You remember bars? I remember bars. After a long week of talking on the radio, talking to people on the phone, and just talking all the damn time, there's nothing I love more than going to the bar and being ignored because nobody is interested in talking to me there, especially girls.
It was back on March 17 that Orlando bars were ordered to close their doors, likely to cut off the impending St. Patrick's Day party crowd. Back in late-June, there was a two-week period where bars were allowed to open again, and the terrible animals known as human beings just ruined that. I'll admit it, I went to a couple of bars in that time. I went to a couple of nearly-empty bars where everyone was wearing masks and staying many seats apart, but not all bars were like that. The popular UCF bar Knight's Pub was the first bar to get their liquor license pulled after an excessive amount of COVID-19 cases were attributed to it, and even Will's Pub in Mills 50 voluntarily shut down after someone there was exposed to COVID.
Shortly after that, the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation suspended all liquor licenses. I had walked around downtown on a Saturday night to see what it was like, and it was a madhouse. There were just bars full of people, drinking, screaming, piling over each other with no regard to the pandemic and it's places like that which lead to Dr. Fauci warning that drinking at bars really needed to stop. A study done by the Texas Medical Association also suggested, with no surprise, that bars were among the highest-risk places for contracting COVID.
Ever since the licenses were suspended on June 26, we've just kind of sat around waiting... with no word on whether or when bars would open again. On Tuesday, Orlando Buddy Dyer addressed the concerns saying it may be months before bars would open, or it might take until a vaccine is available.
Dyer said, "I think bars are in one of the most difficult situations, So I just don’t know how, until probably we have a vaccine, I’m not sure how we bring the bars back." In recent weeks, the Florida Department of Business & Professional Regulation has been meeting with bars to have that conversation as well.
Can I start a pre-tab? Will that help? Like... let me put down $20 a week for my favorite bar(s), and once they open, I'll just start cashing those checks.