It’s like old times, or at least like the Before Times. Every Fourth of July, the San Francisco Mime Troupe premieres a new musical comedy political satire that tours Bay Area Parks for the rest of the summer, with donations encouraged to keep the show going.

Only for the last couple of years that hasn’t happened. Though SFMT has kept its hand in during the COVID-19 pandemic with a few radio serial podcasts, the theater collective has held off a return to parks until now.

Now the Mime Troupe is back in parks with a new show appropriately titled “Back to the Way Things Were,” though, of course, the nostalgic title is tongue in cheek. It’s the troupe’s first touring show in Bay Area parks since 2019’s “Treasure Island.”

Written by Michael Gene Sullivan with Marie Cartier, “Back to the Way Things Were” does feature a family attempting to go out and do things after being cooped up at home because of the pandemic, but the show’s not really about COVID at all. It’s about voracious capitalists profiting off human misery and destroying the environment, and basically everything being terrible and getting worse.

Small wonder that Zoe, the teenager at the center of the play, has become so nihilistic. Played with scowling exasperation by Alicia MP Nelson, Zoe volunteers at an unhoused placement center, but she also doesn’t believe there’s any hope for the future and doesn’t pretend otherwise.

By contrast, her parents are blithely optimistic, cheerily singing that things are at last getting “back to the way things were.” Norman Gee and Lizzie Calogero keep up a comically sunny, old-timey mom-and-pop demeanor as Ralph and Alice — yes, like “The Honeymooners.” Ralph is even an ex-bus driver who’s now an Uber driver, while Alice just got a new job as a package sorter at a fulfillment center. Of course, the world outside their door turns out to be a parade of horrors giving just a small sampling of how messed up our society is today.

Aside from Nelson as Zoe, all of the actors play multiple roles. Calogero portrays a harried but dedicated social worker, while Gee shows up as a patient but endlessly delayed client waiting for housing help with his volumes of paperwork.

Andre Amarotico is a smooth and smarmy venture capitalist looking to privatize social services, the glad-handing guy who’s obviously going to become the villain of the piece. He also plays an overworked fast food employee, a helpful street protestor, a predatory cop and a shattered idealist.

Like 2018’s Mime Troupe show, “Seeing Red,” this one involves time travel. Keiko Shimosato Carreiro appears as Book, a seemingly crazed visitor from who-knows-where in a cowboy hat, long duster and coveralls (fun costumes by Brooke Jennings). Book is jumpy and paranoid about all the surveillance devices that we all routinely carry and install that allow a mysterious “Them” to track our movements. (The show’s weakest running gag is about whether to call them “They” or “Them,” as if that were a point of legitimate confusion.) And she keeps trying to draw Zoe into her mission to save the future.

Directed by longtime collective member and frequent performer Velina Brown, it’s a lively show showcasing the Troupe’s trademark quick shifts of scene and character, aided by Carlos Aceves’ versatile set. With music and lyrics by Daniel Savio, who leads the three-piece SFMT Band, the songs in a variety of styles are fairly catchy, especially the chipper title tune.

At 100 minutes without intermission, it’s actually one of SFMT’s longer musicals, as some other recent ones have been just a little over an hour. It’s fast-paced enough that it doesn’t feel overlong so much as meandering, less focused on a particular issue than sampling a smorgasbord of social woes that capitalism has wrought. Like Zoe, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by it all and conclude that we’re doomed — at least in the absence of fanciful sci-fi solutions like the ones she stumbles into. But even so, kudos to the Mime Troupe for calling out America’s broken and sabotaged systems and demanding that we somehow collectively do better.

Sam Hurwitt is a Bay Area arts journalist and playwright. Contact him at shurwitt@gmail.com or on Twitter at twitter.com/shurwitt.

IF YOU GO

What: “Back to the Way Things Were”

When: Through Sept 5; various locations and times, including at 7 pm July 20 at the Mill Valley Community Center, 180 Camino Alto, Mill Valley

Admission: Free, donations accepted

Information: 415-285-1717; sfmt.org

Rating (out of five stars): ★★★★

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Before firefighters had even arrived, teachers and students from Rosa Parks Elementary watched as smoke was coming out of the residential building.

The schoolyard is right behind the apartment complex.

“I yelled for my amazing co-workers to clear the yard and move the kids away from the fire,” said Cicily Ina-Lee a teacher who, along with her colleague Vincent Reyes, ran toward the apartments.

Both teachers pulled down the fire escape ladders. Reyes went inside to rescue residents.

“I went inside the building here when the fire first started. I saw the fire it was pretty heavy on the roof and that’s when I saw the last person hopefully come out of the building,” Reyes explained.

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One of the residents, who did not want to give us her name, described the teachers’ efforts. “And they were screaming and knocking and calling and trying to get us out and when the doors opened they went in and rescued the old people. They were fantastic,” the resident said. She managed to take her two parakeets with her.

Josh Gant was walking in the area when he saw some of the other victims being taken away.

“They were bringing one lady out, she was burnt really badly on her face and hands. Then they brought another lady out, she had smoke all over her and they brought another lady out, smoke all over her, and they were all like 80 years old, I guess,” added Gant.

Eighteen people were displaced in what exhausted firefighters described as a fast-moving blaze. It was a rescue effort aided by two teachers who thought of their neighbors first.

“We’re teachers, so we care about other people. Hopefully anybody would do the same things,” said Reyes.

The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Copyright © 2022 KGO-TV. All rights reserved.

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It’s the sort of sight you’d only see in San Francisco. You’re chilling on the Marina Green with your friends, sipping a Philz Coffee and shivering in the fog, when all of a sudden, a robot with a smiling face rolls up to your group. “2 cookies for $7,” reads the text on its side. And they’re not just any cookies: They’re those really trendy ones from that new bakery you just heard about. You want to hate it, but you also really want to try those cookies.

This is the scene portrayed in a TikTok I came across recently, soundtracked to a jaunty indie rock song. And it wasn’t just a one-off: These robots have also been spotted hawking cookies and other treats in Dolores Park, Golden Gate Park and the Embarcadero.

@kailynowak robot cookie machines will take over the world #sanfrancisco #fyp #marina ♬ Love You So – The King Khan & BBQ Show

The company behind the entering robots is called Tortoise, a Mountain View-based robot delivery company that recently pivoted to “Mobile Smart Stores,” or “the world’s first robotic remote-controlled store-on-wheels,” as it claims.

“We had a remote control grocery delivery robot, and we were deploying that in a bunch of different markets,” said Tortoise co-founder Dmitry Shevelenko. “We saw the same thing happening again and again — whenever the robot would be parked, people would walk up to it and talk to the robot and interact with it.”

He said that when the company asked people what they were expecting from the robot, people thought they could buy something from it.

“As is often the case, your customers are a lot wiser than you are,” Shevelenko said. “We kind of took the insight to heart.”

A Tortoise “Mobile Smart Store” prowls around Dolores Park.

Courtesy of Tortoise

It only took one modification to turn the grocery delivery robots into miniature mobile stores: installing a tap-to-pay card reader in the top of the container lid. People who want to buy something just tap their card, the lid unlocks and they grab their box of cookies from inside. All the while, the robot’s remote controller, who can be stationed halfway across the world, is watching the transaction and playing audio messages to guide the consumer.

For those wondering what’s stopping people from robbing the robots, the fact that it requires your credit card information before the container unlocks discourages most people from taking more than their fair share. Plus, it has a camera prominently displayed (a not-so-subtle reminder that we are literally always being surveyed).

“We’ve done hundreds of transactions, and there hasn’t been a single person who’s taken more than one box,” Shevelenko said.

While Tortoise is based in the Bay Area, its launch is worldwide: Robots will soon also be popping up in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, London, Denver, Dallas, San Diego, Santa Cruz, South Carolina and Missouri, hawking everything from headphones to truffles.

A customer retrieves a box of Bake Sum pastries from a Tortoise robot.

Courtesy of Tortoise

Bake Sum, an Oakland bakery selling Asian American-inspired pastries, was one of Tortoise’s first customers. Owner Joyce Tang is a friend of Shevelenko’s — they used to work at Facebook together — so she was happy to give Tortoise a try for its fee of 10% of gross sales.

“Pastries don’t require refrigeration or heating to transit, and that makes it a lot easier for the kind of logistics required in a mobile smart store,” Tang said. “So it was kind of an easy, natural fit.”

Over the past few weeks, Bake Sum has sent its robot into San Francisco parks to sell cookies. Every time the bakery has used it, Tang said, it’s sold out.

“It’s actually a great way for us to widen the market a little bit and get a little bit more exposure in areas that we don’t normally get to,” Tang explained. “So I think it’s fun, and it makes it a lot more convenient to get our pastries, given we’re only open so many hours a day and you have to come to Oakland most of the time.”

A tortoise robot stationed in front of Bake Sum, a bakery located at 3249 Grand Ave., Oakland.

Courtesy of Tortoise

Tang has also tried stationing the robot in front of Bake Sum after its normal business hours to sell pastry boxes. Since the bakery has quite limited hours — it’s only open Friday to Monday until 1 pm — it allows them to drum up more business after hours in a time of labor crisis.

“I think while the business environment is still kind of weird and evolving, Tortoise definitely gives us a lot more flexibility to be able to pull off another sales channel without a crazy amount of overhead,” Tang said.

These are certainly not the first robots to pop up in Bay Area businesses — over the past few years, we’ve seen robots waiting tables, robots giving manicures and robots delivering food. As robots have begun to infiltrate more and more of our everyday life, particularly during the pandemic, fear that they are taking jobs from humans grows more palpable.

Kiwibot, a robot food delivery startup based in Berkeley, responded to these fears in a 2020 SFGATE interview by arguing that it was actually creating jobs: Its bots, like Tortoise, are not autonomous, so an actual human must be employed to navigate them. But these companies tend to outsource that labor to countries with cheaper labor — Kiwibot employs remote workers in Colombia, and Tortoise’s are based in Mexico City.

A customer retrieves a box of Bake Sum pastries from a Tortoise robot.

Courtesy of Tortoise

San Francisco hasn’t exactly been hospitable to delivery robots. In 2017, the city strictly limited the number of delivery robots allowed in the city and banned them from most sidewalks.

This is partially why Tortoise made the shift from delivery robots to “Mobile Smart Stores”: A business doesn’t need a permit to park a robot in front of its own private property. As for the park sales, that’s not strictly legal. But Shevelenko says that element is not their business model — the focus is more on stationing the robots in front of businesses — and putting the robots in parks was more just for testing purposes.

“The thing that just obviously we want to be cognizant of is in some of those cases, you’d need a mobile vending permit. … We don’t want to run afoul of any of those,” Shevelenko said. “So I think it’s a question for merchants that are using us in the Bay Area. Wherever they’re getting permits, that’s where they’ll be deploying their robots.”

Tang says she’d love for her cookie-selling robot, which she’s named Leonardo, to make more appearances in San Francisco parks or elsewhere. She’s even considering making an Instagram account for Leonardo so people know where to find it. The use of robots in restaurants has always been of interest to her, she said.

“That’s always been in the back of my mind, but with the way that small businesses work, I’ll never have enough time or resources or energy to dedicate to mechanize my workflow like this,” Tang said. “So it’s kind of the perfect partnership that Dmitry gets to focus on what he’s good at, and I get to focus on making the pastries themselves. And it enables us to reach more people together than we could have otherwise done alone.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF / BCN) – With San Francisco planning to upgrade the car-free route along John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park, city officials said Wednesday they would ask city residents to contribute to these plans.

The city carlessed most of JFK Drive between Transverse and Kezar for the first time at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, to make way for social distancing for people who walk, jog and bike.

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Since then, the car-free route has become hugely popular, with San Francisco Recreation and Park officials seeing a 36 percent increase in recreational use along the road compared to pre-pandemic numbers. In addition, the car-free initiative has also reduced accidents with serious injuries on the road to zero – compared to more than 50 such collisions in the last five years.

Because of its success and in an effort to better serve residents, officials from Rec and Park and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency are now looking for ways to improve the route.

The agencies’ shared Golden Gate Park Access and Safety Program allows residents to provide feedback through an online open house, scheduled online office hours, virtual open house, pop-up information centers and tours of the park.

Specifically, the program is asking residents about options for JFK Drive and other parking streets, including permanently banning the current closures; Return to pre-pandemic configuration; or providing managed vehicle access to the restricted vehicle park on JKF between Eighth Avenue and Tansverse Drive for westbound traffic only.

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Proposed new services in the park to improve usability and accessibility include the establishment of parking spaces accessible under the American Disabilities Act; Establishment of taxi stands in the music hall; Creation of a drop-off zone in the station’s garage; Modernization of the existing parking shuttle service; Expansion of bike share and roller share services in the park; Allowing cycle rickshaw services; and modifying intersections to improve safety and traffic congestion.

“Public feedback is critical to determining the future of JFK Drive after the pandemic, and we look forward to your thoughts and experiences,” said Phil Ginsburg, general manager of the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, in a statement. “The Golden Gate Park belongs to everyone, so neither security nor access can be neglected.”

“The Golden Gate Park car-free route was designed to provide a safe recreational space during COVID. It turned out to be a huge draw, bringing more people to the park, serving commuters between sunset and downtown, and creating safe space for kids to learn to drive, ”said Jeffrey Tumlin, SFMTA Traffic Director.

To find out about virtual information events, upcoming park tours and personal events, visit sfmta.com/accessggp or sfrecpark.accessggp. In addition, the virtual open house, which runs until November 25th, can be found on the storymaps website.

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© Copyright 2021 CBS Broadcasting Inc. and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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DUBLIN (KPIX) – More hungry wildlife is venturing into the backyards of the Bay Area because of the drought.

The total rainfall in the Bay Area this year is well below normal and according to the United States Drought Monitor, the counties of Alameda and Contra Costa are experiencing exceptional drought conditions.

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In East Bay Regional Parks, this means wetlands and ponds are drying up and many of the native plants and trees are dying, taking a huge toll on wildlife.

“You come in – this is the best restaurant in town if you’re a deer or something,” says Dayle Hall.

He has fenced off deer around his vegetable garden and other parts of the property. Hall has lived on the border of Las Trampas Regional Park for 10 years and sees plenty of wildlife moving through the area but says there is more than ever this year.

“We get a lot of deer coming down in search of food – food, water, whatever,” he says.

The drought is taking its toll, according to experts at East Bay Regional Parks.

“This is one of the worst years we have ever known. We see that many of our ponds and streams dry out extremely early, ”says Matt Graul, Chief of Stewardship of the EBRPD.

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This means that all kinds of animals come into the neighborhood in greater numbers and more frequently to look for something to eat or drink

“Coyotes move to areas they haven’t moved to before, again because they’re looking for water,” says Peter Flowers, who runs the Lindsay Wildlife Hospital in Walnut Creek.

Quite a few people in West Dublin have captured coyotes wandering the neighborhoods with surveillance cameras at home and then posted their footage on social media sites like NextDoor.

Dayle says he also sees more wild turkeys, skunks, and raccoons.

“Animals usually come later. I would say earlier in the evening, when it’s not that dark, they are a bit more confident or desperate, however you want to look at it, ”he says.

EBRPD officials say they already have plans to make their country more drought resilient. It is planned to increase the water capacity in all parks by expanding existing ponds and restoring natural streams.

“Now we just want to speed up our efforts and what can we do, things that we have planned in a couple of years and say how can we do it faster? possible because we really don’t have time to wait any longer, ”says Graul.

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Flowers says while the animals are stressed from the drought and may be roaming the neighborhood more regularly, it’s important not to expose them to food or water. He says the animals will become dependent on it and will never return to their natural habitat.

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After closing since March, the reopening of six major recreational lakes and the surrounding parklands in the East Bay Hills has crowned a number of park openings as the Indian summer sweeps through the Bay Area.

The Del Valle Reservoir and Quarry Lakes opened last week and have reopened to the public along with Lake Chabot, Los Vaqueros and San Pablo Reservoirs and other lakes.

“We sold out our 23 rental boats on Monday,” said Kent Hintzman at Los Vaqueros Marina. “At the weekend, pontoon boats were the first to sell out, and after an hour and a half we run out of boats.”

Of 350 parks and recreation destinations in the Greater Bay Area, all but about 30 are now open to the public in some form, including all but a few lakes and most beaches in the states and counties.

In warm weather in the region this week, many parks are under fire warnings. For full details on what is open and closed, see The Chronicle’s Outdoor Guide and Tracker.

Outside with Tom Stienstra

Three main areas will remain closed after the late summer forest fires: the interior of Point Reyes National Seashore; the East Bay Hills in the Sunol-Ohlone Regional Wilderness and the Round Valley Regional Preserve; The heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains in the Big Basin Redwoods and nearby Sam McDonald, Memorial and Pescadero Creek County Parks.

Here’s the view over the Bay Area:

San Francisco: With COVID restrictions mandating the wearing of masks, social distancing, and disinfecting common surfaces, all but a few parks and recreation areas are a breeze. Party boats had a successful salmon (and halibut) run at Fisherman’s Wharf, with the season open until November 8th.

The most famous closings are parking in the Candlestick State Recreation Area, which is only allowed on foot or by bike, and Thornton State Beach, which remains closed and where access from the cliffside parking spaces is a long-term problem.

Marin: After the Woodward Fire, most of the Point Reyes National Seashore is open, including Pierce Ranch, Drakes Estero, Drakes Beach, Mount Vision, Limantour Beach, and Palomarin – as well as camping at Wildcat Camp and the boat docks in Tomales Bay. The gated park area is bounded by the Bear Valley Visitor Center, Limantour Road (although the road is open), Arch Rock, and the coast south of Wildcat Camp. The road to Point Reyes Lighthouse and Chimney Rock Headlands is closed at the turnoff to Drakes Beach.

Elsewhere, all of Marin County’s beaches, 39 wildlife sanctuaries, and boat ramps are open.

Peninsula: In San Mateo County, 14 of 23 county parks are open. The main closings are the parks that were in the zone of the CZU Lightning Complex on the edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

All 26 protected areas managed by the Midpenisula’s Regional Open Space District are open, including Long Ridge and other protected areas on the edge of the CZU Lightning Complex.

The boat ramps at the harbors are open at Pillar Point, Oyster Point, Coyote Point, and Redwood City. In the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve, hand-launched car-top boats are accessible (at high tide).

Santa Cruz Mountains: On the edge of the CZU Lightning Complex zone, Castle Rock, Portola Redwoods, and Butano state parks have reopened, with limited campsites in Portola and Butano.

In the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Redwoods State Park in the Big Basin and the adjacent Little Basin are closed for at least a year after most of the park’s infrastructure has been destroyed.

The Skyline-to-the-Trail is of course closed, as are the trail camps along the route.

Three county parks south of La Honda are currently closed for fire fighting: Sam McDonald, Memorial, and Pescadero Creek County Parks.

East Bay: Of the 73 parks in the East Bay Regional Park District, all but a handful are open. The most notable fire-fighting closures are in Round Valley, Morgan Territory, and the Sunol-Ohlone Wilderness.

In hot weather this week, news that all but one lake (Anza) in the hills of the East Bay is open could bring welcome relief to thousands of residents nearby.

Major recreational lakes now open for boat trips include Los Vaqueros (north of Livermore), Chabot Lake in the Castro Valley, Del Valle (south of Livermore), San Pablo in El Sobrante, and Quarry Lakes in Fremont.

Other lakes open for hiking but not boating include Lafayette, Shadow Cliffs in Pleasanton, Contra Loma near Antioch, and Briones (near Martinez).

Santa Clara County: Santa Clara County’s 29 county parks are open (along with all open spaces).

Camping is possible at Coyote Lake, Grant, Mount Madonna, Sanborn and Uvas Canyon. Boating is possible again at the reservoirs Calero and Lexington (with reservation for the start). Park reservations are now required for Uvas Canyon every weekend at www.goutsideandplay.org.

Tom Stienstra is the outdoor writer for The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @StienstraTom

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