[ProtectOurFreedom]

Drove by panhandle of Golden Gate Park [San Francisco] today. Packed with people walking and riding bikes, way worse than a regular Saturday. Meanwhile the entire sunset district (including the parks I saw)were empty. Went on a bike ride to the beach and back and only passed one other cyclist. Most of the city is empty and beautiful yet everyone goes to the same spot.

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This is exactly why I haven't been going to the trails, which sucks since that's one of my favorite ways to exercise my dogs. People are treating this as a weird snowday free-for-all and all common sense goes out the window. Even the neighborhood walks are fraught with people blocking sidewalks in large groups.

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San Ramon reporting in, Iron Horse trail has been packed lately, the side streets and parks as well (with people doing recreational activity, walking, pets, etc). It's like...4-5x the regular amount, I'd guesstimate.

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...you must be talking about the [Berkeley] fire trails behind the school because I completely agree. They are absolutely packed right now and the 6ft rule goes right out the door when you're walking on some of the skinnier paths.

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I live in west marin, and all the trail heads were completely packed with cars today. Non- locals everywhere!

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Maybe the health people shouldn't have repeatedly told people to go exercise.

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20 years living in the East bay and I’ve never seen Briones Open Space as crowded and as many cars ever

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Same out at Black Diamond Mines. I got there at 8:30 in the morning and couldn’t find parking. I’ve never seen so many people out on some of the more remote parts of the park.

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I drove to the Sonoma Coast, expecting it to be quiet, only to find every beach along Highway 1 packed as if it were memorial weekend; definitely felt shame on the way home for excusing myself from the rules.

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We're allowed to go to state parks. My wife and I went to the beach too. All the parking lots along highway 1 were gated. Cars were parked all around the gates, and in no parking zones. A sheriff's deputy was ticketing everyone who parked illegally. The one thing that struck me is that cyclists were way worse than normal. We kept coming around corners on CA-84 with cyclists riding in the middle of the lane. Dunno what's gotten into people.

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I went today to a usually very quiet trailhead and it was packed :( people really didn't make enough effort to maintain a safe distance. If I go out again I'll go to quieter spots early in there morning but this has to stop. People are so cavalier. There were a bunch a kids 4 abreast across the entire trail/fire roads.

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I went running today in the park near my house. Stayed off the narrow singletrack, stuck to the 20’ wide main roads. So many groups strung out 4-6’ apart, side by side, taking up the whole road.

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I went for my normal Saturday ride (30m), and every clown with a bike was out. It was insane. Idk if the icing was the old guy on a tricycle biking the wrong way down a 35nph street, or the dude in camo on a fixie tackling some hills. Nobody is staying home.

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Beaches were mobbed today and traffic getting in and out of Half Moon Bay was horrific.

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Went to walk around sycamore grove park today...fully packed when I've only seen a handful of people there normally.

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I went for a solo drive up to the vista point on Skyline today and there were more people there than I've ever seen (which made it an easy decision to just sit in my car to take in the view). Everyone outside of their car were in groups and seemingly without a care in the world. Every single turnoff was packed with cars too. Pretty ridiculous.

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The whole coast, from ocean beach to halfmoon bay was packed, one week of Netflix and everyone had become an outdoorsman....

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It was like that in Roseville today too - park across the street from me was packed with families and I saw tons of kids at the playground. There was even a dozen or so adults playing touch football.

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Same, here - in the South Bay. My husband and I went to a county park about a mile from our house that’s generally not very crowded. Plus, most of the trails are wide fire roads, so we figured we’d be able to keep a good distance from the few people we’d see there. How wrong we were - not only was the place the busiest we’d ever seen, but most people we encountered during our hike were not taking seriously the need to keep one’s distance from others. And we saw quite a few groups of people who were most certainly not all members of the same household.

No tourists!

Stinson Beach, March 21, 2020

Saint Patrick's Day Traffic Jams!

[Wuli]

Why not? Aren’t the politicians promising a paid vacation for everyone?

[BenLurkin]

Probably the most beautiful city in the United States.

[olivia3boys]

I’m in the Bay Area too. Decided last Sat to just not leave my house at all for the duration except to walk only around my house in my empty neighborhood.

Really unless going to an essential job no one should be driving anywhere at all; I don’t get it. I’m practicing what Trump said a few days ago: “Enjoy your living rooms.”

I plan to do that throughout April or longer—luckily I have a job that easily translates to telework and I can homeschool my kids (and have been since March 13th).

Everyone in the Bay Area is still running all around, going to crowded grocery stores—daily.

It’s disappointing but understandable—people need to eat. We should be eating our canned/frozen food for 2 weeks though, to flatten the curve, for 15 days. . .I thought that was the idea. Maybe no one has canned or frozen food?

[ifinnegan]

People know infection is not running rampant throughout the community.

[ifinnegan]

Great post, by the way. Thanks.

[xp38]

They’re doing quarantine wrong

[faithhopecharity]

nobody believes the state government or the large city mayors in California

they are all corrupt as Hell and, as the saying goes,
they lie horozontally all night
then
they lie vertically all day

[hanamizu]

In France, medical authorities are discouraging recreational bicycling. The reason surprised me but made sense: If you fall off of your bike and hurt yourself, you’ll end up going to the hospital, which right now in France is bad for both you and the hospital.

[thecodont]

Thank you for this post.

I’d just like to add that motorists seem to be a bit more reckless, so if you are a pedestrian crossing the street (in a marked crosswalk), be careful.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Kids and grandkids went on a nice bike ride around Moraga. Beautiful day. What are ya gonna do?

[socalgop]

i’m in the bay now too and it’s stupid. i heard about the panhandle and it makes you wonder what people are thinking. i’ve just been walking around neighborhoods and they’re uniformly empty. if people keep failing at distancing the gov’t is going to step in more and i’m dreading that.

[a fool in paradise]

bug chasing

[Falconspeed]

Thankfully, people are getting outside. When living in Berkeley for many years, I went surfing at Ocean Beach 2x month and Inverness 1x month. Taking Fell Street to the beach was always 45 minutes. My father complained about the small freeways and constant traffic in San Francisco in 1980. Good to see the San Francisco map today full of green roads. Just like Los Angeles today.

[luckystarmom]

Part of the problem is we have had several weeks if rain in addition to the shelter-in-place. I’ve been going to on open preserve between San Jose and Morgan Hill. Today was crowded. I don’t think I’ll go in the weekend again.

I’m afraid they will issue a real stay at home order because there are too many big groups.

[Mrs.Liberty]

My daughter is a senior nursing student and Army ROTC Cadet at the University of San Francisco. The week before last, during Spring Break the students were told all classes would be taught on-line til the end of March. She was doing nursing clinicals, so stayed up there until last Saturday. As she was driving home (to our home in SoCal) she received an email from the school stating that school would be on-line until the end of the semester and oh, by the way, all students must move out of the dorms by noon on March 21st.

Since she was halfway home, she continued on vice turning back to empty out her dorm.

We drove back to SF this past Friday morning, took the 5/405/101--a straight shot through LA with so little traffic at a time when it normally would be bumper-to-bumper. Made it into the city in 9 hours. Got her stuff packed and into my car in about 2 hours, and left. I did see people walking around, lots of joggers/runners.

We spent the night in Salinas Friday night and drove home yesterday. Again, little traffic. As we neared Santa Barbara, could see quite a few cars parked at the beaches, thought the state beaches/campgrounds were closed.

North of Ventura, at Sea Cliff, pretty crowded with campers along the PCH there.

[Cedar]

A few days ago the temps were mid 70’s, and the Great Smoky Mountain National Park was packed like it was the middle of July. Folks enjoying the great outdoors. Probably lots of college students from Knoxville with free time now. And maybe plenty of laid-off east Tennessee workers wanting to relax in the beautiful mountains.