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The first day of dining inside was quiet at Tudor House, a historic dinner theater in Lake Arrowhead. Before the pandemic, the Prohibition-era restaurant could seat 60 people at a time for its champagne brunch. Sunday at 11 a.m. there were only two.
“It’s not about when the government says you can open up, it’s when people reestablish that routine,” owner John Connor said. “It will be a slow process for people to put on their big boy pants.”
San Bernardino and Orange counties left the purple level, the most restrictive of California’s color-coded reopening plans, on Sunday, allowing restaurants to resume dining indoors at 25% capacity. Los Angeles County will join them on Monday to allow for additional reopenings.
Some companies have reported a rapid rebound.
Virginia Ramirez, hostess for Belgian Waffle Works in Lake Arrowhead, said the dining room at the popular family-run restaurant was criticized on Sunday morning. “We’re really busy,” she says.
At Social Costa Mesa, a trendy new American restaurant, patrons were eager to dine inside, said Robert Garcia, the service manager.
“Business is strong right now,” he said of the crockery of dishes and chatter from customers. “I can not complain. We are lucky to have what we have. “
But other establishments said customers were slower to come back.
“Right now 90% of the public don’t even know we’re open,” Connor said. He said heavy snowfall made the heated tents impractical for restaurants in the hill station and unattractive for the area. But he had high hopes for April, when he planned to host a mystery theater performance.
“The Mafia in Los Angeles once owned the Tudor House, so we could create a theme of Bugsy Siegel, a gangster,” he said.
Still, he feared the government might turn the tide again.
“Restaurants can’t be yo-yoed like that: hire staff, let them go, buy food, throw it away,” Connor said. “Another stop is a good possibility, and 25% make no profit – but eventually you have to pay the rent.”
Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties joined with 10 others – Contra Costa, Sonoma, Placer, Mendocino, San Benito, Tuolumne, Siskiyou, Amador, Colusa and Mono – in moving to the less restrictive red reopening level. The 13 counties are home to 17.7 million Californians, which means that by Monday, when LA County gives the green light, about 45% of the state’s population will be able to eat at a restaurant, visit a museum or take a yoga class indoors.
In addition to offering indoor dining, Red Level counties are allowed to resume screenings in cinemas at 25% capacity and accommodate Grades 7 to 12 students on campus., reopen indoor gymnasiums to 10% capacity and expand capacity restrictions in non-essential stores and libraries. Museums, zoos and aquariums can also reopen indoor operations, at 25% capacity.
“I think it’s a long time coming,” Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner said Sunday. “It’s a big step in the right direction. The Governor probably could have done it earlier, but at this point I will be taking the step in the right direction.
He said he heard “a lot” from voters about the economic hardship caused by the virus and the rules that resulted from it, as well as the physical, mental and emotional stress.
But he recently saw this change to a temporary hope.
“People I’ve spoken to over the past two days, knowing that the red level is coming and that we can do a lot more, seem to have more bounce in their step,” he said. “I think there is real optimism these days that the worst days of the pandemic are behind us.”
Still, some companies have said that despite the easing, a fuller reopening is not yet worth it.
Heidi Grunt owns the 29 Palms Inn outside of Joshua Tree National Park. The park was teeming with tourists for the spring bloom, and at 10 a.m. Sunday, her phone was ringing off the hook with hungry hopefuls inquiring about the meals inside.
“This morning I had at least five phone calls: ‘We heard that everything is fine’ and ‘Why don’t you do it? “, Did she say. “But if you can only open 25%, it’s still very difficult to operate like that. It still takes a lot of staff and you still can’t do the business you once did. “
Before the crisis, the hotel and restaurant employed around 65 people. Now, says Grunt, it’s down to 10.
“We have thought of ourselves more in a resort sense since COVID,” she said. “We continued to provide meals to our hotel guests, but not necessarily to the public.”
While some businesses were working on the reopening, others were on hold, at least for a few weeks.
Amusement parks can reopen at 15% of their capacity, with further modifications, from April 1. Attractions such as Disneyland, Universal Studios, Knott’s Berry Farm and Six Flags Magic Mountain, some of which have reopened for limited food and shopping events, will initially be required to limit visitors to residents of California. Outdoor sports – with fans – and live outdoor performances will also be allowed to resume on April 1, provided they meet restrictions on capacity and concession sales which vary by level.
LA County health officials – as well as Long Beach and Pasadena city health departments – said the red-level reopening permission would take effect at 12:01 a.m. Monday.
LA County health official Dr Muntu Davis said the decision to wait until Monday was “really to give businesses time” to prepare and change their operations appropriately.
13 other counties – San Diego, Riverside, Sacramento, Ventura, San Joaquin, Tulare, Santa Barbara, Monterey, Kings, Sutter, Yuba, Lake and Tehama – are set to join the red level as early as Wednesday, provided their settings of coronaviruses remain constant.
“It’s nice to see hope on the horizon and a sense of normalcy returning to it,” Orange County supervisor Lisa Bartlett said on Sunday.
She said that while it’s great to be able to start reopening the local economy, she’s even more excited about what this step forward means.
“Going red is a key signal that we hope to gain the upper hand over COVID-19,” she said. “Hospitalizations are down. The rates for intensive care beds are falling. More and more people are getting vaccinated – thousands of people every day in our county. “
That doesn’t mean the virus is gone, she noted: It will take time to vaccinate the 3.2 million people in Orange County, and more transmissible and potentially deadly variants continue to circulate. Measures such as masking, hand washing and distancing remain crucial.
“It’s really important, even after someone has been vaccinated, to continue to adhere to health and safety guidelines to better protect yourself and those around them,” she said. “These are always important things to keep in mind and to respect as we continue to come out of the COVID pandemic.”
Times editors Luke Money and Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.
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