SAN FRANCISCO
The San Francisco Bay Area, a destination for foodies and wine drinkers across California and abroad, is resuming outdoor dining, even as the pandemic continues to threaten the region.
The state’s relaxation of stay-at-home orders could provide a big boost to the region’s tourism industry, with some caveats.
Like much of California, the Bay Area remains a tapestry of limits on social gatherings, a product of individual counties setting their own rules based on state guidelines, which can be hard for people outside the region and even inside to follow. Though the area’s county health officials have been more unified than their counterparts in Southern California, the re-openings announced Monday could change depending on infection rates caused by new strains of the virus.
When restaurants can reopen outdoor dining in San Francisco and each Bay Area county
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1of6Miguel Batam (right) serves (rom left) Katie Wilcox of Sausalito, Keshav Saharia of San Francisco and Katie Donick of New York their lunch while seated at the outside patio at Fish restaurant in Sausalito, Calif. Monday, January 25, 2021. Fish is one of the first restaurants to re-open for outdoor dining after Governor Gavin Newsom lifted shelter-in-place orders. Monday morning, Marin County announced restaurants could open immediately.Jessica Christian/The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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A jogger runs past empty outdoor dining tables in San Francisco on Friday, December 4, 2020. As Coronavirus cases continue to surge San Francisco could once again see restaurant closures and shelter in place rules.Nick Otto / Special to The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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A group of California wineries and restaurants sued Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state public health officer this week in an effort to overturn the state’s ban on outdoor dining and wine tasting.
The Wine Country Coalition for Safe Reopening, a group of more than 50 businesses in Napa and Sonoma counties, alleged in the lawsuit that California’s ban is arbitrary, irrational and unfair, and that it has hurt local businesses and thousands of workers who lost their jobs.
California added new COVID-19 restrictions in early December amid rising coronavirus cases and hospitalizations. The state hit a high of more than 45,000 new cases reported in Dec. 18, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Carolyn Cole/ Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
More than four dozen Bay Area restaurants and wineries have banded together to sue California Governor Gavin Newsom over the ongoing public health orders that require those business to cease some vital services during a surge in the coronavirus pandemic, including on-site dining. The lawsuit, filed this week by the Wine Country Coalition for Safe Reopening. based in Napa and Sonoma counties, is the latest salvo in a growing procession of court cases pushing back on the ongoing lockdown orders across the state. The Bay Area region’s intensive care unit bed capacity (the primary metric for enacting lockdowns, per state public health officials) fell below the 15 percent threshold roughly a month ago, triggering the lockdowns; the 11-county Southern California region, Los Angeles County included, has been under those same stricter stay-at-home orders since basically late November.