Movie theaters allowed to reopen Friday in Miami-Dade. There are popcorn rules.

Movie theaters may reopen Friday across Miami-Dade, two months after they were closed by emergency order as the county faced rapid COVID-19 spread and a surge in coronavirus admissions in hospitals.

Mayor Carlos Gimenez said he planned to sign an order Wednesday allowing theaters to resume operations under rules requiring half-empty screenings and banning customers from eating popcorn at their seats. Along with a 50% capacity cap for theaters, food and drink will only be allowed in designated areas.

That’s a stricter rule than what’s been in place since theaters reopened in June in Broward County, where customers can take off their masks to eat and drink at their seats while watching a movie.

Gimenez said allowing people to take drinks and food to their seats would create too wide of a snacking loophole for the requirement to keep wearing facial coverings during the movie. “You’d be sitting there the whole time without a mask,” he said.

Gimenez said last week he was ready to allow movie reopenings as he moved closer to lifting the remaining closure orders on an economy that’s been under emergency restrictions since March.

At a press conference Wednesday outside of County Hall in downtown Miami, Gimenez said Friday’s order would also lift closure rules for arcades, bowling alleys, banquet halls, playhouses and other indoor entertainment venues that he had closed during the summer surge in coronavirus cases.

In two weeks, Gimenez said he also expects to lift closure orders on bars — reversing a previous stance that he wouldn’t allow drinking establishments to reopen until COVID had been wiped out by a vaccine.

After protests from bar owners, Gimenez softened his stance and said he was willing to let bars resume operations under rules restaurants must follow. That includes reducing capacity to 50%, limiting drink service to tables, and prohibiting the use of actual bars — that is, counter tops — for seating.

The term-limited mayor, a Republican candidate for Congress in Florida’s 26th Congressional District, said he’ll meet with medical advisers next week to finalize details but that he expected bars could reopen in the next two weeks.

He said the new bar rules would apply to strip clubs as well, provided they limited drink service to socially distanced customers at tables watching performances from a distance. The county had briefly allowed adult clubs to open earlier in the summer, then banned lap dances, and then closed them completely in early July.

“We’re working hard to see what we can do safely as quickly as possible,” Gimenez said. He added live music and performances would be allowed, but bars couldn’t let patrons dance or let music be any louder than background noise.

“One thing we don’t want is people yelling and screaming because they can’t hear each other,” he said.

The Gimenez rule requiring table service and barring drinks at bars themselves would be stricter than what’s in place statewide.

On Monday, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis lifted closure orders on bars, provided they limit capacity to 50%. He allowed Broward and Miami-Dade to continue their closure orders, which have been in place since March.

Monday’s lifting of statewide closure orders was the second time his administration let bars reopen since the coronavirus crisis began. Closure orders were lifted in early June, only to have the state outlaw alcohol sales at bars in late June as COVID cases surged.

Halsey Beshears, secretary of Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation, told the News Service of Florida he expects the months-long closures to spur more bars to be vigilant in enforcing COVID rules.

“They realize they have to get it right this time,” he said. “They realize they can’t afford another shutdown.”

This story was originally published September 16, 2020 at 7:57 PM.