On Friday night, my family went out for the evening. We went to dinner and a movie, and as exciting as the outing was, it was always in the back of my mind that we’d probably get told to mask up because of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s mask mandate.
The mandate hasn’t been going well. In fact, I would call it a spectacular failure. Hochul put the responsibility of enforcing the mandate on the counties, and more than a dozen counties are refusing to enforce it (though I’ve heard that now as many as half aren’t), and Gov. Kathy Hochul isn’t going to force them to. It’s not just Republican-led counties, either. Neither of the two counties on Long Island is enforcing it. Despite this, many businesses in counties that aren’t enforcing the mandate are still pushing masks, while others are brazenly resisting the mandate. In other words, it comes down to the individual business.
So what happened during our night out?
I’ve been out to dinner enough times during the pandemic to see the most absurd mask behavior. It never ceases to amaze me when I see people walk into a restaurant masked and then take their masks off once seated because suddenly they’re safe from COVID.
I suspected that we’d be told to wear a mask upon entering the restaurant until we got to our table. But that’s not what happened at all. In fact, we were greeted by a hostess who wasn’t wearing a mask. It didn’t appear that any of the wait staff were masked either. I wanted to jump for joy.
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Of course, as always, no one was wearing masks at their tables, and it looked like maybe half of those who came into the restaurant were masked until seated, which is a lower rate than I witnessed earlier this week. From what I’ve observed, it seems many people wear masks in stores because they think they’re supposed to. But, once they see others (like me) not wearing a mask, they decide they won’t either.
I did not expect a similar experience at the movie theatre.
We went to see Spider-Man: No Way Home (which I highly recommend, by the way—this review from Christian Toto is spot-on), and there were more people masked up in the theatre than at the restaurant. The staff was all masked, too. But we were in the clear; no one asked us to mask up or offered us masks. Some may have given me dirty looks, but I wasn’t accosted by staff or other customers about my lack of a mask.
Nevertheless, it was amusing to see many masked people waiting in the lobby, then immediately take their masks off once they were seated in the theatre. How is sitting in a crowded theatre, packed like sardines next to strangers, safer than being out in the lobby? Beats me, but that’s the absurdity of masking for you.
Hochul’s mask mandate never had a chance. On January 15, the state will reassess the situation and decide whether or not to keep it going. I can’t wait to see what she says.
