San Francisco, California
I’ve written before about the difficulty of photographing calla lilies whose nearly pure white flower challenges the lens to find a focal point and the photographer to capture the nuanced color at the flower’s core. This appears to be the last calla of the season, the last to open. While we still may see a few out-of-season stragglers from time to time, the lilies’ root clusters in our garden show every indication that they intend to go back underground. So now is my last chance to get it right this year. Paul Landskroener, this one’s for you.
Reopening stories dominate the headlines this morning. All seem to agree that social distancing has been a successful strategy so far, but disagree on what can and should happen next. Should we reopen the economy with full guns blasting? Or should we stay the isolation course until the disease is finally, truly gone (and risk making the economy even worse)? Without a coherent and cohesive game plan, states - and sometimes individual counties and cities - are making up the rules alone and as they go along. And for those of us most susceptible to the disease, this anarchy feels wrong.
As businesses rush to be the first - not last - to reopen, it is not just us elders in the family whose vulnerability will increase, it is those already working on the front lines — the hospital workers bracing for a surge, and those reinventing themselves to save their small businesses. My stepson Jack, chef at a local southern comfort food restaurant, reports that his kitchen was the busiest ever this Mother’s Day — folks tired of their own cooking rolled up non-stop for takeout fried chicken, shrimp and grits (the quart-size jars of Margarita didn’t hurt). That was also the day Jack got the test results back for all of the staff he'd hauled down to the clinic last week. The news was good - they all tested negative(yay!!). So far. In general, cash flow has not been bad, Jack says, all things considered. And the line staff is working - he's scheduled shifts so everybody gets paid.
But what happens if the brakes come off and all these small operations feel compelled to fully reopen in order to compete? Jack's restaurant’s dark, closed-in space is a perfect place for spreading germs. No matter how much they try to reconfigure, there will not be enough tables six feet apart to cover the costs of reopening and the expenses of sit-down service. And who will stay away? People like us who have been ordering food for pick-up, but wouldn’t dare to venture inside. We’ll quit coming, and the restaurant’s current stop-gap revenues may actually go down. And what about the staff? The danger for them gets worse. Hours in a tiny kitchen, waiting on customers that talk, and laugh, and eat, and cough, is bound to take its toll.
Multiply that by the number of restaurants in this foodie city, and every other little business that has always hustled to make ends meet. I know we all want to get back to normal, but how do we think this is going to work? I'm afraid that in a rush to reopen, we may kill the survivors in more ways than one.
I am grateful to our mayor, London Breed, who saw the danger coming and had the courage to close us down before we knew we had to. San Francisco was one of the first places in the nation to initiate shelter-in-place. I encourage her to show the same measured leadership - in spite of, or perhaps because of the danger to local businesses like Jack’s - in helping us stay the course.