The weekend Hayes Street closures to auto traffic have been uncrowded delights over the last couple of months...
...and have provided a lifeline to a few local restaurants and their staffs.
Sunday afternoon was the last day of this neighborhood experiment because the State of California decreed that we need to go back into shutdown mode again, for at least three weeks, while the pandemic advances into its most virulent, devastating phase this winter.
At the beginning of this pandemic, I finally read about the global 1918-1919 flu where the fatality rate was about 2.5%, which was about what early estimates were predicting for COVID-19. For some reason, I had always thought the early "Spanish Flu" epidemic featured a fatality rate of at least 20%, so when I read the 2.5% number, my first thought was, "Oh, fuck, we're in for it."
The behaviors between then and now are similar, starting with anti-mask contrarians demanding their personal and economic freedom, but the detail that struck me back in March was that the initial 1918 Spring pandemic was scary and deadly, but it was the fall and winter second phase when death truly stalked the globe.
The current shutdown is controversial but helpful, if only to remind people that the spread of this disease is exponential and it's serious.
I spent the afternoon on a one-person concrete stool in Patricia's Green happily watching fashionable characters walk by, and even got to witness an influencer carrying a skateboard being interviewed about his vision while being filmed by a third party.
The couple above were my favorites, the sweetest pandemic couple bubble of the day as they shared ice cream nearby.
Walking home by Anina's outdoor patio, I had a sudden realization that bars and churches seemed to be taking the pandemic restrictions the hardest, and they are bizarrely similar: seriously dangerous for pandemic transmission while being all about community, ritual, and friends. My advice to both groups: create some new habits for the next six months.
1 comment:
Nice essay. The Mission doesn't feel as shutdown as we might have hoped. People got to work and that follows.
To my considerable surprise, our little church has adapted fairly well to the pandemic, meeting on zoom in both worship and social modes and even attracting some faraway additions. Hope we can keep it up. There's a lot of shared purpose there ...
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