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COVID-19

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Whether you’re a die-hard football fan or a casual bystander, each year, the world stops for 90 minutes to watch the biggest game in club football — El Clásico Español, a game between Spanish juggernauts Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. Only this year, Barcelona’s Nou Camp stadium wasn’t rocking. The teams’ 99,000 fans had to chant from home.

With Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that gyms would be allowed to reopen on August 24th in New York State, relief is in sight for those whose fitness routines and physical and mental health have been upended due to COVID-19. But this announcement does not mean people can simply rush back to the gym and pick up where they left off prior to the shutdown.

Joe Villasana’s $641 vanished into the ether of the live entertainment industry.
He splurged for a ticket to see Rage Against the Machine at the 12,000-seat Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas, but the band’s reunion tour has since been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Villasana pleaded for a refund from two Ticketmaster representatives, but they thwarted his efforts. Instead, the pair ingrained in him their company’s new policy: “Ticketmaster cannot issue a refund until the concert is canceled.”

The coronavirus swept the country, forcing me and almost everyone everywhere into quarantine – with shelter-at-home orders, remote learning for kindergarten-through-college classes and entire industries and small businesses shut down. I’m a creature of habit, but I’m adapting. Still, this change is different – scary, even – with health risks, uncertainty, rising death tolls and limited social contact with the outside world. 

But life in lockdown has had one silver lining for the Taku family. It has forced my family – all six of us – to eat dinner together at the dining room table almost every night. 

In recent weeks the live entertainment industry has gone dark, including Mendelson’s own tour to support If You Can’t Say Anything Nice…, but she refuses to let that stop her from performing. She flips on her “party lights,” crystalline specks that electrify the gray curtain backdrop in her Brooklyn home, and arms herself with her keyboard, acoustic guitar and harmonica.