After a flurry of excited calls from her employees and customers Friday, Kym Reed found herself doing math.
“If I worked an eight-hour day theoretically, at an hour per visit, I could do eight haircuts, at 25% of that, two hair cuts,” Reed calculated.
Reed owns Blue Marble hair parlor on East Ave. but she’s not sure if it's sustainable.
Her business, like many in orange zones, were forced to close on the day before Thanksgiving. Orange zones are areas with high levels of COVID-19 cases.
Reed says operating at 25% capacity - on top social distancing and masking requirements - will make it harder for her and her employees to keep going. She’s hoping the state will provide clarity to the requirements in the coming days.
A graphic from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s press conference on Friday showed the hair and personal care industry, which is mostly barber shops and salons, is the origin of only .14% of all COVID-19 cases statewide.
With that data now public, Reed, who is quick to applaud Cuomo’s overall performance with pandemic, can’t help but wonder why her business was shut down at all.
“We’re being conscientious for our own safety and our customer’s safety,” said Reed. “So to be sitting home for the past two weeks, knowing that we’re not the primary root of transmission, but feeling like we’ve been singled out, just because of optics, just because it looks like we’re close to people, has been frustrating.”
It seems the cry from Barber and Rochester City Council Vice President Willie Lightfoot’s was heard. He organized a petition signed by more than 1,000 people asking Cuomo to reopen salons and barber shops in orange zones.
During his appearance on WXXI’s Connections with Evan Dawson Friday, he said businesses should be compensated for their losses during one of their busiest times of the year.
“There’s a loss of income that should be recouped to this industry,” said Lightfoot. “In my opinion, three weeks of income is a lot.”
He also encouraged state and local governments to use barber shops and salons to inform the public about COVID-19.
“These are the places where people trust and where people have relationships and they can be very instrumental in spreading education about this virus,” said Lightfoot.
He also encouraged barber shop and salon owners to continue following existing state protocols because the low percentage of cases in these locations means it's working.
Cuomo also permitted the reopening of gyms in orange zones. New York state contact tracing data says gyms are the source of .06 percent of COVID-19 cases in the state.
Jeff Saunders, owner of Athletic Apex, a small chain of gyms with a location in Penfield, said the numbers are trending that way nationwide. He also said mandatory masking helped keep those numbers low in gyms.
“I think gyms already were in a better spot to stay cleaner, better than most industries but the mandates made helped ensure that there was going to be no issue.”
Saunders expects to reopen soon with limited capacity and expects many in his industry to follow suit.
