Arcades feel gamed by reopening rules
Offagain orders confusing to owners
Reopening during the pandemic feels like a game Megan and Shawn Livernoche just can’t win.
The couple opened a High Scores Arcade in Alameda in 2013, and expanded to Hayward in 2016. Business was going well — until the coronavirus struck and the Bay Area began sheltering in place. Both videogame arcades have been shuttered since March, and things are increasingly dire. Rent is due, and arcade machines not in use must be maintained.
Megan Livernoche got a flicker of hope last month, when a Hayward official mistakenly told her that arcades could reopen, but city and county officials soon said that was not the case, and High Scores Arcades remained closed.
High Scores’ plight shows how businesses outside of broad categories like restaurants or hair salons can suffer under shelterinplace rules, and how the variance in state and local rules and miscommunication about the details can compound owners’ frustrations. It also highlights the difficulty in enforcing such rules when businesses misunderstand or choose to ignore reopening mandates.
Shawn Livernoche said he’s not sure if his business is
“going to be here when this is all over.” Things have “kind of come to a grinding halt,” he said.
Arcades fall under the broad category of “family entertainment centers,” for which the state of California gives guidance about reopening. But what kind of entertainment businesses can reopen, as well as when and
how, varies based on the colorcoded tier for coronavirus infections a county falls in, as well as local rules. Outdoor skate parks, batting cages and outdoor playgrounds can reopen even under the mostrestrictive purple tier, while indoor businesses like arcades must wait until a county reaches the leastrestrictive yellow tier, and then only if local officials also approve.
Alameda County remains in the orange tier, which allows some types of indoor family entertainment to reopen, but not others.
Arcades are considered “activities with increased mixing and proximity” along with trampolines, indoor laser tag, indoor roller and ice skating, indoor skate parks, and indoor playgrounds, according to the state. The close quarters and frequent touching of shared game controls are obvious points of concern for health officials.
Within the Bay Area, only San Francisco has reached the yellow tier, and the city has not yet approved arcades to reopen. Such a step might come in midNovember, according to a timeline on a city website that says “bowling alleys, indoors, and identified other family entertainment centers” could be considered then.
But it could also be delayed as city officials face rising case counts. They announced Tuesday that San Francisco will scale back its reopening, despite remaining in the yellow tier. By Friday, indoor dining will be prohibited once more, and gyms and movie theaters will face reduced capacity, among other restrictions.
At least one arcade had been operating in Alameda County as of Tuesday.
A Chronicle reporter visited Plank, a business that includes a restaurant, bowling alley and arcade in Jack London Square, and found it was operating its indoor arcade last week, in addition to the restaurant. Restaurants were allowed to reopen indoors in Alameda County at 25% capacity in late October, as were indoor bowling alleys, but arcades remained prohibited. Plank advertised its arcade as reopening on its Instagram account.
When asked about the status of the arcade Tuesday, Plank general manager Jorge Garcia said the business had decided to reopen the arcade based on an Alameda County document he had been provided dated Oct. 21 that named arcades as being allowed to reopen and was not aware of a subsequent document dated Nov. 3 that corrected the county’s guidance. He said the arcade would immediately close.
It’s unclear whether enforcement is a priority for the county in the event of such errors.
Megan Livernoche said Paul Nguyen, Hayward’s economic development manager, told her that the city “doesn’t have the bandwidth to enforce” the county’s coronavirus rules.
Reached by The Chronicle, Nguyen declined to say whether he had told any business that the city would not enforce health code violations.
He said the city of Hayward’s approach to enforcement is educational, adding that he’s not aware of any code violations by businesses in the city.
Regarding the confusion surrounding the reopening of arcades, Nguyen said it’s a “matter of interpretation in terms of how the county complies with the state.”
State guidance on indoor arcades remaining restricted in the orange tier is unambiguous, and counties cannot set looser rules than the state. The state last updated its guidance for family entertainment centers on Oct. 20, a day before Alameda County announced more business reopenings. It was not clear why the county’s initial guidance was inaccurate, but officials conceded they had made a mistake.
In San Francisco, arcades are allowed to reopen at 50% capacity with modifications, according to the state’s industry guidance on reopening, but the city does not allow them to operate yet. The famed Musée Mécanique on Fisherman’s Wharf, for example, is still closed and is running a GoFundMe fundraiser for financial support.
Jay Cheng, public policy director at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, said he’s not aware of any confusion that has arisen in the city around reopening rules, but said he could see how it might happen. “We’re in a situation where the public health guidelines are changing all the time” and local governments may not always be synchronized with the state, he said.
“I think it’s a really complicated time for everybody, and so this kind of confusion, in some ways, is inevitable,” Cheng said. He added that San Francisco’s business community has “developed a better rhythm with our local government.”
In Alameda County, other arcades were also affected by the countylevel confusion. Brandon Yuen, coowner of Luv 2 Play, a playground facility that operates indoor arcade machines in Dublin, said he was informed by the Dublin Chamber of Commerce that he’d be able to reopen Luv 2 Play at 25% capacity by Oct. 23.
He said that he didn’t have any plans to reopen his business anyway because it wouldn’t have been financially viable to reopen at 25%, but that confusing directives from authorities can hurt any business.
“The last thing you want to do is open up just to know that we have to be shut down again,” Yuen said. “There should be better amount of communication and a little bit more clarity. Either open up all the way or not open up at all, because 25% doesn’t make any sense.”
Luv 2 Play closed in March and laid off 15 or more employees, Yuen said. He’s hopeful his business will bounce back in the long run.
Michael Schiess, founder and executive director of the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda,
said that there are ways for arcades to operate safely in the midst of the pandemic.
He pointed to a pinball museum in Roanoke, Va., that spaced out its machines for social distancing, along with checking patrons’ temperatures, mandating the use of masks, and increasing cleaning.
He said he wasn’t getting his hopes up about reopening because he’s gotten used to the pandemic’s choke hold on entertainment businesses like arcades.
Schiess said he wasn’t confused when Alameda County announced some indoor entertainment businesses could reopen last month.
“I did know some arcades who thought that they were going to be able to reopen, but that wasn’t the case. I guess it’s hard,” he said. “I’m not trying to make excuses for the county, but I guess it’s hard for everybody.”