In today’s edition of the Tap newsletter, we talk at length with Jorge Guzmán about his new restaurant, Petite León, which opens tonight. One of our first questions: Why not take 6-12 months off and wait for the pandemic to subside before launching a new venture? In Guzmán’s words:
I don’t have a sugar momma or a sugar daddy to keep paying my bills. I can’t just quit what I do and find another job in a different area. One, no one’s hiring, two, my qualifications are very specific. There are some people who are lucky and have family money, that can just kind of hang out and weather the storm. Some people are really fortunate and have great investors. But we aren’t rich, so we have to keep working. We have to keep our heads down and figure out how we can survive and kind of pay ourselves so we can make it through this.
We also explored the fight that Minocqua Brewing Company is waging to keep its staff and customers safe during COVID-19 in a red county in Wisconsin, and published essays about the demise of City Pages and the closure of Uptown stalwart Chino Latino.