A Pandemic Hits Home: Santa Cruz

Local Businesses Deal With The Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak

(Update 3/13/2020: Bookshop Santa Cruz has announced 99-cent local delivery! Check it out. As of today, Digital NEST has temporarily suspended in-person classes and co-working.)

The Atlantic: Cancel Everything.

New York Times: Call It Off.

It’s officially a “global pandemic,” says the World Health Organization.

The time for wondering has passed. Should we cancel that event? Stay home from that vacation? We should. We must. Even the healthiest among us are social distancing. Stocks continue to plunge. Because testing for COVID-19 was delayed and short-supplied, experts warn that we can’t claim to have a full picture of what this outbreak looks like in the United States yet. California is in a state of emergency. No one knows exactly where this is all going.

According to a slew of international coverage, including an incredibly detailed outline of the virus’s spread from The Atlantic's Yascha Mounk and Tomas Pueyo’s viral (has that become a tasteless term?) article on Medium, we do know one thing for sure: It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Likely a lot worse.

What does that mean for people trying to just live their lives, raise healthy kids, pay bills (relatively) on time, get exercise, and keep their jobs?

Undeniably, the fallout will most severely affect people who were already struggling to make ends meet, those in the lowest income brackets and whose health and safety were already compromised. Gig workers, contract workers, people who work in the service industry, and other hourly wage employees are feeling the blow already.

“During this moment of crisis, having a vibrant gig economy…should create more flexibility in the response,” says Wired Editor in Chief Nicholas Thompson in his daily Most Interesting Thing in Tech video.

But the system is breaking down, and this moment “shines a light on the inequities of the gig economy,” Thompson says.

“Suddenly, many of the people who are doing much of the work to help society respond in this moment of crisis are people who don’t have the benefits society is used to.”

Benefits that contractor workers at tech giants like Google don't even have (though they make up over half of the company’s total workforce). Google and Microsoft have announced pay for contract workers who can’t work due to the outbreak, whether that’s because they are sick, quarantined, or their shifts have been cut, since Google employees have been told to work from home.

The entertainment industry is taking a beating—Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals rescheduled, anticipated film releases postponed, the NBA suspended their season until further notice. Tech companies that deal in teleconferencing software (like Zoom, Microsoft, and Slack) are offering robust free versions of their software—read Doug Erickson’s take on that here.

But the outbreak is threatening small businesses and local nonprofit organizations as much as it is huge corporations, or more—and these are the very businesses that stitch small towns together.

Business is not usual in Santa Cruz

I spoke with an anonymous personal trainer who now lives in San Jose but was a long-time Santa Cruz resident and works in Santa Cruz multiple days a every week. She is contemplating serious concern about her livelihood—which, before this month, was booming. She teaches classes at tech companies where all fitness classes have been canceled and workers told to stay home. Clients she’s been working with privately for years have indefinitely suspended their sessions.

“My business is tanking. I’m worried,” she said.

The world-famous Sea Otter Classic bike race in Monterey was one of the first major area events we saw rescheduled. The Santa Cruz Warriors will play their upcoming games to an empty arena. Area schools have stopped travel for sports or field trips. The beloved She.Is.Beautiful race has been canceled, along with the Watsonville Film Festival, and the Santa Cruz Business Expo has been postponed with no future date announced yet.

Local businesses and event venues whose success rely on public events, like Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History and Bookshop Santa Cruz, are canceling and postponing major events. They are concerned with the wellbeing of their businesses, customers, and employees. In an email and blog post on Monday, Verve Coffee Rosters was one of the first businesses to widely address health concerns, noting that they’ll suspend use of customer’s own cups, among other measures.

Casey Coonerty Protti, owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz, remembers that most small businesses have overcome downturns before, whether during The Great Recession or, especially for Bookshop, after the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake.

Bookshop’s events program is at the heart of their business strategy and mission. While Protti knows canceling or postponing events is the right thing to do for all involved, “it is really hard to run a business without being able to plan, even a few weeks out.” Protti and Bookshop’s Events Manager, Chorel Centers, are among those making the hard decisions about when it will be safe to hold public gatherings again.

“I think what makes this different is the uncertainty about how big this will become and for how long,” Protti wrote to me in an email.

Protti explains that Bookshop’s top concern is the safety and health of their staff and customers, as well as staying true to their values. She noted that Bookshop has always told employees that cutting staff or hours is the absolute last thing they would consider in an economic downturn—it’s a guiding commitment of her business. Bookshop Santa Cruz announced in an email Tuesday that they will provide additional paid sick leave to employees who are feeling unwell.

“We are developing new ways to keep our customers connected and buying from Bookshop even if they can’t make it into the store,” Protti says of how they are dealing economically with the drop in customers.

Still, it’s too early to know just how much this is affecting business. Bookshop Santa Cruz is already looking into the future and planning for an economic downturn as a result of the pandemic, as many small (and big) businesses surely are.

Another Santa Cruz business owner who wished to remain anonymous told me that their profits are already down 25% year-to-date. This business owner has been compassionately and patiently supporting the worries of their employees, who are nervous that they’ll be let go or their hours reduced—or worse, that they’ll become ill—but the business owner is nearly unraveling from the stress as more bad news rolls out.

Several non-profit leaders told me they are contemplating canceling huge annual fundraising events, though none of them wanted to speak on the record, understandably. Canceling an event without a reschedule date or a clear communications plan doesn’t just hurt public awareness of a business, it can also feed the public’s panic around an already tense situation.

Educational professionals, particularly at UCSC and Cabrillo, have been told to move their classes online (some cities are already doing this for middle and high schools, too). Seems like a great innovation, right? But what about those teachers who aren’t comfortable with online teaching or whose material isn’t delivered optimally online? What about students who don’t learn well online and need in-person instruction? And how do we ensure accessibility to those students who don’t have high-speed internet at home?

Asking students and professors are expected to quickly pivot to online teaching and learning isn’t a simple task by any means, nor is it an equitable one.

"We take care of each other.”

Jacob Martinez, Executive Director of Digital NEST, who just won the prestigious James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award, is trying to stay positive. The NEST is still operating normally, but watching.

One of the biggest impacts the NEST is feeling is from the postponement of the Watsonville Film Festival. NEST youth were heavily involved in the festival not only through promotion and coordination, but because a NEST-created film was to be screened at the festival. NEST youth even created all the trailers for the festival films.

“Here’s this great community event,” Martinez says, “the whole purpose is to bring people together, have dialogue, share stories. But the first thing they recommended us to do is to not bring people together.”

And yet Martinez says he knows the NEST will weather this crisis.

“One of our values is that we act with love and we take care of each other. We help each other, and we will do that for our employees.”

That might mean extended leave, allowing employees to work from home, giving more paid sick time, and generally being more accommodating. Digital NEST is ready for these actions, but Martinez, who more and more becomes a leading voice for equity in the tech world, wants bigger companies to consider the implications of this crisis on their workforce.

“I hope this causes employers to look at their benefits and the way they take care of their employees,” he says.

If the Digital NEST seems pretty prepared, it’s because they are.

“We just have that value of taking care of each other,” Martinez says. They’ve been doing it all along.

“The great thing about Santa Cruz,” says Bookshop’s Casey Coonery Protti, “is that I know we will all be here for each other. We did it before with the earthquake and the 2008 recession and I know we will do it again.”

What can you do?

Besides all those helpful lists you’re seeing (wash your hands, stay home if you’re sick, and all the rest), it’s important to remember that panic can sometimes spread faster than germs, especially if we spend all day alone in our heads…or on social media.

First, take a deep breath: Preferably at least 20 feet away from other breathing people. Nothing is going to get better if you let yourself sink into despair.
Keep taking care of yourself: Don’t forget that exercise, meditation, eating good food (not just canned beans and pasta—save those for the real zombie apocalypse), and getting plenty of rest are essential practices for staying healthy. Caring for yourself will also help ease your stress and anxiety, and hopefully ease the panic of your community members.
Physically distance, but reach out: Just because you’re “distant” from your loved ones doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still talk. Humans need social time. And luckily for us, we’ve developed the technology we need to talk without sharing germs. Send loving texts, call your older relatives who are probably fearful, and ask for help. Your therapist may be able to do a phone session—just ask.
Check the facts: This is not the time to get hooked by fake news, un-cited “statistics,” or your inflammatory uncle’s clickbait Facebook shares. Read reputable journalism, check the sources, and listen to medical experts.
Care for your neighbors: We are all in this together, whether we like that or not. Fighting someone for the last roll of TP isn’t going to help anyone get through this. Be nice. Check in. Drive safe. Rethink getting into a Twitter argument over “if it’s like the flu or not” (hint: it’s not). Division will only make this worse.
Keep spending in our local economy: Bookshop Santa Cruz is promoting their ship-to-home services. Stripe has a birthday sale coming up tomorrow. Luma Yoga is live streaming classes online. If you’re going out to eat or for coffee, tip extremely well. People who work in service and retail are being hard-hit right now. If you have extra money to spend, keep it local.