Entering 4th year, Castro grapples with effects of COVID

by John Ferrannini

The beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020 marked a dark turning point in the lives of many people around the world, and that’s as true of San Francisco’s LGBTQ Castro neighborhood as anywhere.

But even as the pandemic’s direct influence on day-to-day life ebbs and COVID enters its fourth year – President Joe Biden took heat last fall for saying “the pandemic is over” though hundreds of people continued to die on average each day – the aftereffects are hard to overstate.

“It has been a really crazy three years and the impact is still being felt but it’s harder to say directly COVID at this point because there’s so much on top,” Terry Asten Bennett, a straight ally who is general manager of Cliff’s Variety, told the Bay Area Reporter. “The war in Ukraine, the gas prices, it has an impact on a number of fronts. … I saw on the news people saying the supply chain will be fixed in six months and I laughed.”

The supply chain has been severely impacted by the pandemic, resulting in delayed shipments of many goods to retailers, car dealerships, and others.

Bennett’s shop on Castro Street was a lifeline for many during the pandemic’s early years, as it remained open as an essential business. Since then, the store has leaned on the cautious side, providing masks and hand sanitizer, but its policies reflect the general relaxation of COVID prevention measures in the past two years.

“The last time I mandated the public wear [masks] was when we had 10 staff members get it in a week,” Bennett said, adding that this was during the late 2021-early 2022 Omicron surge. “That was awful. It was a really awful 10-day period, but when a quarter of the store comes down with COVID, you’ve got to do something.”

Masks have been optional for employees since the end of February, Bennett said.

“Within a week of it being optional people who chose not to [mask] all got the flu,” she noted.

San Francisco and California’s states of emergency ended February 28, and the federal state of emergency is set to end May 11.

“While the threat from COVID-19 is not over, as both the virus and the tools to respond to it have evolved over the past three years, San Francisco is now in a significantly better position today than at any prior time in the pandemic due to the city’s high vaccination and booster rates and the availability of effective COVID-19 treatments,” stated a recent city Department of Public Health news release.

See page 8 >>