“We REFUSE to risk even ONE Juggalo life by hosting a Gathering during these troubling times.”
Ummm…What? While protestors across Denver, Michigan, and even, Albany, New York protest for cities to open up again, one unassuming group is staying vigilant to promote social distancing.
That group you ask? None other than the hardcore, face-painting hip hop music duo who haven’t been relevant since 2007, the INSANE CLOWN POSSE. For the first time in 20 years, the duo has canceled their annual music festival, The Gathering of the Juggalos, quoting, “We REFUSE to risk even ONE Juggalo life by hosting a Gathering during these troubling times.”
This is America 2020: While Gov Cuomo has been warning us that NY won’t be normal for a while – mayors across the country are pushing to open up their cities including Las Vegas and Georgia, which partially opened up businesses today. What has our country come to when the Insane Clown Posse is more rational than our city leaders?
Back to Normal Won’t Be Happening for a While An oncologist and bioethicist for the Center For American Progress suspects that large format concerts, conferences, and sporting events won’t be back until Fall of 2021.Well hey, at least we won’t have to deal with Santacon this year.
Facebook Status: Dislike On top of that, Facebook announced this week that they are canceling all large events until June 2021. They’re also allowing all their employees to work remotely through the summer if they don’t feel comfortable coming into the office.
But Baseball Could Be Back! Just…not the way you think Dr. Fauci, however, thinks Baseball could be back as soon as this summer...except,
“Nobody comes to the stadium. Put [the players] in big hotels, wherever you want to play, keep them very well surveilled. … Have them tested every single week and make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their family and just let them play the season out.”
In the meantime, VR and 5G will be at the forefront for immersive, virtual experiences. So if you have some extra cash, that’s probably where I’d put my stock.
#ASKANEXPERT is a weekly Q&A with NYC experts on our Instagram Live. Each episode features a guest that we love and we can rely on for advice to guide us through the pandemic. This week we spoke to Justin Mckibben, the founder of a volunteer-run organization helping businesses with no online presence, build an online presence.
In the midst of the coronavirus, the city so many of us call home is forced to grapple with a new reality. The city that never sleeps is suddenly empty. Its busy streets are now vacant as almost all stores and businesses have closed.
While almost all of New York City’s businesses have been affected, one area has been hit the hardest: Chinatown. New York’s once-bustling and vibrant neighborhood famous for its dim sum brunches, steamed pork buns, and big bowls of noodle soups is now a ghost town.
Almost immediately after the coronavirus breakout in Wuhan, China, many businesses across the world (including New York’s Chinatown) experienced large declines in business. Nom Wah restaurant, a normally popular dim sum spot where it’s almost impossible to land a seat on weekends, was wrongfully associated with the first coronavirus case in New York and experienced a 40% decline in sales as a result.
Chinatown has seen the earliest economic impact due to COVID-19 crisis. 70% of Chinese restaurant owners decided to shut down before the NYC mandated closure due to xenophobia, racism, and sinophobia – the fear of Chinese people/culture. President Trump’s usage of terms such as “kung flu” and “the Chinese virus” have only contributed to a dramatic surge in anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination towards Asian-owned businesses throughout the United States.
Because of these circumstances facing the thousands of Chinese- and Asian-owned businesses across the NYC area, we decided to create Send Chinatown Love.
How easily will Chinese restaurants be able to sustain themselves going forward?
Although Asian Americans are seen as a “Model Minority”, they face some of the highest economic disparities according to the Pew Research Center. In New York City, 13% of the population is Asian, yet only 1% of government funding is dedicated to charities focused on the Asian community. And, with many Chinese immigrants being lower income as well as lacking English proficiency and the financial resources to assimilate and receive assistance in general, they are faced with an even more difficult road to recovery in the midst of the pandemic.
Therefore, while everyone is experiencing the economic impact of the coronavirus, Asian Americans (and especially Chinese Americans) will be one of the groups doubly affected by both its economic and race-based impacts.
While many dine-in restaurants are shifting to take-out and delivery-only during this crisis, Chinatown restaurants fear for their employees’ safety and are not able to leverage these methods to sustain their businesses.
Many restaurants in New York City are also adapting digital solutions to keep their businesses running to accommodate government mandates limiting restaurants to take-out and delivery-only orders. These include selling online gift cards or setting up pages to accept donations, and promoting these on their social media channels. However, the traditional mom-and-pop shops cannot afford to, or do not have the technical skills to adopt these digital solutions. They may not even have an online presence of any capacity – so they won’t be able to promote themselves on Instagram/Twitter, nor will they be setting up a GoFundMe.
Wilson Tang, the owner of Nom Wah, spoke to Gothamist about this very issue. “As a mid-size company, just getting that paperwork in [for the small business relief program] was very difficult,” Tang said. “The small businesses that are immigrant-run are the ones who are going to suffer the most.”
“The landscape is going to be forever changed after we get over this,” he added. “Unfortunately a lot of restaurants are going to fail.”
Who are we?
We formed Send Chinatown Love to help the immigrant-owned businesses in Chinatown that are most vulnerable to failing for all the aforementioned reasons.
Send Chinatown Love is a collective of people who care deeply for Chinatown and its businesses. All of us on the team have our own personal connections to Chinatown and this mission. Some of us live there, some of us eat our meals there religiously, and some of us come from an immigrant family that owns a Chinese restaurant themselves. For all of us, Chinatown is a place we feel at home.
Our goal is to identify restaurants who are suffering from the impacts of COVID-19, and help them raise money to sustain themselves until the effects of the virus pass over. We are leveraging our multifaceted team of engineers and cultural ambassadors to uplift the Chinese business community.
What are we trying to do?
We want to create a digital community for Chinatown’s businesses to sustain themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. In short, we want to give merchants an online platform who otherwise wouldn’t have one.
Currently, there are a plethora of initiatives that collect merchant websites – encouraging people to buy gift cards, order delivery, or donate. While we rally behind all of these campaigns, we couldn’t help but notice that merchants who don’t already have online stores or offer delivery are left behind. Unfortunately, many of these merchants are based in Chinatown.
Our mission is to try and empower the businesses that are most vulnerable. Our target merchants are located across the 9 NYC Chinatowns (Manhattan Chinatown, Flushing, Bensonhurst, and Sunset Park, to name a few). They are:
● Asian-owned small businesses that do not have actively managed websites, online delivery service, or gift cards set up
● Immigrant business owners who may not speak or read English fluently, run cash-only establishments, and are not tech-savvy
● Faced with expenses like rent, utility bills, employee wages, and real estate damages, despite not having their usual cash flow
We are building web pages for each of these restaurants to take donations and sell gift cards. 100% of all donations and gift cards sold will go to each restaurant. This way, they will have a steady cash flow to meet basic needs while their businesses are closed.
Our plan to bring Chinatown online during these uncertain times is as below:
● We have a team of fluent Chinese speakers to understand each restaurant’s distinct needs.
● We will work with each business to build them a webpage. This way, they can take donations and sell gift cards, and we can teach each merchant how to track gift card redemptions.
● We will handle all social media marketing and SEO to ensure that their webpages are discoverable and plugged into existing directories.
What have we done so far?
To date, we’ve onboarded two merchants since we started this initiative a month ago. Our Engineering team is in the process of finalizing the back-end and front-end of each merchant’s page and building out the payment flow, working closely with the Design team to create webpages and beautiful illustrations to represent each business.
While the Seller Empathy team continues to reach out to Chinese business owners and understand their needs, the Business team is hard at work promoting who we are and spreading awareness of our initiative, including social media marketing. And finally, our Partnerships team is talking to individuals (e.g. influencers / leaders in the Chinese community) and organizations
(e.g. Chinatown’s Business Improvement District, Apex for Youth, Slant’d, and other Asian-focused non-profits) who may be willing to help.
Chinatown was there for us when we were homesick and desperately seeking a bowl of noodle soup and cold tea. To all the tourists and locals alike who have visited NYC’s Chinatown and were welcomed by its ambiance and enjoyed its services, please lend a hand. Let’s be there for Chinatown.
If you’re an organization or individual that would like to partner with us, please contact Grace at grace@sendchinatownlove.com
If you’re a business owner who would like us to build you a webpage to receive gift cards/donations, please contact Ling at ling@sendchinatownlove.com
If you want to learn more about how to help but unsure of how you can, please contact Julia at julia@sendchinatownlove.com
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#ASKANEXPERT This week we’re talking to Dr. Orin Davis, professor of positive psychology and a career coachon how to best utilize our time right now.
Experts estimate that over 47 million people will lose their jobs in the US, with unemployment rising to a whopping 32 percent due to the Coronavirus. In New York City alone, 80,000 people filed for unemployment last week. With no end in sight for “normalcy”, we reached out to Dr. Orin Davis for tips on how people who have recently been affected utilize this time to plan for their new careers.
You earned the first doctorate in positive psychology. What is positive psychology and how does it help us in these crazy times?
Positive psychology is generally referred to as “the science of human flourishing,” and focuses primarily on how we can live our best lives. There are many things we can be doing to make sure we’re not just surviving, but thriving. Cultivating gratitude, for example, can be very helpful, as can finding experiences to savor. We can also work to develop and foster high-quality connections, and seek out opportunities to experience flow.
What can people at home do to prepare themselves for a new career path, find a new job, or use this time to find new opportunities?
One of the most important things people can do with this time is to get to know themselves better. Learn what your preferences are, your strengths, your preferred methods of working, your best times of day, and what kinds of routines and habits you have and want. The more you know about these things, the more strategic you will be about searching for a job, hitting up your network to see who knows whom on the hiring side, and crafting a job application (resume, cover letter, etc.). You will be able to explain who you are, what you want to do for a company, and why working that specific job in that specific company is meaningful to you.
How can people build a path to the next steps in their careers?
There are two ways to think of work. One is the expression of your passion, and the other is the means for funding your passion. I find that the latter is more common, with people holding day jobs that provide the wherewithal for them to do what they love, whether it’s music, makeup, or martial arts.
When people are thinking about pivoting their careers, they need to consider which conception of work they have, and how they want to contribute to the world (whether through skills, passions, knowledge, abilities, etc.). Build identity capital, where your unique talents are translated into an offering that the world will value and pay for.
Here’s an exercise you can follow:
Ask yourself: What were your most amazing experiences? What were the experiences that impacted you in a powerful way? Think about the positive and negative, since both can inspire you. Reflect on what you like, love, and enjoy doing…
For yourself
For others
If you’re struggling with this one, ask: what are people most often thanking me for doing?
Pro tip: Nothing is too trivial for this exercise!
If you had your basic expenses automatically covered, how would you spend your time?
Looking at your answers to the above, reflect upon the following:
What makes you unique? It’s likely going to be a combination of items!How might your contribution to a company be different from other applicants’ because of this uniqueness?
Other steps you can take to build your upcoming career:
Dive deeply into your passions, whatever they are. If you love coffee, for instance, become a master at brewing, differentiating between coffees, knowing the history and supply chains, etc. As the saying goes, “treat yourself,” because here that means investing in yourself.
Look beyond your immediate inner circle and look at the people to whom you’re more loosely connected (“weak ties”) but who think highly of you. They may know someone who is hiring and would be willing to pass your name along.
Pick up new skills by taking free classes via Coursera or any of the Ivy League schools. Find and do the things that you would do if you weren’t going to get paid for it. They not only keep you sane, they give you opportunities to develop in ways that can readily apply to the job market, your side hustle, or your next startup.
A lot of people have gotten laid off or are struggling to find new opportunities because of the global pandemic. What advice do you have for them?
First, it’s OK to have a pity party, and freak out, and worry, and panic. If you need time to do that, accept this and have your meltdown. When you’re done, recognize that you are now free to choose your next move. Sure, there are going to be constraints, like money, time, etc., but, as the adage goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail.” Take at least some time to think about the many opportunities available to you, including the potential for a pivot. This is a great time for the Reflected Best Self Exercise, in which people tell you about their experiences of you at your best. You might be surprised to discover just how much of your personal awesomeness you haven’t been using consistently in your work and life.
Also, consider this: you may have been wanting to do something different for a long time, but didn’t because you couldn’t leave your job. Well, now you’ve been forced to leave your job. So, what have you been itching to do?
Looking towards the future, what are the next industries that you expect to boom? How can we prepare for what’s coming?
I think we’re already seeing a boom in the industries that support online and virtual experiences, whether movies or meetings. Right now, most of what we have leaves much to be desired, and demand is only increasing, so expect developments in those areas.
FinTech or Financial technology like online banking, also, is going to become more and more important as we start to need global standards of exchange and the ability to invest and transfer money in both large and small amounts. We need faster, more seamless, and more profitable ways of doing this, and the FinTech industry is leading the charge.
While there’s a lot of content out there, we’re both consuming more content and wanting to make more content, so that industry is going to see some developments, especially with authentic content that resonates. On-demand services are already exploding, and that’s only going to increase as we get impatient.
The future is also going to see a greater premium placed on empathy, trust, caring, and one-on-one interactions. We need better ways of making those happen securely, both virtually and in-person.
Some of the big issues that are about to come to a head include:
Customer service — companies who treat their customers well in crisis will keep them when it’s over and gain the ones that others mistreated.
Employee experience — companies who treat their employees well and make the workplace a great place to work will not only retain their talent, but also pick up the talent that their short-sighted compatriots gave up. Oh, and they will also get customers that are increasingly caring about how workers are treated.
Sustainability — This isn’t just the environmental side, but ethics, which will include worker treatment, fair wages, and the like, since those are personnel practices that keep the production side of the company sustainable.
Downsizing and rightsizing — Companies often forget an important rule of cooking: when you trim the fat, you have to add spice! The business world is littered with the corpses of downsizers and rightsizers who missed the memo about how crises are times to reshape, not to reduce. Pivot and change the flavor, or your dish will be discarded.
As we look to our future careers, the most important question we can be asking ourselves is: How do we want to create value in the world in a way that resonates with our authentic selves?
In the battle of East vs West Coast, which does it better? Sorry honey, we’re not talking about hip hop (though, we could talk about Tupac vs Biggie all day). We’re talking about the number of Corona patients between New York and California. While we’ve been warned of America’s hospitals hitting peak numbers…one city has remained oddly quiet.
West Coast That city? None other, than Patagonia vest-wearing, Lululemon rocking, Techland, San Francisco. With 1,019 cases and only 17 deaths as of writing, the numbers are VASTLY different than what we’re seeing here in NYC. The entire state of California is seeing 10x LESS cases than New York.
East Coast As the epicenter of the pandemic, there have been over 123,146 confirmed cases in New York City alone, and over 11,477 people have passed away.
And the winner is… West Coast. San Francisco Mayor London Breed enacted a citywide shut down on March 17th over FIVE days before NYC. Despite severe backlash for putting SF in a shelter while the city had less than 50 cases (compared to NYC which placed the shutdown after over 2,000+ cases), Mayor London Breed is being celebrated for her “proactive vs reactive” approach. De Blasio meanwhile, was under fire for keeping schools open which led to several NYC deaths.
Social distancing, people. It works! We still love Biggie, though. On a positive note – here’s what cities look like as they’ve been shut down from space.
