SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR BLASTED FOR DANCING MASKLESS AT CROWDED CLUB
Breed’s city recently reinstituted indoor mask mandate
At San Francisco’s Black Cat club last Wednesday, San Francisco Mayor London Breed rose from her seat and started getting down to the music.
In a room full of maskless people, the Democratic mayor moved her hips, swung her arms and appeared to sing along at the top of her lungs as the R&B group Tony! Toni! Toné! performed their 1996 hit “Let’s Get Down.”
But after a San Francisco Chronicle reporter posted a video of the mayor busting moves at the nightclub, critics noted that Breed may have been violating a city health order: She wasn’t wearing a mask, a requirement for patrons who are not eating or drinking indoors.
“Elected officials have a greater responsibility to model the behavior that’s necessary to control the pandemic,” John Swartzberg, an infectious diseases expert at
University of California Berkeley, told the Chronicle. “Any time the elected officials behave like this, it undermines public confidence in them and that translates to people saying, ‘Well, if the mayor can do this, I can.’”
The mayor deflected criticism at a news conference Friday, insisting that she was nursing a drink when she started feeling the music. “I got up and started dancing because I was feeling the spirit and I wasn’t thinking about a mask.”
She also implied that adhering to the city’s mask mandate might not be necessary. “Make sure you are vaccinated because of the requirements, but don’t feel as though you have to be micromanaged about mask-wearing,” the mayor told reporters. “Like, we don’t need the fun police to come in and try and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing.”
San Francisco, with six other surrounding counties, reinstated its indoor mask mandate in early August as transmission of the Delta variant caused a regional spike in COVID-19 cases. Like New York City, San Francisco last month began requiring proof of vaccination to enter bars, restaurants and gyms.
As the city’s mask and vaccine mandates remain in effect, San Francisco’s coronavirus cases remain relatively low, with an average of just over 100 new cases per day. About 73 percent of the city’s population is fully vaccinated.
Explaining that she was proud San Francisco nightlife is returning to normal, Breed told reporters on Friday the focus should have been on the performance of Tony! Toni! Toné! — not her own maskless dancing.
“I’m not going to sip and put my mask on, sip and put my mask on, sip and put my mask on,” Breed said. “While I’m eating and I’m drinking, I’m going to keep my mask off.”