After Cuomo Rebuke, a St. Mark’s Bar Owner Tells His Side of Story
Gerard McNamee of East Village Social doesn’t want to tangle with the governor of New York. But there are a few things he needs to understand.
People sit outside during happy hour at the Oscar Wilde bar in New York, on Wednesday, June 10, 2020. New York streets got a little more congested this week as the city entered the first phase of its reopening from the coronavirus-imposed lockdown.
Photographer: Nina Westervelt/BloombergEditor’s Note: No city is more important to America’s economy than New York, and none has been hit harder by the coronavirus. “NYC Reopens” examines life in the capital of capitalism as the city takes its first halting steps toward a new normal.
Gerard McNamee isn’t going to tangle with the governor of New York — not about the coronavirus, not about the bars, and certainly not about crowds spilling out onto St. Mark’s Place, that faded vestige of the punk-rock past in the East Village of Manhattan.