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Salons, Movie Theaters Prepare for June 10 Opening

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In a Friday morning news conference, Gov. Whitmer announced Northern Michigan and the Upper Penninsula were moving to phase 5 of the governor’s .

That includes the reopening of hair, nail and tanning salons, and movie theaters.

“Personal care services, including hair and nail salons, tattoo parlors and tanning salons, as well as exercise facilities may open,” she said.

While businesses are eager, some are more ready than others to open next week.

The nonprofit Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay has spent the past three months working on maintenance and renovations, according to Rick Andrews.

“We tried to take advantage of the downtime the best we could… the place is kind of a mess right now, because we’re refreshing the bathrooms and we’ve been doing a lot of things like that and maintenance items in the theater.”

Andrews says they’re eager to open their doors, but were also caught off guard by the Governor’s announcement.

“Theaters were always named as something that was down the road. It felt like it was going to be further away, so to be honest, I was a little but surprised,” he says.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that there are no new movies to show.

“Hollywood has postponed all their big summer blockbusters, which is typically what we put in this theater in June, July, August, September. And that’s how we get a lot of big crowds. We don’t even have the content from Hollywood right now,” Andrews says.

The Bay Theatre is looking at bringing in some older classic films and contemplating other community uses for the theater.

But the theatre is also trying to navigate the rules of social distancing for seating and the concession stand.

“How do we handle concessions? How do handle popcorn? Do we require everybody to have a mask? Do the staff and volunteers all need masks? Lots of things we have to make sure are right before we can open the doors,” Andrews says.

So Andrews says while they’re excited about the announcement, “right now, it’s impossible to say when we’re going to be open. But I’m very confident it’s NOT going to be June 10. We’re just not going to be ready. We’d love to fill this place up, but we’ve got to do it safely and we’ve got to have good content to do it.”

Hair salons and barber shops are getting ready too.

While not salons will be ready next Wednesday, Jen Planck with Lux Lab Salon Suite in Traverse City says they will be.

“There’s also this excitement like the first day of school,” she says. “Like you’re going to get ready for school, and what are you going to wear? And how are you going to do that? And although it’s going to be a cheetah mask and a face shield, it’s still something new to wear to work.”

Planck says they miss the business–and the social interaction.

“We miss our clients a lot. We have a very unique relationship, hairdressers do, with their clientele and I think that’s probably the part we’ve missed the most,” Planck says.

She says in mid-March she vowed to suffer along with her clients. She let her Mohawk grow out and the shaved sides of her head are now filled in as she shows off her pigtails.

“I said I’m not going to cut or color my hair either, I’ll just stand next to you and suffer together,” Planck  says. “Well, 90 days later, I may have rethought that because now I look like this and I’m wearing a hat all the time. I wanted to grow through it with them. I wanted them to know I feel your pain.”

Planck’s business partner is Lacey Griffiths.

“Jen and I are probably going to work 14 days in a row, 12 to whatever-hour days so we can see everybody.” Griffiths says.

She got exhausted by constantly calling clients to reschedule.

“After the fourth time I rescheduled them, I was like, maybe we shouldn’t do this until we know.”

And like all salons, now they have a three-month backlog of appointments to catch up on.

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