10
BROOKLYN WEEKLY, MARCH 22, 2020
BUSINESSES
pockets, it’s when things
come a little more to life
for us,” said Jimmy Kokotas,
the third-generation
owner of the restaurant.
The spread of the respiratory
disease also
halted the long-awaited
reopening of the historic
restaurant Gage and
Tollner on Fulton Street
scheduled for March 15,
but the owners were optimistic
the ancient business
would withstand
this crisis, too.
“Gage and Tollner has
already survived two
World Wars, the Great Depression,
the Spanish fl u
epidemic, and Prohibition
— it will survive this as
well,” the owners said in
an emailed statement. “We
will re-open Gage & Tollner
as soon as we feel it’s
the responsible thing to do
— and when we do, what a
magnifi cently grand reopening
it will be.”
Other forms of entertainment
also come to a
standstill, leading one
Coney Island playwright
worried that the mostly
freelancing artists would
struggle to pay their bills.
“I think everybody’s
priority is real life, but
performers are generally
freelancers or have
a part-time job in the service
industry and people
are freaking out about
losing their gigs,” said
Dick Zigun, who had to
call off a years-in-theworks
rock opera due to
the outbreak.
Zigun cancelled the
show he co-wrote about
a brain-eating jukebox
and said he and his fellow
artists were scrambling
to fi gure out how to not
have all their work be for
naught.
“It’s devastating because
for an Off-Off-
Broadway theater company,
you can’t just pause
a show and bring it back
two three months later.
There’ll have to be casting
changes, we’ll have to restart
rehearsal,” he said.
BIKER
“There’s these quirky
mansions and pockets of
really weird architecture,”
VanDusen said. “That was
the biggest eye-opener, how
diverse and weird it gets.”
She’s even managed to
gain access to Brooklyn’s
handful of gated enclaves,
including the Navy Yard in
Fort Greene, Seagate near
Coney Island, and a gated
cul-de-sac off Strickland
Avenue in Mill Basin.
And on top of merely
sightseeing, she’s also visited
about 1,800 bars and
restaurants along the way.
“When I’m in a neighborhood,
I want to eat there
and fi nd out where that local
bar is,” VanDusen said.
Her least-favorite spot to
bike is Dumbo, because of
the hordes of tourists taking
selfi es in the middle of
the bumpy Belgian Block
streets.
“I absolutely hate it,” she
said. “There’s also just not
that many things I want to
take pictures of there.”
VanDusen said she has
become more conscious of
the dangers of biking in
Brooklyn, where motorists
hit and killed 19 cyclists in
2019 — more than in any
other borough.
“I’ve been incredibly
lucky,” she said. “Statistically,
I should have been
hit by now.”
Though she bikes much
more defensively today,
VanDusen says there needs
to be more awareness of
bikers among drivers and
pedestrians, and that the
city needs to install more
bright green protected bike
lanes — a color she’s adopted
for the logos on her
social media.
“People stand in bike
lanes. I’ve yelled at dozens
of people for standing in
them and people just don’t
know to look for bikes,” she
said.
VanDusen is still fi guring
out what her next
project could be after she’s
fi nished covering Brooklyn.
She has no interest in
biking and photographing
other city boroughs, but
she might do something
similar in her native Philadelphia,
and has already
secured the Instagram
handle Phillybybike.
“I am considering Philadelphia
if I move there,”
she said. “I have the account
just in case.”
Continued from page 1
Continued from page 1
Matt Hogan, the owner of Irish Haven, worries about the effect of
the closures on his livelihood. Photo by Paulo Basseto
Jacqueline VanDusen wants to bike every block in Brooklyn by
Sept. 1. Photo by Kevin Duggan