Closed streets and expanded outdoor dining is the best thing to come to SF during the pandemic, especially since the weather is mild enough that they can be utilized year-round. I really hope the city decides to extend them beyond December.
I almost felt like I was back in Europe. Slow streets or blocked streets allowing people and bars and restaurants to reclaim some of that space. It’s a treat. I hope it stays this way after covid19 and people realize how much car roads are killing the liveness in a city.
The first time I was in Europe on a road built for humans to walk on, I kept looking over my shoulder waiting for a car to make its way down the roads. I was pleasantly surprised.
I wish they'd close even a single street to car traffic in LA. A single one. Instead restaurants sprawl into the sidewalk and leave a little 2 food wide strip where you walk within spit fleck distance of dozens of maskless people eating and drinking and talking loud. I just look for a break in traffic to walk along the road or cross the street entirely.
Build a pedestrian traffic layer over the service road tunnels, turn the 3rd floor into the main level. Vehicles are still needed for delivery and long distance, apply the engineering solution.
That sounds almost like a typical airport or mall.
For some reason, people don't want to be in a mall anymore. It's like how people don't want to be in a minivan anymore. Malls and minivans are practical. They just don't have the right image.
There are streets below airport concourses. The streets near the aircraft are used by baggage handling vehicles. The streets farther from the aircraft may be used by buses and taxis.
Large malls have lower space, often on only two sides, for delivery trucks. (the ground is commonly sloped so that customers enter on a different level from the deliveries)
You have the right username to know Paris ;-) I can't remember from my own visits to Barcelona and Belgium how common it is. But photos of 1950s Paris are not evidence that it's common in other cities now.
NYC here. One of the quaintest things I have seen in my life : A small pub had three tables, two chairs each, on the pavement. One of it was "cordoned" off with velvet-red ropes and for full bottle service, the pub staff open the ropes with great aplomb! Roadside-Royalty.
Mild? Haha. My wife and I celebrated our anniversary back in late June by visiting the city and having dinner outdoors. Despite patio heaters, being on the leeward side of the building, and blankets(!!!) provided by the proprietor, we were absolutely freezing. I understand it's probably fine now, but give it a month or so.
Yeah it's typical CA weather. The heat may not start until August but it hangs around until Nov/Dec. The thing is, we're just about to the end of the warm season. The rains may(it's a La Niña year, right?) start soon, and cold weather as well.
I wonder when chastising outsiders for extrapolating from summer that winter must be hellish overtook Herb Caen's "don't call it frisco" as the ultimate S.F. meme shibboleth?
The problem with the bay area is that the majority of the buildings are old and lack proper insulation. The temp outside is often not too bad, but when your apartment turns into an oven or a drafty freezer for most of the year, the weather effectively sucks. Contrast with somewhere like Austin, which has horrible weather at times but with affordable, modern construction and cheaper CoL overall, you can live comfortably indoors year round.
I just paid my second $200+ electric bill this year, and that's for a 800 sq ft apartment with a single AC. That AC had to run for the last 3 months, nearly non-stop, just to keep the place in the low 70s. Sure, the place was renovated, and even has vinyl windows, but anything not relating to appearances was skipped in the remodel. No insulation. No leak sealing. Every time my neighbors light up a joint in the garage downstairs I get to smell it throughout my house.
Yes. I got to experience this on a trip back to LA (family health fun and games). I hope after all the misery is over that the increased open air dining and parklets stick around.
Somewhat along the same line, I expect a resurgence of outdoor beer gardens. Every super-spreader event to-date included a crowd, indoors, with poor ventilation and few if any masks in evidence. That is pretty much the definition of any standard bar, pub or tavern. And hey, outdoors in January your beer stays colder longer as a bonus...
The few times I've eaten outside in the evening the last few months, I've noted how whichever companies that make those outdoor space heaters are probably experiencing a huge boom, as every restaurant capable sports a new or larger outdoor dining area, and even some that aren't capable get public sector help to make it so (e.g. in my city they closed the major downtown strip to auto traffic to allow outdoor dining areas to take up the entire sidewalk and some of the road).
I'm curious what the energy formula on those things looks like. Is cold weather outdoor socializing going to help us catch up on the backlog of fossil fuel we haven't been burning in our cars?
A quick calculation: space heating in food service normally uses 46 trillion BTU of energy [1]. That's 0.05% of all energy consumed in the US, which has dipped by about 10-15% [2]. So if these space heaters would increase heating energy use 5-fold annually across the entire food service industry (I think that's a high estimate), that would undo 2% of the dip.
Braising and the like are a really nice thing to learn to make since you make a lot of delicious food in one go and once you get some technique down you can adapt it constantly. You’re limited only by the size of your pot.
Additionally the ingredients tend to be inexpensive compared to “nicer” cuts. Similar to BBQ.
Not to mention the end result doesn’t have to be stews, etc. I like to braise brisket in a liquid of peppers and stock and then use the resulting liquid for salsa’s and shred the meat for tacos.
Local heating units (clothing/chairs/IR light beams) with human body temperature feedback to make outdoors comfortable during the winter is totally possible now. What is the best product in this space?
Now we just need to relax about street food, kitchen requirements and health codes a bit, and lower the bar to becoming a food entrepreneur. Making food is one of the most basic things people do, yet we've put a $50k+ barrier of entry on what constitutes an acceptable kitchen, along with massive regulatory hoops that have to be jumped through.
I think there's still a place for inspections, but unless you're absolutely terrible it should be informational for consumers rather than a hurdle that must be passed before doing business. Let people choose to eat at uninspected facilities if they want (with the knowledge of what they're doing), and have liability laws in place for when things go wrong.
While we're at it, we should make it easier to become a street vendor. We encourage children to be entrepreneurial with lemonade stands and bake sales, yet it's stupidly hard to actually do something like this as a real business.
I think the most odd thing is the cheap hardware store greenhouses for outdoor dining that are shown. I guess those patio heaters don't really do the trick do they?
The reasoning I've heard is that greenhouses provide group isolation rather than overall ventilation per se, but there's usually also a trapdoor or partially open roof to vent the air, so it does work in some sense. This is what it looks like in practice in Chicago [0].
Indoor Plexiglass partitions provide isolation too but the level of isolation is more limited. Plus the air in a smaller indoor location is recirculated between partitions, whereas outdoors it is ostensibly exchanged at much higher rates.
Which makes me wonder, can't we build indoor booths?
The catch would be one would also need a HVAC that can exchange air outside the booths at high throughputs like aircraft cabins.
ACPH = air changes per hour = 60 * Q / L where Q = volumetric flow (ft3/min), L = ft3.
Aircraft cabin ACPH are around 20-30 (and through a HEPA filter) [1], while a restaurant dining area is 8-12 [2] (many assumptions here, like airtightness, etc), and no HEPA.
Exactly what's considered "outdoor" in that respect depends on the jurisdiction. For example DC's current regulations allow tents to count as outdoor dining as long as they have no more than one side closed [1]. Other places allow more enclosed tents.
My family's plan for watching $sportsball together outside this winter is having everyone in their own small ice fishing tents with personal electric heaters. There's going to be a lot of extension cords running out of the garage.
I assume you are aware that each heater will need to be on its own circuit? A garage typically only has 2 or so, so you'll need to run extension cords to various rooms in the house.
Also you'll need 14 gauge extension cords, many regular ones are only 16 or 18 gauge.
So, we tried it this last sunday and we did trip the breakers. The garage only had 1 circuit for the outlets (the other powered ceiling lights and the garage door.
New plan for next time: electrically heated blankets!
Depends on how sealed it is. An actual greenhouse would not be. If the area is draughty and has a lot of air exchange it may actually be close to outdoors.
A CO2 meter can give a quick approximation of whether the greenhouse canopy spacs is more like an inside or outside.
My intuition was you’re right. But I could see it being the other way if it’s just a loose shield.
In a place with wall windows, quite possibly! But it really depends on the airflow.
You can use a co2 meter as a proxy. Outdoor levels are generally around 450 in a city. If your indoor space with open windows is there, you’re probably basically outside. If it is higher, you’re not.
To be clear. I think very few restaurants have enough windows to really be like outside with a bunch of people in there.
I had a look at the greenhouses. Key difference from indoor dining: they prevent superspreader events. The problem with indoor dining is you have 30+ unmasked people dining in a poorly ventilated room. One infected person can infect many others.
In a two person tent an infected person can infect at most their dining partner, assuming waiters are provided good sanitary measures.
Isn’t it crazy what people will do to preserve their way of life when it no longer makes sense and there are good alternatives? Not every food works as takeout, but it’s hardly a deprivation.
This doesn't seem that crazy to me. But I do live in a relatively cold climate. Outdoor dining in 50F weather was a thing we'd do even before the pandemic hit. Heck, I've done outdoor dining below freezing in the mountain town where my brother lives.
The best way to combat cabin fever is to get out of the cabin.
It's a social thing more than anything else. People want to meet up with people; in many places outdoor bar/restaurant is one of the obvious ways to do this safely and legally.
It's common in Europe but didn't quite catch on in the milder US states, maybe it will now.
It's actually a nice concept, but NY state and North it won't work every day, and unlike 'breaking for rain'. there are long periods of at least several days, sometimes weeks, where it's 'too dam cold' which makes it really hard to operate, i.e. 'just on the nice days'.
And FYI for the skiiers chiming in, it's not the same thing. Skiiers are already 'being active', they're bundled up and prepared for cold, and 'doing an outdoor activity'.
That said - Montreal 'defeats winter' with weekend long raves in the dead of winter, getting more 'bundled up' for 'outdoor dining' might possibly be a cultural shift that could be made if enough people were on board and it became 'a thing'.
Manhattan has had outdoor winter dining on Stone St. for a few years. It benefits from being a sheltered narrow space easy to fill with tents and trap heat.
> Because there's dozens of states where indoor dining is not restricted at all and they're getting no different results in Covid cases?
Is that after adjusting for things like population density/urbanization?
Also, while I don't have an easy cross references of case rates and restrictions, it certainly looks like the places at the top of per-capita case rates are also disproportionately places that have not had strong mandatory restrictions, so I suspect your claim is wrong as stated, too.
Deaths Per Million By State:
1. New Jersey - 183
2. New York - 172
3. Massachusetts - 142
4. Connecticut - 128
5. Louisiana - 124
These states have had some of the harshest restrictions. They've gotten worse results than the mixed approach for the rest of the country.
Good case in point: Michigan vs Florida. Both have about the same deaths per million at 74 and 75 respectively. Yet Florida is fully open with no restrictions. And Michigan had some of the harshest lockdowns and restrictions.
Density may have been some kind of argument early on, but we are 9 or 10 months into this. The virus has had a chance to spread.
Worth noting that, in a large part, this is because Michigan has been dealing with Covid-19 for an extra 2 months compared to Florida. Since August, Michigan's per capita death rate has been less than half of Florida's. Yesterday, more than 100 people died of Covid-19 in Florida. That's more than died in New York State over the last 10 days, despite approximately similar populations.
That has little to do with government policy. People from Michigan and New York State move to Florida to retire. Florida is basically where Americans go to die. It's packed with old people.
We do have to be careful about that kind of adjusting. There just aren't all that many states in the country, so adjusting for even a handful of factors risks overfitting.
I don't really understand the point of this. Is outdoor dining and cold a new thing? Doesn't this happen every year at winter?
Like someone paid money for this?
>A report from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. indicated that 45F (7.2C) is the temperature below which demand for outdoor dining will collapse. (In a separate report, the company projected that outdoor dining demand would fall to 5% in December before rebounding in 2021.
That and all the food they listed are typical winter dishes you find on menus every year. How is this newsworthy at all?
ETA: I guess i'm the only person who's eaten at a restaurant with heated patios in November then. Those crowded tables around me must've been my imagination.
I doubt they will. Especially once temps hit near freezing, plus with wind and precipitation... If I owned a restaurant I would just make ordering take out as quick and convenient as possible.
There's plenty of people who eat and drink (mostly drink, usually from cans) outside once every week or two in nearly zero (freedom degrees) temperatures. Often they also light a pile of pallets (and maybe even a fiberglass boat if the wind is right) on fire for warmth.
It just so happens that people inclined to do these things have mostly all been driven out of major urban areas where the restaurants are and if they weren't they would mostly still not go downtown for overpriced beer.
You're talking about two fundamentally different operations.
With food trucks, first and foremost, people don't "hang out" for as long as they might at a restaurant. It's more akin to fast food - get your food, wolf it down, get out. The process is also different - people approach a window, order their food, and then eat it wherever they want. They have the option of eating it near the truck, but the convenience of taking your food to a different area of your choosing (say, your warm and cozy house) is also there. In addition, in places where food trucks are hugely popular like Portland and Austin, there are "food truck parks" where multiple trucks congregate around a shared communal eating area that is often covered and heated. That space is often operated by an entity other than the food truck so the truck operators don't have to worry about it.
Restaurants, on the other hand, are places where people like to hang out at for extended periods of time. Whereas at a food truck you might order all of your food at once, at a restaurant you're ordering your first drink, then an appetizer or two, then another round of drinks and your entree, then more drinks and your dessert. That process lasts a lot longer than your time at a food truck. There also isn't a convenient "communal area" like at a food truck park that is in the center of a block of restaurants that restaurants can send people to - restaurants must figure out how to build their own seating areas and provide ample warmth.
Food trucks don't care about people being comfortable because that's not in their business model - you order your food and where you eat it is your problem. In order for restaurants to maintain business, they need to cater to the comfort and warmth of their customers.
Restaurants are already doing take-out. Most people don't eat the food truck, and certainly not when it's cold out, so I don't know what else restaurants would learn from them.
There are multiple points in the article we are discussing that touch on how restaurants are pivoting how they serve dishes in order to keep them warm.
No restaurant that I can think of has outdoor dining in the winter. I live in Georgia, and our winters are fairly mild compared to northern states. Even so, outdoor dining in the wintertime is very uncomfortable.
Winter is going to be very difficult for restaurants. If they don't adapt to serving meals outdoors, they may not survive.
They're going to have to change a lot to create a comfortable environment for patrons. Fire pits, heaters, warm dishes: soups, stews, ramen, pho, pastas. Warm drinks and heated cocktails. All of this while maintaining safe social distancing.
I've already seen a number of restaurants and bars make the attempt. It's pretty ingenuitive.
I found outdoor seating at bars to be comfortable in the winter before the pandemic; the heaters work pretty well, and the fresh air is still much better than the crowded interior. I think it could work just fine, but might require an adjustment period.
The pandemic will probably be over in a year, though, so at least in the USA, I don't see a great future in the near-term for mid-40Fs outdoor dining.
There definitely are outdoor restaurants and bars even in winter. Most add insulation / heating. In NYC for example, several outdoor rooftop bars add tents and heaters. The biergarten at the Standard hotel is covered and operates year round.
We have outdoor dining in Australia. Restaurants box in outdoor areas with "cafe blinds" and use patio heaters. Wasteful in terms of energy use, but gives the restaurant access to cheaper council space so they can expand capacity.
> No restaurant that I can think of has outdoor dining in the winter. I live in Georgia, and our winters are fairly mild compared to northern states.
I grew up in the South and live in the Pacific Northwest now. I think you see a lot less outdoor dining in the South not because of the winters but because of the summers. It's so hot that eating outside is miserable half the year, so restaurants aren't physically designed for outdoor dining during the couple of spring and fall months when it would be nice.
> It's so hot that eating outside is miserable half the year
This is wrong in my experience. There are hundreds of restaurants equipped for summer dining [1]. Lots of restaurants have open rooftops, patio seating, open-air "fireman"-style garage door walls, etc. Pretty much every BBQ joint and taqueria is outdoors.
Outdoor eating is very popular in the Georgia summer.
Up until today (when they were all closed) every restaurant near my house had a crowd of people eating outside in temperatures of around 8 degrees C. That’s not at all normal; they’d normally have abandoned outdoor seating by now. It’s a consequence of COVID regulations.
Seems pretty crazy! I’m from the northeast and I can’t imagine people doing outdoor dining through the winter! Half the point of restaurant dining is the comfortable no-stress environment. Why would people go when they will be shivering outside under a little heater?
Indoor restaurants aren’t allowed at the moment, so if people want to go out... I can’t see it continuing all the way through the winter, though; while it doesn’t get very cold here (minimum of about 0 C usually) it does get very windy.
And all restaurants, even outdoors, are banned for the next six weeks, anyway.
Yeah, my wife and I have been eating outside (in Ireland) since restaurants re-opened.
To be fair, we used to be smokers, so were used to this before. Around September, everyone else stopped eating outside, and the staff often looked at us funny when we continued.
Here id DC, eating outside in the winter sucks. Wind makes the outdoors miserable, and we have a tendency to get just-above-freezing rain. Outdoor seating just packs up for 4 months.
Outdoor dining is a new thing for a lot of restaurants given the current circumstances. That said, colder weather meals is only going to make a difference at the margin of whether people eat outside.
Read the article (paywalled for me) and see who is mentioned. That is likely who paid for the PR. They're just making something normal into something topical.
