By Daniel Van Oudenaren
Austin’s Parts & Labour clothing and art store limped into this week already smarting from a week of coronavirus-driven slowdown, but determined to stay open.
The South Congress consignment store, which features the work of dozens of Texas-based artists, had taken robust measures to protect shoppers and its own staff from the coronavirus.
A bright pink sign hung over the doorknob saying, “No touchy… we’ll see you — or knock.”
Near the entrance, an employee waited with disposable towelettes for shoppers to disinfect their hands before entering. On a table in the middle of the store stood a half-dozen bottles of cleaning spray.
Owner Lizelle Villapando said in an interview Monday that she was hoping to stay open: “I just want to be here in case anybody happens to come by and need something.”
“I know it’s weird to have a store selling gifts and wanting to be open when I know that everyone should stay in. But I want the traffic for the artists to get the sales and for us to be able to accumulate enough money to pay rent. I can’t be upset that no one’s out.”
Villapando had two employees on hand, who were maintaining social distancing, and no more than four shoppers were being allowed into the store at once. For a week very few people had come by, but there was still a “trickle of sales,” she said.
Parts & Labour also was offering curbside sales, in case anybody wanted to phone in an order and come pick it up without coming inside.
For the City of Austin and Travis County, such measures were apparently not enough. Mayor Steve Adler and County Judge Sarah Eckhardt issued orders Tuesday, March 24, telling people to stay home except to do “essential activities” or to work at an “essential business.”
Under the order, a McDonald’s drive-thru is an essential business, but Villapando’s store is not.
Groceries, liquor stores, takeout restaurants, hardware stores, pharmacies, and a few other types of business are allowed to stay open under the new public health order.
Of course, many retail establishments already closed last week. Parts & Labour’s only South Congress neighbors to remain open to the end were a barbershop and one other clothing store.
In front of a shuttered storefront next door, a street performer played the violin for an empty street. She said that she was thinking of taking a job with CapMetro disinfecting buses.
Farther uptown, on East 6th Street, every bar and restaurant was boarded up, other than a takeout place selling pizza by the slice. A tattoo shop remained open, and a worker there said that the shop had done at least one tattoo on every shift recently.
“We treat everybody like they have a disease anyway,” he said.
Up until the closure order, some big-box stores remained open as well, including Home Depot, Gamestop, Michaels, and Hobby Lobby. But department stores including Nordstrom, Macy’s, and JC Penny have been closed for a week.
For Villapondo, the owner of Parts & Labour, the coronavirus outbreak has already caused a massive financial hit, forcing her to lay off 8 of 11 staff. “I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s just extremely overwhelming,” she said.
Villapondo is hoping for some relief from the Small Business Administration, which is offering loans for economic injury due to the virus, or perhaps a line of credit.
She says the one positive that she sees in a ‘shelter-in-place’ order is that maybe “it puts pressure on bigger money to be more compassionate about knowing that there’s no cash flow. They can’t have the same expectation.”
