I hired a team of shoppers to find out how businesses were opening in Dallas
I have to say I feel really sad how out of touch with life outside most of HN posters are. It must be nice to wax about theoretical problems and theoretical solutions when one thinks he is secure about where his or her check is coming from.<p>Let me tell you about what is happening in New York. On Saturday I saw a line three blocks long. Not tiny blocks. New York sized long blocks. That was a line filled with mostly blacks and latinos, some with children. It was barely moving. At the end of the line there was national guard giving out small shopping bags on onions, carrots and potatoes. Based on me timing it I estimate it took ~3 hours for someone joining at the end of the line to get what is, objectively, $10 worth of vegetables if bought in one of the supermarkets targeting poor Hispanic community. The only reason why they are standing in that line for three hours is because that $10 to them is money. Oh and if your state unemployment claim is &quot;pending&quot; then you do not get the fed $600&#x2F;week unemployment either.<p>There&#x27;s a very popular Bar&#x2F;restaurant in Bushwick ran by a great but rather odd dude. 191 Knickerbocker. I guess he is relatively well off or he is good enterprising guy who manages to raise a lot of money. It provides free meals a couple of times a week. No questions asked. They are not much but they would certainly get you through the day. It has a half a block long line, split relatively evenly between latinos and whites. Initially the latter group did not want to be seen in the line, hiding their faces when others whom they thought were in the same socio-economic demographics went by. Occasionally you would see people crying. By now they don&#x27;t care -- just avoid eye contact.<p>About a week ago on Saturday one of the chefy driven relief trucks showed up. The went around the <i>entire block</i> by the middle of the day. When the people got there, they got two small paper bags of vegetables. The lines was mostly latinos. From talking to a couple of people who were volunteering they estimated about 4 hour wait between the time one joined the line and the time to get those bags.<p>My wife, who worked a white collar medicine related field was laid off and filed for unemployment in mid-march. Her unemployment claim is still pending. She&#x27;s not alone. There are people who lost their jobs around beginning of March who are in the same boat. The NYS unemployment system does not have real time status. It does not have messaging. Its call system does not support queuing! People redial hundreds of times a day through the maze of prompts just to be disconnected because there are too many people calling.  She legitimately lost it a couple of times. If I was not still making money, we would have been eating through the savings to cover rent.  We rent our apartment from a family who lives in the same building. Both of them have been laid off. Neither of them have been able to get unemployment -- their claims are &quot;pending&quot;. Every week they look more and more terrified as the only thing that lets them to put food on a table is me paying rent. And there&#x27;s an eviction moratorium now until August, which means I can , at the cost of ruining a relationship with the landlord to whom I&#x27;m paying market rent, stop paying them. Oh and NYS unemployment fund is running out of money.<p>Last week the first of my wife&#x27;s friends who used to only worry about when they would be able to go out to do &quot;girl&#x27;s brunch&quot; have been laid off.  The laid off person is shell shocked. At the end of April their company was absolutely convinced there were no layoffs coming.<p>We are only in the first act. This economic showdown only started at the end of March. Unless you own your own company and you can cut 90% of your expenses and still get enough revenue to pay yourself your white collar job is not safe. People working for companies in layoffs.fyi are the example.