giddy at how quickly it
was moving, as if she were the
owner of a golf cart who’d just
discovered it could reach high-
way speed.
“It was quite clear that a
process in which we would have
to survey and certify everything
— we would never be able to do
that in real time,” she said. “So
we leaned into a different model,
which I’ll admit is unusual in
New York City and is probably
one of the most liberal in thecountry right now.”
Transportation commissioners
have not historically had much
jurisdiction over restaurants, but
the outdoor dining program
happens to dovetail with the
department’s wider effort to turn
some of the city’s streets over to
walkers, runners and skate-
boarders. That list now includes
eaters and drinkers, which any-
body who enjoys the spectacle of
life played out in public will
recognize as a promising move.
There are even signals ema-
nating from City Hall that some
of this new street and sidewalk
dining could, conceivably, possi-
bly, outlast the pandemic. “This
will be a great conversation to
have towards the end of the
summer,” Ms. Trottenberg said.
“We’ll have lots of information
then about how well it’s worked.”
My own view is that change
can’t come fast enough. Restau-
rants need to make money. New
Yorkers need to get out of their
apartments, even if it means
wearing masks, carrying hand
sanitizer and talking across
longer-than-usual distances.
None of this bothered me at
Veselka. I took off my mask for
about 15 minutes and then retied
it again when I’d finished lunch:
cold borscht and a mixed plate of
boiled pierogies, half cheese and
half blueberry.
I liked it all, especially the
slightly scouring tartness of the
cherry lime rickey, but if there
had been any problems I would-
n’t tell you about them. Now is
not the time for criticizing. Any
restaurant that is serving food
now is a good restaurant.
But it is a time for imagining.
Once we don’t need to fear
Covid-19, what would the city
look like if more of our dining
spaces spilled over into the side-
walks and streets? Would it look
like the crazy, whirling, profane
outdoor feast of “Fellini’s Roma,”
with swaddled babies passed
around in baskets and conversa-
tions that revolve almost entirely
around sex, excrement and cacio
e pepe shouted from table to
table? New York is too fancy for
that now. (By 1972, when Fellini
conjured it up, Rome was proba-
bly too fancy for it.) But those of
us who love restaurants have
been unsettled lately by how
many new ones have taken the
form of whispery, darkened,
expensive cloisters. A little spa-
ghetti in the streets couldn’t hurt.
There was one small glitch at
Veselka. It took longer than
usual for the check to arrive —
long enough that my server
apologized. She didn’t need to. I
would have waited all day.Veselka was one of the first East Village restaurants offering outdoor seating on Monday, the first day since March that on-site dining was permitted.
EMON HASSAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESChow, Drinks and Clinks: Dining in the Streets
Above, an illustration showing
criteria for setting up outdoor
seating in New York City. Left.
Melba’s Restaurant in Harlem.NYC DOTBy PETE WELLSCRITIC’S NOTEBOOK
EMON HASSAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESA restaurant critic is
served for the first
time since March.
WASHINGTON — The International
Monetary Fund warned on
Wednesday that the global econ-
omy faces an even deeper down-
turn than it previously projected
as the pandemic continues to sow
uncertainty and businesses
around the world struggle to oper-
ate amid the virus.
The forecast underscores the
scale of the task that policymak-
ers are facing as they try to dig out
from what the I.M.F. has de-
scribed as the most severe eco-
nomic contraction since the Great
Depression. Even as countries be-
gin reopening their economies, it
is increasingly evident that the re-
covery will be uneven and pro-
tracted as cases continue to surge
and consumers remain wary of re-
suming normal activity.
More than 35,000 new coro-
navirus cases were identified
across the United States on Tues-
day, according to a New York
Times database, the highest sin-
gle-day total since late April and
the third-highest total of any day
of the pandemic. Other countries
are also experiencing surges in
new cases, complicating plans to
reopen the global economy.
In an update to its World Eco-
nomic Outlook, the I.M.F. said it
expected the global economy to
shrink 4.9 percent this year — a
sharper contraction than the 3
percent it predicted in April.
The fund noted that, even as
businesses began to reopen, vol-
untary social distancing and en-
hanced workplace safety stand-
ards were weighing on economic
activity. Moreover, the “scarring”
of the labor force from mass job
cuts and business closures means
that the world economy will re-
cover much more slowly, with the
I.M.F. projecting 5.4 percent
global growth in 2021, far below its
pre-pandemic projections.
Overall, the I.M.F. expects that
the cumulative loss of total output
for the global economy this year
and next year will top $12 trillion.
“We are definitely not out of the
woods,” said Gita Gopinath, direc-
tor of the I.M.F.’s research depart-
ment. “This is a crisis like no other
and will have a recovery like no
other.”
The I.M.F. forecast is more grim
than global projections outlined
earlier this month by the Organi-
zation for Economic Cooperation
and Development. And its U.S.
forecast for 2020 is also less opti-
mistic than what the Congres-
sional Budget Office and the Fed-
eral Reserve have projected.
The I.M.F. now projects that the
U.S. economy will shrink 8 per-
cent this year before expanding
4.5 percent next year.
The Fed in June projected a par-
ticularly sharp economic hit in
2020, with officials expecting out-
put to contract by 6.5 percent at
the end of this year compared to
the final quarter of 2019, before re-
bounding by 5 percent in 2021. A
May report from the C.B.O. fore-
cast a 5.6 percent contraction in
the United States this year.
Charles Evans, president of the
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago,
said on Wednesday that he ex-
pects a “broad recovery will take
some time” in the United States,
adding that “the future is more un-
certain now than at any other
time” in his professional career.
“My forecast assumes growth is
held back by the response to inter-
mittent localized outbreaks which
might be made worse by the fast-
er-than-expected reopenings,”
Mr. Evans said.
“Usually, we are able to look to
the past for guidance on what is in
store for the future. But in this sit-
uation, there is simply no relevant
benchmark.”
Ms. Gopinath said in a news
briefing that the world was facing
the worst downturn since the
Great Depression. However, she
said that the depth and duration of
the economic collapse were not
expected to be as severe, given
the strength of the economy going
into the crisis and the relative sta-
bility of the financial system.
The path of the recovery is diffi-
cult to track, she added, noting
that much will depend on the de-
velopment of a vaccine or cure for
the coronavirus pandemic or
whether future waves create theneed for additional lockdowns.
The pandemic has not spared
advanced or developing econo-
mies. Economies in the eurozone
are projected to shrink 10.2 per-
cent this year and expand 6 per-
cent next year. In China, where
the virus originated and which im-
posed draconian containment
measures, the economy is ex-
pected to expand 1 percent this
year and 8.2 percent in 2021.
Yet the Trump administration
continues to suggest a more bull-
ish outlook for the U.S. economy.
Larry Kudlow, the director of
the National Economic Council,
said Tuesday that he expected a V-
shaped recovery, meaning a
sharp, steady economic uptick on
the heels of recession. And Treas-
ury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
said that he could foresee the re-
cession being over in the United
States by the end of the year.
“I think you’re going to see a
spectacular rebound off the bot-
tom in the third quarter,” Mr.
Mnuchin said in a virtual confer-
ence on Tuesday.
Prolonged economic pain could
increase pressure on the Trump
administration and U.S. lawmak-
ers to move forward with another
round of stimulus measures.
House Democrats want a $3 tril-
lion economic support package,
but Republicans are increasingly
wary of the long term impact of
such spending on the deficit. Mr.
Mnuchin said this week that fu-
ture measures should be targeted
to help industries that have been
hit hardest by the pandemic. Pres-
ident Trump has suggested he
would be open to another round of
stimulus checks, which could land
in peoples’ bank accounts just
ahead of the November election.
The I.M.F. cautioned that its
forecast was more uncertain than
usual because the trajectory of the
pandemic remained hard to pre-dict. It praised robust fiscal and
monetary policy responses
around the globe for helping to
contain the economic fallout, but
warned that mounting debt could
constrain additional support as
governments began to worry
about ballooning deficits.
The I.M.F. report notes that,
even in countries where infection
rates are declining, major obsta-
cles to a resumption of normal ac-
tivity persist. Travel and mobility
remain depressed, and the virus
has dealt a blow to consumption
and business investment.
“In most recessions, consumers
dig into their savings or rely on so-
cial safety nets and family support
to smooth spending, and con-
sumption is affected relatively
less than investment,” the I.M.F.
said. “But this time, consumption
and services output have also
dropped markedly.”
The pandemic has also cur-
tailed the flow of global trade,
which the fund estimated had con-
tracted 3.5 percent in the first
quarter from a year earlier.
That is in line with an estimate
by the World Trade Organization,
which said that global trade had
fallen sharply in the first half of
the year. That trajectory did not
seem quite as bad as the group
had previously projected.
Trade in goods shrank 3 percent
year on year in the first quarter,
while initial estimates indicate
that it fell 18.5 percent in the sec-
ond quarter, the steepest decline
on record. But those declines
could have been much worse, the
organization said. Trade needs to
grow only modestly for the rest of
the year to meet the organiza-
tion’s more optimistic outlook of a
13 percent contraction in 2020,
versus a more pessimistic poten-
tial decline of 32 percent.
Roberto Azevêdo, the director
general of the World Trade Orga-
nization, said the development is a
“silver lining” but governments
need to be on guard and continue
to stimulate the economy.Global Economic Dip
Is Worse Than Thought
Even as businesses reopen, the path to economic recovery is uncertain.WANG ZHAO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGESBy ALAN RAPPEPORT$12T
The expected loss of total output
for the global economy this year.Ana Swanson and Jeanna Smialek
contributed reporting.