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One Door Down : Profiles from a New York City Apartment Building During the COVID-19 Pandemic Main Menu About Our Profiles George and Kathy Profile Sonia and Paul Profile Mary Profile Leeat and Uwvie Profile Jo Profile Tyler Profile Methodology and Background

Paul and Sonia Recall How They Came To Own Their Store Just Before The Pandemic Transcript

Paul: I’ve been playing Magic! since like the early nineties. And, there was another game store in this location, and they closed down towards the end of 2018, beginning 2019, and yanno I knew like the customer base and everything like that

Sonia: Well you worked there.

Paul: Yeah. I helped bring magic into the store, ’cuz they didn’t know anything about Magic!. We just, started everything immediately from the ground up…

Sonia: They left the bones.

Paul: We were able to just hit the ground running with that.

Tyler: Having your own business, opening it right before the pandemic, how has it impacted you, the change from a world where people could go into stores left and right into one where they couldn’t do that?

Paul: Well, there’s a- there’s a couple different sides to that, the biggest one from a personal point of view, I didn’t want a lot people in the store at that time. So, from that stance, I was okay with it. On top of that, were lucky to live in a neighborhood where people are able to, respect the space of others and we didn’t have any real blowback from enforcing maximum capacity. Yeah, we limited it to four people at a time in the store. But even before that we did curbside and there was a lot of ways that we were able to adapt to different requirements that yanno we had to try and follow.

Sonia: And, and continuing to adapt it hasn’t… stopped yet.

Paul: Yeah, I mean there is a bunch of things, I think just recently New York got rid of mask mandates and, and those are things that we’re still maintaining because, again it’s my business and I can run it how I want and yanno it goes with these guidelines that they used to have, and I think they’re just the best practices for us to go forward. I would drop everything if and when we hit zero percent for a duration, but beyond that I think it comes down to just, yanno, how our, how our patrons are viewing things and how are-how safe yanno my employees wanna feel.

Sonia: That’s a big one because with the drop of the mandate, yanno he’s not required to do this stuff at his store anymore, but he asked his employees, yanno, “how do you feel? Do you still want to require masks? Do you still want to require vaccination?...” And they do.

Paul: Yeah.

Sonia: Yanno. That’s what you’re gonna do.

Tyler: A democratically run establishment here, pretty much. (Sonia laughs)

Paul: For the most part… most of the time. (Shared laugh)

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Sonia and Paul Sonia and Paul moved into the building in March 2019, Sonia having lived in the same apartment for 14 years prior to that. The move, in part because of the birth of their son ten months prior, was made amidst a flurry of other achievements they had been making; the month before, Paul opened a board game store a few blocks from home, while Sonia had decided to go back to school at LaGuardia Community College in Fall 2018. Having been a self-employed massage therapist since 2004, her years-long plan to switch careers came to fruition in part because of the enticing nature of benefits, and so she began studying nursing.

The difference between the first few months of 2019, and those of 2020, could not be starker. Early on in the pandemic, the entire family came down with COVID-19, Sonia becoming particularly sick. When Paul was able to return to the store, he immediately noticed that at times, there would be nobody on the sidewalks, nor were there cars driving down the street. None. When Sonia resumed her practice, her clients that worked in Manhattan would tell her about how eerily quiet and empty the city was.

With less people out and about, at least without specific reason, many small businesses faced hard times throughout the pandemic, and continue to. For Paul's store, though, the impact has not been as severe. Board games became a medium through which people within the same household could gather together to be social together. In a time where there was minimal ability to do anything outside the house, gaming, for some, was a key element in making it through the pandemic.

In this clip, Paul discusses his view on how the pandemic impacted the gaming community in particular, and how his store served as a meeting ground for people who didn’t have another outlet for their hobby during the pandemic. Sonia talks about her part-time work as a cashier in the store, the people she encountered, and the conversations she had with them about how gaming has helped them get through it.


Transcript

The continued success of the store throughout the pandemic did nothing to lessen the unpredictable nature of changing guidelines and requirements, which posed to Paul the question of how stringently he should abide by them. To take a lax approach was to allow people in your store who should not otherwise be there by virtue of their inability to abide by masking or vaccination status guidelines, potentially putting your employees and other customers at risk, or draw the ire of that faction of the community by being firm in his resolve to maintain protocols.

In this clip, Paul and Sonia recall how he came to own the store, and then delve into what it was like making the decision to maintain a stricter environment for his patrons relative to COVID protocols, the lasting impact that the pandemic will have on the store, and the continuing need to be flexible in adapting to guidelines.


Transcript

Sonia and Paul realize that their son does not remember the world before COVID; everything we’ve adopted during the pandemic, masking, social distancing, less social occasions, is second nature to not only him but all of those who were born around the same time.

In the clip below, Paul and Sonia discuss the difficulties that the pandemic posed to them as parents. They also talk about the gradual return to normalcy that they experienced after COVID’s height, the particular meaningfulness behind the reopening to the playground a block away from their home, and the isolated nature of childhood in a time without play dates and minimal social occasions.


Transcript

Omicron tore through their son's daycare, which led to him staying home for a few weeks. During this time, it became clear that COVID was something that had become personal to him. Sonia and Paul had a discussion with him explaining how the virus had been making people sick for about two years, and that it had now made the people in his daycare sick, and that that was why he would not be able to see them for a while; he understood.

One thing that they noticed, venturing back out, is that he is absolutely obsessed with public transportation. Sonia had intentionally wanted to ease her son into everyday experiences, and so when comfortable enough to start using the buses and subways again, they did. They know that if the monotony of taking the subway into the city, or the bus across Queens, had been there the entire time, he would be bored of it by now. Even though they never really used public transportation, as they worked close to home, they have made the effort to do so for him.

The prospect of seeing family again is not just an exciting one for Paul and Sonia, but one that they feel is needed. They look forward to resuming their trips to Sonia’s mother’s house, and having Paul's parents come to visit them in New York. They had sometimes gone to the beach in Delaware, and did so again during the pandemic, having arrived just before the Delta variant was announced. “Oh, shit.” Was the natural response.

Paul, out of an abundance of caution, will not be boarding a plane anytime soon, so the beach will likely be their next destination. While Sonia loves the beach itself, Paul prefers playing games on the boardwalk; he claims to gives away a lot stuffed animals.

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