It will come as no surprise that BWRC will be canceling its annual conference, scheduled for April 24. What is sad and deeply ironic is that the focus for this year’s conference was “A Good Drink, A Good Meal, and a Good Night’s Sleep: Hospitality along the Brooklyn Waterfront.” The conference was meant to look back on the history of hospitality along the waterfront and to examine what was until yesterday, a burgeoning industry. Given the ever shifting moment we now find ourselves in, we will almost certainly be telling a very different story when we reschedule our conference.
While we wait, please check out the White Paper commissioned by BWRC for the conference. Entitled, “From Brooklyn to ‘Brooklyn:’ The Cultural Transformation of Leisure, Pleasure, and Taste,” the paper offers a history of hospitality along the Brooklyn waterfront by looking back at the industry’s glory days during Brooklyn’s industrial past and tracing its decline and ultimate resurrection. We hope this paper can offer some intellectual diversion as we shelter in place. In the meanwhile, the pandemic makes us wait in trepidation, anticipating how hospitality along the Brooklyn waterfront will be affected by Covid 19, a most inhospitable intruder.
Please be safe. We will all meet again on the other side of this, but until then, BWRC will be communicating through email, social media and our website.
Best,
Richard Hanley
Director
Brooklyn Waterfront Research Center
PS — Here are additional links explaining the dire straits the industry and its workers are finding themselves in and suggesting small ways in which we all might be able to help.
Read:
- A Guide to Coronavirus and the Food World
- How the Coronavirus Crisis Is Devastating New York City’s Nightlife Community
- New York City Weighs Turning Hotels Into Hospitals
Support and participate:
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