California’s reopening is inching closer.
With June 15 approaching, Bay Area businesses are preparing to implement new rules and those rules will be new to some activities we haven’t done in a while.
NBC Bay Area’s Cheryl Hurd talked to several business owners in Oakland on Thursday night and many are getting ready for June 15 and a lot of them are taking it slow.
Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre has been open for only two weeks.
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New movies are out, and people can’t wait to see them on the big screen after COVID-19 forced theatre’s to close for more than a year.
“The most important thing is to be back in the cinemas and sharing film with an audience," said Oakland resident Rod Armstrong.
An audience who has to wear and mask and reserve seating which is six feet apart from people you don’t know.
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Allen Michaan, the owner of Grand Lake Theatre said the rules won’t change much next Tuesday.
“I’m not going to rush into it. We’re not going to go to 100% capacity like so many people are planning to do. We are going to keep requiring masks. We are at 25%, we will probably go to 50%," he said.
Bowling is becoming popular again for the kids. Plank general manager Jorge Garcia recently started allowing people inside. He’s ready for the reopening but he knows there will be challenges.
“We don’t know the guidelines yet. People think they’re going to be completely free to do whatever they want to do. We’re still going to enforce rules and regulations,” he said.
Masks will be required inside. Nik Dehejia, the Oakland Zoo’s CEO says policy changes are coming on June 15.
“We are going to keep our times ticketing, so everybody still needs to get a reservation to come into the zoo. We want to do that to manage safety and spread people throughout the zoo,” he said.
The zoo will also maintain capacity restrictions at 50%. It will stay there for a couple of months.
Masks will be required in areas where there are crowds. Vaccinated people can take their mask off outdoors.
While unvaccinated people have to keep their faces covered throughout the visit.
