Staten Island Mall Turns Zipcode Into A Hotzone
When you live in Staten Island there isn’t much to do. It’s not like the other boroughs where Brooklyn has Coney Island and Manhattan has many attractions and museums. Staten Island is only good for eating out at restaurants and going to the mall. The Mall is the hangout spot and most people go there on the weekends. So when your only spot to have fun turns into a potential covid risk, it makes you rethink going out at all. Many things have changed around the mall to make you feel safer and comfortable as you shop in a pandemic.
As soon as you walk into the Apple store, one of the most popular stores in the mall, there are many signs shown. You can see by the sign that asks you to social distance, there are gloves to keep you from protecting yourself from spreading and catching the virus. It’s ironic how most people are iPhone users and cellphones hold a lot of germs, so for the Apple store to have the gloves ready for your use emphasizes how serious this virus is.
In the Mall Food Court, as you can see before you enter you need a face mask, as well as food in order to enter. The Covid safety guidelines changed how many people would sit in the food court just to catch a breath or simply hang out with their friends. Now because of Covid guidelines, you have to have food to enter or you will not be permitted to sit in the area.
Besides not being allowed to sit in the food court without having a meal present, they have also added a rule where they limit the number of people per table.
As you get ready to enter the Food Court, two security guards are making sure you test your temperature and that you don’t go over 100°F. They also make you sign in with your recording temperature. They are there to make sure that everyone entering the food court isn’t violating Covid rules.
To ensure that they don’t go over their capacity, they limit the seating so many people wouldn’t have room to sit. They took half of their tables and pushed it into a corner where no one is allowed to go.
At many stores in the mall, instead of having paper receipts and touching money with cashiers. They provided a tray for you to put your cash in and are pushing e-receipts so you would limit the amount of spread between employee and customer.
These are new to the mall. So you step on the bottom of the hand sanitizer dispenser and it dispenses the hand sanitizer in your hand. This is an innovative design to help reduce the spread of Covid.
As you walk throughout the mall, there are many security guards out in place to control the crowds and ensure that customers wear masks and put on hand sanitizer before entering the Disney store. This is good because some kids don’t wear masks.
You got line control by Apple. Apple is usually packed with customers but since you can’t have crowds of people in one store. They limit their crowd control by only taking appointments and hiring security to control their lines. You can also see that they only use the front half of their store so it reduces the number of people that can enter Apple.
But even with all these changes around the mall, we still have many people that don’t follow the rules. Now Staten Island is known for having a lot of Trump supporters. In the 2020 election, 69% of Staten Island voted for Trump. Predominantly the south shore which is where the mall is located.
We have Law Enforcement not even wearing masks or wearing masks incorrectly. How are you supposed to enforce the law when you don’t even follow the law yourself? Of Course in Staten Island, the law is optional to some individuals.
This is why I brought up the point earlier on how you couldn’t sit down without eating in the food court. You see two children without parents playing around in the mall which many kids do since there isn’t school and they don’t wear masks. In the other picture, you can see the kids with their masks pulled down walking around the food court which if caught they are expected to leave the mall. This is the one reason why Covid is still around, kids seem to forget the rules and spread germs.
Finally, we save the best for last. Resellers and customers come into the mall on a release day and form a crowd in front of Jimmy Jazz. Resellers want to make their money and no one is hating on their side hustle but is money worth risking your life. Lines outside of Jimmy Jazz where people are waiting first come first serve for a pair of Jordans. These resellers will crowd to get Jordns just to see a small profit.
Jimmy Jazz employees that come to work their shift on a release day comment “COVID will never go away if people continue to disregard the law for their selfish reasons.”
Many people want to go back to their normal lives and enjoy vacations, hobbies, and other things in life but without following guidelines, our normal might never come back. If individuals keep ignoring the COVID guidelines, we will be forced to live in a new normal where everyone is limited to doing their daily activities.