California will drop the mask requirement inside K-12 schools. The new indoor mask policy will take effect on March 12.

gov. Gavin Newsom announces the state will continue to adjust its policies based on the latest data and science. According to the California Department of Public Health, nearly 3% of all of the state’s COVID-19 tests in the past two months were positive.

“We cannot predict the future of the virus, but we are better prepared for it and will continue to take measures rooted in science to keep California moving forward,” Newsom said.

San Francisco Unified School District, however, will continue the indoor mask mandate for public schools.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highly recommends wearing masks inside schools by students and staff.

SFUSD’s press release states that masking is “one of the least burdensome policies on schools.”

“It helps prevent infections among students and staff and their families, and reduces missed school days,” San Francisco Unified School District Public Relations Manager Laura Dudnick said in an email.

San Francisco Board of Education President Gabriela López in an email said the district agrees to keep the “important safety tool” and will keep the mandate in place until the end of the school year.

Cassondra Curiel, president of the United Educators of San Francisco, a teachers union, said that there is a need for students to have high quality masks since many elementary school students are not eligible for the booster vaccine. When asked if teachers prefer masks, Curiel said it’s more nuanced than a yes or no.

‘Do we all love wearing masks?’ said Curiel. “The answer’s probably no, it’s not a loved thing but it is a necessary thing.”

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The streets of Pacific Heights on a Tuesday night are not a typical setting for a history lesson. The teacher, who cosplayed a cross between a Victorian gentleman and a performer from the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, does little to make this any less weird.

When Christian Cagigal, owner of SF Ghost Hunt and sole tour guide, told the story of Mary Ellen Pleasant – an abolitionist dubbed the “Mother of Civil Rights in California” – the 32 tour participants seemed to be attached to his every word.

Cagigal could look like a steampunker from the context of the tour. His night uniform consists of a black caban, a pink bow tie and a black top hat with an outwardly curved brim. He said his Victorian style outfit is common among spirit guides. He was armed with an old fashioned lantern to complete the look.

“I think we’re all just trying to mimic the Haunted Mansion archetypes,” Cagigal said in a pre-tour interview.

Cagigal started SF Ghost Hunt with his then business partner Jim Fassbinder in 1998 and made it the first ghost tour in town. At the time, Cagigal was studying theater at SF State. The two already knew each other from San Francisco’s amateur wizarding scene; he said Fassbinder initially got in touch because of his penchant for mixing storytelling and magic.

In front of the Healing Arts Building on Bush Street, Cagigal begins the tour about an African-American capitalist with three contradicting biographies during the SF Ghost Tour on October 26, 2021. (Cameron Lee / Golden Gate Xpress) (Cameron Lee)

When Fassbinder retired in 2016, Cagigal took over. Since then, he said he has made a few updates, mostly on social justice and feminism topics. The latter was initially a coincidence, he said.

“It’s a very women-friendly program,” said Cagigal. “I didn’t try to do the feminist ghost tour. It’s just what happened. “

Pleasant, the subject of the tour’s first stop in front of today’s Healing Arts Building on Bush Street, is an enigmatic figure in San Francisco history. As an African-American capitalist and millionaire in turn-of-the-century San Francisco, she has published three different biographies in her lifetime – each contradicting the last.

For her part, Cagigal said Pleasant did little to clear up the rumors about her. When it became the talk of the town that she was practicing voodoo, she began to carry a crystal ball in the palm of her hand.

According to some, she was a freed slave with ties to the famous abolitionist John Brown. For others, she was a voodoo priestess who learned her trade from Marie Laveau, the “Voodoo Queen of New Orleans”.

Cagigal said that it was clear to the people on the tour that his version of the story was just one of many. In fact, at the end of the tour, he said he would send an email with links to two other books on Pleasant that delve into two other potential life stories.

“It was important for me to try what I could to represent them better,” said Cagigal.

Since her death, he has said that the spirit of Pleasant continues to haunt the property where her mansion once stood. Dogs have been known to bark unprovoked when passing by. Another time a crow shot from above and landed on the head of a local restaurant owner, and the tall eucalyptus trees Pleasant himself planted have been known for throwing their seeds at passers-by with unusual precision.

Almost all of the ghosts seen on the tour are women – and strong ones, according to Cagigal.

“If there is some kind of demonization that happens to them in the story, I try to tone it down with the context so people understand why this person or that person may have done whatever they did,” he said.

Since leaving Fassbinder, he has been running the tour several nights a week until the pandemic broke out, forcing him to cease operations except for a few virtual tours last October. Cagigal said he re-launched personal tours last June, starting three evenings a week with 20 people. That was less than his average of 30 or 40 people per tour before the pandemic.

“

People just die for something. You want out. “

– Christian Cagigal

To his surprise, these tours sold out, so he increased the number to 25 people and added an extra night just to run out of tickets again. Cagigal said it was one of the best October the company has ever had, in part with people’s pent-up boredom about the pandemic.

“People just die for something. They want out, ”he said, adding that the fact that the tour was outdoors and required masking for non-vaccinated participants helped customers feel safe.

Tina Robinette and Andrew Chapman, both from Alameda, said they signed up for Ghost Hunt because they were fans of ghost tours. Robinette estimated she had done about 10 tours across the country, while Chapman said he had done between 20 or 30 tours.

Since the two had recently moved to the bay this year, Robinette added that they realized that ghost tours are a unique way to learn about an area and mentioned that they have been to New Orleans, Canada, Washington on other tours DC and across California.

“It’s really fun to explore a city,” she said. “This is the first tour we’ve been on since moving to San Francisco.”

With tour participants around him, Cagigal tells the story of a female spirit. one of many to be seen on the tour on October 26, 2021. “It’s a very women-friendly program,” said Cagigal. (Cameron Lee / Golden Gate Xpress) (Cameron Lee)

Chapman said Cagigal had a fun vibe compared to some of the other tour hosts he’s dealt with in the past. He said his lively personality helped.

“He wasn’t trying to be super creepy all along,” Chapman said. “Once in a while [ghost tours] Really go overboard if you’re trying to be scary or really overboard if you’re trying to be cheesy. He had a nice combo of ‘Here are the facts as I know them, here is what is not explained, here is what is explained’ and that was pretty cool. “

For someone in the business of the paranormal, Cagigal still has a certain skepticism about what he is open and honest on his tours. Whenever he tells one of his stories, he describes a sudden and mysterious death before throwing in, rather sarcastically, that the death could have been due to a number of things.

“It was in the 19th century, all deaths were sudden and mysterious,” he said.

Despite his own skepticism, Cagigal said he wanted to believe in ghosts. According to him, his favorite moments on tour don’t come when he’s teaching, but when he can’t find an explanation for them.

“I love these moments,” he said. “When I’m in a little mysterious place, ‘Maybe there was a ghost, who knows.'”

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Stephanie Ernst Scott would be the first to admit that she has never fished a day in her life – a unique position as the owner of a 62 year old tackle shop.

After 45 years at Gus’ Discount Tackle, an Outer Richmond fishing business, Ernst Scott said that her week off day is better spent playing with her grandchildren. In addition, Ernst Scott admitted that she hardly has the patience to fish anyway.

“I could never sit there,” said Ernst Scott, “you have to have the ability to sit, not my strength.”

Framed by over a thousand photos of customers and their fish, Ernst Scott sat smiling behind the counter of her tackle shop and waited restlessly for her next customer to come in. It was a slow, cold morning in a city where fog was often dictating the public’s retail habits.

The photos that adorn the walls and ceiling, some new, others faded and curled up from years in the sun, depict generations of anglers in San Francisco. The smiling customers who pose with their fish in these snapshots are doctors, teachers, hairdressers, and lawyers. Ernst Scott pointed out not one, but two photos of customers in full wedding regalia in the store. One was new – both the husband and wife wore masks.

The store, a mecca for fishermen in San Francisco, is a place where, according to Ernst Scott, customers can talk about anything – from fishing to family. And while Ernst Scott may not have an affinity for the sport itself, she stays because of the fulfillment she supposedly gets from the job.

“Goods are goods, but this is just a great place that has a very emotional bond with a lot of our customers,” said Ernst Scott.

The general store became a tackle shop

Ernst Scott inherited the shop from her father, Gus Ernst, an Austrian Jew who she said fled the Nazis on skis during the Holocaust before settling in San Francisco.

“He was driving across the Alps while the Gestapo was shooting at him,” said Ernst Scott. “He saved his life and knew how to ski.”

Like father and daughter, Ernst did not fish either. The store first appeared as a general store on Clement Street in 1959 before moving to its current location – a former upholstery factory – on Balboa Street in 1961. Ask Ernst Scott and she will point out the pipes that run across one of the walls and the spot in the background she suspects must have once housed a kettle.

“This store sold everything but hot stoves and pets,” she said of her father’s early days.

It wasn’t until Ernst began receiving more requests from his regulars for more fishing gear that the business became more specialized. It started slowly, said Scott. Ernst would be asked one day to bring more rods. The next would be lines or hooks. In order to meet the demands of its customers, Ernst’s general store eventually became Gus’ Discount Tackle.

Behind the register, Scott spends most of her day. From here, she can see the news, speak to customers, and control the store. (Avery Wilcox / Golden Gate Xpress)

Criminals to lawyers

Ernst Scott never thought she would run her father’s fishing business.

Ernst Scott was unemployed in 1974 and had a masters degree in communications from SF State which felt increasingly useless. He felt stuck. Her father hired her as an employee out of kindness, she said.

“Really useful in this world,” said Ernst Scott sarcastically of her degree, gesturing around the shop. “Teaching is the only application, there were no jobs.”

Forty-five years later, she said she couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

While waiting for her first customers of the day, she joked that the people who come through the store are usually a lot more interesting.

“I’m sorry there can’t be more wackos for your story,” she said. “I have the best customers, 10 hours a day I have to deal with the most beautiful soup and nut customers in the world. They share their lives with you, come in for a coffee, it’s like an old general store. ”

Ernst Scott sums up her client base simply: she brings everyone from offenders to the lawyers they represent. She said that over the decades she has worked there, she has seen generations of customers attend to their discount needs.

One such customer is Chris Leong, a hairdresser whose father first brought her to the store about 30 years ago. She had stopped by Gus to drop off a gift certificate for Ernst Scott’s daughter from her salon (both she and her daughter have their hair cut by Leong) and they were about to show each other family photos. Leong was back at the store with her friend Karen Fong for the first time since the pandemic.

Leong said she hasn’t seen any major changes in Gus since childhood.

“She kept it where you can dig out of boxes,” she said.

“Is Chris telling you I’m a slut?” Ernst Scott said and cut him across the room.

“

It’s a family business. It’s not a franchise, it’s not a chain – it’s personable. “

– Chris Leong

Both women laughed before Ernst Scott took her on an impromptu tour of the store and showed her the old signage that was neatly hidden in the rafters. Leong said Ernst Scott was one of the main reasons she kept coming back after all these years.

“It’s a family business. It’s not a franchise, it’s not a chain – it’s personable, ”said Leong.

“Also for her personality,” said Fong, a non-fisherman, who said she would like to accompany Leong when she visits the store.

At the other end of the store, Chris Titus and his son Gage were rummaging through the store’s goods. Both were in town for the day from Sacramento and were drawn to the huge mural covering the shop front, showing a fisherman throwing his line over the door. Titus and his son, both fishermen, suspected that they had come across like-minded people.

“I like these little mom and pop shops,” said Titus. “I’d rather go somewhere like here than go to a big store like Bass Pro Shops.”

1,500 photos and counting

In the 10 years before his death, Ernst Scott worked with her husband Bill Scott on Gus’ Discount Tackle, where he primarily ran all books, handled advertising and managed the store’s website.

He and Ernst Scott met while studying at SF State and, like Ernst Scott, struggled to find work after completing his Masters in English.

Before helping Ernst Scott in the tackle shop, he served as the director of management information systems at See’s Candy Company and as a skylight designer.

One of his most important tasks, according to Ernst Scott, was a simple one – printing out customer photos and putting them on the wall. Before his death, Gus’s patrons could email their photos directly to the store to print and hang on the wall or ceiling, often the next day.

Nowadays, customers can still have their picture hung, all they have to do is bring the photo themselves. Unlike her late husband, Ernst Scott is admittedly not tech savvy. Not even a computer is in the store right now.

“I miss my husband for a lot of reasons,” she said, pointing to the photo wall.

When businesses around the world began to close at the beginning of the pandemic, things looked uncertain for the 62-year-old fishery. However, they were identified as an essential business and were allowed to remain open. Ernst Scott thought back to the beginning of the lockdown and said she didn’t know what it would have done if it had to close.

“My husband died a month before Covid started. This and my family saved me spiritually,” she said. “I would have gone mad as a hatter, we were together for 50 years, so you won’t get over it anytime soon.”

A changing neighborhood

Kevin Lorne, a 65-year-old construction manager from West Marin, said he has been coming back to Gus for the past 20 years. Over the past two decades, he said he noticed the neighborhood was getting fancier, but for him Gus’ hasn’t changed a bit.

“It’s small and has excellent service all the time,” Lorne said, indicating Ernst Scott. “And the prices are good.”

“

I will stay here as long as I want. I love it.”

– Ernst Scott

With COVID-19, Ernst Scott said many stores were closed in her beloved Richmond District. Despite the changing neighborhood, she said she will always call the Outer Richmond her home.

“I love to live here,” said Ernst Scott, “they will [have to] carry me out with your feet first. “

Regarding retirement, she said she has no intention of quitting anytime soon. Her daughter is a teacher, her son a cook, and only leaves her small grandchildren, or “geniuses” as she likes to call them, to take over the family business.

“I’ll stay here as long as I want,” said Ernst Scott. “I love it.”

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In the past few months, NFTs have grown in importance as more and more people become interested in the latest cryptocurrency trend.

NFT, which stands for intangible token, acts as a digital collector’s item that people can buy and collect for monetary value. Sites like Open sea and NBA top shot are just a few of the marketplaces where people can buy NFTs.

Works like “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” by Digital artist Beeple has sold for $ 69 million on NFT marketplaces. Artists like Kings of Leon and retired UFC champion Khabib have also stepped into the NFT realm each Publications.

A local San Francisco art gallery known as Local Maker Mart premiered in San Francisco on March 25 – an online NFT auction on Twitch that allowed viewers to bid and buy works by various artists. The auction was held at the market between Green Street and Columbus Avenue in the North Beach district to bring local artists into the NFT scene.

Gregory Castellanos, the gallery’s CEO, sees the latest trends in NFTs as a signal for a new future in art.

Liam Skye, a local artist and Local Maker Mart Gallery resident, explains his NFT-based art to an audience as viewed on a touchscreen monitor in the Local Maker Mart Gallery. (Emily Curiel / Golden Gate Xpress) (Emily Curiel)

“I think it’s growing and it’s going to expand into the mainstream. I feel like there was this crucial point where it looks like it would quickly go away if it gushed, ”he said. “Now I have the feeling that it not only stays here, but also pushes [NFT’s] as moving technology forward and making it accessible to artists, ”he said.

Sponsored by NFT exchange platforms Digitalax and OpenSea, the gallery featured a variety of local artists including Liam Skye and Akeem Raheem. For Raheem and Skye, the event was an opportunity to immerse themselves in an excitement that has grown steadily over the past few months.

“I had heard some rumors about NFTs and what they were and how there was a digital art scene that had already broken out and I was kind of behind the ball,” Raheem said of his knowledge of NFTs before entering the auction .

The prices for the NFTs displayed ranged from $ 500 to $ 1,000. Those who participated in the auction were able to purchase the NFTs through QR codes that the gallery had displayed on monitors. Scanning the QR code would then take users to the OpenSea marketplace, where buyers could bid on the NFTs and view the moving items for some of them.

Each of the NFTs was displayed on a touchscreen monitor where visitors could click and read the premise and motivation for each work.

Although his art has been exhibited as NFT, artist Liam Skye said he was still skeptical of the whole concept.

“It’s kind of scary because you have no idea who it’s going to go to, like the whole thing, who owns the art, gives it value,” he said. “I won’t know who will act it. It’s not the same as when the person comes here or you sell it to them and know who you’re selling to, ”he said.

Anna Chili, a San Francisco artist, displays her paintings on a metal shelf for people to see at the Local Maker Mart Gallery. (Emily Curiel / Golden Gate Xpress) (Emily Curiel)

Because of its uniqueness and limited quantity, artists like Raheem believe that the work chosen to be later minted and turned into an NFT must have some meaning.

“I try to choose because, on the one hand, I have too many pieces to shape them all and, on the other, I just want something that really reflects the urban culture we all know,” he said.

The term is coined when an artist inserts their work onto the blockchain, which is a type of digital record book that relates to cryptocurrency and shows all of the transactions made on the network. When an artist shapes his work, he makes his work immutable. This gives NFTs the uniqueness that there is nothing like it on the blockchain. It’s like one of one for a fashion item or someone else of monetary worth.

Castellanos hopes to make the auction a recurring event as the popularity of NFTs grows.

“I’m happy about this first one. It is always a learning experience the first time you host an event and we are pioneers in new waters here, ”said Castellanos. “So I would love to see this grow and develop. I hope we have a lot of success on our first auction, and we hope that we can do this more often and add this to the regular schedule if there is something we can do to help artists succeed. “

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Government grants allow the purchase of two hotels in order to continue to find housing for people with homelessness

San Francisco is promoting the construction of permanent homeless shelters.

The city bought the Hotel Diva using a $ 29.1 million stake and awarded a US $ 45 million grant to the Granada Hotel with the intention of converting these buildings into permanent supporting housing. These purchases are all part of Mayor London Breed’s Homelessness Restoration Program It announced this in July 2020 in order to create up to 6,000 housing agencies for people with homelessness within the next two years.

The Homelessness Restoration Program proposes the largest one-time permanent home expansion in San Francisco in 20 years.

Joe Molica, a representative with the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said the pandemic had helped uniquely fuel progress in finding better solutions to solve the housing crisis.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has created new funding avenues and new and creative ways to keep our vulnerable neighbors safe,” Molica said. “First and foremost, I think of the places and villages for safe sleep. We were also able to buy two hotels with the state Project Homekey funding, which will be converted into Permanent Supportive Housing. “

Safe sleeping places and villages are city designated zones where people can sleep in tents away from the sidewalks while staying socially separated from each other. San Francisco currently has six active locations that provide 24/7 access to garbage and hygiene services, as well as trauma-informed behavioral health services.

Shortly before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Gavin Newsom launched the Project Roomkey program to help cities find shelter-in-place hotels for the homeless. The cost of maintaining this program wasn’t cheap, however, costing San Francisco about $ 15 million a month. Under the Trump administration, the city was reimbursed only 75% of its spending on this program.

The City of San Francisco bought Hotel Diva as part of their Homekey project to house the homeless. Around $ 29 million went into converting the hotel into a permanent animal shelter in the Lower Nob Hill district on February 5, 2020. (Amalia Diaz / Golden Gate Xpress)

President Joe Biden’s administration has pledged to fully reimburse local governments for their housing programs by September 30, 2021 so that the city can continue to support the program without fighting for money.

Following the success of Project Roomkey, the state continued the program into its next progressive phase known as Project Homekey. Project Homekey is a $ 600 million program calling on local governments to buy hotels and build permanent housing for people with homelessness.

According to Deborah Bouck, Head of HSH Communications, one goal of permanent housing support is to encourage rehabilitation so that people don’t get left on the streets. The Driving the initiative is a program that helps people who are ready to move out of permanent support shelter by helping them gain access to federal housing vouchers and find new homes.

“It is always our goal to help people get back on their feet – that is the core of our mission to make homelessness rare, short and unique,” said Bouck.

The homelessness crisis is far from resolved, but the number of people being housed has increased. According to City dataThere are around 2,220 people who have benefited from the Shelter-in-Place program.

While the future expansion for permanent supportive housing in San Francisco sounds promising, Bianca Beverina, who works for Raphael House, a nonprofit that supports low-income families affected by homelessness, believes the city will do better with helping the homeless Population can handle it in this day and age.

Beverina hopes the city will also focus on adequate mental health programs and find permanent supportive housing for people in need.

“I can’t say that I’ve seen changes,” said Beverina. “There are more resources now because of the pandemic, but it definitely doesn’t clean the streets of Sutter and Polk. The whole area felt the same way. “

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