Ready for a bop? On “Drain,” a very thorough liquid metaphor (listen for what sounds like a xylophone made of half-filled glass bottles) also extends to ~feelings~. On the song’s single verse, the Shy Girls lament an inability to let things go, which, as they explain, is a drain on the psyche. Counterintuitively, the jolly sound of those bottles and some funky bass ought to fill you up. Take a listen.

It’s already happening: mondo restaurant chains are gobbling up the indies. We’ve already seen a handful of our favorite local places close for good, and for each little spot that goes under, there’s a national chain ready to swoop in: Domino’s, Chipotle and the like are already inking expansion plans that take advantage of newly-empty, discounted real estate. The Outback CEO told Reuters, “I don’t mean to wish ill on anybody, but there’s going to be real estate opportunities,” which means more drive-thru McDonald’s and Starbucks are likely in our future. Sous vide egg bites for everyone.

Or maybe it is time for the restaurant industry to die. That’s what we hear from Tunde Wey, the New Orleans chef who creates dining experiences as justice-oriented social experiments (he’s the one who ran a pop-up chicken restaurant in Nashville that charged white diners $100 per piece while giving meals to black guests for free). In the first video of a series he’s publishing on Instagram, he explains that restaurants are a flawed business model: they depend on the exploitation of (largely immigrant and POC) wage laborers, and only profit a very few already-rich businesspeople (see this interview with Helen Rosner where he explains the Momofuku corporate chain). Maybe, he says, it’s time to burn the whole thing down and build something more functional in its wake. (Spoiler alert: the “something more functional” starts with a strong and comprehensive social safety net provided by the government, not business owners. Tall order, but what else are we ordering right now.)

A similar call for reform is echoing across industries: as evidenced by mass layoffs in media and museums, similar wealth-gap problems are being exposed by pandemic-time business troubles. Given that this kind of inequality sucks and has always sucked, workers are suggesting we forget the old way and start fresh.

It’s possible to agree with the reformers and still want to help out your neighborhood haunts. That’s the purpose of Merch Aid, a pandemic-time collaboration series where hot designers make limited-edition merch to help beloved local establishments to make a little extra cash. Past features include La Morada in the Bronx, Economy Candy, and Casa Magazines, and they’re debuting new collabs all the time (including businesses outside New York). Click here and enjoy a good scroll.