What happens when you can’t wait tables while waiting art to pay the bills?

NEW YORK — It’s been the story for many a starryeyed creative type looking for a big break in the Big Apple — wait tables to pay the bills while auditioning, performing, singing, painting, dancing, writing, whatever it takes to make the dreams of success come true.

But there’s been a plot twist, thanks to the coronavirus putting food servers out of work in recent months as restaurants were forced to shut down their dine-in services. And much uncertainty remains over what restaurant dining will look like even as New York City reopens.

Questions of whether there will be enough business for establishments to stay open and even have waiter jobs to fill are causing concern about what that’s going to mean for the city’s creative class if the jobs that helped them be able to live here and add to the city’s artistic culture are no longer readily available.

“It really is a part of the artist’s life in New York, so I don’t know what that’s going to look like if it’s just suddenly not an option anymore,” said Travis McClung, 28, who has spent close to nine years waiting tables while doing theater, singing and more recently, trying to build his career in video editing and post-production.

The virus has been devastating for the city’s restaurant workers. According to the state Department of Labor, restaurants and other eateries employed just over 273,000 people in February, before the city shut down in mid-March due to the pandemic. In April, during the peak of virus cases, that number had fallen to under 78,000. As the city reopened in May, it rose slightly to close to 100,000, still vastly below where it had been.

And while outdoor dining has been allowed in recent weeks, with around 6,600 restaurants in the five boroughs applying for permits to feed people on sidewalks and streets, the return of indoor dining has been put off indefinitely over fears that confined quarters would make virus cases spike.

Bebeto Matthews / Associated Press Rachel Berry, in New York City since 2004, from Laurel, Md., sits in her living room decorated with her art on July 6. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Berry worked as a bartender and waited tables, jobs that gave her enough time to work on her creative pursuits. But as New York City tries to reopen, there's concern that jobs for the city's creative class are no longer readily available.