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A 'brutal winter' ahead: Austin restaurateurs say new COVID recommendations will further deter business

When local officials recommended businesses limit their capacity beyond state requirements due to the current surge in COVID cases, restaurateur Eric Silverstein was discouraged.
Silverstein owns The Peached Tortilla on Burnet Road and Bar Peached on West Sixth Street, the latter of which was closed for more than two months before opening recently for outdoor-only dining.
Neither is close to the 75% capacity limit allowed under state orders. Instead, they've hovered around 40% in recent months. And Silverstein is still trying to get back to his pre-pandemic staffing levels.
So when city officials asked businesses to keep their capacity between 25% and 50% last week due to rising case counts, Silverstein worried that the message would further jeopardize his attempts.
"We're trying to run a business, and when the entire marketing campaign is sort of geared against you it's difficult," he said. "When the mayor and the city are like, 'Restaurants are dangerous,' it's going to affect your business."
A new phase
Austin-Travis County Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott issued the new recommendations on Thursday, citing the increasing number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Travis County and concerns about adequate ICU personnel.
Travis County also moved to Stage 4, according to Austin Public Health's risk-based guidelines, which asks residents to avoid non-essential travel.
"We know this has been a hard time for our businesses, but we want to keep them open," Escott said. "And the best way to do that is to limit the risk that we have now and keep them functioning, keep them open and keep them productive."
Escott also asked Austinites to limit their exposure to others outside their household, such as by not eating inside at restaurants in large groups.
"It's okay for families, if you live in the (same) household to go to a restaurant and have a non-home-cooked meal," he said. "The pattern that we've been seeing over the past couple of months is that people are going out to restaurants with friends and with neighbors and with larger groups of people."
Austin Mayor Steve Adler acknowledged the burdens the pandemic poses to local business owners—especially those in the hospitality sector, such as restaurants, hotels and music venues—and said federal funding is needed to help address them.
"Everybody should be reaching out right now to our delegations in Washington because that's where this kind of relief needs to come from," he said last week.
In the eight months since Congress passed the CARES Act, countless local businesses have closed.
One step forward, two steps back
The Stage 4 announcement came at a bad time for Sammy Lam, who opened Wanderlust Wine Co. in downtown Austin in June.
The first two months were tough, but as the curve flattened in August people felt more comfortable visiting the wine bar.
"August and September, we just started seeing this overall increase in business after having nothing—almost this point of no return," Lam said.
But the new recommendations threaten this progress.
The six-month deferment period for Wanderlust's debt payment ran out in October, and Lam was banking on continued business through the holiday period before the traditionally slow months of January and February, when people often resolve to drink less.
With the recent surge in new cases, however, Lam has seen a decline in foot traffic, which was already hard to come by as a new business in an area with a large population of homeless people.
"It's understandable, of course," he said of the officials' decisions. "But from a business standpoint, we're just doing everything we can to survive."
Silverstein echoed this feeling, saying that he "absolutely believes in the virus" but thinks that restaurants are getting an unfair rap.
"I'm paying for the sins of other people, and I think that's bullshit," he said.
Silverstein anticipates even fewer people will come out to eat at his restaurants with the new recommendations in place and encouraged Austinites to spend money at their local favorites any way they can.
"I think we're going to see a pretty brutal winter," he said.
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Popular
(Paxton Smith/Instagram)
Paxton Smith’s 2021 valedictory speech at Lake Highlands High School in Dallas wasn’t the same speech she had previously shared with school administrators. She dropped the approved speech and made a case for women’s reproductive rights after lawmakers passed the Texas "Heartbeat Bill.”
Her advocacy made news on NPR, YouTubeTV and in The Guardian. Just over a year later, the “war on (women’s) rights” she forewarned has come to a head as the U.S. Supreme Court voted Friday morning to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protection for abortion access.
“It is up to the people to show up and show the courts and the politicians that we won’t sit back and let this happen,” Smith told Austonia Friday morning. “We will show up, we will fight back. Before, we were scared of them, now they should be scared of us.”
Now a University of Texas sophomore and abortion rights activist, 19-year-old Smith said she wanted to give the same speech in the “the most public way possible” to reach “as many people as possible who don't agree that I deserve this right.”
However, she says the response was “actually overwhelmingly positive” and supportive of her cause. According to a recent UT poll, 78% of Texas voters support abortion access in most cases.
The speech opened up further opportunities for activism: she advocated for reproductive rights at the International Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, interviewed with Variety magazine and spoke to tens of thousands at Austin’s Bans Off Our Bodies protest at the Texas Capitol in May.
Smith also serves on the board of directors for the Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project, a national nonprofit organization that helps fund abortions or medication abortion—like Plan C pills—in all 50 states. Most recently, Smith has been attending protests in Washington, D.C. leading up to the ruling.
“This is land of the free. This is where you get to choose how you live your life,” Smith said. “Overturning Roe v. Wade violates everything that we have come to believe about what it means to live in this country. I think a lot of people aren't willing to accept that this is a human right that is most likely just going to be gone for over half of the country within the next couple of weeks.”
Bracing for the next steps, Smith gave some tips for supporters:
- Find a protest to attend.
- “I would say invite somebody to go to those protests with you, invite a couple of friends, invite people into the movement,” Smith said.
- Talk about the issue on social media—use the platform you have.
- “Have these kinds of conversations where people can just talk about their fears and then find ways to go and advocate for yourself,” Smith said.
- Volunteer at a nonprofit near you.
“I feel like a lot of the reason things have gotten as bad as they have within the abortion rights world is that people are not making a scene, not protesting, not putting the effort into ensuring that the government doesn't take away this right,” Smith said. “I want to emphasize that if you're not doing anything, don't expect the best scenario, expect the worst because that's the direction that we're going in.”
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(Council Member Chito Vela/Twitter)
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, Friday morning. Moments later, Austin City Council set a special meeting for next month to pass a resolution aimed at decriminalizing abortion.
The GRACE Act, which stands for guarding the right to abortion care for everyone, is a twofold plan submitted by council member Jose “Chito” Vela. It recommends that city funds shouldn’t be used to surveil, catalog, report or investigate abortions. It also recommends that police make investigating abortion their lowest priority.
Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, who co-sponsored the resolution along with council members Paige Ellis, Kathie Tovo and Mayor Steve Adler, said the importance of the GRACE Act cannot be overstated.
“By introducing this resolution during a special session, City Council is doubling down on fighting back for reproductive health,” Fuentes said. “Items like the GRACE Act will promote essential healthcare while enabling individuals to exercise their bodily freedom.”
The act takes an approach similar to when former council member Greg Casar moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana. Ultimately, state law doesn't allow city officials to order police chiefs to adopt specific enforcement policies so the resolution would be a request to Police Chief Joe Chacon. In May, Politico reported that Vela is having "ongoing conversations" with Chacon about the proposal.
Austonia contacted Attorney General Ken Paxton for comment on the GRACE Act but did not hear back by time of publication. On Friday, Paxton celebrated the overturning of Roe and announced an annual office holiday on June 24 in recognition of the high court's decision.
In a press release, Vela said the Texas state government has a history of overturning municipal protections of human rights. Thirty days after the Supreme Court’s ruling, Texas will ban all abortions, with exceptions only to save the life of a pregnant patient or prevent “substantial impairment of major bodily function.”
Still, Vela expressed hope for the GRACE Act’s longevity. Council’s special meeting on it is set for the week of July 18.
“We know this resolution is legally sound, and Austin is not alone in this fight,” Vela said. “We are working with several other cities who are equally horrified by the prospect of an abortion ban and want to do everything they can to protect their residents.”
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