New-Vegetable-1274 t1_iz86xpf wrote on December 7, 2022 at 4:28 AM

I don't know if it was the pandemic but there has been a definite shift in all sorts of businesses that serve the public face to face. I think there was a lot of damage done to the public psyche in terms of one's comfort levels in indoor spaces with other people. It has effected the number of people who patronize a business and that tends to drop off after a certain hour. Small businesses like cafes et al have expenses beyond their inventory and payroll like heat and lights and so on. A lot of small businesses also lease rather than own and that's a huge expense. Time was when a lot of small eateries in Worcester did big business Wednesday through Saturday. They made a killing after hours when the bars closed. It was like a secondary economy and they were a secondary social venue. There were diners in Worcester that were open 24 hrs six days a week and closed on Sundays. A night out at the clubs was like the main course and the diners were desert. It was so much fun. You don't even see that as much in big cities anymore. I remember the Coffee Kingdom on Pleasant St and through at least two generations it had a real Bohemian vibe not to mention great coffee. There was restaurant on Highland St on the corner of N Ashland St, it's a Thai place now and in my time went through many incarnations, all were awesome. Every one of those businesses catered to the after hours crowd. So much has changed.

your_city_councilor OP t1_iza8cfv wrote on December 7, 2022 at 5:00 PM

>You don't even see that as much in big cities anymore.

That's definitely true. Even NYC is full of places that close early now. That has definitely happened since the pandemic; it really is a great tragedy of our world that humans now feel nervous of interacting with each other. That's going to have ramifications for decades to come.

>I remember the Coffee Kingdom on Pleasant St and through at least two generations it had a real Bohemian vibe not to mention great coffee.

Definitely. I don't even really remember their coffee, though I drank a lot of it, and also their Italian sodas, which I thought were very cosmopolitan at the time, but it was the vibe and the conversations and the people that I spent time with there that I remember.

Restaurant on Highland...was it the Mexican place?

New-Vegetable-1274 t1_izboen6 wrote on December 7, 2022 at 10:44 PM

There were actually two different Mexican restaurants at that location, I can't remember the names but the food was really good. One of them served guac, salsa and chips as an appetizer. One time a friend of mine asked for something spicier and said something like " Nothing is too hot for me". The wait staff brought a another bowl of salsa and said he should be careful but he shoveled a chipful of the salsa and immediately chugged a pitcher of water. He said he thought his heart stopped. The wait staff said " We call that one napalm". I think a lot of this social anxiety could be eased with entertaining at home with a weekly potluck dinner with a dozen or so people. I met my wife at such a dinner a long time ago. We rotated houses and the host had to provide the main course, everyone else brought something. Bringing along someone new was encouraged and it was never dull. Over time the group grew so big we had to move it to restaurants. Like anything else, people come and go and it eventually came to an end but it was fun while it lasted.