San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Subdued celebrations abound as the Bay Area improvises Independence Day away from the danger of crowds.
“Normally I’d watch a parade and go to a barbecue. Not this year. It’s definitely different.”
The Fourth of July Saturday might just as well have been the fourth of any other month, as the Bay Area came to the realization that it’s not that easy to eat a hot dog through a face mask.
Most everything was closed or canceled, and the things that were open were hard to get at. Sitting on the beach or a park lawn was possible for the masked and the socially distant. Parking nearby, in most cases, wasn’t.
The official holiday was on Friday, the Third of July. Everything about the Fourth of July in 2020 was a little different.
“I’m 84, and this isn’t like any Fourth of July I’ve ever experienced,” said Carl Vogt of San Francisco, who was putting golf balls at the Presidio Golf Course. There were no holes on the practice putting green, to prevent people from reaching in with their hands and spreading the virus. Dozens of golfers putted at imaginary holes and imagined the balls going in.
“We’re all fighting the pandemic together, and it’s challenging this year,” Vogt said.
At Ocean Beach, parking lots were closed and enforcement officers stood by, ready to do their enforcing. At Crissy Field, a long walk was required from any conceivable parking place in a land far away. There were fewer picnics, fewer vendors hawking Uncle Sam hats and Old Glories on a stick, and, in general, a lot less redwhiteandblue regalia and paraphernalia than usual. On the northern waterfront, usually jammed with revelers, the real live nephews of Uncle Sam, and various other Yankee Doodle dandies, seemed to be taking a holiday from the holiday, at least from the starspangled part of it. Cameron Yuen of Alameda found a space in the Sports Basement parking lot near Crissy Field, took his road bike out of his car and prepared for a 25mile ride to the Marin Headlands and back.
“Normally I’d watch a parade and go to a barbecue,” he said. “Not this year. It’s definitely different. The state America is in right now is different. There’s a lot to think about.”
Lorcan Gately and Venezia Zandrelli were lounging on the Presido’s main post lawn with their dog, Skyler. Gately is from Dublin — the one in Ireland, not the one in Alameda County. He said he already knew what it was like to celebrate being rid of the British, and while it is a noble cause for celebration, there are reasons this year to do it quietly and reflectively.
“I think there’s a lot less to celebrate,” Zandrelli said. “There’s the pandemic. There’s injustice. There’s global warming. There’s all the plastic in the ocean.”
In San Francisco, it was just possible for early birds like Gately and Zandrelli to find lawn space for their nonpicnic. In San Mateo County, all beaches were shut, parking along Highway 1 was forbidden and the price of a citation was higher than the skyrockets that weren’t flying.
Although parades and public gatherings were canceled, in Danville a determined group of celebrants organized an unofficial driveby “parade” with a lot of honking and flagwaving from windows. About 50 cars drove down Danville and San Ramon Valley boulevards, according to police Sgt. Steve Stapleton, who called it “more of a cruise than a parade.”
Bay Area skies were, of all things, clear. Most Fourths of July they aren’t, at least above the Golden Gate, where pyrotechnicians insist on trying to light up the sky. It did seem to be a great day for fireworks viewing, were there any to view. But with the big fireworks shows called off, the field was left to amateurs with their low
Cameron Yuen of Alameda wattage safeandsane boxes, and various scofflaws, whose booming, illegal explosions have been heard for weeks across the Bay Area.
The weather was hot and dry, with Bay Area temperatures in the 80s and 90s. The heat and the plethora of illegal fireworks were blamed for fires in Contra Costa County that burned structures, vehicles and vegetation but caused no injuries. In San Francisco, a fireworks explosion blew three windows out of a house in the Excelsior district, firefighters said.
Solitary Fourth of July celebrations were the rule, not the exception. In the Presidio, Jennifer Soloway jogged from Inspiration Point to the Golden Gate Bridge and back. It’s not easy to jog while wearing a mask, she said, especially uphill. She did take the mask off when her fellow joggers were 30 feet distant and put it back on when they weren’t. The year of 2020 is one of sacrifice and making adjustments.
Jogging, she said, is “quiet and contemplative,” and that’s not such a bad thing.
“This year is so different,” she said. “There’s the pandemic. And social change. And injustice. There’s a lot to think about when you’re running.”