Groundhog Day

Another COVID-19 lockdown is coming. I can't remember if this is the third or fourth stay-at-home order since March. The days, weeks, and months on the COVID calendar are a blur. This article from SD Beer News is a depressing read about what craft brewers face. This paragraph stood out to me*:

In the last two weeks alone, two brewery-owned venues have shuttered. The first was San Marcos Brewery, whose owners cited the impossibility of carrying on amid COVID-19 restrictions when announcing the closure on social media. A week later, Pacific Beach-based Amplified Ale Works announced it would be vacating the Miramar brewery and tasting room it has operated since 2015, leaving it without a facility in which to manufacture its beers. These venues join a list of pandemic-era closures that includes Vista’s Iron Fist Brewing, Escondido Brewing, Miramar’s Thunderhawk Alements, Hillcrest Brewing (which remains open as a non-brewing restaurant), Bolt Brewery’s La Mesa tavern and Two Roots Brewing’s Ocean Beach tasting room. Kearny Mesa’s Circle 9 Brewing and San Marcos-based Rip Current Brewing are still open but openly for sale.

The periphery of doom for breweries and restaurants gets narrower with each new stay-at-home order. I plan to do my part by buying local, direct from breweries if possible. I will keep ordering food to-go, too, from local restaurants. For years, most of my beer purchases and consumption have been take-away, but now this act has an urgency. Everyone is tired of COVID and lockdowns, but WEAR A MASK AND SOCIAL DISTANCE. VIGILANCE!

* How is Amplified Ale Works able keep its tasting rooms open without a location to brew its beer? I suspect it must have arranged a contract-brewing location before it decided to close its Miramar location.