Sunday, 8.30.2020 The Throughline is your portal to tomorrow, a view of the Bay Area at the intersection of reality and possibility. Our nine-week journey continues by exploring our collective lives:
SAN FRANCISCO AT A CROSSROADS — ALTERED BY PANDEMIC AND PROTEST
1 The pandemic’s three lessons for better learning.
1 Can Chinatown survive, or even thrive?
A SPECIAL REPORT BY CULTURE DESK WEEK EIGHT: THE COMMUNITY
1 Saying ‘I do’ to virtual weddings. Find more inside.
J2 | Sunday, August 30, 2020 | SFChronicle.com
SFChronicle.com | Sunday, August 30, 2020 |
T H E CO M M U N I T Y
F E AS I B I L I T Y RAT I N G Go: Assuming everything will be safe, Bay Area people are likely to return to past habits like attending live performances. Though, there may be adaptations to the experiences.
FINDING HOPE I N O U R H I S T O R Y: C I T Y C E L E B RAT E D AS 1 9 1 8 F LU FA D E D A B OU T T H I S S ECT I O N Throughline is a Culture Desk limited-series project exploring what the Bay Area of the near future could look like after the effects of the pandemic and protests take hold. How could we use this moment to reshape our region for the better? On the cover: Check back each week as we reveal another portion of visual development artist Pong Lertsachanant’s rendering of the future of the Bay Area.
STA F F Throughline Editors Sarah Feldberg Robert Morast Designer Alex K. Fong Deputy Photo Director Russell Yip Creative Director Danielle Mollette-Parks Contributing Editor Bernadette Fay Managing Editor, Features Michael Gray
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By Peter Hartlaub
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When the pandemic is over — or at least it’s safe to go out again — there’s worry that the annihilation of music, theater and other audience-driven entertainment may just be starting. ¶ With cautiousness becoming the new national pastime, will movie theaters go extinct? How does anyone think about stepping in a museum again, or a street parade, or a New Year’s Eve party? Can we ever recover from a pandemic that leaves almost nothing unchanged?
San Francisco faced the same questions in the past, and responded by filling the seats. When the so-called Spanish flu threat ended more than 100 years ago, the city’s residents didn’t shy away from gathering together. If anything, they doubled down on the future of in-person entertainment. “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, my brethren, for many things this Sabbath,” The Chronicle’s Walter Anthony wrote on Nov. 18, 1918, the morning after live theater reopened in the city. “The Hun has been whipped, the Spanish influenza has been against the armada of a great defeat, the garbage men are functioning regularly once more … and now comes the climax of glad tidings: The portals of the playhouses are thrown open.” The Spanish flu of 1918-1919 had a lasting effect locally. Businesses closed, the health infrastructure was overwhelmed and at least 6,000 people died in the Bay Area — six times the current death toll from COVID-19. But the theaters rebounded quickly, with an air of celebration and reported sellouts. Churches, schools, pools and recreation centers, and regional sports were quickly thriving as well. While the two biggest pandemics in San Francisco history are devastating, they are not strictly comparable. The earlier pandemic had a shorter stay, shutting down the city for about a month in October and November 1918, before returning in January for another deadly round. Remote entertainment wasn’t much of an option in the 1910s — even the first radio station, KFRC, was more than five years away. Meanwhile, the death count in 1918-1919 was much higher. Forty-two San Franciscans died in a single day in early January, according to Chronicle records. As of this writing, well under 100 San Franciscans have died from the coronavirus during more than five months sheltering in place. Among the most affected in the city’s 1918-1919 pandemic
What’s especially encouraging to modern San Franciscans is the way the city came together in 1919. Being around other San Franciscans became a point of pride.
ONCE THE PA N D E M I C I S OV E R What is the first thing you will do when it is safe to venture outside again? Tell us by voting in our poll at sfchronicle. com/throughlinepoll
were children, who perished by the dozens. But residents rebounded quickly — perhaps because they were used to city-changing tragedy; many 1918 residents had lived through the 1906 earthquake and several fires and plagues before that. On that first opening night in November 1918, the Orpheum, Curran and Alcazar — three of the city’s biggest theaters — all reported sellouts. What’s especially encouraging to modern San Franciscans is the way the city came together in 1919, even after the influenza returned, and a vocal anti-mask contingent had resisted government safety mandates. Being around other San Franciscans became a point of pride among residents. (The end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918, and soldiers returning to the city in early 1919, clearly contributed to the mood.) “TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT,” blared one advertisement in The Chronicle, sponsored by a musician’s union. “Put away your smoking jacket and those ugly house slippers, get the family and Visit Your Local Theater.” Masks were still required when theaters first opened. As modern theater operators hope to see, San Francisco residents during the first pandemic were eager to pay for live performances, even with added inconveniences. “Masks were de rigeur in all the showhouses, and even the seasoned Orpheum habitues managed to forgo their accustomed privilege of smoking,” The Chronicle reported in 1918. There were worries about safety. Across the Bay in Berkeley, the new California Theatre advertised its superior ventilation for the flu-concerned, boasting, “Our air is drawn from the roof and forced through the entire theater. The air is completely changed every three minutes.” Once the case numbers dropped near zero, crowds swarmed back. City leaders sounded the all
Chronicle photo illustration from file and Getty Images
After the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic ended, San Francisco rebounded quickly into the 1920s with theaters — such as the Orpheum, Roosevelt and Castro — reopening to packed houses. The city also marched forward, completing the de Young Museum in 1919, and in early 1920 revealed plans for the Steinhart Aquarium. And, of course, crowds turned out to celebrate the end of World War I as soldiers returned in 1919.
clear for the last time on Feb. 1, 1919, and by Chronicle accounts it was one of the most entertaining months in San Francisco history. Still early in the silent movie era, the city premiered Ethel Barrymore in “The Divorcee” to packed houses at the Tivoli Theater, while Gloria Swanson opened Cecil B. DeMille’s “Don’t Change Your Husband” at the Imperial. (The latter theater would later become the XXX-rated Market Street Cinema, demolished in 2016.) At the Curran, in another sellout, the San Francisco Symphony debuted a performance on a mechanical player piano, executing a preprogramed performance from star pianist Harold Bauer. Meanwhile, the rest of the city crowded to watch a new six-cylinder Studebaker, which accomplished the then-impossible task of climbing steep California Street without stalling, with five passengers in the cab. On April 22, 1919, less than 60 days after the second mask order was lifted, Market Street hosted what The Chronicle called “the greatest ever” spectacle in the city’s history: a World War I parade for returning soldiers of the 347th and 363rd regiments.
By the end of 1919, there was almost no mention of a pandemic that had killed almost 1% of the city’s population. “NEW YEAR’S EVE PROMISES TO BE GAYEST OF ALL,” the front-page Chronicle headline read on Dec. 31, 1919. “Downtown Hostelries Report Every Inch of Room Has Been Taken.” That happened to be the last night before Prohibition laws went into effect. The Chronicle reported that all hotels were full, and every major live music and theater event sold out. “There has been many a wild night in San Francisco since the 49ers — hardy men who took their whiskey straight — lighted the first candle and drew the first cork in revelry, but last night outshone them all,” The Chronicle reported on Jan. 1, 1920. “This year the desire to take part in the last ‘wet’ New Year’s Eve brought out everybody in the city able to walk, and some who had to be carried.” The next year was booming for San Francisco, as The Chronicle reported an increase in conventions. The new de Young Museum was completed in 1919, and in early 1920 plans were revealed for the Steinhart Aquarium, a gift to the city by heirless banker
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Ignatz Steinhart, in honor of his brother Sigmund. The word “infuenza” barely appeared in the newspaper a year after the crisis ended, except for a few advertisements for suspiciously unscientific mail-order flu cures. The 1920s became arguably the greatest decade for the Market Street theater district, with the ultra-grand Fox Theatre opening and a train-full of Hollywood stars attending. San Francisco grew quickly as a tourism destination. Closing thoughts are from Walter Anthony, written in the same 1918 column that opened this article. “It took the influenza to show us our mutual dependency. … There can be no sound where there is no ear. There can be no play where there is no audience,” he wrote. “It never occurred to me until this epidemic came along how completely I am in debt to the profession. It positively made me shudder. If there were no theaters and no concerts, I’d probably have to go to work somewhere.” Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s culture critic. Email: phartlaub@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @PeterHartlaub
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J4 | Sunday, August 30, 2020 | SFChronicle.com
SFChronicle.com | Sunday, August 30, 2020 |
T H E CO M M U N I T Y
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OPTIMISM METER Hopeful: Given the renewed attention education has received in recent months, these potential fixes don’t feel as fictional as they once did.
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OUTSIDE CLASSES, M E N TA L H E A LT H : A N O P P O RT U N I T Y TO C H A N G E E D U CAT I O N FOR THE BETTER By Anna Nordberg
says Carter, pointing to staff members from children’s museums, science museums and organizations like the YMCA and NatureBridge who are cleared to work with children. “What if some of the funding to support education during COVID was routed through these organizations to redirect staff to schools, to support teachers with outdoor learning?” Then the question becomes: How do we get kids outdoors? For schools near the Presidio, it’s easy; for campuses in the Tenderloin or Chinatown; it’s more challenging. Given that many tech companies have announced they will work from home for at least the next year, could there be a way to redeploy the fleet of tech buses that shuttles city dwellers to Silicon Valley? There are a mountain of obstacles to this — making sure buses are certified to transport kids, finding the funding to hire more drivers, especially since SFUSD just laid off all its bus drivers. But if this would allow in-person learning to take place, and potentially enable the district to rehire essential bus drivers, it’s a challenge worth tackling. And when school finally goes back to “normal,” we should still think twice before herding kids back into the classroom all day. “Being outside more I think you’ll see students are more calm and that there are tremendous mental health benefits,” says Carter, who also believes that truancy rates would decrease. “We’ve tried the more, more, more approach,” she says of the conventional classroom. “It’s not working.” That may be the strongest argument for a long-term shift to more outdoor learning — that it actually improves outcomes for kids. After the pandemic, let’s try to remember that.
2 PRIORITIZING STUDENT WELL-BEING
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Within the span of about five days in March, our nation’s school system moved from the unthinkable to the inevitable. ¶ To prevent the spread of the coronavirus, schools closed, and millions of students from kindergartners to high schoolers moved to a fully remote learning model. Now, as a new school year begins, districts are grappling with how to reopen, while remote learning has left students, especially the most vulnerable learners, even further behind. ¶ It’s a crisis for education, but it’s also an opportunity to put everything on the table and consider ideas that would have been impossible before COVID. Outdoor school, long relegated to the Waldorf fringe, is getting a serious look. The pandemic is forcing conversations about equity in education, and both parents and teachers are asking how we can reimagine the school day to prioritize student well-being and mental health. ¶ In other words, as schools adapt to COVID, what changes could actually transform education for the better? 1 MOVING LEARNING OUTDOORS COVID-19 is an airborne pathogen, meaning that one of the best ways to mitigate risk is to step outside into the open air. Yet, rather than move in-person school outdoors, districts have doubled down on virtual learning. “On Monday of the week everything shut down, 100% distance learning seemed preposterous. By Friday, it was inevitable,” says Vanessa Carter, an environmental literacy content specialist at San Francisco Unified School District. “The pivot was, let’s get everyone in front of a screen. Is it any crazier to try to get kids 100% outside?” (Carter notes that the ideas here are her own, and not meant to represent SFUSD decisions or current planning.) Research shows that spending time in nature builds resilience and self-confidence in kids; reduces obesity and attention deficit disorder symptoms; and improves focus, behavior and learning. During the pandemic, it would also mean giving students in-person instruction rather than teaching via screens. “Just to get kids back to in-person learning would be huge, for
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BAC K TO SC H O O L Tell us how you feel about education during a pandemic by writing to culture@ sfchronicle.com
our youngest learners especially,” says Carter. “To start, use what you have. Move whiteboards and tables and chairs outside. Don’t reinvent the wheel.” Carter acknowledges that there are challenges to taking learning outside. Not all schools have outdoor campuses or parks nearby, not all parks are created equal, and not all neighborhoods are walkable. To make outdoor learning sustainable, schools would need infrastructure like tents and outdoor furniture, as well as more staff. “Don’t leave it to schools to figure out how to pay for this,” says Carter. Could a government stimulus program support outdoor learning? Corporate sponsorships? With so much philanthropy being directed to COVID response right now, perhaps districts could appeal directly to environmental nonprofits and donors. And if outdoor learning starts by moving the classroom model into a yard or a park, it can grow beyond teaching regular curriculum in a new environment. “We have this pretty remarkable workforce of environmental and outdoor educators and science educators in the Bay Area,”
We won’t know the full mental health toll of the pandemic on children for years to come, but we do know this: As millions of families face financial hardship, the illness or loss of loved ones, prolonged uncertainty and the complete obliteration of normal routines, it’s a recipe for increased rates of anxiety and depression in kids and adolescents. It’s also an opportunity for schools to rethink how they support students’ mental health. Some schools are already doing this by building social-emotional learning (SEL) — lessons focused on how to manage and regulate emotions, build relationships and show empathy — into their curricula. But the pandemic is a chance to try bolder ideas. Especially since there is evidence that for some kids, getting a break from the pressure cooker of academic expectations and after-school commitments has been better for their mental health. Even as we long to get back to “before,” it’s important to ask if before was really that great. We already had an epidemic of anxiety among children, teens and college students in the United States. This forced pause could be a time for educators and school administrators to reconsider how we support mental health at school. Wendy Mogel, clinical psychologist and author of the parenting book “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee,” suggests an approach that is radical in its simplicity: Talk to the children. “If the question is, ‘How can we redesign the school day or focus on social-emotional learning to make kids less stressed?’ talk to them and see what they have to say.” Mogel offers a set of questions that focus on student wellbeing: What do you miss most about school? What are you relieved about not having to do? What was the hardest part about the school shutdown, and what did you enjoy? What did you discover about the way you like to learn? “You need someone who is really good with kids — a youth pastor, the school psychologist — to ask the questions,” she says. In Mogel’s experience, one of the biggest contributors to anxiety and stress in students is schools’ focus on conventional academic learning over creative intelligence, experiential learning and citizenship. “Ideally, art, science and SEL would be woven into an integrated curriculum,” says Mogel. “And adding SEL to the Core Curriculum would give it both pride of place and legal standing.” She also advocates for more time outdoors and in nature, more hands-on learning through all five senses and learning
1 “Just to get kids back to in-person learning would be huge. ... Move whiteboards and tables and chairs outside. Don’t reinvent the wheel.” VA N ESSA CA RT E R , environmental literacy content specialist
2 “If the question is, ‘How can we redesign the school day ... to make kids less stressed?’ talk to them and see what they have to say. You need someone who is really good with kids ... to ask the questions.” W E N DY M O G E L , clinical psychologist
3 “Schools were already starting to have these conversations around equity, but the pandemic has accelerated them.” D E B O RA H S I M S, education consultant
through fellowship. “We’ve taken this whole complicated, rich creature, which is a child, and distilled it into numbers and rankings. It causes so much anxiety and depression in both kids and parents.” Leyla Bologlu, a pediatric neuropsychologist in San Francisco, notes that for children with learning differences, anxiety and self-doubt are heightened in classroom settings, and for some, during remote school as well. However, distance learning has forced educators to pace differently and shorten instruction periods for younger students. The benefits of that suggest better ways to support differentiated learners when in-person classes restart. “We need to rethink how scheduled children are,” she says. “How many adults work more than 8 or 10 hours? We ask our children to work those hours.” Because motor skills and cognitive skills develop in tandem (“It’s not uncommon to see language bursts follow a major motor milestone,” Bologlu says), Bologlu has been excited by the increase in physical activity on her street. “In some ways we are getting back to important developmental basics,” she says. She suggests schools add more body breaks into the school day and longer transition times between academic subjects. To pull all of this together and create accountability, Mogel says schools should create a position of director of mental health. Think of it as a sanity czar. “This person would need to be really adept at interviewing kids and handling parents,” she says, and to show that the position is truly valued, “pay them a lot of money.”
3 DIGGING INTO EQUITY ISSUES From access to high-speed internet to proximity to outdoor space to the scramble to form learning pods, almost every COVID adaptation has exposed inequities in education. Lately, the conversation has turned to an uncomfortable question: How do we feel living in a country where private schools can potentially reopen with heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, as well as COVID consultants while public schools cannot? “This is an opportunity for everyone — public schools and independent schools — to rethink how we educate, teach and learn,” says Deborah Sims, a former Bay Area school administrator and superintendent, who now works as an education consultant. She notes that all the things that disadvantage kids during remote learning — not having a private place to work, access to WiFi or an adult at home able to help — also make regular school harder. “Schools were already starting to have these conversations around equity, but the pandemic has accelerated them,” says Sims. When schools return in-person, it could be an opportunity to rethink how much work students are asked to do at home now that we are more aware of the ways that privilege plays a role. Just consider the inequity baked into a school rite of passage: the elaborate science or history project. “One child’s parents go out and get all sorts of supplies and help their kid build a pyramid that could go in a museum,” says Sims. “The other child doesn’t even have access to materials or an adult at home during the day to help.” The solution is not to stop doing projects. It’s to restructure the school day so that more of the work can be collaborative and done during school hours. Here’s the good news: Local districts are already thinking hard about how to tackle many of these challenges. SFUSD is working to make sure that every student in the district has a device and hot spot for remote learning. Educators are recognizing that outdoor education and a stronger focus on SEL may be key to getting through the pandemic, and when it’s over, we’ll have what amounts to data from thousands of mini pilot programs. At that point, schools will need to ensure that the changes that have positive benefits for kids — more unstructured time during the day, outdoor learning, SEL and wellness as part of the curriculum — don’t fall away as soon as we go back to “normal.” This is a chance to rethink education for the better. For all kids.
Anna Nordberg is Bay Area feelance writer. Email: Culture@sfchronicle.com
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J6 | Sunday, August 30, 2020 | SFChronicle.com
SFChronicle.com | Sunday, August 30, 2020 |
T H E CO M M U N I T Y
H OW ’ S YOU R N E I G H B O R H O O D? Tell us how your community has changed during the pandemic, or what concerns you have about it by writing to culture@sfchronicle.com
H E R I TA G E A N D RESILIENCE: W H Y C H I N ATOW N W I L L S U RV I V E T H E PA N D E M I C
B AY A R E A E B B A N D F LOW: WHO WILL BE L E F T TO S H A P E CO M M U N I T I E S ?
By Melissa Hung
By Carly Stern
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1 Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
We all have our routines that were upended by the coronavirus pandemic. One of mine was riding a crowded bus into San Francisco’s Chinatown, swimming laps in the YMCA’s saltwater pool, then grabbing a cha siu bao at Eastern Bakery and eating it on a bench at Portsmouth Square. ¶ Though I’ve never lived in Chinatown, it’s a place where I feel at home, where I blend in, where my mother tongue Cantonese surrounds me and I can speak it in my own clumsy way. My family has roots here. More than 100 years ago, an ancestor from my mother’s village journeyed to Chinatown. ¶ And so, my heart aches to see Chinatown bereft in the wake of the pandemic, its streets empty of locals and tourists alike, its storefronts shuttered. Chinatown suffered early on from the pandemic, “the victim of a double set of catastrophes,” says Malcolm Yeung, executive director of the nonprofit Chinatown Community Development Center. There is COVID-19 itself, but also the racism tangled up with it. “With the xenophobic reaction to the coronavirus being labeled as the ‘Chinese virus’ early on, we started seeing significant reductions in visitorship well before shelter-in-place even started,” Yeung says. Business fell sharply in January and February, usually a busy time leading up to and during the Chinese New Year. Merchants make 30% of their annual revenue then, according to Yeung. Particularly hard hit are the neighborhood’s restaurants, which operate on slim margins. They are important not just for the neighborhood’s character but as a source of starter jobs for new immigrants. A few weeks ago, the development center surveyed 32 restaurants. The results were grim. Seventy percent reported that they were unsure they’d survive to the end of the year. Community groups have stepped up to help. The Rose Pak Democratic Club created an online directory of Chinatown restaurants that remain open, especially since many of the owners, facing language and digital divides, don’t maintain websites or social media accounts. The development center, in partnership with other organizations, launched a program funding 34 restaurants to feed the neighborhood’s most vulnerable residents living in public housing and single room occupancy (SRO) hotels. The development center also teamed up with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce to help restaurants transition to outdoor dining. But with most of Chinatown’s restaurants located on hilly streets like Clay, Jackson and Washington, that option is difficult. Yeung especially worries about the neighborhood’s remaining banquet halls. There are just two now, Far East Cafe and New Asia, down from five a few years ago. Far East Cafe, one of the few restaurants located on flat Grant Avenue, opened for outdoor dining while New Asia temporarily transformed into a grocery store. “Banquets are really the backbone of culture in Chinatown. It’s where we all gather and see each other, reconnect, connect and celebrate,” Yeung says, noting that hundreds of banquets are hosted each year. “If those go, they’ll never be replaced. And that could really break the cultural fabric of Chinatown in a way that I think is hard for us to understand right now.” And yet, Chinatown has a history of surviving adversities, with several indications the neighborhood will weather this one, too.
The quarantine view from bedroom windows has pushed many people to peer more closely at our neighborhoods. We notice who lives downstairs, who runs our favorite coffee shops, who sleeps on our streets. We become aware of the daily interactions we miss, as well as the neighbors we never bothered to get to know. ¶ The Bay Area has long been a place of comers and goers. Indeed, many of us who live here can attest to that vaguely ominous backdrop of a ticking clock: pre-pandemic commutes that consumed our waking hours, rents that feel untenable and widening inequality. Coronavirus, along with issues highlighted through the protests following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, have made these dynamics more acute and urgent.
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2 The Chronicle 1913
1 Closed businesses along Grant Avenue in Chinatown last week. In a recent survey of 32 restaurants by the Chinatown Community Development Center, 70% said they were unsure they’d survive to the end of the year. 2 A historic photo of San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1913 after it was rebuilt in the wake of the 1906 earthquake and fire. 3 A woman walks by the New Asia Restaurant in 2018. New Asia is one of the last remaining banquet halls in Chinatown.
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Founded in the late 1840s, San Francisco Chinatown is the oldest Chinatown in North America and one of the oldest ethnic enclaves in the United States. From the beginning, it has been a home to new immigrants. Today, 15,000 people, 81% of them Asian, live in the neighborhood, packed into a 20-squareblock area, according to a 2018 report. Chinatown is “the most densely populated urban area west of Manhattan,” says the San Francisco Planning Department. “Most people think of Chinatown as a tourist destination and just a curious, Oriental, exotic place to go visit,” Yeung says. “But to us and to this community, Chinatown is a living, breathing community. And I think most importantly, Chinatown remains an active immigrant gateway for low-income newcomers to this country.” Roughly 50% of the housing stock in Chinatown — about 6,000 units — is in SROs. Entire families often live in a single room and share communal bathrooms and kitchens. For a neighborhood so dense, Chinatown has had relatively few COVID-19 cases — 29.2 cases per 10,000 residents, as of Aug. 21, according to city data. Chinese Hospital sounded the alarm early in January, working with neighborhood institutions and Chinese-language press to educate residents about the virus. It conducts free COVID-19 testing at SROs. Still, community leaders and residents worry about an outbreak, which could spread rapidly through close quarters. “Most of these cases are tied to essential workers, which is a similar pattern as what we’ve been seeing in the Latino community,” Yeung says. Essential workers tend to live with fami-
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Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
“I’d hate to see COVID be the catalyst for the real gentrification of Chinatown.” M A LCO L M Y E U N G, executive director of the nonprofit Chinatown Community Development Center
James Tensuan / Special to The Chronicle 2018
lies. “And that deeply concerns me because too many families live in SROs already. And these families are living next door to seniors.” While some residents work low-wage essential jobs, many others have lost their income. Chinese for Affirmative Action, an civil rights nonprofit, runs a workforce development program. (Full disclosure: I do some work for the organization.) Many of its clients work in the hospitality industry. But with the exception of custodial positions, most of those jobs vanished.
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On top of concerns over catching the virus and loss of income, Chinatown residents also fear attacks, as harassment toward Asian Americans has surged in the wake of the pandemic. Over a 13-week period beginning in March, 832 incidents of coronavirus-related discrimination and harassment took place in California, according to the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center. As the pandemic continues, so does the misinformed idea that China caused this suffering. There is a sense of history repeating itself. The xenophobic trope that Chinese people are dirty and diseased has persisted since the beginnings of Chinatown. In the late 1800s, when smallpox and the bubonic plague spread in San Francisco, authorities scapegoated its Chinese residents. During the smallpox epidemic of 1875-76, the city health officer ordered the fumigation of every house in Chinatown. Yet the epidemic raged on. Unable to account for the epidemic’s severity, he doubled down on his belief that “treacherous Chinamen” had caused it. Authorities repeatedly proposed moving Chinatown away from the heart of the city. After the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed Chinatown, city officials wanted to rebuild it farther south near Bayview-Hunters Point. Instead, the Chinese community hired architects to redesign the neighborhood with pagodas and eaves curling skyward — a calculated move to attract visitors and to protect the neighborhood. The neighborhood’s Chinese New Year Parade is another Chinatown reinvention. It began in the 1860s as a way to introduce other people to Chinese culture, but its current form took shape in 1953, along with the introduction of the Miss Chinatown Pageant. Due to discrimination, residents couldn’t find jobs outside of Chinatown, so these festivities were a way to bring business to the neighborhood. Today, San Francisco’s Chinatown, like Chinatowns across the country, is at risk of gentrification. “We’ll have to fight a battle against gentrification by speculators who are attempting to transform Chinatown by making us an annex of downtown,” says Mabel Teng, the former San Francisco supervisor, former assessor recorder and a longtime Chinatown advocate. Gentrification has been at the forefront of community leaders’ minds for some time, but coronavirus could speed it up. “I’d hate to see COVID be the catalyst for the real gentrification of Chinatown,” Yeung says. “I think we’re in a particularly precarious moment.” Even if the neighborhood’s mom-and-pop shops and eateries recover, it won’t be enough to rebuild its economy, Teng says. “I think Chinatown needs to create something new, something extraordinary, to become a major destination and anchor that will attract regional visitors as well as international tourists to come and stay.” That something could be a new cultural center. The Chinatown Media and Arts Collaborative — an unprecedented partnership of the Chinatown development center, Chinese for Affirmative Action, the Chinese Historical Society of America, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, the Center for Asian American Chinatown continues on J8
“A lot of the positive things we attribute to homeownership — being a good neighbor, knowing your neighbors, becoming involved in your community — these are not actually about ownership. They’re largely about stability,” says Brian McCabe, a sociologist at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., who studies urban planning. Here in the Bay Area, stability already felt like a luxury for the few — a reality amplified by coronavirus and systemic racism. As tech behemoths like Twitter and Facebook allow their employees to work remotely, there’s speculation about a mass exodus from the Bay Area. Surely, some will leave — already, inbound migration to San Francisco has dipped since last year — but plenty desperately want to stay. And they want to live in a community that’s reimagined. Across the Bay Area, residents are envisioning how a region at its breaking point can use this tumultuous moment to rebuild a more equitable society. At the core of their considerations are the questions that feel fundamental to the heartbeat of the Bay Area and foundational to its future: Who gets to stay? How will our communities change?
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In Donna Hunter’s eyes, the San Francisco she’s known and loved has been swept up by a wave of transience. The 60-year-old Stanford University professor, has lived in the Mission District for 19 years in a rent-controlled apartment that she jokes she’ll never leave. Staying at home has crystallized Hunter’s focus on her neighborhood, making her aware of how little she knows the people on her block. As highly paid tech workers have flooded her community, it’s grown to feel like a place where newcomers simply pass through. As it’s gotten younger, it’s also gotten whiter. “These are people who are itinerant livers,” says Hunter, says Hunter, whose father was Black and mother a German immigrant. “I want to feel like people are invested in the neighborhood and the community more than just here for a job and to go to the trendiest new restaurant.” Hunter is first to admit that her simmering resentment toward “tech people” dissuades her from connecting with those neighbors. Her frustration has mounted as she’s watched longtime residents get priced out to be replaced with absentee neighbors who rent their homes as Airbnbs or don’t live there full-time. That frustration is coupled with nostalgia: “It’s not a town full of progressives anymore,” she says. “Why am I so angry about it? I feel like the diversity has been lost.” To Hunter, nothing encapsulates this sentiment more than the rigid divide she sees between the Mission’s lower-income renters and wealthy homeowners. But as she began to deliver groceries to at-risk neighbors through coronavirus mutual aid programs, she remembered what a cohesive community felt like — and wonders if this crisis will be a turning point. Post-COVID, she craves a community that is present. If remote workers leave, she hopes the Mission will fill with people who intend to stick around — though it’s hard to be sure whether they’ll have the means to. “Are those the people who are going to stay?”
***
Alina Musgrave is one of the people trying to hang on. The 31-year-old managed a store on Fillmore Street that went out of business during the pandemic. Musgrave, who identifies as Latina, calls herself a “nomad of the Bay Area.” She grew up shuffling between her parents’ homes in Vacaville and Mill Valley, and lived in Oakland before moving to the Richmond District last year. Observing the intricacies of different communities has made her value the one she’s chosen. Musgrave often hears Russian and Mandarin throughout her neighborhood, and sees faces that look different from hers. “I grew up speaking three languages, and I love hearing different languages all around me,” Musgrave says. This welcoming pull and affordability are what drew her to the neighborhood. “I think that’s pretty much why we all live out here,” Musgrave says. Many neighbors also work in service or retail, and she finds comfort in living among people with similar incomes. When asked why, she sits in a long pause. “It’s hard to explain,” Musgrave says slowly. Each time a new luxury apartment complex crops up nearby, she feels a pang of anxiety along with a rush of gratitude that she has a place to live.
Paul Chinn / The Chronicle
Donna Hunter, top, has lived in her Mission District apartment for 19 years and says, “I feel like the diversity has been lost.” Thornell Washington, above, who owns a home in Oakland’s Eastmont Hills, says the pandemic has heightened awareness of Oakland’s problems: “It’s either the haves or the have-nots.”
“Do you consider people who are visibly homeless a part of your community? Do you feel a sense of responsibility to them? Who’s in my group? Who am I responsible for?” CLAIRE H E R B E RT, sociologist at the University of Oregon who studies housing
Rising rents are a lingering existential threat for Musgrave and her neighbors. “I know I’m not alone in those feelings,” she says, adding that Sea Cliff — among the city’s priciest real estate, with stunning ocean views — is a few blocks away. She suspects that any San Francisco exodus would be cyclical. Its consequences would be complicated. The tech boom brought an influx of revenue into the city, including to her store. “ ‘How long can I stay where I am?’ is an active thought,” she says. “The uncertainty of it is not lost on me.” Even so, Musgrave’s stepfather urges her to stay in San Francisco as long as possible. “They always say, ‘Never leave California, because you won’t be able to move back.’ ’’
***
When Heather Starnes describes East Palo Alto, she speaks of her community as if it is a person who lives and breathes: “It has a very grassroots, movement-oriented soul,” she says. East Palo Alto is a tight-knit and connected place, where food and ideas are exchanged eagerly, she says, who is white. People take pride in the community they have cultivated, a place residents fought to incorporate in 1983. The city remains a middle-class community among affluent Silicon Valley neighbors. It’s also more racially and ethnically diverse in comparison. More than 60% of East Palo Alto residents are Latino, 12% are Black and 11% are Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders, according to census data from 2019. These demographics are reflected in East Palo Alto’s leadership: People of color make up the entirety of its City Council and school board. Meanwhile, just across Highway 101, Palo Alto and Menlo Park are majority-white communities. Starnes’ neighbors show up for one other. A local college student lives in her house for free, while she and her husband rent a belowmarket rate room to another student’s father. Her nonprofit organization, Live in Peace, has been fundraising to pay three months’ rent for vulnerable neighbors during the pandemic. This period of instability — between health, economic and equality issues — is “exposing what we know is true: this dual existence in Silicon Valley,” she says, adding, “There’s some comfort, maybe, in knowing that people can see it for what it is.” Her message is both urgent and clear: The region has been teetering on the brink of becoming a monoculture of wealth, and it has reached a breaking point. If Silicon Valley’s tech presence disperses, she worries about “exporting” the injustice here to other burgeoning hubs. In a post-COVID world, Starnes longs for East Palo Alto to be a place where her community’s college graduates can afford to return and bring their knowledge, capacity and futures. But her neighbors must survive this time of crisis first: “This region deserves a community like East Palo Alto to still be intact when this is over,” she says. “I really believe that this region has the capacity to not let this community disappear,” she says. But under the weight of all the forces pushing people out, “this could easily be the last nail in the coffin.”
***
Thornell Washington, a 37-year-old Black homeowner who lives in Oakland’s Eastmont Hills, delivered food to older neighbors before the pandemic. The neighborhood is a place where people keep an eye out for each other. Members of his community give to each other freely: a carton of peaches, fresh zucchini, canned food. The pandemic has heightened awareness of economic problems that have been compounding in Oakland for a long time, he says: “It feels like a third-world country, where there’s truly no middle class. It’s either the haves Community continues on J10
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J8 | Sunday, August 30, 2020 | SFChronicle.com
SFChronicle.com | Sunday, August 30, 2020 |
T H E CO M M U N I T Y
O PT I M I S M RAT I N G Cautious: Though our health and work lives have seen new scrutiny during the pandemic, the political hurdles around universal sick leave still exist.
LEARNING TO LOVE CHANGE: M A R RY I N G I R L VOWS W I T H V I RT UA L C ROW DS
UNIVERSAL S I C K L E AV E : W H Y W E CA N N O LO N G E R D O WITHOUT IT
By Alix Wall
By Sarah Feldberg
A
Tosca Productions
Anne Mitchell and Joni Hauser were to marry in June at Oakland’s Mills College. ¶ But unlike those getting married in the early months of the pandemic, the Berkeley couple — and their event planner — had several months to execute a Plan B. The only thing in common with their original wedding, pretty much, was the date. Their June 20 date was significant to the couple in a number of ways: They met in mid-June; they liked that it was near the solstice; it was during Pride month and it was close to the anniversary of the landmark 2015 Supreme Court case Obergefell vs. Hodges that granted same-sex couples the right to wed in all 50 states. “We wanted to show our respect and gratitude for those who came before and fought to make it possible for us,” said Mitchell. Wedding planners say that most couples whose dream weddings have been ruined by the pandemic are choosing to reschedule. Many will get married on weekdays next year or in off-season months, since choice venues had their weekend dates already reserved. “2021 is fully booked, unless I want to take on more in a year than I usually do,” said Stacy Wichelhaus, event planner and designer at They So Loved events in San Francisco. But for those who don’t want to wait, Mitchell and Hauser’s nuptials give a glimpse of how weddings can look right now and, without a vaccine, may continue well into the foreseeable future. The recent San Francisco wedding at Sts. Peter and Paul Church that ignored restrictions and infected not only the wedding couple but numerous guests made headlines around the world and serves as a cautionary tale. Other couples are rising to the moment. They’re hiring Zoom producers, getting food delivered to remote guests and adapting in ways that may linger even after the pandemic is past. The Mitchell-Hauser wedding was held during the day, in their own yard. Most guests watched it streamed live on Zoom, although 26 local friends and family attended a socially distanced ceremony and reception. Judge Tara Flanagan, an Alameda County Superior Court judge, began her officiating by acknowledging the Ohlone and Chochenyo peoples on whose land they were standing. The brides wore matching blue flowered suits made by Wild Fang with masks sewn from the same fabric by an independent artist. At the luncheon, the couple sat at their own table with guests surrounding them, one household or pod per table, the meal packed in a picnic basket atop each one. Those getting special food or drinks from the bar were kept at least 10 feet away, using a “transfer table” to make all pickups contactless. “We have to make sure everyone feels safe, both staff and guests,” said Hugh Groman, chef/owner of Hugh Groman Catering, who agreed to pivot from the Mills College wedding to Plan B in the front yard. Making everyone feel safe amid a pandemic means gloves and masks for staff, masks for guests and plenty of hand sanitizer stations. Customized masks are the new must-have wedding accessory. That years-old cupcake fad will continue. And most likely, no dancing. “It could be safe if you danced only with your pod, but you’d need a larger than usual dance floor,” said Groman. “And if you are serving alcohol, it would be hard to manage people. No matter what, we ain’t doing no hora.” (The traditional Jewish wedding dance requires holding hands with whoever is next to you). Hauser and Mitchell notified their neighbors, assuring them they were observing safety protocols, and in a pre-wedding email, the couple instructed guests to remain masked except when at their tables and asked that they disinfect the bathroom after use. DJ Airsun played music, facilitated the Zoom and emceed, often giving reminders about maintaining social distance. “We know this is a lot of information,” the couple wrote to their invitees. “We are hoping that by letting you know this beforehand, we can all feel safe, relax and enjoy our time together.” Jamie Chang, founder of Los Altos’ Let’s “I Do” This intimate and virtual weddings, has joined with other vendors she works with to plan smaller-scale events. With rules in flux, Chang’s packages now include a totally remote wedding with flowers, cake and drinks for two shipped to the couples’ home and a virtual host and tech guru ensuring the festivities run smoothly; and a socially distanced ceremony with a few people in person followed by a reception live-
Chinatown from page J6
Media and the Chinese Culture Center — sees a cultural facility as an economic development strategy to help Chinatown’s recovery post-pandemic and to slow displacement and gentrification. Teng, who is the project lead on this three-year effort, describes the center as a mini-MoMA PS1, the contemporary arts center
in Queens, N.Y. The new cultural center will feature contemporary exhibitions that spark discourse about pertinent issues of the day, like global warming, domestic violence and racial justice. The group is raising money to purchase its own building and hopes to open it in 2024.
** *
As Teng describes the
T
Think back, if you can, to February of this year when Muni buses and BART trains still rumbled through the city packed with bodies and the novel coronavirus felt like a distant threat. When Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency for San Francisco on Feb. 25, there were zero confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the city; residents of the Bay Area were at low risk of infection; and the primary public health directives were to sing “Happy Birthday” twice while washing your hands, cover your cough or sneeze and stay home if you felt sick.
Seth Affoumado
Top: Jordi Miller (left) and Sam Pollock, who wed in the courtyard of Oakland’s Temple Beth Abraham with 13 people present, visit with remote guests in Zoom breakout rooms. Above: Anne Mitchell (left) and Joni Hauser are married by Judge Tara Flanagan in their Berkeley yard with Hauser's children, Jeff Asa-Hauser and Kit Asa-Hauser. The couple were unmasked only during the ceremony.
“I think having a virtual aspect to your wedding will remain long after COVID. It provides an opportunity to invite more people, to share and celebrate with those who couldn’t make it either for travel, health or conflict issues.” JA M I E C H A N G, founder of Let’s “I Do” This
streamed from home. Guests dance to the same music played by a DJ in their own living rooms, toasts are given and a caterer delivers the same meal to locals, while an edible snack is shipped to those out of town. Zoom breakout rooms are used to create “tables,” where guests can mingle in a smaller setting. Jordi Miller and Sam Pollock did exactly that at their recent wedding. “Visiting with our guests in the breakout rooms really did feel like going from table to table,” Miller said. The Albany couple’s June 28 wedding was supposed to take place at Tilden Park’s Brazilian Room in Berkeley, with a brunch for 150 following. First Miller’s bridal shower on April 4 turned into a Zoom shower, but the fact that she felt so well celebrated by more people than could have come in person made her feel OK about a Zoom wedding, too. The wedding itself took place in the courtyard of Oakland’s Temple Beth Abraham, which the groom grew up attending, with 13 guests in person. Rather than the elaborate brunch buffet they had envisioned, guests got individually wrapped bagel sandwiches from Berkeley’s Boichik Bagels. While it was too late to cancel the personalized yarmulkes that had been ordered, a friend of the bride improved on the theme by sending masks for the in-person celebrants that she had embroidered with each guest’s name. “Once I started getting that my big wedding wasn’t happening, I began to think about how I can make this fun for people,” said Miller. While some vendors were canceled, Miller and Pollock added Zoom producer Lindsey Sachs, who “toggled between the people who were there and those who weren’t,” said Miller. Wedding planners say that even after the pandemic ends, live-streamed weddings are here to stay. “I think having a virtual aspect to your wedding will remain long after COVID. It provides an opportunity to invite more people, to share and celebrate with those who couldn’t make it either for travel, health or conflict issues,” Chang said. “It’s an additional way to connect with people, so while the in-person aspect will always be desired, having a hybrid wedding expands those opportunities.” While these couples made peace with not having their dream weddings, ultimately, they came through the experience married and feeling celebrated by their friends and family. “Getting engaged and choosing to spend your life with someone is something to be celebrated, no matter what,” Chang said. “Just because things are different doesn’t mean these milestones should be missed.” Alix Wall is an East Bay freelance writer. Email: Culture@sfchronicle.com
arts center, I feel excited for Chinatown’s future, despite my anxiety over what the neighborhood is up against. This spirit — of community collaboration, of fighting for our rights and our space — has given Chinatown the strength to endure. When I think about Chinatown these days, I think about the baked goods I miss and the seniors playing card games
over cardboard boxes turned into makeshift tables at the park. But I also think about the connections that weave through our community. I think about the family associations that help new immigrants settle into this country, including one that bears my mother’s family’s name, and how when my grandfather first came to this country, he stopped in San Francisco Chinatown
on his way to Texas. What the pandemic has wrought in Chinatown saddens me, but Chinatown’s history, how it has relied upon itself, how the community organizes and advocates and fights, gives me hope. We have — and will — survive. Melissa Hung is a Bay Area writer. Email: culture@sfchronicle.com
Nearly six months later, we’ve internalized the span of 20 seconds at the sink, and face masks now muffle most people’s coughs and sneezes. But staying at home when we feel ill? For essential workers on the front lines today — and office denizens who may return to in-person work in the coming months — that’s a more complicated ask. It’s a directive that forces us to reckon with our collective responsibility toward each other and a public support system that often neglects those who need it most. Breaking the habit of working through illness will require a cultural and policy shift. But if we can get it right, it may be key to protecting us during this pandemic — and beyond it. We need an attitude adjustment, says Dr. David Spiegel, medical director of the Stanford Center on Stress and Health — and universal sick leave. Across the globe, 179 countries have a national policy of paid sick leave. The United States isn’t one of them. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 24% of civilian U.S. workers lacked paid sick time in 2019, and that number rises dramatically for lower income workers less financially capable of missing even one day on the job. “I’m very concerned about what it means this year, and it’s something we have to fix for every year,” Dr. Jody Heymann, founder of the World Policy Analysis Center at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, told Public Radio International’s “The World” in March. “We shouldn’t just be fixing it temporarily in 2020. We have to fix it for every year.” Both California and the City of San Francisco have enacted paid sick leave requirements, but even among employees with access to sick pay, many are in the habit of reporting to work when they’re under the weather. A 2019 survey by staffing firm Accountemps found that 90% of U.S. workers at least sometimes showed up at their jobs while sick; 33% said they do it all the time. Spiegel says that behavior reflects an American mentality of “don’t let anything get in your way” — the cliche refusal to take no for an answer or to acknowledge vulnerability that is both a strength and “also kind of a moral weakness.” “It’s a sign of honor that you don’t let anything slow you down. It creates an implicit pressure on everyone to be the same,” says Spiegel, who is also associate chair of psychiatry at Stanford. “Denial gets us through some terrible things, and it creates some terrible things.” During the coronavirus pandemic, that attitude, on display in grocery-store shoppers throwing hissy fits over mask requirements, is acutely dangerous. In an average year, showing up to work or social events with a cough or throat tickle could rankle your desk mates or friends. This year, it could kill them. “It’s one thing if you want to take a risk yourself,” he says. “If what you’re doing poses a risk to someone else, it’s a whole different story. This anti-collective ethos is really particularly troubling at a time like this.” Changing that mindset, Spiegel says, requires a shift from a me-first ideology to an acknowledgement that we’re part of a social group and our collective health is inextricably linked. At the grassroots level, he’s seen progress — neighbors masking diligently and people seemingly digesting the public health message of “I protect you. You protect me.” Nationally, however, Spiegel says, the rhetoric from President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders that the virus “will go away because I say it will is not helping the situation at all. There are still a lot of forces in the other direction.” One of the most important forces that would encourage people to stay home when they’re ill is universal sick leave. “Without sick leave people will tend to go to work when they’re sick,” says Patrick Mulligan, director of San Francisco’s Office of Labor Standards Enforcement. “It’s great to say, ‘Stay at home when you’re sick,’ but that means something very different if you have to go without pay.” While San Francisco law requires businesses to provide paid sick time, the people who fall through the cracks are often those who can least afford to miss a day of work or lose their employment: gig workers delivering groceries or driving for ride-hailing services and undocumented immigrants in low-wage jobs. In San Francisco, Latinos have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, accounting for 51% of cases even though they represent 15% of the population. “The people who can afford it the least are the ones who suffer the most if they get sick and can’t go to work,” Spiegel says. “The people lowest in the social hierarchy bear the highest burden.” That’s a problem even when there isn’t a deadly virus circulating in the community — when we’re infecting each other with run-of-the-mill colds and the seasonal flu — but COVID-19 has dragged the issue into the spotlight. It has also created the political will to address it, with emergency ordinances; relief programs; and grants meant to encourage workers to get tested for COVID-19 and to take time off to recover
Chronicle photo illustration
179
countries have paid sick leave. That does not include the United States
24%
Of civilian workers in the U.S. lacked paid sick time in 2019
90%
Of U.S. workers at least sometimes showed up at their jobs while sick
33%
Of U.S. workers show up to work while sick all the time
or quarantine if they’re positive or have been exposed. Joaquín Torres, director of the San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, points to new programs like Workers and Families First, which subsidizes 40 extra hours of paid sick time for employees of small businesses in the city, and the Right to Recover, which grants any worker in the city who tests positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing financial difficulties $1,285, the equivalent of two weeks pay at minimum wage. There’s no application process to receive the money, and “immigration status does not affect eligibility” it says in red type on the office’s website. As of mid-August, 659 people have qualified for assistance through Right to Recover, receiving a total of $847,000 so they can stay home, heal and avoid spreading the virus. So they don’t have to choose between exposing others and paying their families’ bills. “Those are hard choices for people,” says Mulligan. The last five months have shown that paid sick leave is a “societal benefit, not just an individual benefit.” Torres sees hope in the urgency the crisis has created to address the impacts of economic insecurity and systemic racism on communities of color. “These issues are not new, but our collective hope is that the commitment to meet these challenges continues long beyond this pandemic, from every part of society,” he says, “and that this awakening ensures that working individuals and families have the support they need to not only survive but thrive in our city.” Spiegel has felt some communal ties strengthen during the pandemic, when we all depend on each other to stay safe. Maybe they’ll endure after the immediate threat of coronvirus is over. “My neighborhood feels more like a neighborhood than it has. You walk up the street and you would be embarrassed to not wear a mask,” he says. “It feels like we’ve made some connections that will continue to grow afterward.”
Sarah Feldberg is an editor of the Throughline. Email: sarah.feldberg@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sarahfeldberg
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J10 | Sunday, August 30, 2020 | SFChronicle.com
T H E CO M M U N I T Y
A BIT OF FICTION: ‘THE SPECTRUM G E N E RAT I O N ’ By Carolina De Robertis
D
Leo Quiñones Sociology 308 March 15, 2030
Dear Professor Pérez-Bankole, No offense, but this assignment of yours has been rough. It’s 5 a.m. and I’ve spent all night starting draft after draft, writing and deleting, trying to get at what you’re asking for: Write about what you remember most about those first months of The COVID Era, and how you think they shaped your life. With all due respect: that’s impossible. Like most people my age, I can’t think of a single thing in my life that hasn’t been shaped by TCE, so it’s sort of like asking a fish to describe water. All the hoopla in the news about the 10-year-anniversary of it starting doesn’t make it any easier to fathom. That’s why I’m rebelling here and busting out of the five-paragraph essay format, to write you a letter instead. I’m breaking the rules, I know — but hey, that’s actually something the pandemic taught those of us who were kids back then: the rules of the world aren’t as stable as you think, and things that look super solid can fall apart at the drop of a hat, or the drop of a mask (see what I did there? stretching the metaphor? not bad for a science major, yeah? truth is I can’t help it, I was raised by an English teacher) and even the grown-ups in charge are actually winging it and freaking out inside. Once you live through that kind of disruption as a kid, it never leaves you, I think. The rules don’t seem immutable anymore. That can be terrifying, but it’s also kind of amazing. I know I’m generalizing, and that it’s probably bad form to speak for my whole generation when I can only speak for myself, and in any case you might still fail me on this essay for not following instructions. I’m asking you not to. I’m taking the assignment seriously, I promise. It’s just that this is the only path I can find into your enormous question. Everybody knows the story from the outside. Here’s what it was like on the inside, at least for me: it was as if the world had decided to fall apart but couldn’t quite make up its mind whether to melt or crumble or crack like an egg, as if it didn’t quite understand its own substance so it just kept wobbling between this and that type of dissolution. Weirdly, though, I don’t remember being very afraid. Angry, sure, that I couldn’t see my best friend more often and even then that we had to talk through masks and stay outside and keep it short, that I couldn’t climb on the monkey bars at the local park, that distance learning was so dumb and boring and chaotic and I still had to show up for it, that my fifthgrade graduation was a bunch of little boxes on a screen with all my classmates looking overdressed and hopeful and alone. It was only later that I understood how much some of them had been going through. Who’d run out of food, lost a parent to COVID, or been evicted from their homes. The full sadness of all that wasn’t visible to me yet, in those little online boxes. It would take us all many years to understand each other’s stories. Actually, I think we’re still learning to understand. Anyway: I was definitely among the lucky ones. My mothers kept us in a pretty strict lockdown the whole year. Family trips were canceled. Everything was canceled. Our house became our world. And it was a full world: two parents, my little sister, and me, plus my grandma who flew up to Oakland and moved in with us when it all started, because where she’d been living wasn’t safe. So our house was crowded in a way that kind of felt like a nonstop party. Grandma made us laugh and read the funnies out loud to us, we stayed up too late watching movies and learning how to make pineapple upside-down cake, and we got more screen time than before while the moms scrambled to work remotely and keep it all together. One morning, in June, we were all sitting in the dining room with the newspaper splayed open as we ate our scrambled eggs and bacon. The grown-ups were talking about the protests, and about the big photograph of Angela Davis, fist high in the air, leading a huge crowd from the Port of Oakland to Oscar Grant Plaza. I tried to tune out at that point, as I usually did at the mention of Oscar Grant’s name. Once, Mami had told me that Oscar Grant was murdered when she was pregnant with me, and that it had happened not far from our home, and though she hadn’t added anything like, and I thought about how that could one day be you, there was still something bleakly close and personal about his death, his name, that at 11 years old hollowed me out inside. So as soon as I’d gulped down my breakfast, I reached for my video game. But the grown-ups went on talking. “This reminds me of the ’60s,” Grandma said, “but it’s also
Community from page J7
or the have-nots. “You can go three blocks in one direction, and if you were driving in the car and your eyes were closed, when you wake up, you’d probably think you were in a completely different city,” Washington says. Potholes and trash abound in East Oakland, while the Oakland hills look like a “wonderland for the wealthy.”
He points to the duality of renters paying $4,000 a month for apartments downtown, adjacent to homeless encampments where residents lack running water. Many people don’t consider unhoused people living on their blocks a part of their community, Washington says. But this pandemic has urged Americans to think more deeply about who their neighbors include and
Chronicle photo illustration from Getty Images elements
Maybe that’s what I learned from The COVID Era: we don’t have to fear change. This isn’t some dystopian future where all is lost.
A B OU T THE AU T H O R Carolina De Robertis is a Bay Area writer whose novel “Cantoras” was released in 2019. Find her writing at www.carolinade robertis.com/
what that means, says Claire Herbert, a sociologist at the University of Oregon who studies housing. “Do you consider people who are visibly homeless a part of your community? Do you feel a sense of responsibility to them?” asks Herbert. “Who’s in my group? Who am I responsible for?” are questions that we’re being forced to reconsider, she says. The way Washington sees
nothing like it at all.” “What do you mean?” said Mama, who’d also finished eating and was at her machine at the corner of the table, sewing masks. Now I was listening, pretending not to. Grandma had some pretty incredible stories from back in the day, of risking her life to register voters in Mississippi, of marching, getting arrested and surviving Molotov cocktails thrown through the plate glass window of the house where she was sleeping. She knew some things. “The level of involvement,” she said, sipping her coffee. “The amount of white people on the streets, and really seeming invested. Maybe this can be an inflection point after all — though it shouldn’t have taken us all this horror to get here.” I remember the way sunlight spilled into the room and illumined her hands, wrapped around the coffee mug. Maybe that’s the memory I’ll pick to represent my early COVID days. Two sunlit hands, creased and beautiful, cupped around warmth. I wish my grandma could have been here to see the victories of this past year. Not that anything could justify the horrors. I mean, COVID alone — there are no words. Half a million people. I can’t wrap my head around that, and I’m a math guy. I’m glad there’s going to be a memorial. I get the national controversy about making it virtual instead of physical, but I think President OcasioCortez has the right idea. This piece of history just doesn’t belong to one city or geographic place more than others. The memory of it should be everywhere and nowhere, real and ethereal, anchored but also transcendent. Virtual. Like so much of our lives now. I looked up the roots of the word “virtual.” Turns out it’s from the Latin virtus: excellence, potency. So a virtual experience holds the essence of something, its excellence, without keeping to the same physical form. Virtual versus IRL is an outdated framework, really. It’s a false binary just like the one we have around gender, and, you know what, my generation sees through them both. Maybe we should be called the No-More-Binaries Generation, or the Spectrum Generation, or something. Ha! The problem is that young generations never get to name themselves. Unless that’s another old rule we can explode. Maybe that’s what I learned from TCE: we don’t have to fear change. This isn’t some dystopian future where all is lost. Those old narratives are so lazy. If all is lost, you can just throw up your hands in despair, and then what? Look at the climate crisis. We can’t afford those old despair stories anymore. The more complicated truth takes all of where we are, and tries to see it clearly. The more complicated truth is that I may be part of a different generation, but I’m also my grandma’s grandson, and we all have to pick up where past generations left off and carry the work forward. For me, though I’ll always fight racism, my main work is on a different but connected front. I’m an aspiring biologist of color in an era of ecological collapse. I have dreams about the collapse that are terrifyingly real, in which I hear the trees screaming as they burn, the ocean wailing a song of poison. It’s what gets me up in the morning and keeps me up all night poring over molecular configurations and calculus functions. Fear, maybe, but also determination, because there’s work to do and I intend to be part of it as long as I’m alive. Will I make it, as a scientist? And will it make a difference? I have no idea. But scared as I am, I have to try. My Mami has a proverb framed on the wall, in Spanish: El que no sabe de dónde viene no sabe dónde va. He who doesn’t know where he comes from doesn’t know where he’s going. OK, aside from the gendered phrasing, it’s deep, right? We look at the past to understand where we’re going, to help ensure we’ll have a place to go to at all. Now I feel like the floodgates are open — memories, thoughts, ideas, sparks. But I’m running out of space! What the hell? You said something once in VirtuClass about how the best thinking doesn’t actually lead us to answers, but to deeper layers of questions. I feel that happening. Does it go on forever? Is that a good thing? One more etymology-nerd-fact: the word “essay” comes from the Old French, “to endeavor, to attempt.” What if I never finish this essay? What if I’m just getting started? Yours, Leo
it, Bay Area progressivism has been masquerading as fairness for too long. Oakland has become a place where wealth has been extracted — but post-pandemic, Washington envisions his city as an investment of it. He imagines a place where city programs assist educators with down payments so they can buy a house where they teach. Where city officials and employees, like firefighters
and police, spend paychecks in the community where they earn them. Washington hopes that a wave of departures could be a healthy reset for the region, easing the burden on people who want to be here. “They’re holding onto hope that they can own a piece of their community,” he says.
Carly Stern is a Bay Area writer. Email: culture@sfchronicle.com