Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/19/san-francisco-lockdown-missio.html
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Keep on rockin’ in the free world?
I’ve seen 2 bushiness so far in Seattle downtown boarded up (Could be more, my outside time is super minimal)
One was a barbershop and it looked like the window was smashed before being boarded up.
The second is a bar and the boarding was precautionary.
Somewhat related, the place I occasionally take my dog to for daycare/boarding is closing permanently tomorrow. They had been struggling for months to find a new location they could afford after the property owners decided to raze the building to build condos in the future (sometime after 2021). With most of the customers not needing daycare while working from home and the concern of the front desk being a vector of transmission they decided to use their savings to give all employees severance packages rather than waste it on trying to keep the doors open when so few now need the service. Most of the employees have been there for the 8 years my dog has been going.
I fear this is the first of many local businesses to close.
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It looks bad for morale. 
I hope that we will soon see a post with photos of all the amazing community art popping up on those boards overnight. With proper social distancing, of course.
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Not just the Mission; I live in the Castro, and at least two shops have also boarded up their windows.
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Spanish citizen living in lock-down here. Spain has being locked since March 14 approximately, no public facing business other than supermarkets, groceries, pharmacies and gas stations*. People can only go out on the streets to go to the those business and then get back home ASAP, walking the dog or autistic people.
Police departments are fully operational and patrolling as normal, checking on everyone the encounter on the streets. Even homeless people has being given a safe place to stay in indoor sport arenas and congress halls.
What does it means? That crime has fallen to an all time low. Anyone suspicious, any strange noise pop up like a sore thumb. No house robberies because all houses are inhabited now. No criminal can move around the city because the police stops and scrutinizes everyone.
This is not societal collapse, no riots or mad max gangs roaring the streets: its people in their houses coming up with new ways of entertain themselves and their neighbors. It is a time when solidarity and empathy shines and those egoistic and willfully careless are punished by society.
I hope that you, Americans, end experiencing the same because it is a great vaccine against cynicism, fear and all the vile toxic trash that Fox News has being vomiting the last thirty years.
PD: There are no toilet paper shortages.
*And some exceptions for laundries and hair dressers.
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Don’t those storefronts have built-in metal barriers that can roll down when the businesses are closed?
I clearly remember that sort of thing being de rigueur in The City once upon a time
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Ha! I was just thinking this. One of the things that always strikes me as a big difference between NYC & SF. Of course, you don’t see these as much in central Manhattan anymore, but that’s about it.
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Austin, TX checking in.
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Glad to see the Spanish government is more helpful and decent than the French one. Some cops already fine at least one homeless person for being on the street without any permission slip.
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The baby boom nine months from now is going to be epic!
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Yeah, my favorite dog groomer has closed their doors forever (mostly because they groom shelter and foster dogs for free to socialize them & so they look good when people come see them). With the shelter in place they have no income, and the strip mall they are in still wants rent.
While I’m at it a great breakfast place a few miles from there also closed. The owner had to let go all but one employee because they were only serving about 20 breakfast orders and the cash flow couldn’t even pay his last employee let alone pay to order more food to cook. The landlord is also uninterested in any sort of rent deferment so he shut shop and now the building will be empty until someone breaks in I guess. (he paid the last worker out of his own pocket)
Yeah, while all the deaths are horrible, this is also bad.
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Not half as epic as the divorce rates…
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Compounding levels of bad. 
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Several years back my design studio helped re-brand a bunch of businesses in another part of the city as part of a grant to revitalize the then-unfashionable Third Street corridor. One of the new guidelines was that businesses couldn’t have bars and metal shields covering the windows because they contributed to the appearance of a blighted, crime-ridden environment.
As I recall removing all that 1989-Batmobile-esque protective shielding apparently did NOT result in the uptick in smash-and-grabs and vandalism that many feared, so that was nice.
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“We’re doing it so we can sleep at night,” said Needles and Pens owner Breezy Culbertson.
THEY know they’re guilty of gentrification and that payback and retribution are lurking around the corner.
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