I moved to the San Francisco Bay area at the beginning of this year when my wife's job brought us over from our home in Maryland.  Since then, I've been infatuated with exploring the heart of the city almost every day - walking and taking photographs of the scenery.  I felt like I got to know neighborhoods and streets pretty well to the point where I could start navigating without a GPS.  A few keywords come to mind to describe my observations:  active, relaxed, diverse, booming, new.  Never in my mind would I have ever imagined a time when I would observe a city's energy frozen.

Today, San Francisco is in week three of shelter-in-place/lockdown and many cities around the globe shutdown in hopes to heal faster, quicker so we can limit the health and economic risks we are all facing.  I began documenting how people and various sized businesses are handling the situation upon the mayor's mandate.  Most businesses are creative, finding ways to stay open and successful, while others are completely closed until the government sanctions normality - whatever that new norm might be.

Luckily my wife works for a company that allows for telecommuting and is used to remote work, enabling us to setup a modest home office in the corner of our apartment.  We've practiced safe-distancing and even taught our 17 year old cat to make sure his paws are cleaned.

20 years of being together has made us realize that we could easily adapt to being in our home  24/7 without strangling each other.  We didn't panic buy, but it's very easy to fill a small pantry in our small kitchen.  Thankfully, in the city, many grocery stores are still open, providing and servicing our basic needs, while the majority of us adjust to the new norm and our heros on the front lines battle the pandemic.

For about a week starting March 23rd, I began taking over a thousand photos and thought it would be important to share selects of what I was seeing.  All objective, I didn't want to be that trending photographer to wait for that one moment showcasing an empty street.  In my observations, many neighborhoods and parts of downtown are active, but at 95% of what they usually are... definitely, not at the same volume as a few weeks prior.  You would think a tornado or hurricane was upon us the way many businesses boarded up their doors and windows. 

At the time of this posting, some businesses may have closed or adapted their strategy with new information arriving every day in regards to the state of the crisis.  The following groups of photos are selects from areas I visited on foot, while minding the recommended social distancing, to share a sense of how people are coping with the pandemic.

Click on the arrows found in the slideshows below, left and right of the photos, to navigate the curated selections.