re: After COVID is over, what things that were normal before will not come back?

Fine dining replaced by fast casual and eating at home, as most places will lose their fine dining establishments without tourism revenue. They were already struggling before but got mostly shut down for a year. They may come back somewhat in some places, but fine dining in small and medium markets that don’t have tourism may not be able to come back.

24 hour bars were only common in a few places before covid, and covid shut them the f$&k down and normalized having reduced hours. I don’t see government nanny states allowing them to go back to 24 hours in New Orleans for sure.

Nearly all venues were bankrupted by covid, even legiondary venues like Tipitina’s and the House of Blues. Live Nation, the largest owner of venues and the largest tour promotion company in the world, was already bankrupt before covid. The entire music industry was absolutely wrecked by a year, essentially, without live music. While the biggest players in the industry can make a living off of streaming revenue, the main lifeblood of the industry is live performances. With so many venues closed and promotion companies belly-up, it will take a very long time to recover. The entire infrastructure for the live performance industry has essentially been destroyed and will need to be rebuilt. They will have to create an entirely new network of venues, touring companies, and promoters. That’s no small feat. A lot of festivals went under as well, and it will take time to attract large enough crowds to pay the headliners that can draw large crowds. I think live music will eventually recover, but it will take up to a decade and the venues won’t be the same. It will never again be what it was.

Movie theaters have been replaced with home streaming, much to my chagrin. I like the theater experience for new movies, but Hollywood seems content to do the end-around.

The mid-sized chains are being bankrupted by and replaced with Wal-Mart, Amazon, Lowes, Home Depot, Costco and a few other of the biggest boxes that had a substantial online presence. Smaller chains like Stein Mart are gonzo. They’re either getting run out of town or bought up.

Dressing rooms are more spaces employees have to clean and monitor. They’re also a major source of shoplifting. Covid shut them down, so stores got spoiled by not having to pay someone to monitor changing rooms. I could see, post covid, only high end stores having changing rooms and all other stores switching to a returns based system where you buy it, try it on at home, and return what doesn’t fit.

We saw freedom of movement severely curtailed post 9/11. That became our new normal. We will see a similar new normal in transportation due to the government’s response to Covid. That’s just the reality of bureaucratic security theater.