TP2000
Well-Known Member
Wow, I did not know that. That's gotta be tough!
Indoor Dining has returned here in OC, but it's all technically illegal. But no one enforces it. Only the big corporate players have to obey the rules because they have legal teams and carefully curated Twitter accounts that would be destroyed if a Karen in New York found out that an Olive Garden in Orange County was openly violating California's The Guidance.
But for the non-corporate restaurants, they can do whatever they want.
I took this picture earlier tonight. I went down the hill and across the freeway to a favorite pizza parlor for dinner. The pizza parlor will let you eat inside once you order at the counter, and next door to it was a Pho restaurant that also had people dining indoors, with full waitress service.
Oh, and see that shop next door with the barber pole and windows covered in black plastic? That's a barber shop that operates daily for customers. But by keeping their windows covered in black plastic they don't have to obey the Sacramento mandates on capacity and plexiglass panels between chairs, they can just run their barber shop as normal.
This type of open disobedience and flouting of Sacramento "mandates" is very, very common in Orange County.
And when Orange County reaches the Red Tier in a couple weeks, this type of indoor dining will actually be legal again. Except for theme parks. So the IHOP and Panera Bread and Captain Kidd's Buffet across Harbor Blvd. from Disneyland will have indoor dining, but The Blue Bayou will be closed. Catal and Naples Ristorante in Downtown Disney will be open for indoor dining, but Carthay Circle inside DCA will be closed. You can eat indoors at Splitsville, but you can not eat indoors at Flo's V8 Cafe.
In Sacramento, this all makes sense to someone. And they pretend that most small businesses are not ignoring them.