Much like at one’s favorite bar or diner, patrons often have a long-standing relationship with their hair stylist or barber, making the recent health-order-mandated business closures difficult for patrons along with workers and business owners.

Unsurprisingly, hair salons and beauty parlors are just a few of the many businesses that have been impacted by Covid-19 health orders.

Indoor salons were allowed to operate during California’s short-lived reopening but, on Monday, July 13, Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered salons in the 30 counties on the state’s watchlist—including Marin County and the rest of the Bay Area—to stop offering indoor and outdoor service.

After push-back from beauticians, politicians and the Professional Beauty Federation of California, an industry advocacy group, Newsom clarified at a Monday, July 20, press conference that salons, barbershops, massage parlors and a few other related business will be allowed to move their operations outdoors, provided they follow safety protocols.

The latest rule change likely won’t save every business but, for those who do have the ability to move outside, the new order might give them the ability to scrape by.

The Bohemian spoke to two North Bay business owners to gain an understanding of the struggles of the state’s hairstyling industry—and what they think of the state’s latest order.

San Rafael Salon

On Tuesday, July 14, San Rafael salon owner Ann Brewer, 61, walked into her building to grab some supplies for clients requesting at-home service.

Just days before, the well-maintained Brewer-Phillips Hair Design  had been singing with the snip of scissors, the hum of blow-dryers and slightly muffled conversations behind face-covering masks.

After the initial California shutdowns of non-essential businesses in March, Brewer talked to her team and other Marin salon owners about how they could create safe plans to re-open their businesses.

When sanctions were lifted for two weeks in July, a horde of clients—all wearing mandatory face masks—flooded in to find temperature screenings, self-reporting waivers of symptoms and socially distanced stations. The salon received compliments on cleanliness and safety from doctors who came in for appointments, Brewer said.

Yet, by July 14, Brewer’s self-described “big, beautiful” salon in downtown San Rafael had once again fallen silent due to the new rules for counties on the state’s watchlist.

“It’s hard to just look at all that, and say, is it really unsafe to be here?” Brewer said in a phone interview.

“I’ve found that basically, everybody is self-policing, like if somebody sees somebody pull their mask below their nose, we go and tell them, ‘Put that back up,’” Brewer said. “There’s not one thing that people get away with, because everybody’s watching.”

Yet, despite the precautionary measures taken by Brewer-Phillips and other establishments, Newsom shutdown salons and other businesses in 30 counties on July 13. The order came during a statewide spike in Covid-19 reportings, with Marin in particular being a hotspot, as average daily cases in July have nearly doubled that of prior months.

After a process of staying afloat following the first wave of shutdowns due to funding from her husband and Small Business Administration loan programs, the future of the salon remains unclear.

“At a certain point, I might lose everything,” Brewer said.

On July 20, following Newsom’s latest announcement, the California Department of Consumer Affairs clarified that hair salons may offer outdoor haircuts but not other related procedures, including shampooing, electrolysis and coloring.

Brewer said roughly 80 percent of clients received coloring during their appointments, a procedure which is not allowed under the new state guidelines. However, while she’d have to check with staff and clear the service with both the state board and city planning, Brewer said jumping through hoops wasn’t a problem.

“I’ll do anything I can to keep things moving,” she said.

Sonoma County

Up in Sonoma County, another county on the state watchlist, a Graton-based hairstylist may have unintentionally lucked out.

Months before Covid-19 struck, Ramona Camille, 39, began refurbishing a 1974 VW van with the dream of offering haircuts and other outdoor services at festivals, weddings and elsewhere through her company,  Ramona Rainbow Hair Art.

While the North Bay’s wedding and party industries probably won’t recover for a long time and Camille still hasn’t completed the VW van, she started cutting friends’ and clients’ hair around the county before the pandemic, including at some on-site weddings.

Camille, a single mother, saw another benefit to at-home visits before the pandemic, describing the services she provides to some clients as childcare and haircare combined. Even before the pandemic, more than half of her clients, many of them single mothers, asked her to make at-home visits, she said.

As a result of her previous experience, Camille mastered the art of to-go appointments long before the July 20 reopening. She is able to gather all of her equipment—including a collapsible chair, an umbrella, outdoor lights, a trash can and disinfectant supplies—in her car.

“[Offering outdoor service] is really completely possible,” she said.

Camille was inspired by a trip to Hawaii where she saw residents offering a variety of services outside.

“People were outdoors and they seemed to be having so much fun,” she said.

Under the state’s new order, Camille plans to cut hair on her front porch in Graton and continue offering clients at-home visits.

In Sonoma County outdoor spectator sports are shut down because crowds are vectors for the spread of the deadly Covid-19 virus. But some people and businesses believe themselves to be exceptions to the public health rules made to protect us all.

On Saturday night, the Petaluma Speedway hosted the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame Classic, and the Bohemian was on the scene at the fairgrounds, observing. Citing Covid-19 public health order restrictions, the Speedway has closed the main grandstand where generations of fans once cheered the raucous machine circuses. Racing fans can now safely watch the exciting contests online. But some diehards are putting themselves into harm’s way, paying three times the regular ticket price of $16 to physically attend the races by purchasing tickets disguised as “pit passes.” Many of these attendees were not wearing masks, nor keeping safe distances from each other—exhibiting the kind of behavior which is blasting the flames of Covid-19, nationwide.

Speedway managers are trying to skirt the public health ban on crowd spectating by charging fans $45 for viewing the races from a smaller, benched viewing area across from the main grandstand, accessed through the pit area. Trying to cover its potential liabilities for spreading Covid-19, the Speedway requires all who enter to sign a blanket liability waiver  in case they are infected with Covid-19 whilst on the premises of the racetrack.

Legal experts opine that these Covid-19 waivers are not worth the paper they are printed on. (Adults are required to sign away a child’s right to sue for negligence). For one thing, the Speedway is not consistently enforcing all of the mandated safety precautions it claims to be abiding by on the Covid-19 protection signage it is compelled by law to display. Rather, the Speedway is putting everyone in Sonoma County and beyond who, during the next two weeks, comes into contact with a fan or driver or official who was infected there at risk of illness and death. Are we all agreed that watching stock cars race is worth dying for? Of course not.

On Saturday, the Bohemian observed, and took photos of, unmasked staff selling the $45 “pit passes” to non-mask-wearing fans who were paying to watch. A handful of people roaming the pit, and a few of the spectators watching the races, wore masks, but most did not. Even the racing officials lining up the cars to enter the track were not wearing masks as they leaned in to talk to unmasked drivers.

The Speedway manager, Rick Faeth, said in a telephone interview that 300 people attended the race on Saturday, including drivers and their crews and Speedway staff of eight and the pit-pass-purchasing spectators. Although Speedway staff is required to take the temperature of all those entering the racing pit, the Bohemian did not see any one having their temperature taken as they strolled through the gates past a not-masked security guard who monitored the entrance for those bearing pit pass wristbands while sitting in a golf cart.

Faeth said he did not have enough staff to “play mask monitor,” but that in the future he would ask the EMTs staffing the Fire Department ambulance that is on hand for car accidents to help discipline the crowd. He commented that the racetrack’s insurer requires that all those who enter to sign the Covid-19 waiver form and that he cannot speak to its legality.

The Speedway’s Covid-19 waiver format was created by California Fair Services Authority, which insures fairs and racetracks in California. The waiver that all who enter the racetrack are required to sign acknowledges, “I am aware that I could be infected, seriously injured or even die due to Covid-19. … I am voluntarily participating in these activities with knowledge of the danger involved and agree to assume any and all risks of bodily injury, death or property damage, whether those risks are known or unknown.”

The densely worded waiver forever indemnifies the Speedway operators, the Sonoma-Marin Fairgrounds, Sonoma County, the state of California and unnamed contractors from “any and all liabilities,” not just for contacting Covid-19, but for any type of harm that occurs to them on the premises. Remarkably, that blanket indemnification includes any acts of negligence by all of the above. And even your heirs and survivors are not allowed to sue if you are killed by Covid-19 contracted at the Speedway. Or so says the waiver, which does not mean it is legally valid.

Legal expert Allison Zieve, with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, reviewed the Speedway’s Covid-19 waiver. She said, “The waiver sounds way overbroad. I am skeptical that any court would enforce it as written, certainly not as to many or most of the claims that it purports to waive.” Its signers are not informed that, in actuality, they really cannot sign away all of their rights to sue. They are just encouraged to believe that the waiver is binding on them and their heirs in perpetuity—but it is not, so the Speedway is not telling the truth to those who are entrusting it with their safety and well being.

While it is not uncommon for skydiving and other businesses selling dangerous experiences to require liability waivers, they cannot escape liability for negligence, which is what the Speedway and its insurer are trying to do—pretending that people can sign away rights to sue for damages under all circumstances. Attorney Zieve asks, “I wonder if the waiver was drafted so broadly just to discourage people from filing lawsuits in the first place, because they assume that they can’t?”

Writing in the legal profession’s ABA JOURNAL, Tyler T. Rasmussen, a litigation partner with Fisher Phillips in Irvine, California asserts, “To be the most enforceable, you have to have a [Covid-19] contract that is narrowly tailored to your business. It has to be clear and unambiguous and easily understandable by the individual who is reading it.”

There is a larger question to ask, though. The Speedway appears to be violating the state and county requirements that it take the temperature of all those who enter and enforce physical distancing and mask wearing. Since it takes a person infected with Covid-19 two weeks to show symptoms, proving that the virus was contracted at a specific time and place by a specific person is extraordinarily difficult. Why is the Speedway requiring its drivers and the spectators to sign away their right to sue if it is really operating its business according to the public health rules that are designed to protect everyone? California law explicitly protects Speedway employees from signing away their right to sue for negligence. But the fans are told otherwise—and we are all at risk of being victimized by what looks like legal jabber covering for potential negligence.

With new infections sharply rising, Sonoma County Health Officer Dr. Sundari Mase has issued a public warning, “Even gatherings over 10 people are fueling rising infections. Your social bubble should really consist of your household members at this time.” That applies to stock car racers and their pit pass holding fans, too.

As educators across the state finalize back-to-school plans, Gov. Gavin Newsom today announced new criteria on how schools should operate amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Learning in the state of California [is] simply non-negotiable,” the governor said during a virtual press conference. “Schools must provide meaningful instruction during the pandemic whether they are physically open or not. We all prefer in classroom instructions for all the obvious reasons … but only if it can be done safely.”

Criteria 1: In-person school is based on local health data

In order for schools to have in-person classes this fall, Newsom said that the county in which the school is located must be off the state’s monitoring list for 14 consecutive days.

“Schools that don’t meet this requirement, they must begin the school year this fall through distance learning,” Newsom said.

The state Department of Public Health maintains a list of counties seeing an increase in transmission and hospitalization and have limited ICU and ventilator capacity.

Criteria 2: Mask requirements

All staff and students in the third grade and up must wear a mask at all times. Students in the second grade and below are encouraged to wear either a mask or a face shield.

Criteria 3: Physical distancing

All staff must maintain a six-foot distance between each other and students at all times. Schools will be required to have daily temperature checks and hand-washing stations.

Newsom said deep sanitation and disinfection must also be a priority and that schools are required to create quarantine protocols if students or staff contract COVID-19.

Criteria 4: Testing and contact tracing

School staff will be required to get tested for COVID-19 on a regular basis and the state contact tracing workforce will be directed to prioritize schools.

Criteria 5: Rigorous distance learning

For schools that can’t return to in-person classes, teachers will be required to have live daily interactions with their students. Teachers must assign work equivalent to that done during in-person classes. English language learners and special education students should have adapted lessons.

Access to internet and devices has also been marked a high priority, with the state investing $5.3 billion in additional funding to make learning more equitable.

According to the state Board of Education, 20 percent of California students—1.2 million—can’t access the internet at home. The digital divide is even worse in rural areas, according to a 2019 analysis by EdSource which found only a third of California households in rural areas have internet compared to 78 percent in urban areas.

Newsom also announced guidelines for what schools should do in the event of an outbreak. The governor said that if 5 percent of a school tests positive for COVID-19, then the school must close. If 25 percent of schools in a district have positive cases that reach that 5 percent threshold, then the district must be closed within a 14-day period.

“None of us want to see education virtualized—at least I don’t,” Newsom said. “The one thing we have the power to do to get our kids back into school is look at this list again: wear a mask, physical distance, wash your hands, minimize the mixing. The more we do on this list and we do it at scale, the quicker … we’re going to mitigate the spread of this virus and kids are back in school.”

In a statement released on Friday afternoon, Dr. Steve Herrington, the Sonoma County Superintendent of Schools, addressed Newsom’s announcement.

“(The Sonoma County Office of Education) SCOE will now work closely with local school leaders and our public health department to interpret these state directives and how they impact the plans that schools have been diligently creating throughout the summer. Additionally, SCOE will work with our public health partners to ensure that Sonoma County has adequate testing and contact tracing capacity to ensure a safe return to school once Sonoma County is off the watch list,” Herrington said.

“I will meet with Sonoma County’s 38 superintendents, as well as charter school and private school leaders, early next week to discuss this new guidance in detail. SCOE has been and will continue to provide professional development and other supports to assist districts in building robust distance learning options for all students. Sonoma County schools are committed to serving families with high-quality instruction and supports, regardless of the current conditions under COVID-19,” Herrington continued.