After protests, Californians mostly keep off beaches
Californians seemed to heed Gov. Gavin Newsom’s admonitions to stay home Saturday, bringing to a quiet end a week that started with packed beaches in Orange County that drew widespread condemnation, followed by new beach closures that triggered raucous protests against the state’s shelter-in-place orders.
Instead of the flocks of sunbathers defying health directives that some had feared, beaches from Orange County through the Bay Area were largely empty, with a park district in the East Bay reporting busy but manageable hiking and biking trails.
In Santa Cruz County, signs on Highway 17 warned would-be day-trippers that beaches there would be closed from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. to deter crowds during the peak hours.
No dogs were running on the sand at Its Beach, which typically would be packed with them. Instead, the only barking came from a group of sea lions sunning themselves on a rock offshore.
It was a far cry from last Saturday, when smaller but still concerning crowds went to local beaches, said Bill Saxton, a 67-year-old stand-up paddleboarder who lives near Natural Bridges State Beach. He said the closures were a good idea.
“If people come together down on the beach,
it’s going to lead to someone dying,” he said.
People are allowed to swim and surf when the beaches are closed, but being on the sand for any reason other than going to or coming from the water is prohibited. Protests against shelter orders might be grabbing attention, Saxton said, but as far as he can tell, “the vast majority of people are on board and trying to help.”
Only a few dozen people were strolling Main Beach just before it closed at 11 a.m.
Among them was Kristen, a bank employee from Oakdale who declined to give her full name. She said she hadn’t known about the closure until she arrived in Santa Cruz after a two-hour drive from the Central Valley with her sons and one of their friends, believing beach closings were happening only in Southern California.
“We’re just going to play it by ear and see what happens,” she said.
Not long after, a Santa Cruz police pickup truck drove up to Kristen’s group, and a man politely told them they needed to leave.
In Half Moon Bay, restaurant owners said people were generally respecting orders to stay off the beaches and to limit their trips to walking distance from their homes. San Mateo County has limited
beaches and parks to people who live within 10 miles, and officials have closed parking near the beach to prevent crowds.
Lewis Rossman, executive chef and a partner at Sam’s Chowder House in Half Moon Bay, said the restaurant had been serving crab cakes, lobster rolls and even pints of ice cream to go.
He said that it’s hard to know which customers live in the small beach communities along the coast, but that business has slowly been picking up over the past few weekends, which has allowed him to bring back a few workers out of the nearly 150 let go amid the coronavirus closures.
“On the weekend you definitely do see more traffic
on Highway 1, for the most part, people are playing along,” he said.
The restaurant is next to the beach and has a large parking lot, so Rossman said he met with the sheriff’s department and ended up closing off a large portion of the lot when officials restricted beach access.
“There’s not a lot of people on the beaches,” he said. “We haven’t seen anything like Newport.”
Newport Beach in Southern California became the focal point of a statewide fight about beach closures and the state’s shelter-inplace orders after an Orange County Register photo of a crowded beach went viral. There were some reports Newsom might close beaches statewide, but on
Thursday he decided to close only those in Orange County.
On Friday, as many as 3,000 protesters gathered in Huntington Beach to protest the closures, calling on Newsom to reopen the state, according to the Register.
The coronavirus crisis has wreaked havoc on the global economy and pushed 3.9 million Californians to file for unemployment. However, polls show the shelter order is supported by a majority of state residents, and despite progress flattening the coronavirus curve, the number of cases continues to increase: Friday was the deadliest single day in the state in over a week, with 98 new fatalities reported.
On Saturday, the sands were mostly empty in Huntington Beach, though people sporadically lounged there, some with beach umbrellas set up.
Many others were biking, walking and jogging along the pathways. A helicopter began circling overhead, telling people that the beaches were closed under state order and that everyone should leave. A surfer walking toward the beach aimed his middle finger at the helicopter.
In Laguna Beach, 80-plus demonstrators, some on the sand and in the water, made their displeasure with the governor’s order known.