FRIDAY FIVE
By Matt Charnock, Editor-in-Chief of The Bold Italic
I was in the Target off Mission Street when it was announced that the City and County of San Francisco, as well as six other Bay Area counties, would enact a history-making shelter-in-place (SIP) ordinance on March 17th, 2020. Mind you, I knew this was happening prior to the edict’s release; journalism affords glimpses into certain crystal balls. It’s why I was wheeling around a red shopping cart with hast on a Monday afternoon, filling it with non-perishables and tissue products, the moment word got out about SF’s looming SIP. When those expressions came crashing down. With the weight of an anvil. Falling on a Fabergé egg — an embellished ovum that held my individual reality, which would permanently change overnight, shattering into a million sharp pieces.
I think of that moment often: panic-shopping before I knew what panic-shopping even was, let alone the terror and trauma that was to come over the next two years. I, too, have recently let my mind wander to a past pandemic self. But not, say, out of some sort of despondent rumination; these spinnings were done more so as an exercise of curiosity, contemplating what my then-self would make of words, sentiments, phrases, actualities that now envelop our current world.
Through those various spiralings — supported by synaptic bungee cords that snapped back when I went *too deep* — there are five things that constantly stick out to me.
‘Patio, parklet, or table inside?’
San Francisco has always had a comparatively robust al fresco dining scene; our city’s weather and geography would necessitate no less. But the decline into a global health crisis spurred by a new respiratory virus caused SF to double-down — well… like, quintuplet-down, honestly — on its outdoor eating culture.
Over 1,200 parklets have since been erected by local bars and eateries under the City’s Shared Spaces Program. And for us, we’ll always side with “parklet,” barring wet weather.
It’s the car-free streets for me
The pandemic ushered in a renaissance of urban hiking and explorations into SF’s green spaces. (Just to re-up this v fun fact: San Francisco has the densest number of public greenspaces of any city in the country; all of its residents are no more than a ten-minute walk from a City-maintained park or open space.) And when the notion of commuting to work became an anathema, San Francisco’s streets closed to cars and opened to pedestrians.
Throughout the city, nearly thirty car-free corridors have been implemented as part of SFMTA”s Slow Streets Program, each one complete with signage and barricades meant to minimize through vehicle traffic and prioritize walking and biking. Even if some have reopened, be it completely or under some odd hybrid model that pleases no one, in the end, it’s difficult to imagine these pedestrian-friendly streets being pushed into reality so quickly if it wasn’t for the pandemic.
WFH… on your own terms
The mythologies that wrap’s startup offices were so steeped in San Francisco’s folklore. It’s hard now for my prefrontal cortex to even envelope ideas of returning to a physical office. Five days a week. For (at least) eight hours a day. Commuting to and from said offices. I, without hyperbole, had a visceral, full-body reaction just typing those previous words.
Downtown San Francisco — the concrete bastion for the city’s shiny corporate tech offices, most trailed by multi-million-dollar leases — is coming back, absolutely. But it will never return to its bustling mid-afternoon self… when people were crammed into physical spaces against their own will. WFH is just better, so long as there are boundaries, habits, and structures built around those routines.
Glued to news about vaccination rates and mask mandates
Nearly 85% of all eligible San Franciscans are now fully vaccinated against Covid-19, which is an astounding figure. SF was also one of the few cities in the country to uphold ardent mask-wearing mandates throughout the pandemic, regardless of its severity as surges waxed between extremes. It wasn’t until just this past Friday that certain businesses, like gyms and bars, didn’t have to require patrons to show proof of vaccination if they wanted to enter inside. Similarly, the City dropped its requirement for fully vaccinated people to wear masks in most indoor settings on February 16th.
Could you low-key imagine seeing such news two years ago, nevermind comprehending it (and having hot takes on those updates)? I high-key can’t.
Six million deaths
6,007,000 lives have been collectively lost to Covid-19 across the world; 966,000 of those fatalities were recorded in the United States; 88,000 Californians have lost battles to this not-so-novel disease; 831 San Franciscans were stolen by SARS-CoV-2 — a pathogen not found in any lexicon before the fall of 2020.