Big wings party on hold in Long Beach

This Sunday night, Darren Gallo will be doing what he does on most Super Bowl Sundays: He’ll be watching the game. But there will be a difference this year. The group at his Long Beach house will be cut by about half, to seven people.

Gallo, his wife, their three kids, his father and a friend of his father’s will gather to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers host the Kansas City Chiefs.

“The thing I’m going to miss most,” Gallo said, “is the Polar Bear Club swim.”

The tradition in Long Beach every year is to take the plunge into the Atlantic and then watch the Super Bowl. City officials said they had to cancel the event this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Instead, officials said, they are asking participants to “splash at home.”

The event attracts some 10,000 people each year, with hopes of raising $500,000 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The Polar Bears are taking donations and pledges through Sunday, and asking people to make videos of themselves at home to post online. They might, organizers suggested, dump a bucket of ice water over their heads, or just take a cold shower.

“Normally, I’d have a lot of friends over,” Gallo said. “We’d go to watch the Polar Bears and then do the wings and chips and salsa while watching the game.”

This year, he is hardly alone. Across the barrier island, football fans — and those who just want to watch the year’s most eagerly awaited commercials — are planning to spend the evening with only a few close friends or family.

Jimmy Hennessy, of Long Beach, a Hewlett High School history teacher, makes it a habit to get together with a bunch of friends on Super Bowl Sunday. He isn’t a big football fan, butlikes the commercials and the camaraderie. This year, his gathering will comprise five or six people, including his family.

“It’s all going to be different this year,” Hennessy said.

The National Football League plans to limit the crowd at the game. Only 22,000 fans will be allowed at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla., a stadium that normally seats 65,000.

The league is honoring and celebrating health care heroes at the game, inviting 7,500 vaccinated medical workers to take advantage of all-expenses-paid trips.

David Woolfe, of Atlantic Beach, an emergency medical technician in Long Beach, has seen Covid-19 cases up close, and is taking no chances. He said that he and his wife, Elizabeth, will have the game on, “but it will just be the two of us.” In previous years, Woolfe said, the gathering was bigger.

“I will miss the way the day was celebrated,” he said.

Super Bowl Sunday is a big day for Long Beach restaurants. Brixx and Barley, on West Park Avenue, is expecting a busy day, said general manager Henry Velasquez.

“We always do pretty well on that day,” Velasquez said. “People love their wings.

Shlomo Feierman, a banker with a young family, said he, too, is taking no chances. The days of having 20 people over for the Super Bowl are done, for the time being, anyway, Feierman said, and this year that number will be less than half.

“There are fewer people coming,” Feierman said. “I’m concerned about Covid.”

The matchup between Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady and the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes will draw a huge television audience, said Jack Zanerhaft, chief rabbi of Temple Emanu-El of Long Beach. Zanerhaft said he would surely be watching, but he was worried about the crowd at the stadium, even though it will be reduced. Fans, he noted, will be buying food at kiosks and using restrooms in close quarters.

“It’s a risk,” Zanerhaft said. He noted that authorities in New York state have ruled against religious activities with far smaller crowds.

“I will be watching alone,” Zanerhaft said.

Did he have a prediction? “I think Brady will be hard to beat,” he said.