Smiles, excitement in Sonoma County as California fully reopens

Lora Brenner had never met the first customer who walked into her Santa Rosa furniture store on Tuesday morning, but the woman was so excited by the arrival of California’s long-awaited reopening that she gave Brenner an enthusiastic hug before she headed home.

“It was a nice way to start the day,” said Brenner, who has worked at Old Town Furniture on Fourth Street for 30 years.

Brenner said she and the customer, who bought a pair of vintage signs for her home in Arnold, “chatted for a while about how happy we were to not wear a mask.”

“It’s nice to see people’s smiles again,” Brenner said.

The statewide reopening allows businesses to drop social distancing requirements and capacity limits. People who are vaccinated against COVID-19 are no longer required to wear masks.

Peggy Henecks, who lives in Carmel, began her 74th birthday celebration on Tuesday at Omelette Express in Santa Rosa, where she ate brunch outside with her sister-in-law.

Henecks said she’s thrilled to stop wearing a mask everywhere she goes, but she’ll gladly cover her face inside businesses where that remains the norm.

“I’m just going to follow what other people are doing and pull my mask down whenever I get the chance,” she said.

Barber Kyle Corbin of Santa Rosa’s Daredevils Barber Shop wore a blue surgical mask to work on Tuesday, but his clients aren’t required to cover their faces anymore, he said.

“It’s whatever makes you feel comfortable,” Corbin said.

Beginning Tuesday, the Fourth Street shop will allow customers who are waiting for haircuts to sit as close together as they’d like in the shop’s waiting area, according to Corbin.

Previously, customers had to wait outside or stay six feet apart with masks on if they lingered inside shop.

“There’s a sense of relief that we’re getting back to a little bit more normalcy,” Corbin said.

At El Mercadito Roseland, the site of the former Dollar Tree on Sebastopol Avenue, the varying attitudes on the state’s changing COVID-19 rules were clear among the small business owners who share the space inside.

Jose Garcia, who runs JC’s Discount, an electronics business on the west corner of the store, wore a gray fabric mask as he repaired the circuit board for a piece of audio equipment. Though he’s been vaccinated, he knows there’s still a small chance he could contract the coronavirus from any one of the clients who enters the store.

About 15 steps away, Janet Sanchez, who sells artisan clothes and items from Mexico at the store, organized merchandise on a rack sans-mask. She hoped the state’s reversal of the state’s mask mandate would encourage more clients to visit her business.

“Now we’re seeing, even if they’re not buying, they’re coming out,” Sanchez said. “The vaccine is giving a lot of people confidence.”

‘They’re excited to be back’

Among the businesses most relieved about the state reopening are gyms and fitness centers, whose clients over the past year were asked to endure workouts wearing face coverings.

“People absolutely hated working out in masks,” said Sonoma Fit owner Adam Kovacs as he walked around his Highway 12 gym in Sonoma on June 15. “It’s just not a comfortable experience when you’re breathing hard and sweating.”

Kovacs said the end of California’s mask mandate “couldn’t come soon enough, and didn’t.”

The Sonoma gym, one of three sites that Kovacs owns, was closed for long stretches during the pandemic and lost more than 50% of its members in that time, he said. Kovacs questioned whether the business would survive.

“The last thing people need is an excuse to not work out,” he said.

Member Emily Weber has been taking spin classes at Sonoma Fit since the gym’s partial reopening in March.

“I love being back inside and maskless,” she said early Tuesday. “It was kind of nice spinning outdoors but there’s nothing like the energy inside the room here when it’s loud, dark and packed, and it never would have worked with masks on.”

Sonoma Fit was quiet by midday on Tuesday. The fitness center’s survival depends on how things shake out over the next six months, Kovacs said.

“We can’t get members back overnight,” he said. “It’s going to take time.”

At Coach’s Corner in Sebastopol, about a dozen members – most unmasked – were comfortably using the equipment in the afternoon.

Although the gym was able to open in March at restricted capacity, membership has dropped by half, said Drew Hicks, who works the front desk.

“But we’ve been getting people back slowly,” Hicks said, as he was signing up a resident for a summer membership. “They’re excited to be back.”

‘We can breathe again’

The parking lot was packed at Sonoma Market on West Napa Street in Sonoma. Tuesdays are senior discount days at the store, and the customers streaming toward the entrance fit the profile, for the most part. The vast majority of customers on Tuesday wore masks from their cars to the store’s entrance, and kept them on inside.

But Lorene Reed stood unmasked near the market’s smoothie counter.

“Yippee,” Reed said. “We can breathe again.”

Reed said she had reluctantly complied with COVID protocols throughout the pandemic, but she became frustrated by inconsistencies in the government health guidelines.

On Tuesday, however, she was overjoyed. “I’m so excited about the town opening up again,” she said. “Smiling faces, human connection.”

The employees at Sonoma Market, on the other hand, were all wearing masks.

“Yeah, we’re still doing it,” said a clerk who was restocking the wine aisle.

Vicente Osequeda, the assistant store director, said the ongoing mask standard for employees was a dictate of Cal/OSHA, the state agency that monitors workplace safety.

Was it strange to encounter unmasked patrons in the store?

“Just like we got used to wearing the masks, it’ll take a while for it to feel normal to see people without them," Osequeda said.

An unmasked woman with a gray ponytail pushed her cart toward the exit. “It’s time,” she said of the end of the mask mandate. “It’s past time, in fact. We can’t breathe in those things, and besides, they don’t work.”

‘Like the wild wild West right now’

At one of the shaded outdoor tables at downtown Petaluma’s Café Zazzle Tuesday afternoon, Robin Palmer, 65, leaned back in her chair and pushed her empty lunch plate forward. She and her husband, both maskless, stopped by for a long lunch after running errands that morning.

“I’m so happy that we don’t have to wear masks today,” Palmer said. “My husband and I are both vaccinated, so it’s nice we don’t have to worry about putting one on when we get up or go inside or anything. It makes everything feel more leisurely, more calm.”

Her two Australian shepherds sat on either side of her like sentries, their tails thudding on the pavement as dozens of similarly bare-faced pedestrians streamed past her along Kentucky Street clutching coffees, ice cream cones and shopping bags. For the first time in a while, Palmer said, it felt like there was a celebratory feeling to the day.

As a waitress glided past her with a plate of food for a nearby table, Palmer lifted up her empty wine glass, smiled at the waitress and mouthed silently, “Another, please!”

Across the street from the café along Kentucky Street, Brian Tatko, 41, was preparing to open bar and event venue Jamison’s Roaring Donkey.

Tuesday marks the first time he’s able to fling open his doors without strict capacity limitations or a requirement that he serve food alongside booze.

In the hour before staff arrived, Tatko sat inside the empty bar and checked his email one last time for any new guidance or rules from the state and county governments. After more than a year of changing public health regulations, he said he still felt like he was operating on limited, and sometimes conflicting information.

“It feels like the wild wild West right now, I’m still unsure about what today is going to look like,” he said. “But we’re ready to go, we’ve been ready to go. Now it’s just a matter of taking off masks and going back to capacity.”

The team at Retrograde Coffee was excited to accept personal cups for the first time since the pandemic hit. The shop, located on the corner of Main and Burnett in Downtown Sebastopol, didn’t undergo a drastic makeover upon the reopening. Shop owners Casey Lanski and Danielle Connor removed the mandatory social distancing stickers that dotted the café floors for the past year, as well as the “masks required” inside signs from the door.

“You can take your masks off inside now,” Lanski said.

The baristas are still wearing masks, Lanski added, as he noted their customer base isn’t quite ready to go completely maskless.

“We want people to feel comfortable,” Lanski said.

Next week the coffee shop, which serves sandwiches and pastries, plans to bring back its community-sized tables.

“We’re looking forward to it,” Lanski said.

Friends Parker Silverman, Sean Cohen and Donnie Aldridge drove up from Marin to Sebastopol to enjoy flights of Crooked Goat Brewing’s beer. The brewery, based in the Barlow, opened up to indoor customers without restrictions.

“It’s really great to be able to be outside without our masks, especially when it is so hot out,” Silverman said.

Aubury Doherty, general manager of Copperfield’s nine bookstores throughout the North Bay, said Tuesday’s official reopening brings hope and relief.

“We just went over everything with our employees yesterday,” she said. “Obviously, we were concerned there might be last-minute changes, but (the state) has stuck to what they've been working on for the last several weeks.”

Her biggest concern — and now relief — was mostly around masks and how the state would handle the guidance after June 15.

“We’ve consistently had people not wanting to wear masks,” Doherty said, “but I would say it’s far and few between. It’s not by any means many people.”

Abe Hamami, owner of Grazie Restaurant in downtown Novato, is hoping Tuesday’s reopening of the state will mean a continuation of increased business like he’s been experiencing over the past nearly two months.  He said Tuesday that his ongoing problem is finding enough workers.

The Marin County restaurant owner said half of his staff has not returned to work, a problem that will become bigger as business volume increases.

Grazie’s menu, which includes American, Italian and Middle Eastern dishes, has been key to getting clientele back. That variety is what Hamami calls “the triple-play winning combination for surviving after the pandemic.”

At Kenwood Market and Deli in Kenwood, owner Lakhwinder Kaur said about 20% of customers today were not wearing masks. Though she is fully vaccinated, as are the market’s employees, Kaur said she will continue to wear a mask until she has more clarity from officials.

“I haven’t heard anything from the Health Department [about] us. I’m waiting for their email,” she said.

Lakwinder, 43, expressed mixed feelings about the easing of restrictions. “I’m from India, and they said it was no more in February and March, and then they got a really big wave at the end of March, two weeks later. So yes, I’m worried about it, but at the same time, I’m happy, because we are really dependent on tourists.”

“I feel hopeful,” she said. “A little bit worried, but more hopeful. I’m excited to see the people’s faces. It’s been a year.”

Gary Quackenbush and Abigail Peterson also contributed to this story.