Wednesday: At first, things didn’t seem so different. But as the day wore on, the changes were more palpable.
Good morning.
If you didn’t know it was reopening day, Tuesday morning in Los Angeles might have felt like any other — or at least, any other in the recent downslope of a pandemic that has restricted life in California for more than a year.
Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights was quiet. In stores, patrons still wore masks, even though they didn’t have to. On Hollywood Boulevard, the heart of Tinseltown’s tourist district, only scattered visitors took selfies in front of a blocked off TCL Chinese Theatre plaza.
Nearby, at the nearly century-old Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, the lobby was dark and cool, while its lush Tropicana Pool was lively, but relaxed — as it has been for a while now, amid climbing occupancy.
“I think you’re seeing what you were seeing yesterday,” Denise Randazzo, the hotel’s vice president of sales and marketing, told me as we looked out at guests, mostly unmasked, lounging on chaises and dipping into the crystal aqua water. Workers, still wearing face coverings, brought drinks and sanitized chairs.
My colleagues reporting on California’s big reopening found much the same around the state: Depending on where you were or what you were doing, many things stayed the same, and reactions to the fanfare were mixed.
At the Berkeley Bowl, my colleague Thomas Fuller reported, most shoppers still wore masks, although the region has some of the state’s highest vaccination rates. In the Central Valley, my colleague Giulia Heyward reported, residents and officials asked: What took so long to lift the restrictions?
In other words, however Californians were feeling about reopening on Monday — jubilant, angry at the governor, cautiously optimistic — is probably how they felt on Tuesday.
“We just kind of want to see how it goes,” Roselma Samala told me recently. “Honestly it’s been a little bit of trauma from the past year of flip-flopping from whether we can open to when we can’t — just all the regulations.”
She’s the co-owner of Genever, an Art Deco-inspired gin bar in Los Angeles’s Historic Filipinotown that won’t reopen for in-person drinking until July 15.
Once they do welcome tipplers in for an ice-cold martini or a Filipino-style gin and tonic, though, she said she expected people would be ready to party: “You know — the Roaring Twenties.”
Of course, this tentativeness was on display in the daytime. As Tuesday afternoon wore on, beloved watering holes started to reopen their doors, many for the first time in many months.
At the Short Stop, an Echo Park dive near Dodger Stadium, Cassandra Simon, the general manager, was pacing, taking phone calls outside, while Theo Ogboghodo waved in grinning patrons.
“We’ve had at least five cars come by and say, ‘Are you guys open?’” Ogboghodo said.
Moments later, a man rode a motorcycle down the sidewalk and asked about coming in.
Simon said both the Short Stop and the other bar she manages, Footsie’s, had been closed during lockdowns; it wouldn’t have made financial sense to operate at limited capacity.
Reopening, she said, felt surreal.
Drinkers in Dodgers jerseys and ball caps bellied up to the bar, shoulder to shoulder, laughing, hugging and taking shots with bartenders. Though the dance floor was still empty, Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day” bumped from the speakers.
Christina Arutyunyan, 31, and her boyfriend, Hugo Hernandez, 38, were finally back at their regular corner, along with Chris Reynolds, 50, who said he’d been coming to the Short Stop since 2003.
“I’ve been giddy all week,” Reynolds said.
Hernandez said it was a relief “to see old faces.”
At the stadium — which over the course of the pandemic became a kind of civic hub — it was clear that things had changed. Traffic, for one thing, was in full force.
Kristopher Williams, 21, wore a hat celebrating the team’s World Series win last year and carried a homemade sign. He had taken public transit from South Los Angeles, leaving at 1:30 p.m. for the 5:30 p.m. gate opening. Williams said he was eager to be part of history.
“This is a very special game,” he said.
Inside the stadium, it was hard to remember that not long ago, the parking lot had been one of the nation’s biggest mass vaccination sites. And not too long before that, thousands of people had driven through the parking lot to administer their own coronavirus tests as instructed by Mayor Eric Garcetti, whose face was projected on giant video screens.
The crowd on Tuesday of 52,078 — give or take — went wild for Mookie Betts when he hit a go-ahead home run. “Take me out to the crowd,” the fans belted out during the seventh inning stretch.
It felt electric. It felt normal.
For more:
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Gov. Gavin Newsom marked California’s reopening with a lottery, a Hollywood robot and no mask.
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While many Californians were celebrating the state’s reopening, a complaint emerged from some residents and officials in the redder parts: It should have happened a long time ago.
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The Los Angeles Times has a list of attractions that have yet to open.
Here’s what else to know today
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A federal watchdog backed the legality of President Biden’s suspension of wall construction along the Mexican border.
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Vice President Kamala Harris hosted women of the Senate for dinner at the Naval Observatory.
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Dana Rohrabacher, the former representative for Orange County who lost his congressional seat in 2018, admitted that he participated in the Jan. 6 Capitol march, but said he did not storm the building.
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In some areas of California, drought is a continuous state of being, CalMatters reports.
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The manager of the state’s electricity grid warned of rolling blackouts in some areas of the state this week ahead of an upcoming heat wave, The Sacramento Bee reports.
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An I.R.S. backlog is stalling coronavirus stimulus and tax credit payments that California offered to undocumented families, The Sacramento Bee reports.
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A judge ruled that Harvey Weinstein can be extradited to Los Angeles to face rape charges.
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Southwest Airlines flights in the U.S. were temporarily suspended on Tuesday afternoon, the second major disruption to the company’s operations in less than 24 hours.
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CalMatters explores whether the reopening will bring travelers and tourism back to the state.
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The Associated Press explores why stolen Army rifles keep showing up in California.
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Valley Boulevard, Los Angeles’s Chinese main street, was decimated by the pandemic. The Los Angeles Times asks: Can it bounce back?
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Our food critic writes that the most exciting place to eat in Los Angeles is in Chinatown.
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Fashion: A new, lingerie-inspired take on the midriff is one you’d expect from Hot Vax Summer.
California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.
Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter.
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