It’s a Wednesday. Restaurants are usually open on a Wednesday. Yet it took us multiple tries to find an place to get dinner tonight that was open. Most of the restaurants in our neighborhood have “Help Wanted” signs in the window, or notes about being short staffed. Maybe in this post-pandemic world people’s behaviors have dramatically shifted with respect to going out to eat. Maybe it’s inflation still being extremely high for food. Maybe the national labor shortage in the service industry is finally having real effects.
Whatever it is, I’m genuinely surprised at how my very dense urban neighborhood feels on a Wednesday when the weather is nice.