Real New Yorkers: Nelson Braff (Part 2)
Nelson Braff discusses what it was like to own a business in Times Square during the pandemic, tourism, politics, and the importance of first responders.
Jason: Being that your restaurant is so close to Times Square, you had a very unique front-row seat to seeing the effects of shutting down NYC. There was also a poorly managed homeless hotel directly across the street from your business. How did our local government handle crime and homelessness in Times Square during the last two years?
Nelson: Handled it? I think they promoted it! I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt that they do things with good intentions, but even if you go back just a little before COVID, I remember having a conversation with Anthony Scaramucci and asking him “do you feel like the city is as safe as it used to be?” to which he replied no. I couldn’t really explain why but I agreed. Something had changed. There was an underlying feeling of discomfort that previously had not existed for many years.
Jason: Maybe it was when Deblasio decriminalized all of the quality-of-life offenses in 2017?
Nelson: That was definitely a big part of it, then through the pandemic it got really ugly. I did an interview on Fox Business recently and told them it felt like a zombie apocalypse. When Times Square had no foot traffic, the homeless would be the only people you encountered at all. Combined with everything being boarded up, it created a very threatening environment. We needed to do some repairs at our restaurant while closed for COVID and members of the NYPD actually told me that nobody should be there after dark, and nobody should be there alone. Considering this is 44th street off Broadway, this was quite alarming to hear.
This isn't the middle of nowhere, Times Square is the center of the universe.
In 2020 the street smelled like a public toilet. There were three slashings inside the hotel across the street which then housed homeless addicts. We were told those hotel residents were felons and still part of the prison system but I’m not really certain of that. Everyone also heard of the random Times Square shootings back then. These things were why local businesses in the area remained closed longer than most. The hotel across from us that was housing drug addicts did so for over a year. It was so poorly managed that it really did scare people. I participated in a zoom call with the Times Square Alliance and a number of restaurant managers shared stories about losing good employees because they felt unsafe. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case.
I understand that the city needed to do whatever it deemed necessary to keep people safe. Personally, I lost two very close family members to COVID only five days apart in April of 2020. I always believed the city should err on the side of caution and I still do. I never thought that my business, or any business, was worth jeopardizing people’s lives. The idea of sacrificing health for business seems crazy to me. I even made the decision to cease operations nearly a week prior to New York City’s mandate to do so.
I just didn’t feel comfortable asking employees to come to work.
Now let’s assume that many of these decisions during COVID were done for the right reasons. It became very clear that they stopped being the right decisions at some point. Eventually, the vaccines were rolled out, and it went from everyone doing their best to navigate through this really hard time, to something else entirely. Decisions were being made for political reasons and it was doing real harm to people in certain industries. One of the industries that took a beating was hospitality. The federal government gave PPP loans that would be forgiven if we hired our employees back, but then the local government said we were not allowed to open. The 2nd PPP loan was much more helpful because the local government was no longer standing in the way by the time it was rolled out.
Up until November 1st (2022), restaurants weren’t allowed to hire anyone who wasn’t vaccinated, even though there were no other rules about who could come in and sit down to eat. This deeply broken logic was also heavily defended from criticism. And I want to state that I’m very much pro-vaccine and urged my staff to be vaccinated, even before it was made a condition for employment by the city.
How local elected officials fired first responders over the vax requirement was also deeply wrong. Perhaps there’s an argument that the city needed to know that first responders weren’t going to get sick and be out for extended periods of time. I get that. But when they were so short-handed and everyone else was allowed to roam the city freely, it just didn’t seem to make any sense. It became apparent that some politicians had weaponized COVID, especially against the NYPD and first responders.
Elected officials making these decisions acted as if the officers and other first responders were easily replaceable when in fact, they were doing important work and were short-handed. It seemed as if some elected officials had other agendas and used COVID as an excuse to implement them. Releasing people from prisons, putting prison releases and homeless addicts in hotels, and passing bills that made things better for criminals and harder for police to do their jobs. Fast forward a few years and we have a City Council that’s heavily focused on closing Rikers and a DA that really should be the head of Legal Aid. I’m not suggesting he’s a bad guy. I’ve never met him but I have a few friends who have. They said he seems like a nice guy who just has the wrong job. Whoever thought that NYC would elect a prosecutor who doesn’t want to prosecute?
Jason: He’s been dismissing cases at a historic rate.
Nelson: Nothing could be more clear than the fact that Alvin Bragg does not think that people should be in jail. I’m old enough that I remember what NYC was like in the 1970s and 1980s. I am not saying that NYC is as bad as that, it’s certainly not. But it’s worse than most people remember because it’s been great for a really long time. New York is still the best city in the world.
Lately, you see a lot of stuff on social media showing police hesitating to make arrests, this makes sense. Every single interaction for them comes along with some level of risk. Between the inherent risk and knowing that the person will likely be immediately released, it must make policing feel pointless. I don’t blame them. Our local, typically left-leaning media wants us to play along with what they say is good for the city. So instead of talking about the crime we all see with our own eyes, they talk about “the perception of crime” and to say otherwise is fearmongering.
You don’t need to read the news to know that certain neighborhoods aren’t as safe as they were just three years ago, you just have to go outside.
For the record, I’m a huge fan of Mayor Eric Adams. I think everyone sees a marked improvement in quality of life in the year since he took office, and I think the city’s recovery would be further fast-tracked if the City Council and state officials would just get out of his way and let him do his job.
Jason: Do you feel like the neighborhood surrounding your restaurant has returned to the 2019 level of public safety? And has your business returned back to normal?
Nelson: It’s absolutely much safer than it was in 2020 but hasn’t yet fully recovered. What’s really needed is for the office buildings to fill back up. The problem was partly who was on the streets but it was also who wasn’t on the streets. Regular people going to work every day made the streets safer. Seeing crowds in NYC is normal. When you can drive into midtown and not hit traffic, that’s not normal. That’s eerie. The recent past feels more normal than it did in 2020 but still guarded. The streets in Times Square are crowded. Packed actually. It’s a wonderful feeling to see the familiar energy return.
Jason: I have a theory about this. It’s when you are in a neighborhood and everything seems totally normal it’s because that neighborhood has a high percentage of people who just carried on with their lives as if nothing happened during the last few years. These are the people that are actually holding the city together, not the politicians.
Nelson: I agree.
Jason: So recently there was a family of tourists visiting NYC and the son was assaulted by a homeless man in front of his parents. You were kind enough to treat them to dinner at your restaurant. Recently you said to me that you are embarrassed about stories like this. One thing that the media never reports is that the horrible things that keep happening are not condoned by many New Yorkers, but that message never really gets out to the world. The only viewpoints that get shared are that the crime isn’t happening at all or that it’s rampant.
Nelson: It was actually my partner Eytan who reached out to the family to invite them for dinner. They were lovely. The son was an art student who came here on vacation and just wanted to sit and draw pictures of Central Park. That’s what his plan was on the day he was attacked. The family did in fact love their trip to NYC. The outpouring of support and positivity was very much noticed and appreciated by them. The bigger issue from my perspective is that they, unfortunately, experienced the worst of what NYC has become, but that doesn’t mean that the good parts are no longer here. We wanted to make sure that they experienced the best parts as well. People like me, you, and many of us are in a position where we could move, and our lives would probably be much easier if we did. NYC was never easy, and it was never cheap, but it was always worth it. People who remain here do say because they love it.
People like us are still here because we love NYC. The problem is what we love is what NYC was 8 or 10 years ago, a version of NYC that we still believe it can be again. NYC is not replicable, it’s a unicorn. Sooner or later we’ll get the next version of Koch, Giuliani, or Bloomberg. These are the people who brought NYC from a place of deep dysfunction (and mob control) to an era of unparalleled greatness. Hopefully, one day we can add Mayor Adams to that same list. We just need Albany and the City Council to get out of his way and he will absolutely move New York aggressively forward in its recovery. Also, the pendulum will swing back one day and we will have great leadership again. When that day finally arrives, we still have the Yankees, we still have Broadway, and we still have many of the things that make NYC irreplaceable.
The question is how many people have the patience to wait for that day to arrive. It will happen. Maybe it will happen again one day without me being here, but as of this moment, I am here because it’s my personal choice. The pandemic certainly taught us that a lot of jobs, particularly high-paying jobs, no longer require being physically present. As I mentioned, NYC was never convenient or easy, it’s simply the best place to be. Those of us who are sticking it out are becoming more politically active and doing what we can to try to make it better.
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To be continued…