Queens Shop Owner Says She'd Move Before Enforcing NYC's Vax Rule

FRESH MEADOWS, QUEENS — New Yorkers across the city were seen pausing at the entryways of restaurants, gyms and stores this week, pulling out phones or slips of paper to show proof of vaccination against COVID-19 before being allowed to enter.

The city’s newly enforced indoor vaccine mandate, and its choreographed dance of holding up QR codes and CDC cards, isn’t happening, however, at one small business in Fresh Meadows, Queens.

“I’m pretty strong on my stance,” said the small business owner, who requested anonymity for this story. She said she isn’t requiring clients to show proof of vaccination before entering her business — a move that could land her with thousands of dollars in fines.

“If I have to move to another state to resume business and my craft, then that’s what I’ll do.”

At the onset of the pandemic the owner, who’s run her own business for two decades, shuttered for a couple of months. The closure was not because of the governor’s mandated shutdown of non-essential businesses, however, but because talking with clients became too overwhelming.

The owner said she began spending much of her time trying to calm clients' worries by sharing her own beliefs — firmly held by her but considered by most to be unscientific and dangerous conspiracy theories — including that germ theory is inaccurate and that the pandemic had been invented as a way to shutter small businesses and transfer wealth to corporations.

“There’s no outbreak,” she said. “The media is the outbreak, the fear is the outbreak.”

These beliefs are driving her decision to ignore the mandate.

“If you choose to get vaccinated, that’s your choice [but] we should all have a choice,” she said, adding that while she is adamantly against the COVID-19 vaccine, the movement against the city’s vaccine mandate is actually about freedom of choice, and “just not discriminating altogether.”

She's not alone. In the past few weeks, anti-discrimination signs have been cropping up in the windows of citywide businesses that are defying the vaccine mandate. “We do not discriminate against any customer based on sex, gender, race, creed, age, vaccinated or unvaccinated,” they read.

The same graphic is showing up on small business’ Instagram pages, too, often alongside the hashtags #freedom and #fightforyourrights.

The account @no_vax_required, for instance, was created in August just to showcase small businesses that don’t require proof of vaccination — including some in Queens.

Management at La Casita Mexicana, a restaurant in Ridgewood that’s among the first businesses featured on the account, declined to comment on its stance against the vaccine mandate, short of writing in an email that the decision to “not discriminate against unvaccinated people” is “very obvious” — adding the American flag emoji before the email’s signature line.

And, while defying the city’s vaccine mandate is a matter of principle for most, the consequences are concrete in practice – namely fines, which escalate from $1,000 for businesses caught violating the mandate after an initial transgression, to $2,000 for a third violation and $5,000 for any slip-ups beyond that.

The business owner in northeast Queens, however, is not deterred by the prospect of fines.

“Fines are an inconvenience of life,” she said, adding that just as she doesn’t live in fear of the virus, she isn’t afraid of fines. “I don’t feel that being bullied is going to change who I am or what I’m going to do,”

And, from a business perspective, the risk of possibly losing money to fines doesn’t outweigh the upshot of gaining customers who aren’t vaccinated, she said.

“On one end you’re going to risk losing [unvaccinated] customers and money and on the other end you’re going to be fined and lose money, so it really is a matter of principle and what you believe in,” she said.

“In the beginning I decided not to take people who wore masks, but then I decided whatever makes people more comfortable,” she said. “I’m no one to tell you what to do.”