In this 2017 photo, patrons dine outside in downtown Campbell. The city’s new street dining initiative will allow East Campbell Avenue restaurants that have offered patio dining for years to spread out if they wish and others to offer alfresco dining for the first time. (George Sakkestad/Bay Area News Group archives)
The city of Campbell has joined the street-dining crowd.
From now through Aug. 31, the city’s restaurant-rich downtown stretch will be closed to vehicular traffic to allow for alfresco dining and retail sales.
East Campbell Avenue from Third Street to Ainsley Park near Railway Avenue will be reserved for restaurants, small businesses and pedestrians. The cross streets of First, Second and Third streets and Central Avenue will remain open to traffic.
“Face coverings are required at all times except when eating or drinking at a restaurant,” city officials announced, and restaurants must maintain the 6 feet of distance between tables that is required during this COVID-19 era.
This “Good Clean Fun — Campbell Outdoors” initiative is a joint project of the city, the Campbell Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Campbell Business Association. Businesses that want to expand to the street must apply for a permit with the city’s Public Works Department.
Campbell is the latest Bay Area city to embrace the alfresco dining trend, joining San Jose, Palo Alto, Redwood City and others.
The North Carolina Main Street and Rural Planning Center has selected Asheboro, Dunn and Henderson as the latest “North Carolina Main Street Communities,” a designation that municipalities earn after meeting rigorous national downtown development criteria. The designation becomes effective July 31, 2020.
“We congratulate Asheboro, Dunn and Henderson on joining the ranks of our state’s Main Street Communities,” said North Carolina Commerce Secretary Anthony M. Copeland. “This designation is a testament to the hard work of community leaders in Asheboro, Dunn and Henderson. They have fully committed to improving the economic well-being of their towns through the North Carolina Main Street program, and their work serves to inspire other communities considering downtown revitalization.”
Asheboro, Dunn, and Henderson graduated from the Main Street and Rural Planning Center’s Downtown Associate Community program, which supports sustainable economic revitalization through strategic planning and organizational development.
“These three communities will now have access to one of the largest resource networks for downtown revitalization in the United States,” said Liz Parham, director of the North Carolina Main Street & Rural Planning Center. “Their status as Main Street Communities will bring them new opportunities for growth and development.”
Since 1980, North Carolina Main Street program model has leveraged more than $3.25 billion in public and private investment, generated 27,094 net new jobs and 6,503 net new businesses, and rehabilitated more than 6,672 buildings. There are 67 designated Main Street communities in North Carolina.
The N.C. Main Street & Rural Planning Center at the Department of Commerce works with communities on the development of economic development strategies that will transform downtowns through implementation plans based on the Four-Point Approach®, a methodology for downtown revitalization developed by the National Main Street Center ®, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. A program of the National Main Street Center®, Main Street America® has helped revitalize older and historic commercial districts for more than 40 years. Its national network now extends to over 1,600 neighborhoods and communities.
The North Carolina Main Street and Rural Planning Center works in regions, counties, cities, towns, downtown districts and in designated North Carolina Main Street communities to inspire placemaking through asset-based economic development strategies that achieve measurable results such as investment, business growth and jobs. For more information about the N.C. Main Street & Rural Planning Center programming, visit the N.C. Main Street webpage.
ROGERS PARK — After two months of staging daily pop-up protests at prominent North Side intersections, the final Honk for Justice rally will take place Saturday in Rogers Park.
Neighbors will gather 4-6 p.m. Saturday at the corner of Greenleaf Avenue and Sheridan Road. The event is open to the public and is considered a family-friendly protest opportunity.
Honk for Justice is the creation of Jocelyn Prince, a Rogers Park resident a veteran political organizer. Prince started the protests after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, saying she wanted to provide visibility to the cause of ending police abuses and racist practices, particularly in affluent and gentrifying North Side communities.
“We want to bring this issue to white neighborhoods,” Prince previously told Block Club. “This sort of thing, anyone can do. We’re encouraging everyone to provide some visibility to the movement.”
The first Honk for Justice took place June 2 in West Town, followed by large gatherings on Uptown and Rogers Park street corners. Prince’s street corner protests were also regularly held in Logan Square, Lincoln Park, Lincoln Square and West Ridge.
“Making noise for justice is an everyday commitment and we hope that we have inspired others to consider the daily impact they can have on the ongoing fight against police brutality,” Prince said in a statement.
Those coming out to the Rogers Park protest are asked to bring signs, noisemakers and wear masks. The group will seek to encourage drivers heading through the intersection to “honk for justice.”
A Castro District street could completely close to allow outdoor dining, but some merchants are against the plan
The Castro District is expected to join the Mission and Chinatown’s efforts to enable outdoor dining, by closing a stretch of street in the area. While some restaurants are excited about the plan, would could launch as soon as next Friday, some merchants say it could further stifle their business.
According to the Bay Area Reporter, the Castro Merchants business association has applied to close 18th Street between Hartford and Castro streets and between Castro and Collingwood streets on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 1-10 p.m. The SFMTA is expected to approve the closure this coming Monday, the BAR says, and the first shutdown could happen on Friday, August 7.
Though some area restaurants say they are thrilled, merchants like Patrick Batt, who owns gay porn and collectables shop Auto Erotica, worry that the loss of parking might drive business away. It’s an issue that’s also come up in Palo Alto, where a stretch of University Avenue has been closed for the summer. Rob Fischer, who owns three businesses near University’s trafficless stretch (an ice cream shop, a restaurant, and a wine bar), says that he’s circulating a petition to curtail that city’s street closure, the Palo Alto Daily Post reports. He expects to present the petition, which calls on the city to end the experiment in August, to the Palo Alto town council next week.
And in other news...
The windows of North Beach Italian spot Trattoria Pinocchio are plastered with a slew of bigoted, racist, and otherwise offensive signs written in Italian and English. The owner of the restaurant has refused comment, but as the signs are taped on from the interior side of the space, it seems likely that the nose is growing from inside the house. [KRON 4]
Nearly two years after the owners of Lower Haight brewpub Black Sands sold the business to Fort Point Beer Company, and six months after it was shuttered for a massive renovation, the doors at 701 Haight Street have reopened. Now the beer spot is simply called “Fort Point,” the fourth such location in the city. There’s outdoor seating, and a menu of hot dogs to go with the brews. [Hoodline]
Martin Cate, the owner of Civic Center-area rum bar Smuggler’s Cove, says that he scored a $150,000 Payment Protection Program (PPP) loan, but he can’t use any of it — his place doesn’t serve food (nor, it appears, is he open to partnering with a restaurant), so he can’t reopen for the foreseeable future. [SF Gate]
Berkeley’s iconic Chez Panisse has launched a sandwich of the week program: this week it’s a BLT with Fatted Calf bacon, heirloom tomatoes, basil mayonnaise and arugula. Aka a BAT, right? Folks must order on Tuesdays for Friday pickups, so this only works for advance sandwich planning types. [Berkeleyside]
High-profile Divisadero hangout spot Vinyl Coffee & Wine Bar is scooting to 1673 Haight Street, where its owner used to operate craft brew destination Stanza Coffee. [Hoodline]
A racial equity-focused beer movement called Black is Beautiful is helping local breweries sell out of their imperial stout offerings. [SF Chronicle]
Imm Thai Street Food, a six-year old restaurant reliant on the business provided by UC Berkeley students, has been supported by neighbors who’ve rallied to generate orders to the spot. [Daily Californian]
Molly Wizenberg among the greens. Illustration: Margalit Cutler
“Being willing to talk about these things, and not hide our own confusion or mistakes, is tricky,” says the Seattle-based writer andSpilled Milkco-host Molly Wizenberg about co-parenting a young child during the pandemic. On her (now dormant) blogOrangetteand in her books, Wizenberg writes nakedly and intimately about her life; her newest,The Fixed Stars(out August 4, with a virtualbook tour), is a memoir about her divorce from her former husband, coming out, and finding a new way to live with her family. While food was often her lens into everyday life, Wizenberg admits she hasn’t been interested in writing about it lately. But she’s still cooking plenty — and enjoying a first-time garden — though she found herself particularly busy last week. “I really love leftovers,” she says. “I love having a couple dozen recipes that I can really lean on.”
Monday, July 20
Ate my usual breakfast, the one I have 9 mornings out of 10: homemade granola from a recipe I call Granola No. 5, mixed with Straus plain yogurt. I made a cup of black coffee in the Aeropress. While I ate, I read The New York Times Book Review. Lately we’ve been getting the Sunday paper from my ex-husband Brandon’s house when we drop off our daughter June on Sunday mornings. One of his housemates used to subscribe, and though she moved a few months ago and changed her address and everything, he still gets her paper. So he’s been giving it to me, which might be the kindest thing you can do for another person? I’m a digital subscriber, and that’s always been enough, but now, getting the Sunday paper-paper allows me to do a very ordinary, very wonderful thing that, until a few weeks ago, I had never done: sit around on a Sunday and read the entire NYT. Dreams do come true.
After breakfast, I did a bunch of email work for an online writing workshop I’ve been teaching, and then I taught on Zoom from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. This is our third and final week of classes, and today we were exploring the question of whether it is possible to write a “truthful” memoir. I have a brilliant group of students, and they made the discussion a pleasure.
For lunch, I warmed up some leftovers from last night’s dinner, which was a double batch of boxed mac and cheese (Annie’s shells with white cheddar, made with the optional butter, of course) with homemade pesto from the fridge that my partner Ash stirred in at the end of cooking. I warmed up a bowl of that, and with it I ate a handful of cubed raw kohlrabi. Kohlrabi is weird, like the texture of jicama infused with the flavor and stink — the good stink — of cooked cabbage. Our CSA share has given us lots of kohlrabi lately, and it’s growing on me.
After lunch, I went outside and watered the garden. While I watered, I listened to a David Byrne album. There was a single ripe Sungold tomato — the season! — and I ate it right there. My gardening skills are meager and this year is my first time growing edible plants, so it’s required watching a lot of YouTube tutorials about things like raised beds, tomato suckers, and how to harvest basil without killing it. My daughter, who is 7, thinks it’s hilarious how often I reference Gardener Scott, this gardening guru on YouTube. She has no idea how much more I could talk about Gardener Scott. Actually, the best part is that she can never get his name right. She gives me this mischievous smile and says something like, “Mama, have you learned anything new from Gardener Bob this week?” Or, “How’s your friend Gardener Tom?”
Anyway, the thrill of watching vegetables grow in my own yard has turned me into the kind of person who shuffles around the garden, hunched over and squinting, my hands clasped behind my back, appraising everything and grunting. The other night, when I took our dog Alice out before bed, I noticed that our first green bean had appeared, and there I was, squatting down in my bathrobe in the dark, peering between the leaves of the green bean plant, when our neighbor across the street came out with her dog, saw me, and yelled over, “What are you DOING?”
In the afternoon, I had three phone consultations with students. I drank some PG Tips with sugar and milk and ate a nectarine. When I finished, it was almost five, and I felt like my brain was trickling out of my ear. I snacked on an apple and finished off a bag of jalapeño Kettle Chips. While I ate, I read a devastating article about how coronavirus is straining hospitals in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. Every day feels like living in a dystopia; it should be fiction, but it’s not.
We didn’t start making dinner until 7:30 p.m., and it was hot in the house. I poured a glass of Beaujolais that I had stashed in the fridge last night. It was just me and Ash, and we cooked in T-shirts and underwear. Not much fresh food in the fridge — we’re due for our weekly grocery run — so we made fried rice with bacon, kimchi, eggs, scallions, red kale, and frozen peas. I use my friend Jessica Battilana’s recipe for hot dog fried rice, from her top-notch cookbook Repertoire, tweaking the ingredients list to use whatever we’ve got. We played Bananagrams while we ate, and there were Klondike bars for dessert.
Tuesday, July 21
The usual breakfast again. And then I ate the last nectarine. We really needed to get to the grocery store. Had my first student consultation of the day at 10 a.m. and somehow was hungry again by the time it was over, so I went to prowl the fridge. Ash had made Swedish-ish pancakes on Sunday morning, and I’d almost forgotten that there was a plate of four leftover pancakes at the back of the fridge. Jackpot. I warmed up two of them and ate them at my desk with maple syrup. Ash is relatively new to cooking, but this has become one of their signatures. We used to get these thin, plate-size pancakes called 49ers at the Original Pancake House on 15th Avenue NW, and when it closed down — RIP — Ash hunted around online and found this recipe, which tastes similar.
Around 1 p.m., Ash emerged from the basement where they’ve set up a makeshift office. Before lockdown, they saw clients — Ash is a psychotherapist in private practice — at an office, but now it’s telehealth. Their desk is right below the kitchen, so I do a lot of tiptoeing during their work hours. When they’re not with clients, they’ve been building a platform in a tree in our backyard, a playhouse of sorts for June. So they went out back to do that.
I warmed up leftover fried rice for lunch and stirred in some sambal oelek for heat. Perhaps you will notice a pattern here. Without leftovers, I’m pretty lost.
Ash had some hours free in the late afternoon, so they went to the grocery store and did our big shop for the week. Usually the person who goes to the store gets a break from sanitizing, and the person who stayed home does that part. But while I was on calls, Ash sanitized the whole load. My champion.
After lunch I had more calls with students, six in all. Finished at 4:30 p.m., then my mom texted to say she was ordering takeout from Ristorante Picolinos for dinner and wondered if we wanted any. We certainly did. While she was picking up the dinner order, I ran out to mail a few things and buy wine at Delancey. They’ve converted the dining room into a bottle shop, selling wine and some artwork made by staff. I don’t own Delancey anymore — I left in mid-2018 to return to writing and teaching full-time — but we eat from there all the time, and now we buy wine there, too.
When I got back home, I watered the plants outside, mom arrived with dinner, and I opened a bottle of rosé. I harvested a head of near-bolting lettuce and we had it with sliced avocado and vinaigrette — 1 tablespoon strong Dijon mustard, 3 tablespoons red or white wine vinegar, ½ teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt, all whisked up, and then you gradually add anywhere between 6 and 9 tablespoons of olive oil, to taste. I make sure we always have a jar of it on the counter. Mom and I had rigatoni Bolognese for dinner and Ash had spaghetti carbonara. Dessert was Tillamook toasted coconut fudge ice cream, which tasks like a macaroon.
My mom stayed until nearly 10 p.m., by which point Ash and I had moved into our nightly Guinea Pig Time. Back in May, we got two young guinea pigs, a pair of brothers. It was not one of our better decisions. Though we did a lot of research beforehand — and we were familiar with caring for them because June’s classroom at school has a pair — the first weeks were hard. The boys had fungal infections, an abscess, lice — should I go on? Three months in, we’re finally feeling less rattled by how much upkeep they take, both financially and in terms of the sheer amount of feces they produce. Their names are Ron (Weasley) and Alby (Dumbledore). They love to eat the lettuce I’ve been growing out front — a good use for leaves that miss the bar for salad — and they are totally nuts for fennel tops, which I’d otherwise just put in the compost. So that’s nice. Each evening we take them out of their cage, which is this giant thing, roughly a quarter the size of our living room, and we let them run around and climb on us. They’re finally getting more snuggly, more tame, more personable. They make noises like a video game with the volume turned low.
Wednesday, July 22
Usual breakfast.
Spilled Milk taping (in my closet) at 9:30 a.m., then June came over from Brandon’s. She was very excited to show me a pair of bracelets she’d made with loom bands for herself and her best friend. She had a Zoom call at 11 a.m. with a reading support instructor from her school. I made a to-do list that felt never-ending. For lunch, she made herself instant ramen, and I had fried rice leftovers. Felt like I was spinning my wheels all morning, just making lists and not accomplishing much. After lunch, I cleaned up the dishes and fed our sourdough starters. I have one named Sylvia that my friend Matthew made almost a year ago, and then June started her own, named Eloise, about a month ago. Between the guinea pigs, Alice the dog, the tomatoes and green beans, and the sourdough starters, apparently Ash and I like to feel needed.
In the afternoon, June and I stopped at our neighborhood bookstore, which has a great curbside pickup setup, and got a couple of The Baby-Sitters Club books, the graphic versions illustrated by Raina Telgemeier. June had been begging for them. Stopped by June’s best friend’s house to drop off the bracelet and talked a bit over their fence. It was so nice, almost “normal,” albeit with all of us masked. When we pulled up, the kids already had their masks on, waiting for us. A few months ago, it would have made me so fucking sad, seeing kids have to play with masks on. Now it just feels like a relief when we all do what we’re supposed to do to stay safe, when we don’t make a big deal of it.
Back at home, I worked some more, organizing the last details for book events. At 5:30 p.m., June and I watched a cooking demonstration put on by our regional Girl Scouts organization. The theme was recipes that you can easily cook while backpacking, and the instructor Zoomed in from a campsite in the woods, where he was cooking on a tiny MSR stove. Pretty sweet. We made guacamole, queso (with a block of Velveeta! Throw it in your hiking pack!), and chorizo tacos. June made most of it herself, with my guidance — she got to learn how fiddly shallots are to peel and chop; sorry, kid — and we ate it for dinner. She loved the guacamole, but not so much the queso or tacos, so Ash and I ate those. June had last night’s leftover rigatoni Bolognese and a sliced-up Persian cucumber.
While Ash helped June brushed her teeth and flossed — this is our nightly routine; Ash gets June ready for bed, and then we all read aloud in June’s room together — I sautéed some sliced zucchini and tossed it with the last of the homemade pesto. I wanted to make sure we had cooked vegetables in the fridge for future lunches, because I never seem to want to actually cook anything at lunchtime. I need things to be ready.
When June was in bed and the zucchini was Tupperware’d, Ash and I sprawled out on the sofa with the guinea pigs. They rattled and chirped like rusty casters while we attempted to watch the third season of Dark. We’d forgotten so much of the story line in the time between the second and third seasons that we had to look up a family tree for the characters and print it out for frequent consultation. We know how to party.
Thursday, July 23
Ash was already in session with their first client when June and I woke up. June had a bowl of cereal, and I had my usual thing. I also sliced up two nectarines, a little crunchy but with lots of flavor, and she and I shared them. She asked me to read aloud to her while we ate. She’s always asking me to read aloud at breakfast, but I usually refuse, because a person can’t actually read aloud and eat at the same time. So usually I read to her only at bedtime, and occasionally in the afternoon if there’s time, but then it makes me so damn sleepy. I had all these visions, pre-parenthood, of how much I would love reading to my kid, but it turns out, reading to her so thoroughly relaxes me that my eyes start to cross and I can hardly stay upright. But reading aloud in the morning, between slugs of coffee, is a much more energetic experience. I wish I had two mouths so I could do it more often. I liked doing it today.
After breakfast, June walked over to my mom’s house, one block away, and I sat down at the computer at 10 a.m. to teach the last session of my current workshop. This group of students was so good — great writers, and really curious minds. I’ll miss them.
After the workshop meeting was over, I fell down a rabbit hole of reading news about what Department of Homeland Security troops are doing to nonviolent protesters in Portland. Then I read that DHS troops have been sent here, to Seattle, as well. It seems to me that this is actually a civil war we’re in, right? At what point do we start calling it that? Eventually I dragged myself out of the rabbit hole and walked to my mom’s to retrieve June.
For lunch, she had the last of Ash’s spaghetti Bolognese from a couple of nights before, and I had the last of the fried rice. We shared a bowl of the zucchini with pesto, which I’d warmed a little, just to take the edge off. Then she spent the afternoon at an outdoor playdate with a friend, and I sat in front of the computer, following up on invoices and emailing. Snacks: Theo 45 percent milk chocolate, jalapeño Kettle Chips, and a sliced apple.
Dinner: risotto in the Instant Pot, just a plain risotto with peas. I use this recipe, which I learned about from Luisa Weiss, minus the fontina and mozzarella, plus frozen peas. I opened a bottle of Italian white wine from Delancey for the risotto, and we drank that alongside. I also roasted a sheet pan of broccoli with olive oil and salt — nice and hot, 425 fahrenheit, so the florets got frizzled and crisp at the edges. Plus: We harvested the first green beans from our yard. We managed to get a couple dozen beans from just one plant. I don’t know if that sounds impressive to anyone else, but I was elated. I boiled them in well-salted water and we ate them with our hands. We had a “TV dinner,” watching Anne with an E while we ate. We are all obsessed with Anne with an E, so much so that we’ve pinky-sworn to only watch it together, the three of us. That means that Ash and I can’t watch it when June’s at her dad’s house, and she can’t watch it without us. We all have crushes on both Gilbert and Cole.
Friday, July 24
The usual breakfast, plus the now-usual nectarines! The coffee hit me extra hard this morning. I was ELECTRIFIED.
In mid-morning, Ash drove June back to Brandon’s for a couple of days. Our custody schedule is a bit off this week, but we had to make adjustments to accommodate work obligations and a little summer travel nearby. When Ash left, I got on Quickbooks and YNAB and did a bunch of budgeting and accounting. Since Ash and I are both self-employed, there are always accounting tasks to tend to, which is not fun, but the budgeting part is.
Then I tended to email. But I had forgotten how head-spinning, how adrenalized, this time is. When a new book comes out, it usually only has a couple of weeks, or a month or two at the very best, to find its audience and achieve “success” before people move on. So you work on a book for years — three years, in the case of this book — and its “success” comes down to a matter of days.
Anyway, around 2 p.m., I warmed up the leftover risotto and the last of the zucchini with pesto and refreshed my bottle of water. For dessert, I had four Oreos, the original kind. At 4 p.m., I got hungry again and cut up an apple and poured a bowl of jalapeño chips. The guinea pigs make this high-pitched sound called “wheeking” whenever they hear me open the fridge. I gave them lettuce, some kale, and fennel fronds this morning, but they wheek all day long. I admire their spirit.
I worked until after 7 p.m., at which point Ash came inside from their work on the tree platform. We both stumbled around the kitchen, trying to figure out what to eat. I miss going out to restaurants, being out in the energy of strangers. We talk a lot about how much we miss being out among other queer people, out in queerer parts of town than our neighborhood. I miss watching people flirt, summer legs in shorts, people with their arms around each other. I even miss the smell of cigarette smoke. If we weren’t in a pandemic, on a night like this we might go find a bar where we could sit and watch people pass on the sidewalk. But I don’t want to do that now, not even if some restaurants and bars are open. It gives me no pleasure that restaurant workers — servers, cooks, bartenders — have to put themselves at risk so that we can have a pleasurable night out. At the same time, I don’t want those same bars and restaurants to fail, to close permanently. I don’t know.
Eventually we poured ourselves glasses of the Italian white from the night before, and I remembered that we’d bought all the ingredients for coconut-gochujang glazed chicken with broccoli … except that we accidentally ate the broccoli last night. We made the recipe anyway, substituting green cabbage for the broccoli, and had it over jasmine rice, and then it was the weekend.
For the businesses around the areas ofValencia Street closed off to car traffic, the effects of the program have been different, and opinions are mixed about whether it’s a good idea or not.
To be sure, it has been a big success for the restaurants and businesses between 16th and 17th Streets and 18th and 19th Streets, according to Mauricio Guerra, manager of Limón Rotisserie.
“It was very helpful, to be honest,” said Guerra. “People were respectful, it didn’t get too crowded, all the restaurants are doing great.”
And the spill off has even been significant enough for some between 17th and 18th Streets.
Hawker Fare is one of those. With the street in front of Hawker Fare still open to private vehicles, they have had the best of both worlds. The restaurant tripled its typical weekend sales during the inaugural four days of the pilot program, while staying accessible for Doordash and Caviar delivery drivers, which are responsible for 25 percent of Hawker Fare’s business, according to manager Dolly Valdez Bautista.
“I like that I’m not closed, we have parking…people drive past and see Hawker Fare and come back.”
Valdez Bautista said foot traffic was way up and many new diners had not known about Hawker Fare before the closure. Since July 23 Valencia Street has been blocked off to car traffic from Thursday through Sunday, and each day Hawker Fare made more than $9,000.
“We never had an empty seat,” said Valdez Bautista.
Photo by Lydia Chávez
But it’s not all peachy for Hawker Fare. On Sundays at 8 p.m., the Department of Public Works cleans Valencia Street, and the wastewater flows downhill; right into the sidewalk where customers are dining.
“It really kills the mood for our guests. I make a kind of joke, like, ‘oh next time don’t forget to bring your paper boats,’ but it I was having an off day, or the kitchen messed up on a order, and [flooding] happened, I would have to comp the whole check.”
This has been an issue for four weeks, since Hawker Fare expanded outdoors through theShared Spaces Program, and as popularity has gone up, the problem has only gotten more visible. Valdez Bautista has contacted Ronen’s office as well as DPW asking them to clean the streets either later at night or early in the morning, when customers are not around. In addition to being embarrassing, Valdez Bautista said the flooding could cut into profits as well.
For many other nearby businesses decimated by the pandemic, the program has not been as profitable.
“They are shuffling everyone away from my block,” said Lisa Sherratt, owner of Serendipity, a gift shop that sells cards, soap, and jewelry on Valencia and 19th Street just outside of where the street closure begins.
Already, the coronavirus has cut her sales anywhere from 70 percent to 90 percent, depending on the day, and unlike Hawker Fare, her block did not see a substantial increase in foot traffic with the closure of Valencia Street. As a result, sales have remained devastatingly low, she said.
Sherratt said retail businesses between 19th and 20th would benefit from having a street closure, giving diners a chance to shop before their reservations.
“If you know there’s a street closure and you know you can come and get dinner, maybe you’ll come an hour beforehand and do some shopping,” said Sherratt.
Sherratt supports extending the street closure to 20th Street, but acknowledged that not all businesses can operate effectively outdoors, including hers, which primarily sells cards. At present, she does not have the resources to place additional staff outdoors to deter would-be shoplifters.
“For me, it wouldn’t work to go outside, there’s too many little things that could blow away, it would be weather-dependent. On a windy, foggy night there wouldn’t be as many people.”
According to Manny Yekutiel, a member of a Valencia Corridor Merchants Association and the Small Business Commission who played a large role in creating the plan to close off parts of Valencia, the current area of 16th to 17th and 18th to 19th was selected through a survey of Valencia Street merchants. Those most excited about the idea of a street closure were on the chosen blocks. Yekutiel said expanding the closure further south is a possibility.
“I absolutely think that there is a justification to expand the closure to other blocks of Valencia and other parts of the Mission,” said Yekutiel. I know that restaurants between 20th and 21st are interested in having their blocks shut down, the blocks with Amado’s and Lolo’s, and I think there needs to be a critical mass of merchants who want to participate”
He said that it is likely the city wants to see that it goes safely before expanding.
Not everyone shared Sherratt’s and Yekutiel’s opinion. Johanna Bialkin, owner of Aldea Home and Baby on Valencia near 20th Street, said she prefers not to be a part of the Valencia street closure program, mainly for the safety of her staff and customers. Even at her business, she only allows five customers in her store at a time to allow for social distancing.
“I don’t want to have hoards of people on 18th and 19th, [already] sometimes there’s more people than I’d like,” said Bialkin.
Bialkin has also not seen any real increase in foot traffic or sales at her brick-and-mortar storefront, although she is considered an essential business so has been open through the pandemic. Her business is down about 40 percent, thanks to an increase in online orders.
Also lukewarm to a street closure were Paula Capovilla and Pablo Romano, who own Venga Empanadas located near 15th Street north of the closed-off portions of Valencia. They saw a slight boost in foot traffic, unlike Serendipity, even though both are roughly a block away,
“We got the leftovers.” said Romano.
Just like Hawker Fare, Venga Empanadas gets a large chunk of their business through delivery apps, and with the advent of COVID, delivery has doubled, becoming nearly 30 percent of total revenue. Although more foot traffic would be nice, they said, they have concerns about social distancing, and making sure that food delivery drivers, as well as the truck that delivers their flour, have easy access to their storefront.
“I would be open to giving it a try, if it’s from six to ten,” said Romano. “But we are dependent on food apps, and the social aspect is a risk.”
The area of 15th used to be a part of the closure plan, according to Yekutiel, but it was cut because there are few businesses on the west side of that block of Valencia and because Munroe Motors, a motorcycle shop which has operated on Valencia Street for 60 years, requires car traffic to operate and closing the street to car traffic could harm their business, according to Yekutiel.
“We didn’t want to put them into a dangerous place.”
Amy Beinart, chief of staff for Hilary Ronen’s office, said that it is too early to say if there will be any expansion of street closure programs on Valencia or beyond.
“Ronen wants to think very creatively about how to provide spaces for businesses to operate safely, and we will look at this first phase as a pilot and see what lessons should be applied [regarding] whether we are going to expand this or not,” said Beinart. “At this point, we are still gathering feedback and look forward to the next weekend.”
Photo by Lydia Chávez
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Apple CEO Tim Cook delivers the keynote address during the 2020 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California, June 22, 2020.
Wall Street analysts were nearly unanimous in their praise for Apple on Friday morning, raising their price targets across the board after the company's strong results for the fiscal third quarter.
The tech giant reported $2.58 in earnings per share on $59.69 billion of revenue, blowing past Wall Street estimates in a Refinitiv survey of $2.04 in earnings per share and $52.25 billion of revenue. Apple also reported a 4-for-1 stock split.
The revenue result was the highest for the third quarter in company history, rising 11% year over year despite the Covid-19 pandemic disrupting retail locations in the United States and elsewhere. Revenue from iPhone sales alone beat estimates by more than $4 billion.
The stock surged after the results were announced, with shares trading more than 7% higher in Friday's premarket.
The financial supporters of a local social service provider may have had their personal information taken hostage by hackers.
Preble Street of Portland is one of many nonprofit organizations across the world that recently learned its donor information may have been part of a massive ransomware attack of Blackbaud, a South Carolina company that provides cloud-based storage to nonprofit organizations ranging from art foundations and historic sites to churches and schools.
Hackers attacked the cloud-based storage platform where Blackbaud stored Preble Street donors’ demographic information, such as their philanthropic giving history, but not their credit card or bank information, shelter officials told donors by email Thursday. Donors’ Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers are safe, too, as the shelter doesn’t collect those.
The attack made international headlines in May due to the scope and prestige of Blackbaud’s clientele, but also because the company revealed it had paid off the hackers that had spent three months stealing its data to destroy the data rather than resell it or use it for criminal purposes.
But Blackbaud only told Preble Street that its data might have been at risk on July 16, according to shelter officials.
Shelter officials advised donors to remain vigilant and promptly report any suspicious activity or suspected identify theft to both the shelter and the proper law enforcement authorities. Individuals may want to take additional protective measures such as placing credit freezes on their files with credit reporting agencies “out of an abundance of caution,” officials said.
Founded in 1975, Preble Street employs more than 200 staff and 6,000 volunteers each year to provide supportive housing, crisis intervention, healthcare and more than a thousand meals a day to Maine’s most at-risk residents at seven sites in Portland, Lewiston and Bangor.
Longmont has issued traffic alerts to advise motorists of two upcoming street closings.
Pike Road is to be closed between U.S. 287 and Professional Lane from Friday through Monday for installation of a concrete flow pan. Local traffic will be detoured via Emery Street.
South Coffman Street is to be closed to through traffic from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday between Pike Road and Neon Forest Circle for utility trenching work. Local residents and any needed emergency services will be granted access from the south side of the closure area.
A longtime editor for the Orange County Register was killed Thursday in what authorities believe was a street racing crash, according to the Register and Santa Ana police.
Police responded to the crash at about 11:45 a.m. at Bristol Street and Santa Clara Avenue, where a BMW slammed into Eugene Harbrecht’s Ford pickup as he was making a left turn.
The driver of the BMW and another vehicle were allegedly street racing on Bristol Street, police said. Witnesses said the pickup burst into flames and they tried helping Harbrecht, who was unconscious, out of the car.
“We knew it was intense after the first bang,” witness Guillermo Velazquez told KTLA News. “That’s when we were able to tell there was a vehicle rolling, because we heard the consistent impact.”
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Harbrecht, 67, was pronounced dead at a hospital and the driver of the BMW was hospitalized. The second driver in the alleged street race fled the scene, but was later found in the neighborhood and taken into custody, Santa Ana police said.
According to the Orange County Register, Harbrecht was a Santa Ana resident who had worked for the newspaper since 1984. Most recently, he was the national and international news editor for the greater Southern California News Group.
“Gene was one of our best and wisest editors, a friend and colleague whose fierce intelligence and rigorous attention to detail made us all better,” Southern California News Group executive editor Frank Pine said in the Orange County Register. “He was passionate about journalism and carried out his work in service to our readers. We were lucky to have him among us and will miss him dearly.”
A longtime Orange County Register editor died Thursday after his truck was hit by a BMW involved in a street race with another car, authorities said.
Eugene Harbrecht, a Santa Ana resident, was 67 years old. He worked for the Register since March 1984, most recently as the national and international news editor for the greater Southern California News Group.
Gene Harbrecht
The crash that resulted in his death happened at about 11:45 a.m. on Bristol Street and Santa Clara Avenue, said Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna.
Before the crash, witnesses reported that a silver BMW sedan and a dark sedan were racing at high speeds northbound on Bristol Street. The BMW slammed into a Ford Ranger that was traveling southbound on Bristol and turning left on Santa Clara, Bertagna said.
The impact pushed the truck about 60 feet into a fence where it started to catch fire.
“There were two guys who live in the area that went and broke the window and pulled the victim out (of the truck),” Bertagna said. Officers arrived soon after and put out the fire with a fire extinguisher.
The driver of the truck was taken to UC Irvine Medical Center hospital, where he died. The driver of the racing BMW also was hospitalized in unknown condition.
Orange County Register editor Eugene Harbrecht. (Photo by Nick Koon, Orange County Register/SCNG)
The dark sedan involved in the race fled the scene, Bertagna said. Officers found the car a few hours later and stopped it at a post office off First Street near Pacific Avenue. They took the driver, described only as a man, into custody.
Police did not immediately provide details as to how they identified the second car, saying only they received a lead that directed them to it.
The crash knocked down wires and Bristol was closed from 17th Street to Memory Lane.
Bertagna said police are seeing an uptick in street racing in recent months. This is the second fatality related to racing in the city this year.
“We’ve always had street racing,” he said. “We’re seeing it more. People aren’t working, they’re at home, less cars on the road and I guess they decide to street race. But people lose their lives.”
KALAMAZOO, MI — New chicanes, or “bump outs,” are being installed on the streets in Kalamazoo’s Northside neighborhood in an effort to slow vehicle traffic.
Kalamazoo city staff demonstrated and explained the new devices during an event at LaCrone Park on Thursday, July 30.
“Essentially it’s a yield street,” Public Services Director James Baker said, explaining that vehicles will stay to the right and yield to any oncoming traffic before navigating through the “bump outs,” or chicanes.
Chicanes are marked off areas extending from the curb that create a physical barrier for traffic to navigate through. By design, chicanes encourage drivers to slow down when going through them, the city said. They are also meant to reduce crashes, and unlike speed bumps, chicanes are still easy for bikes and emergency vehicles to travel through, the city said.
The devices will be on neighborhood roads, and if motorists feel the need to drive at faster speeds they can travel to a major road, Baker said.
“We’re really trying to send a message of, if that’s how fast you intend to drive, don’t do it on this street, go north or south or east or west to a major street that does have that posted 35 mile per hour speed limit,” Baker said.
Baker, along with Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Chief Karianne Thomas and other city officials, attended the demonstration event Thursday.
Some people asked about speed bumps at the event, and some were skeptical that the new chicanes would slow traffic.
Chicanes are also much more affordable than speed bumps like the ones currently installed in Kalamazoo, Baker said.
The project budget is $30,000 and includes proposed chicane locations on Staples Avenue, Woodward Avenue, Cobb Avenue, William Street, Elizabeth Street, Mabel Street, Florence Street, Ada Street, Burdick Street, Edwards Street, Bosker Avenue, Prouty Street, and Cadillac/Hawley Street. The city showed a map with 24 proposed chicane locations at the event Thursday.
The chicanes will be installed in late summer 2020 after the kick-off demonstration. Existing speed and volume data will be recorded prior to installation for comparison after the chicanes are installed, the city said.
The chicanes the city is installing will be semi-permanent and will consist of areas marked with traffic tape and flexible posts. By using tape and flexible posts they are cost effective and easy to install and allows for easier adjustments compared to poured cement, the city said.
The city’s project information said the devices do have a down side: The chicanes will be installed in a section of the on-street parking area of the street and result in a loss of on-street parking spaces. The city will also have to make special consideration for snow plowing of the street in the winter, Baker said. There is a potential that the chicanes could be damaged by drivers and they also require reflectivity maintenance, the city said.
The project is part of the city’s goals working toward traffic calming citywide, along with a redesign of streets.
SANTA ANA (CBSLA) — A 60-year-old man is dead Thursday after a car involved in a street race in Santa Ana crashed into his truck, causing a fiery wreck.
The crash happened just before 11:45 a.m. at Bristol Street and Santa Clara Avenue.
Santa Ana police say a black BMW and another vehicle were racing northbound on Bristol when the BMW collided with a Ford F-150 pickup truck while making a left turn onto Santa Clara. The pickup truck was sent skidding 60 to 70 feet into a wall and caught fire, Santa Ana police Corporal Anthony Bertagna said.
Two residents ran to help pull the driver out of the burning truck as a police officer on the scene helped put out the fire, he said.
The driver was taken to UC Irvine Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The BMW’s driver was also taken to a hospital. Bertagna said he did not know how badly the driver was hurt, but the BMW was totaled.
The vehicle that was racing the BMW fled the scene, and investigators are looking for it, Bertagna said.
Visitor walk past a Ford Escape Titanium at the Shanghai Auto Show in Shanghai on April 17, 2019.
Greg Baker| AFP | Getty Images
Ford Motor performed far better than Wall Street expected during the second quarter, even beating its own expectations as the coronavirus caused rolling shutdowns of its plants across the globe.
The company was profitable, reported less operational losses than expected and has already started repaying against credit lines it drew down earlier this year to manage through the coronavirus pandemic.
Here's how Ford performed versus what Wall Street expected, based on average analysts' estimates compiled by Refinitive.
Adjusted EPS: A loss of 35 cents per share versus a loss of $1.17 per share expected.
Automotive revenue: $16.6 billion versus $15.95 billion expected.
Shares of Ford jumped more than 4% in post-market trading after releasing its earnings Thursday evening. The stock closed at $6.74, down 2.6%.
Ford reported an adjusted pretax loss of $1.9 billion – more than $3 billion better than expected.
Ford CFO Tim Stone warned investors in April that the company expected to lose more than $5 billion, on an adjusted pretax basis, during the second quarter as the pandemic shuttered factories and severely hampered auto sales.
Quicker recovery
A faster-than-expected recovery in sales, including favorable pricing and better mix, as well as "operational execution" contributed to the company's second-quarter performance, Stone told reporters Thursday.
Ford expects an adjusted pretax profit of between $500 million and $1.5 billion in the third quarter as long as economic conditions remain favorable without production disruptions, Stone said.
The company managed to report a net profit of $1.1 billion during the second quarter, including a $3.5 billion gain on a previous investment in autonomous vehicle startup Argo AI.
An Argo-modified Ford autonomous vehicle parked in Manhattan on Friday, July 12, 2019.
Paul Eisenstein | CNBC
Cash burn
Ford burned through $5.3 billion during the second quarter, up from $2.2 billion during the first quarter — numbers that are being closely tracked by Wall Street. The automaker said it ended the second quarter with automotive liquidity of $39.8 billion.
Investors are also watching for any guidance on when Ford might pay down its debt and for updates to an $11 billion restructuring plan led by Ford CEO and President Jim Hackett.
"They've got a ton of cash. They're certainly not going to run out of money this year," Morningstar analyst David Whiston told CNBC ahead of Ford's earnings release. "Ford's problem, as they've said in their own words, they're not physically fit."
General Motors, which reported its second-quarter earnings Wednesday, said it lost $536 million on an adjusted basis, which was better than Wall Street expected. On an unadjusted basis, the company lost $806 million and it burned through $7.8 billion in cash during the quarter.
Both Ford and GM roughly doubled their automotive debt to $30 billion during the first quarter to help bolster their balance sheets and get through the Covid crisis.
GM said Wednesday it expects to repay a $16 billion revolving credit line it drew down in March by the end of the year.
Ford said Thursday it has already repaid $7.7 billion against revolving credit lines, and also extended $4.8 billion of its three-year revolving credit lines.
