Everything is Coronavirus These Days

Everyone thought "let's visit some tourist towns!" at the same time:

Stacy Corless opened Facebook on Monday and saw someone suggest it was time to start slashing visitors’ tires.

It was startling evidence to Corless, a Mono County Supervisor, that a frantic fear of outsiders had gripped some people in the ski resort community of Mammoth Lakes.

“I’m really concerned about the level of vitriol and xenophobia,” she said. “I’m worried someone is going to get shot.”

Mono County over the weekend banned most short-term vacation rentals in an effort to prevent tourists from carrying the new coronavirus into the isolated, resource-strapped community. The decision followed a wave of similar announcements that have derailed ski trips, hobbled backpacking plans, and landed a devastating blow to local tourism-dependent economies across the West.

After Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide shelter-in-place order last week, longstanding tensions between locals and tourists have begun simmering in new ways. Hundreds of thousands of urbanites have crowded trails, swarmed beaches and holed up in vacation homes and rentals across the state. Newsom’s order said people were still allowed to go outside and exercise, but it didn’t set limits on where they could go.

A short-lived offer from the folks at the antiques store:

Several pix from a walk on March 24th: a sunset, a box of misfit toys, and a chalked sidewalk.

Mysterious, silent response by emergency personnel in my neighborhood in the middle of the night. Curious, and no answers.