Taylor’s bliss can be bad for business.
Not everyone was happy with superstar Taylor Swift’s nuptials with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden on Friday — especially shopkeepers and restaurateurs trying to keep their businesses afloat nearby.
While restaurants along Seventh Avenue are usually bustling on an average Friday afternoon, several of them, including McDonald’s and Smashburger, closed early as an army of city cops shut down streets around MSG for the afternoon wedding.
Commuters who had to be rerouted around the closed-off area were also less than pleased.
Zach was trying to reach Penn Station and get on the Long Island Railroad when he was told he had to take the long way around
“This is the most obnoxious thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” the 36-year-old building engineer said of Swift’s wedding. “This is extremely wrong to do on a Fourth of July weekend. Now I might miss my train.”
“It’s not fair,” he said.
Belal Mohamed shared his pain, but the specific sting the food cart operator felt was in his wallet.
“This affects me bad,” said Mohamed, 45. While he normally sets up within the shutdown zone, cops told him Friday he had to move his cart away from 31st Street and Seventh Avenue near Madison Square Garden.
“I lose like $400 to $500 every day (I’m not here),” he said of his spot, which had been taken over by the A-list newlyweds. “I need to come to (here) every day. I have family, I have four boys. I need money. I need to work every day.”
While most restaurants outside MSG closed early, Bourbon and Branch on West 33rd Street remained open. The place’s manager hoped the cops didn’t shut down the sidewalk outside their front door.
“I’m being optimistic,” she said. “I’m hoping that it’s going to cause a lot more foot traffic now that I know that pedestrians can come down 33rd Street.”
Only a few weeks ago, restaurant workers had to deal with street closures during the NBA Finals watch parties outside MSG, the manager said.
“(This could) probably be really great for us, because people are probably going to want to get as close to the wedding as possible,” she said.
Harlem resident Rel Francis, 33, said the street closures created “a maze” for commuters, but that it was easier to navigate than the Knicks watch parties just a month ago.
“Back when the Knicks were doing the playoffs, I felt like half of the officers didn’t know where to send you, and so they just kept pushing you further and further from your destination,” he said. “It causes a lot of frustration when you can’t get a clear answer. So it’s nice (a cop) gave me a very straightforward, ‘Walk here, turn here, you’ll get to where you need to be.’”
Still, shutting down a big swath of Midtown Manhattan for a billionaire couple’s wedding was pretty unfair, he said.
“New York has been kind of the ground zero for a lot of these insane billionaires just doing insane things,” Francis said. “It’s a crazy example of just, like, capitalism and the powers that people have, and the privileges that other people have that most don’t even get to fathom, you know?”
“I’m sure I would have got arrested,” he said, “if I tried to just walk through that barricade.” - New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
