The BAAZ is Dead. Long Live Parklets!

The two-month-old experiment I dubbed the Burlingame Avenue Autonomous Zone (the BAAZ) came to a screeching halt Monday night.  I noted a number of reservations on the original post here.  The Daily Journal piece today highlights some of the same issues that I was concerned about as well as a few noted later by people venturing into the BAAZ-- like speeding skateboarders and bikers.

Burlingame’s outdoor dining scene proved too popular for its own good, according to frustrated officials who pulled the plug on a program promoting inappropriate partying during the pandemic.  “It just kind of turned into a festival out there with people not doing what they need to do,” said City Manager Lisa Goldman, in advance of councilmembers voting 4-1 to reopen Burlingame Avenue to traffic.

Furthermore, critics pointed to a recent survey of local businesses which offered mixed perspectives on the success of the closure program, with some merchants claiming it made their lives more difficult.  So rather than provide a forum for unhealthy behavior, Ortiz said he favored a proposal for establishing a network of parklets where restaurants and eateries could set up tables in a more controlled environment.

I'll just file that away in the I Told You So folder.  The piece doesn't mention the Broadway BRAZ but a quick look at Monday's agenda shows the BRAZ was also up for discussion and most likely met the same fate as the BAAZ.  If you are able to access the DJ piece as a subscriber, you will read about some council members suggesting more police enforcement of masks and distance while others think they have more to do than enforce such rules.  I didn't note any discussion of the much ballyhooed "community social worker" idea-- a la Berkeley's idiotic approach to handing out traffic tickets.

Parklets live on as they should have from the beginning.  I saw a couple new ones just sprouting, like Five Guys', and no doubt there will be more now.  Recall the estimate back in July that "the creation of parklets will result in a parking loss of up to approximately 60 to 70 spaces on side streets in the downtown area on both weekdays and weekends."  I'm thinking that will be more like 100-120 now that parklets are the only alternative.  The new parking structure is coming along (the second story is up) so perhaps by the rainy season, we will have more spaces.  Here's hoping our parklets designers have the resources to build nice ones like Truckee.

Here's an update photo.  I have to say, it's a little weird walking by the pedicure stand, but they were full so I guess it's just me.

Comments

[resident]

143 cases in Burlingame according to the county. https://www.smchealth.org/data-dashboard/cases-city

[Everything's Jake]

In support of parklets, my hope is law enforcement will ticket excessive noisy cars and motorcycles.

[Bruce Dickinson]

Joe, ya know, you told us so!! Well, if we were being totally objective, you guys "kind of" got some parts right. Hearing what Council had to say, was pretty obvious the main reasons for shutting this down were public health concerns as people openly flouted the rules. The fact that some (but not all merchants) were complaining was a secondary or even tertiary reason. Some merchants were seeing great success!

Let's put it this way, if everyone were obeying the rules and no complaints were made, the program would still be in effect. Given what I've been hearing (I am not venturing to Burlingame Ave due to my advanced age) it was a free for all and given it would make zero sense to dedicate more police/babysitting resources (like Brownrigg suggested, which is very impractical), yours truly would have pulled the plug as well. I think a consequence of stopping this program, more of our favorite restaurants will probably go out of business very soon (another unwanted 'second wave'). It's really too bad that people have such a hard time following rules!

By the way, why do people keep calling them parklets!???!

[Joe]

@BruceD. I guess I was expecting you to dive a little deeper on what is going on with the BAAZ. Council members have been getting an earful, probably both ears, from the merchants including some of the restaurant owners! It's likely the primary cause and the masks are the tertiary cause. The lack of masks might set some people off, but if that were the main reason and the program was so good for ALL involved, they would deal with that directly. There was no warning, just a cessation. I'm not saying the council members spun this on purpose, just that it's not all about the masks. But it is the easy reason to state.

[hollyroller@gmail.com]

This topic angers me.
Burlingame Ave should have been shut down as a Motor Vehicle Road to an Outdoor Mall years ago.
There is a pandemic going on.
The corporations that own 80% of business @Burlingame Ave. should get their heads out.
Close Burlingame Ave to all Car traffic.

[Joe]

I have to disagree. It's a valuable roadway and very helpful to a lot of merchants who opposed the BAAZ. You should talk to them.

The weekly city-by-city update on COVID happens on Fridays. We now have 161 cases in Burlingame. That 0.58% of the town. Half a percent. You probably have a higher chance of having your car broken into in the next month than getting COVID if you do the three simple things right.

[JP]

It is a parklet because instead of your big SUV you only park your skinny derriere.

[MAGA]

Joe, are you expecting the homeless to start coming down here from SF in the next month? I am.

And washing your hands, wearing a mask and social distancing ain't gonna stop that.

We don't need social distancing as much as we need socialist distancing.

[Joe]

I'm not sure. I don't have any reason to think yes, a couple reasons to think no, but just not sure. I also haven't been out to the Bayfront hotel parking lots where rumor has it some influx is happening. Maybe this week after the smoke subsides.

[Bruce Dickinson]

So guys, let's not extrapolate from a small data sample saying that because a few merchants complained about the Burlingame Ave street closure that all of them were dissatisfied with it. It may have harmed some off-street businesses and maybe some non-restaurant retailers, but talking to 3-4 guys doesn't paint the entire picture. Bruce Dickinson's guys knows some guys where business was doing just fine at several Avenue restaurants and will probably decline post the change.

Yours truly went on a recent visit to Palo Alto, and I have to say, their University Ave street closure is a lot more thought out vs Burlingame's. First not all of University Ave is closed..only a few select blocks. Second, all the side streets leading through University Ave were open. With a cafe latte in hand, Bruce Dickinson was observing the diners during lunchtime this past Friday. A lot of takeout orders at the restaurants, which could easily be accessed. Some restaurants had these beautiful, decked out fences that extended into the street (no ugly orange barriers). One of the side streets was actually closed and had a bunch of dining tables. People who were eating at restaurants who did not have enough tables took their lunches for takeout and ate at the numerous public squares.

In short, business was actually totally booming, demonstrating that a closure can be successful. No huge traffic situation, tons of take out orders, a lot of walk in customers. What I saw my friends was a plan for survival of the restaurants right in our own backyard!

Granted University Ave and the surrounding streets are larger than Burlingame's so that adds some flexibility, but it shows that other programs with cities with "can do" attitudes are able to thrive and implement a good plan.

Bruce Dickinson is going to be very worried if the current COVID rules continue into the fall/winter for the restaurants. Nobody is going to want to eat outside or in ugly "parklets" and indoor dining is still prohibited. Given that Burlingame's restaurants were not given the best chance to succeed (in comparison to Palo Alto's), I guarantee you proportionally more restaurants will close in downtown Burlingame compared to Palo Alto.

That should be no reason for celebration! We need to see a lot more creativity here!

[Joe]

Well, BD, I think we are in general agreement on this. I've seen the same thing much closer-- B St in San Mateo. Cross streets are open, there is much less reliance on the ugly orange hydro-barriers (sorry Syed, insisting on these for the full perimeter is a a mistake) and accommodating side street blocks. All good. So why do we (meaning our Council) vacillate from extreme to extreme????? Let's get it right before we have more empty storefronts!

[Cassandra]

SF’s designated hospital for the virus has 4 patients.
The council may be virtue-signaling for the Town Karens.
Open the schools, get back to eating in restaurants and let’s get the herd immunity going. It’s a flu.

[Fugit All]

And the hospital I work at in SF has 7 in the ICU alone, Cassandra. Herd immunity may not even be achievable if reinfection is possible. It's not the flu, it's a killer. Want to prove all the Karens wrong? Go out to some event where like minded people aren't wearing masks, catch yourself a little COVID, and good luck. The RNC is on right now, try there.

[SMH]

So, Cassandra is complaining about how few cases there are in 1 hospital?? You do realize that is due to people practicing distancing and wearing face coverings don't you? This is the whole point and no it is not just the flu. When is the last time that you had the flu and had blood clots in your lungs or a fever over 100 for 2 full weeks? Did your last flu leave you dependent on oxygen? And how do you think insurance companies will treat those who have future health issues due to Covid?

[Cassandra]

You are correct. Covid-19 is a killer, to those with pre-existing conditions weakening their general health. Those folks need to stay home and wait for a vaccine.

Others, who may get no or slight symptoms may need to go to work or school and, if they become ill, stay home until they recover.

If the hospitals become full, as was feared nearly six months ago and came to be a fear unfounded, then we can go back to slowing the economy and school routines.

ICU is a place I have been twice for over a month at a time.
It is a frightening place.
Do not wish me ill, it belittles your argument.

[Fugit All]

Who's wishing anyone ill? Exposing yourself to the virus is the way to "get herd immunity going," is it not? And you're wrong about the potential severity of illness in people without pre-existing conditions, but that's not convenient for your argument. (Nor is ignoring asymptomatic spreaders and longterm, chronic illness in survivors.)

[Cassandra]

Good points.
What is your vision for the near future?

[MBGA]

This is not the flu. The flu is influenza. So yes, this is not the influenza virus; this is a corona virus. We don't have much of a handle on corona viruses, especially ones like this. The vaccine business community has for many years searched for a cure for corona viruses and has never been successful. The world is throwing more resources at it now and maybe we will be more successful. Maybe not.

But to say that this is not like the flu is incorrect, in most cases. Like an influenza most of those that are exposed will be asymptomatic and most that catch it will have flu like symptoms and get over it. Many of us have been exposed. I say us but I have no idea if I've had it. I did have a runny nose for a month. No sore throat, no fever, no cough.

There are some people who get very sick and die from it and that is similar to the flu too. And there are people that have gotten it months ago and are not getting better quickly, which also happens to some people with the flu. Detailed statistics are hard to acquire and confusing, both in what is reported as a case and some confusion about incorrectly stating the cause of death.

We know some demographics of age and race but finding out the other obvious stuff like are they fat or maybe unhealthy in other ways is not possible with what we are given. The statistics are very poorly reported. But for most people that are not pretty old, or don't have health conditions making them prone to all types of other problems too, this is not a killer disease. It is like the flu, if you are unfortunate to get it. Try to stay healthy. Wearing a mask is not very good for you. But if you are going to wear one, try to at least breathe through your nose, not your mouth.

So how do we deal with this. I've been trying to find out what other states and other countries do. It is really hard to parse this stuff to any conclusion with the reported stats because they are extremely insufficient. Countries that look like they are doing better than us because of more restrictions of businesses or tracking or strong enforcement of lockdowns may be doing better because of the weather, the demographics (a younger population), less air conditioning or more, northern hemisphere or southern. Different amounts of obesity. Something like 40% of Americans are obese. Or even are they using therapeutics that we can't use?

States and countries that didn't do the lockdown can look better one month, and then worse the next, so trying to tease out what is going on is really impossible. Increases in reported cases don't mean that much if the reports don't explicitly state the increase in the amount of tests. In fact to not report it that way is actually just manipulative propaganda. Spikes in cases can simply mean more people are getting tested. And amounts of cases on their own doesn't mean much of anything anyway since that doesn't mean the person is sick, it just means he is carrying the virus.

And here's a big one: when we do these numerical comparisons of results comparing one country's rates of 20/100,000 to another's 50/100,000 we act as if this is a really an important datapoint. In almost every other field of study these tiny differences are considered "in the noise" - in other words meaningless.

I was up in Idaho a couple months ago in the suburbs, similar in density to here in Burlingame and there is much less mask wearing up there. People were out and about enjoying themselves (although the movie theaters were closed and no concerts) and I thought what is going on? A month later I read that out of the blue there was a surge in Idaho. Oh my god those ignorant fools, we good locked-down mask-wearing wiser Californians must be doing it right. But from my point in the paragraph above, the reported surge turned out to be that it went from 4/100,000 to 16/100,000 or something like that.

So one of my points is that this whole thing is being poorly reported to make you be very scared. And there is a big goal behind that.

[Cassandra]

Thanks. Put better than I.

[Fugit All]

MBGA, I'm very scared of this virus not because of the reporting on it but because I've seen up close what it can do and have personally put a few of its victims in body bags. The bigger project is in making the general public doubt its lethality and transmissibility in order to protect the economy and it's coming from some of our highest, so-called "leaders."

[Joe]

The positivity rate has been my go-to metric from the beginning. Right now San Mateo County is at 5.6%. Slightly up from 5.0-5.2% in the early days, so to the point above--lost in the noise for most statistical analysis.

[Fugit All]

Anecdotally, I can tell all of you that COVID admissions to the ICU I work at are higher than ever. These, in conjunction with our usual load of critically ill and post-surgical patients mean that the last two weeks have seen our >30 bed ICU at near total capacity, limited only by the number of nurses available. We're not a public hospital and this is still summer. Get your flu shots, keep wearing your masks and washing your hands, and consider that worrying about outdoor restaurant seating is a luxury.

[Sign Me Up]

Not to the restaurant owner...........gotta love the unionized workers.

[Sign Me Up]

Fugit All seems to have forgotten some facts about his/her leaders

On Jan. 31, the day the president issued a China travel ban, Mr. Biden decried Mr. Trump’s “hysterical xenophobia and fear-mongering.” The Biden campaign now says he wasn’t referring to the ban, but it sounds like he was. Campaigning the next day, Mr. Biden seemed to attack the ban again, saying, “Disease has no borders.”

It wasn’t only Mr. Biden; it was also the people around him. Ron Klain, a longtime top adviser and former Biden chief of staff, opposed a travel ban on Jan. 28, a few days before it was announced, calling it “premature.” Other Biden advisers were also dismissive. On Jan. 30, Biden confidant and coronavirus adviser Zeke Emanuel told CNBC viewers to “take a very big breath, slow down, and stop panicking and being hysterical.” The virus will “go down as spring comes up.”

Throughout February, Mr. Biden’s lieutenants kept minimizing the threat. In a Feb. 6 op-ed, Biden coronavirus adviser Irwin Redlener wrote that a global pandemic was “not very likely” and predicted the chances of “getting a severe, potentially lethal form of the Wuhan virus is negligible.” On Feb. 11 Mr. Klain again played down the likelihood that Covid would become “a serious epidemic.” “The evidence suggests it’s probably not that,” he said. Two days later, Mr. Klain tweeted, “We don’t have a COVID-19 epidemic in the US but we are starting to see a fear epidemic.”

Suggesting in a Feb. 20 interview that there’d been “an overreaction,” Dr. Emanuel again suggested “warm weather is going to come and, just like with the flu, the coronavirus is going to go down.” Then on Feb. 24 House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged tourists in San Francisco to “come to Chinatown.” Mr. Klain echoed her three days later, saying people should not be dissuaded by “needless fears about coronavirus.” He added that everyone “should tonight go down to Chinatown in their city and buy dinner or go shopping.”

On Feb. 29, with news of the first U.S. coronavirus death, Dr. Emanuel told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “running out and getting a mask is not going to help.” Then on March 12, coronavirus adviser Lisa Monaco and Mr. Biden double-teamed Mr. Trump’s Europe travel ban: She went on CNN and played down its importance while he tweeted, “A wall will not stop the coronavirus.” Mr. Biden also kept holding large rallies until March 9 and talked up in-person voting as late as April 2.

[smh]

Well, that was a 5 paragraph waste of time. At this point all we should be focusing on is what is happening or not happening NOW. You can go on your google machine and dig up any Biden wrongdoing regarding the early stages of the pandemic. Do keep in mind that he was not POTUS at the time and was not privvy to daily briefings by the CDC and other health professionals. That said, the current POTUS is a failure of a magnitude the world has never seen. A failure in business, in politics and in his personal life. Ex: all those wives and porn stars..... Nice try tho.