The Walk In Stylist and Shop Corona Relief
Donation protected
Hello, my fellow social distancers.
This is such a hard time for everyone, and I hope you are healthy and safe wherever you are reading this. I know y'all are being inundated with fundraising requests, but I'm going to join the chorus to ask for your support for the Walk-In and the amazing people who work out of the shop.
The Walk-In and the Record Shop are closed for the foreseeable future as are so many of our beloved businesses.
I built the Walk-In to be a place where I, and my friends, could work without having our labor exploited. As a place where there are no bosses, the shop has afforded us a lot of freedom and happiness and beauty and community. In short: the Walk-In is a pretty magical place.
But, there is a downside: each of us only makes money when we are physically in the shop, working behind the chair. And stylists and barbers who are classed as self-employed contractors are not eligible for unemployment benefits. In short: no work means no money, and there's no clear pathway to access the limited and insufficient relief programs that do exist.
We are incredibly fortunate to have landlords who are kind, generous, and loving. They are willing to work with us as much as possible, but they are not independently wealthy and cannot possibly float us forever. And there are other bills that still need to be paid.
This all leads me to this place (most everyone who knows me has heard me rant about how I do not like online fundraisers because I think we should have a robust social safety net to care for people) and to ask for your help to offset your favorite Walk-In hair cutters' loss of income and to pay the bare minimum needed to keep us from defaulting on shop bills.
Four years ago, when we were building out the shop and wearing masks to protect against all the scary things falling from the drop ceiling, we never could have imagined that our shop, our community, our city, our world would be thrust into crisis by a global pandemic.
With love from a minimum distance of six feet and all the handwashing,
Chelsea
This is such a hard time for everyone, and I hope you are healthy and safe wherever you are reading this. I know y'all are being inundated with fundraising requests, but I'm going to join the chorus to ask for your support for the Walk-In and the amazing people who work out of the shop.
The Walk-In and the Record Shop are closed for the foreseeable future as are so many of our beloved businesses.
I built the Walk-In to be a place where I, and my friends, could work without having our labor exploited. As a place where there are no bosses, the shop has afforded us a lot of freedom and happiness and beauty and community. In short: the Walk-In is a pretty magical place.
But, there is a downside: each of us only makes money when we are physically in the shop, working behind the chair. And stylists and barbers who are classed as self-employed contractors are not eligible for unemployment benefits. In short: no work means no money, and there's no clear pathway to access the limited and insufficient relief programs that do exist.
We are incredibly fortunate to have landlords who are kind, generous, and loving. They are willing to work with us as much as possible, but they are not independently wealthy and cannot possibly float us forever. And there are other bills that still need to be paid.
This all leads me to this place (most everyone who knows me has heard me rant about how I do not like online fundraisers because I think we should have a robust social safety net to care for people) and to ask for your help to offset your favorite Walk-In hair cutters' loss of income and to pay the bare minimum needed to keep us from defaulting on shop bills.
Four years ago, when we were building out the shop and wearing masks to protect against all the scary things falling from the drop ceiling, we never could have imagined that our shop, our community, our city, our world would be thrust into crisis by a global pandemic.
With love from a minimum distance of six feet and all the handwashing,
Chelsea
Organizer
Chelsea Ebin
Organizer
Brooklyn, NY