Photo by furcafe

With just about everything closed today for Hurricane Sandy’s arrival, you wouldn’t be alone in feeling a little cooped up at home. And while some bars and restaurants have decided to open their doors and advertise hurricane-related specials to save you from cabin fever, others say they just don’t want to run the risk. Either way, it’s a decision that doesn’t often come easy.

Karl Johnson, co-owner of Pound coffee shop and lounge on Capitol Hill, is among the latter, telling us in an email that he didn’t think staying open during an unprecedented hurricane would be safe for his employees.

“We were going to stay open for morning and lunch and then close at 4, but after Metro closed, I knew half my employees couldn’t get to work. There were still a few that lived within about a mile or so away and they said they were willing to walk/bike in, but there was no way I could make them do that in this weather. Dangerous, stupid and just not worth it,” he said. “Unless the owners can run a restaurant themselves, I see no reason to be open.”

Of course, the decision isn’t made lightly: employees might get the day off, but that also means a day’s worth of lost wages. “Definitely lost wages and even bigger lost revenue for the business, but it will be hard to find restaurant employees who are upset that their boss isn’t making them come in during an unprecedented hurricane to serve a few people coffee or beer,” said Johnson. (One Pound employee tweeted her gratitude that she didn’t have to work.)

For those that have decided to stay open, they say that staff has wanted to come in or that employees live close enough to not make the trip too big a risk. Capitol Lounge tweeted this morning that staff wanted to work, and that the bar was “playing it hour by hour.”

Park View’s D.C. Reynolds told us that the owners and chef live within walking distance, so they still plan on opening at 11 a.m. and offering happy hour specials and a place for residents who have lost power to charge up their cell phones or download movies on the bar’s free WiFi. Bloomingdale’s Boundary Stone—near the epicenter of some of the neighborhood’s worst flooding—said much the same, tweeting: “Thankfully all of our team live within walking distance. We will certainly batten down the hatches and keep every1 safe.”

Bill Thomas, who owns both Bourbon and Jack Rose Dining Saloon, said that even though most of the managers and staff of Bourbon’s Adams Morgan location live nearby, he chose to close the bar. “With weather this bad, why open?”, he said. For Jack Rose, he told us, the staff is bigger and comes from further away, so the decision to shutter was easier.

But like D.C. Reynolds, Thomas opted to keep Bourbon’s Glover Park location open because the bar has become a de facto gathering location for residents who lose power. “There’s not a need to stay open [in Adams Morgan], whereas in Glover Park I feel like we have to stay open for the community,” he said. “We would get a backlash if we closed.”

Some locales are splitting the difference: Columbia Heights’ Sticky Fingers will only remain open until 2 p.m., as will the Peregrine locations in Capitol Hill and on 14th Street. H Street’s H &pizza is also going hour-by-hour.

Whether a place is open or not, though, everyone should probably remember that this isn’t snowmageddon—you can’t walk through the fluffy white stuff to get to your favorite bar. Winds are expected to pick up as the afternoon goes on, and D.C. officials are strongly encouraging people to stay inside.

UPDATE, 1:30 p.m.: The City Paper echoes a commenter below by reporting that some bars will either be putting up employees or offering them rides home.