#280 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Monday February 21)
Good morning!
DINING OUTDOORS
I have maintained for a long time (predating the pandemic) that Californians boast the best weather in the country and yet have too few options for outdoor dining. I think the same way about the lack of live musical entertainment, living in one of the music capitals of the world, but that’s a different musing…
In any event, one of the greatest gifts of the pandemic (one of the few) is that we have seemingly endless outdoor dining choices. Some are elaborate constructions in under-utilized parking lots, made to feel like a garden. Others are streetside constructions that are reminiscent of European piazzas. These streetside options have created a vibrant culture of a street life that largely has been unheard of in American cities. People are dining under the stars (with heat lamps!), amidst the liveliness of busy streets full of pedestrians. And people can finally enjoy a margarita outdoors because the ridiculous rules of the Alcoholic Beverages Commission have been waived. All of this at the expense of reducing parking spaces by less than 3% and making it a little tougher to secure the services of a valet. It has created a liveliness that I will be sad to see go.
There already are moves afoot in many cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, to make many of these temporary “fixes” more permanent. I’ll be the first to admit that there are some minor health issues and some of the structures are a bit tacky and prone to filth or fire risk—both requiring some level of regulation to protect the public. But there should be simple remedies to make these outdoor dining options part of a rich urban experience in our otherwise often disconnected cities.
YET LOCAL GOVERNMENT MAY YET SCREW IT UP
Just when things started going well, the chinks in the armor already are appearing. Several cities are ending their outdoor dining or putting up roadblocks to (not wholly unreasonably) require structures built to code. But since the codes don’t contemplate these structures, they need to be “eased up” to reflect the nature of these structures, their uses, and the desires of restauranteurs and their patrons. The Voice of San Diego reports, “City staff said they don’t see any way around putting restauranteurs through a more intensive process to make their structures permanent and bring their slapdash structures up to code.” That is a laudable goal; provided that such processes do not become unnecessarily burdensome and end up “killing a good thing.”
STREET LIFE RETURNS—BUT PERHAPS ONLY TEMPORARILY
In an excellent article in The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf notes that “In San Francisco, the relaxation of rules during the pandemic enabled clusters of restaurants to create “the image people have of a cafe culture that had never taken hold in the city previously,” the architect Charles Hemminger told Architectural Digest. Restaurateurs were allowed to more easily build “parklets”—essentially, wooden platforms atop what had been curbside parking spaces—and use the new structures for outdoor seating. But now, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, “though the Board of Supervisors voted in July to make parklets permanent, the city also imposed new rules and regulations that may force many restaurants to tear their outdoor dining structures down.”
And even though the politicians want to extend the waivers for existing structures, apparently building inspectors continue to threaten fines.
The article shows the following diagram published by the City for how to get a “parklet” (a dining platform over curbside parking) approved. The article says “The primary visualization of the process is part Candy Land, part Kafka”:
Finally, the article concludes “If you read the city’s guidelines in full, most of the discrete steps can be defended in isolation. Then you realize that, taken together, they add up to an exacting series of design requirements and restrictions on use––all to put some tables and chairs atop a wooden platform.” The whole in this case is not the sum of its parts. The various parts, not intended for “parkets” become an impediment to the evolution and improvement of our cities. As the journalist Ezra Klein pointed out on Twitter, “every interest was considered except the one that the law was supposed to achieve—letting a successful experiment continue.” Of course there are safety and cleanliness issues but reasonable accommodations must be made. As Klein notes: “It’s not crazy to try and take everyone’s concerns into account. But you end up with an outcome everyone kind of hates.”
Ah, government again contributing to the argument that, in trying to do too much in the name of good, it ends up defeating the public good it was trying to encourage. Hopefully common sense and reasonableness will prevail.
In the meantime, I’ll take advantage of the weather, the night air, the vibrancy of the street, and the sense of community—all at a safe distance.
A FINAL WORD FROM ANDREW TOBIAS
Happy Birthday, Abe (Feb 12) and George (Feb 22). Far from tearing your statues down, we should shine them up . . . and judge you in the context of your times.
Have a good day,
Glenn
From the archives: