In the wake of this week’s newly imposed stay-at-home order, many California businesses say they won’t comply with this most recent spate of draconian restrictions.
In my neck of the woods, Carlsbad restaurants plan to keep their outside dining options available, especially as they were built to adhere to previous COVID requirements.
“We have to stand up for ourselves. We have to open or else we lose the risk of losing our business entirely,” said Annie Rammel, the owner of Oak + Elixir restaurant in Carlsbad.Rammel said she spent $7,000 to have a deck built outside of Oak + Elixir on State Street to provide a safe dining option for patrons.It was going well until she had to shut things down once again this week as COVID-19 cases surged and the state put restrictions on in-person dining were put back in place.“Closed, open, closed, open,” she said. “A lot of us are not doing well; we’re not doing well, the take out and to-go we’re losing money on that.”Rammel and a group of small business owners in Carlsbad and Oceanside decided to reopen for in-person dining Friday and take their chances, including several restaurants in the Carlsbad Village.She said if she stayed closed, her 15 employees would be laid off during an already rough year.
In the state’s capitol of Sacramento, Mandarin Restaurant owner Michael Helmrich said he can’t afford to follow the state’s orders this time around. He plans to keep both indoor and outdoor dining options available.
“We can’t survive. I’m down 70%,” Helmrich said.He said he will keep his restaurant open with indoor dining and continue with all the safety guidelines of wearing masks and maintaining 6 feet of separation.“We all need to do what we need to do to survive. We’re gonna be open, too,” said Roger Saini, the owner of 500F Pizza x Tap House. “But we’re only takeouts and deliveries. And hopefully, we can weather this storm again, like we weathered in the past.”…Helmrich said they are “doing everything we can,” including spending money on his outdoor dining setup to make it safe and comfortable.
One Los Angeles coffee shop owner kept her place open during Los Angeles County restrictive orders by declaring a “peaceful protest,” only now to face state orders.
“It looks like I’m going to have to stop my peaceful protest and bring my tables and chairs in,” Patricia Neale Vuagniaux, Swork Coffee owner told “Fox & Friends First” Wednesday.”I’m just heartbroken. I’m heartbroken,” the business owner said.Vuagniaux says she got the idea from health department officials to peacefully protest but the new COVID-19 stay-at-home orders affect the area where her shop is located.”I was basically only peacefully protesting for outdoor tables and chairs, so it’s not as if it was a ton, so this was really disappointing because we’re not actually dining, we’re actually just sitting outside having a cup of coffee,” she explained. “It’s a gray area for coffee shops … and we’re stuck in the middle.”
Meanwhile, Governor Gavin Newsom’s team is becoming increasingly worried about recall efforts that have heated up in the wake of his French Laundry debacle.
Near the bottom of a Politico report on Newsom’s chief of staff Ann O’Leary preparing to depart Sacramento for a potential job in the Biden administration rests this spicy nugget: “As Newsom begins his third full year in office, the governor’s team is increasingly concerned with a long-shot conservative recall that could mushroom into a major threat in 2021 if it attracts significant financial support.”The report also states, “Sources close to Newsom said the governor’s office has been disorganized over the past month and has not responded effectively to damaging headlines” including his French Laundry trip, controversial new stay-at-home order and delay in naming Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ replacement in the United States Senate. In addition, most of the state’s public schools remain closed while they are open in other deep blue states such as New York and Massachusetts, and small business owners were particularly irate over the lack of evidence presented to support certain business closures.
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