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Monday, February 8th, 2021, 3:30 p.m. ET
Some inspiring news out of the Northeast today with a pair of announcements from New York City and Atlantic City, respectively. Officials in New York, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s Cultural Affairs Commissioner Gonzalo Casals, introduced the “Open Culture” program which will open up to 115 designated city streets in all five NYC boroughs for ticketed performing arts events.
This new program, which will begin allowing applications for permits on March 1st, will give performers the ability to reserve a city street for up to 12 hours for ticketed events. While indoor events are still not feasible in NYC, this new program will allow outdoor events to operate safely with locations determined by the New York City Department of Transportation.
“This plan and Open Culture is going to streamline the application process, allow arts groups, both for-profit and non-profit, to get easily obtainable permits to perform live on the streets of all five boroughs of New York City, democratizing the arts in a way that we’ve never experienced before in our city,” NYC Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer also added during Monday’s press conference. “And they’re going to be able to ticket [through] online ticketing and charge for performances, which will allow a source of revenue to be had by cultural organizations and allow our artists to be paid.”
In other news, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy indicated that, if the state keeps up the pace of its vaccine distribution efforts, outdoor concerts on Atlantic City’s beach will likely be able to go on. Specifically, the state has a goal of reaching 70% vaccination by the start of summer.
As of February 8th, the state has administered 1,037,657 doses with 224,237 of those as second doses. At this rate, the state of New Jersey would like to vaccinate 4.7 million people before July 4th.
“Beach and [Atlantic City Air] Show higher probability than something indoors. I think something can happen indoors, but I don’t think it will be back to where we’re all piled on top of each other watching a concert,” Murphy said.