As a venue that hosts live comedy performances, classes, and political action events, Q.E.D. Astoria is a true community space — and a business that doesn't easily fit into the state's strict guidelines governing what establishments can stay open during the COVID-19 crisis. Author, performer, and Q.E.D. owner Kambri Crews preemptively shut down the venue last spring even before she was required to do so by state pandemic restrictions, but her subsequent attempt to host socially distant events in the back yard space over the summer ran afoul of the State Liquor Authority. The space has yet to reopen, and now Crews is just one of thousands of small business owners wondering when she'll be back.
We spoke with Crews around the turn of the new year about her ongoing frustrations with Governor Andrew Cuomo, the added challenge of undergoing cancer treatment over the past year, and why she still finds New York City inspiring.
If you can bring yourself back to when this all began in March and April, what was your initial thoughts about what was happening? Did you think that this was going to be a quick thing? Or did you think, "Oh, we're in the long haul here?"
Well, in the beginning, before the city shut down, I was a little surprised at how slow everyone was to react. I'm like, "You see what's happening in Italy and China right now?" Right? I mean, it was as though there's this giant tsunami wave heading our direction and everyone's still on the beach. I was like, "Run! Why aren't we running?"
So, I had already started making preparations to shut down. I had gone to Texas to visit my dad, who was an inmate in prison in Huntsville, Texas. And he's deaf — or was deaf — and prisons are petri dishes. So I wanted to make sure I got in a visit before we went into lockdown, both figuratively and literally. His lockdown, I knew it would be difficult for him, and I just wanted to buoy him with a visit before things got bad. He ended up dying in prison, actually.
I'm sorry —
From COVID, yeah. He was starving to death and malnourished, and he collapsed and then got COVID, and it's a whole different ball of wax.
So I feel like I've got two different COVID stories that are happening simultaneously. It's like the destruction of my business and livelihood. And then, on a personal family and health and safety level, it's a lot for one person, and the city. I'm worried for the city as a whole.
Yeah, understandably. I mean, that is grueling. I can't imagine going through all of that in one year.
Back in 2012, I wrote a memoir about my life because my whole family is deaf, I lived in a tin shed without running water or electricity. My dad had tried to kill my mom, and he's in prison for trying to kill this other woman. And so I was like, I already had all that material and I burned it on the 2012 memoir. And it was like, "I guess the universe is trying to tell me it wants me to write another book, so it's just giving me lots of material to work with." It's like, I got cancer. It's just too much.
Oh, God.
So yeah, I saw this tsunami wave coming. I decided to shut down Q.E.D. before the state did.
At Q.E.D. before the shutdown, you were doing a mix of a lot of different kinds of shows and events —
Yeah, I always hesitated calling QED a comedy club. It is majority comedy, that's my background. My husband is a comedian. I love producing and performing and seeing comedy, but it's really truly a community art space. We have storytelling and fundraising events, we have political action events, we have a lot of stuff that works for formerly incarcerated people, storytelling and poetry and spoken word events, classes.
And my understanding is that you were basically fully shut down until the summer, and then you had some outdoor events that were happening there?
My background before I went into theater arts and stuff here in New York city, like 20 years ago, I was a paralegal. I worked in law, and I was a banker doing foreclosures on commercial real estate and stuff. So I like contracts and laws and rules, and I know how to read all of that stuff. So I'm thankfully pretty autonomous, and I didn't have to spend a lot of money on attorneys and advisors. I paid close attention to all the laws and guidelines.
And so I was very excited to see the numbers dropping, and phases three and four included the ability for outdoor arts and entertainment. I studied the rules and carefully decided, let's work. We have a backyard at Q.E.D. that we don't use because it's not part of Q.E.D.’s space, but with the open streets initiative, you are allowed to use private spaces. The city relaxed on the rules and the landlord said we could use it, and so we started using the backyard.
We — to the letter — followed all the six foot spacing. We required everybody to be masked, even while seated. If they were eating and drinking actively, they could have their mask off, but we asked that everybody was masked.
We had different microphones that were sanitized for each performer, so each performer had their own microphone. They didn't even have to worry about handling those little mic condom things. And it worked, it worked really well, it felt safe. We were doing contact tracing through Eventbrite ticketing.
And six or eight weeks into it, the State Liquor Authority revised their website to clarify that ticketed arts and entertainment was not allowed, even outdoors. I still remain perplexed as to how that's the case when cultural institutions are allowed to do it. Like, Bryant Park is allowed to have ping pong, bingo, they had dance classes, all sorts of activities.
So did you then stop doing it?
Yeah, oh, immediately. Cause I don't have the mental or bandwidth or the financial chutzpah, whatever. There's a lot of comedy club owners that have very deep pockets, and I am not one of them. My pockets are — Q.E.D. was funded out of my 401(k). I had $40,000 in the Q.E.D. bank at the beginning of the pandemic, and now that is down to zero and I'm in debt, and of no fault of my own.
Yeah. I was going to ask, when you brought back these shows, did you feel as though you have been able to maybe not make a profit, but at least keep your head above water?
Yeah, it was stanching the bleeding. Now, I was only doing three nights a week. I really could have — if I wanted — done every night of the week. And I think I would have actually made a profit because I was doing everything myself, I was doing the bartending and my husband was doing the door and tech. So I had no overhead really with regard to payroll, just me and him. And I got a small $25,000 Paycheck Protection Program loan that I used to pay me and him, and I did hire one of my bartenders back.
So you got the PPP, and my understanding is that that was supposed to help pay for keeping some employees on, and had to be used in a very certain way —
Yeah. It was —
How long did it last for you? Does that get you to the summer?
We didn't use it at first because we weren't allowed to be open, and I said, "Well, let's hold onto it. When we're allowed to be reopened, then I can hire everybody back, and I'll have enough money to make sure everybody gets paid a fair wage plus some."
I was paying hazard pay. I've always paid above minimum wage for the bartenders, but I wanted to pay on top of that, like a hazard pay. So we held onto it because my bartenders said, 'No, I'm fine getting unemployment. Let's just get unemployment now.' And then when we're allowed to reopen, we'll have that money saved to pay for payroll.
Something I've been thinking about, and I've asked this of other people as well in these industries: If the federal government had paid you not to be open, would you have been more comfortable being closed during this entire period?
Never in a million years would I have even entertained doing an outdoor show. I didn't want to do an outdoor show, I've got cancer. I'm on cancer medicine.
But I have to do something. I have to. They've given me no choice. By forcing licensed venues to not act within guidelines that restaurants and bowling alleys and other places are allowed to, you're driving people to do more dangerous things. Underground parties, rooftop events, basement events. It's Happening. It was happening in the summer. It's happening now.
It's going to continue to happen. If you had given licensed venues the legal authority to hold spaced events, outdoors, those things would have definitely been less, fewer and further between. And it would have given people emotional and physical outlets to exert some of this pent up — just the shit, the turmoil that we're going through.
Do you have any feelings about some legitimate venues — I think the Stand is one of them — who have been essentially ignoring the rules and just having secretive [shows]?
They have deep pockets there. I don't know that they're secretive. They're advertising them.
There are restaurants — City Winery is doing dinner packages with trivia, because trivia is allowed. Tell me why trivia is allowed? If you go to the SLA website, it says because the patrons are seated during the event. That's their reasoning. The patrons are seated. I don't know if they've ever been to a stand-up comedy show, but the "stand-up" in stand-up comedy means that the comedian is standing and not the audience.
Well, I mean, you have had what sounds like an awful year, and I'm so sorry for everything that you've gone through and that you are going through cancer treatments as well right now during COVID.
I will clarify I'm done with my treatments, but I'm still on a cancer chemo pill. The chemo pill I'm on for several years though. Knock on wood I don't have to have any more surgeries or treatments. I had my last scan right before September, I want to say. My doctors all wanted to see me before the second lockdown. They're convinced there's going to be a second lockdown. And they're worried for me, and I'm worried for them. Everybody stay home. I would stay home if I could.
It just sounds overwhelming either way — I mean, especially going through the circumstances you've been through. Are there things that you think [the state] has done right in addition to the things that done wrong?
Yeah. I want to make sure I'm not bashing city and state legislators. I will say Senators Gianaris and Ramos, and our council members — Jimmy Van Bramer and Costa Constantinides — as well as Brad Hoylman and many others that I could list are tremendous advocates. I am so so grateful and so, so proud of the people that we've elected in New York City, they are tremendous. They are not able to do shit, because of Cuomo.
Nothing matters — even de Blasio hate him as much as you want, he gets overruled. Cuomo has executive authority right now.
It's a strange system they've set up, and it's like along the way they keep updating or adjusting things. And yet it does seem like, especially with the entertainment field in general, comedy, music, anything like that, it has for some reason fallen through the cracks this entire time.
Which is strange. I mean, it's the fifth largest employer in New York State. It's a $114 billion industry for New York City. It's shameful. It's disgraceful.
Cuomo screwed up in the beginning. He didn't shut down quick enough. He had the nursing home fiasco. He's now over-correcting in a way that is as equally damaging, but in different ways. Not in human lives like in the hospital, but in human lives in livelihoods and abilities to put food on their table.
And these venue owners that I mentioned — that I don't want to name by name — they're acting in desperation and doing dangerous things. And then you've got young people who are behaving like fucking maniacs because they're all sex-starved. Like that sex club in Astoria. What are you thinking? Oh my God, who would even go to that? But I'm like, "I guess I was 21, so I don't remember."
I just want to ask one last thing, which is just to end on a slightly upper note. You have your business here, and it has been in flux, and there's been a lot going on, but you have stayed in the city throughout this. You've been here through all of the insanity —
Yeah. 2020 is my 20-year anniversary of living in New York.
So we've been asking people, what do you still love about the city? What keeps you here? Even in the midst of everything going on, what keeps you loving New York and being here?
The adaptability of New Yorkers is so... it’s inspiring and head-scratching all at the same time. Seeing what lengths people will go to to make their art. And I'm speaking about art in general, but those artists that make New York. That's what makes New York, is all the artists and creative people, the creative minds and stuff. But yeah, just the creative ways that people will come up with ways to entertain themselves and each other and come together and create. I love seeing that.
