It’s remarkable, perhaps unbelievable even, but we are now at a place in the pandemic where so many more people are eating out that getting seated quickly at a restaurant is not a given. It’s busy for many of the popular places—the ‘lucky’ ones that managed to survive. Many of my favorites are gone for good, with the words “Permanently Closed” popping up in bold red letters when queried on a Google search. But Manhattan on the weekend is now bustling with brunch crowds, and a thirty-minute wait is not unheard of. This is progress to be applauded—the surviving restaurants need the money. But I was way too hungry to stand waiting, flipping through my phone for my name to be called, eventually guided to a corner table, placing an order, and still waiting perhaps another thirty minutes for my meal. So, I continued past the crowded, mostly “American” cuisine spots, and meandered through West Village streets for a place I might walk in, get seated, and order right away.

Luckily, I discovered what turned out to be the perfect place. Interestingly, it reminded me of my favorite neighborhood restaurant back when I lived in lower Manhattan last year.

The Chinese restaurant was situated on the South Cove pier in Battery Park City. It had sprawling outdoor seating, right on the pier, overlooking the Jersey City skyline across Hudson River, and the Statue of Liberty was visible not so far in the distance. The location was perfect, and I spent much time and money eating many meals here, with my wife, with family, and with friends. Yes, that killer view had something to do with it, but it was also the quality of the food and service. Both were exceptional. Since I spent so much time there, I got to know the staff, but my favorite was this elder gentleman who looked to be the owner or manager of the establishment. I thought this because he wasn’t a waiter, and he didn’t attend bar. Mostly, he stood around, greeting guests and making sure their needs were taken care of. He always made a point of coming to my table and conversing with me for a bit. Later, I learned that he was not the owner or the manager. During one of our chats, he confided to me that decades ago he had owned a restaurant in Manhattan, years after migrating to America. Now, he was on staff at this place on the pier as a greeter and with the task of attracting the tourists walking the pier and passing by the restaurant. The sadness in his eyes as he recollected his time as a restaurant owner left me with the unhappy feeling that his working at this restaurant was not a choice but a necessity: one of the many immigrants forced to work post-retirement to survive.

The restaurant on the pier—Ningbo Café was its name—is now “Permanently Closed”. Interestingly, it closed in the very early days of the pandemic, months before many, many more restaurants in NYC succumbed to the same fate. Ningbo’s fate, and the closure of many Asian restaurants as the pandemic progressed, are both saddening and alarming. It all seems so irrationally weird that many of these places were forced into closure because of the feeling—and yes, I’ve heard this from people I consider friends—that somehow eating Chinese food might contaminate one with COVID-19. Well, given the politics of fear that was being promoted during the scariest times of the pandemic, maybe it’s not so weird, just sad and alarming.

With this in mind, I decided to look for a Chinese restaurant that was mostly empty of guests. I found one and was excited that I could get seated right away, and soon get to ‘throwing down’ on some great food. I decided on a cold appetizer of cucumbers in garlic sauce, with an entrée of fish in Asian chile sauce. And as a, um, “dessert” of sorts I ordered a hot appetizer of beef tripe.

It was all delicious. Completely satisfied, I left the restaurant—Chow House on Bleeker—and started on what I knew would be a very long walk back to the World Trade Center PATH train. As I walked, I considered three things: First, that great Chinese food is as New York as the best Italian, Seafood, Soul food, and Steak restaurant. Secondly, I thought that with Chow House I might have found a nice replacement for Ningbo Café.  Lastly, I pondered about the fate of the elder gentleman who worked at Ningbo. I wondered where he was, and how life had been for him during this past year. Was he lucky finding work in one of the surviving Chinese restaurants? Was he even still with us? Or, was he “Permanently Closed.”

Kelvin

April 11, 2021

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As part of this wonderful weekend, I went to the Angelika Film Center to watch The Father, starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Coleman. The movie was heartachingly brilliant, placing the viewer inside the mind of a man ravaged with dementia and showing just how it must feel to constantly question what you’ve known your whole life, basically questioning your reality. SEE IT AND MARVEL.

My visiting the Angelika that day, was the first time I’d sat in a movie theater since February 2020, when I saw the sensuous The Photograph starring the very talented Issa Rae and LaKeith “The Chameleon” Stanfield. It has been a very long year since then, and my Saturday Angelika experience was…surprisingly strange.

First, it took more than ten minutes of standing in a line of two people—me being one of them—to get my tickets, because there was a Hella’ delay with the other half of the line ahead of me, as he and the cashier negotiated the confusion of his online ticket purchase. I’m embarrassed to say that I was a bit impatient and annoyed with this transaction. And, as a filmmaker, I’m really ashamed to say that as I waited with growing annoyance, this thought crept into my mind: “I could’ve waited for “The Father” to stream in a couple of weeks on Netflix, or Amazon, or Hulu, and watched it in the comfort of my home, not having to deal with all of ‘this’.”

The pandemic has truly changed me.

But finally, I got my tickets—plural because my buddy Cathy had joined me—and we take our seats. Along with Cath and I, there was the gentleman who bottlenecked the ticket line, his wife, and three others in the audience. That’s it. In a theater with at least 75 seats, the seven of us were instructed, before we entered the theater, to keep our masks on, which Cath and I did between sips of our cappuccinos. And yet again, I felt impatience over this mask mandate in the mostly empty room, and a guilty irritation over what felt like an eternity of upcoming movie trailers.

Then, “The Father” started. And progressed. And toward the end of its glorious storytelling, I had one of those experiences I have only had when gazing up at a gigantic screen in a darkened movie theater: I cried. Suddenly, all of my pandemic-induced solitude, fear, and annoyance was gone. At that moment, I was reminded of why I fell in love with cinema as a kid watching “Apocalypse Now” on a giant screen, realizing that something was happening to me beyond entertainment. I was being taught. Challenged. Distressed.

This is what happened with “The Father” this past Saturday, a day before the first day of spring 2021. And although we are almost past 2020, a year of great challenges and distress, we are not quite there yet; we must still wear our masks.

However, we must also push ourselves past the inclination to avert our eyes from each other, and trust that when we lock those eyes on a passing soul the thought is, “I see you, you see me, and we are in this together.” Watching “The Father” in a movie theater, even one barely attended, reminded me that great movies make us feel this togetherness. This is what happened with us seven souls at the Angelika. And hopefully, this is what is happening to the collective us in this pandemic that we are slowly, oh so slowly, crawling out of. Maybe this horrific challenge has taught us that once we get past our fear, irritation, and impatience there will be something beautiful.

Sing! Joy! Spring!

Kelvin

The post The Father, The Pandemic, and Spring appeared first on Bridging Stories.