New York Extends Bar/Restaurant Curfew To 11 p.m.

Governor Cuomo announced today New York bars and restaurants can stay open later starting this weekend.

This Sunday, if you are planning a right out for Valentine's Day, you will be able to extend that date by an hour. According to a WKBW story, Governor Cuomo announced today starting this Sunday bars and restaurants can stay open until 11 p.m. The current curfew is 10 p.m.

The WKBW report says the state made this adjustment based on infection and hospitalization rates continuing to go down, and Governor Cuomo said the state will keep monitoring them for any more adjustments to the curfew.

While it is great that more romantically themed bars and restaurants will be able to stay open one hour later for Valentine's Day, this curfew extension is a week too late for all of our great Capital Region sports bars that could have benefitted from an extra hour of business last Sunday for the big game. While these decisions are based on the data, is the data that far ahead of where it was last weekend? I can imagine that has been a difficult thing for bar and restaurant owners to understand as these decisions are made.

Whether or not we understand the methodology behind these decisions, the curfew extension coupled with the announcement earlier this week that arenas over 10,000 people could start having some fans at events are both great signs that we are slowly moving towards a more normal existence. It would be nice if things could move along quicker, but we are getting there.