My neighborhood’s annual art festival, Art on the Avenue, is generally the busiest, most lucrative day of the year for local restaurants. After a year and a half of the pandemic, many of the businesses are operating on razor-thin margins. They needed a lot of sales during Art on the Avenue, held earlier this month. They didn’t get them. Early that morning, the power went out along much of the Avenue. Most of the businesses had no electricity for the entire festival, which meant managers had to send employees home and close up.
Since then, we’ve all been trying to give them as much business as we can, to help make up for the shortfall. I’m not eating inside restaurants, of course, but there is plenty of outdoor dining along the Avenue, and takeout is also an option. While sitting outdoors at Cheesetique last week, I took this shot of the storefront.
The Petrini Page 