Thursday Hunting And Pecking

Slammed again as the News Gods look down upon us and say: “Vacation? No vacation for you, earthbound desk drones.”

We were assisting a digital bro with a couple of in-county incidents juuuuusst outside our immediate area of coverage this morning when our own side of the property line started acting up with a nasty purse snatch in Orinda (and possibly elsewhere, apparently) and a COVID scare at a Rheem Center restaurant in Moraga.

We debated mentioning the name of the restaurant as we thought that could do lasting damage during these perilous times, and because we know our words carry weight well beyond our perceived status as a “small town blog.”

Anyway, a note pasted to the restaurant’s front door says they’re doing a Deep Clean while they remain closed for a couple of weeks after three of their staff tested positive for COVID – saying they’re conducting ongoing tests of their staff and could re-open or close again in future depending on testing results.

Diners were at the restaurant yesterday, according to some customers. The business is apparently popular. (Ed. This site has no commercial relationship with the business.)

Speaking of incoming reader fire and critique we took some hits for not covering an act of vandalism apparently conducted in response to the act of vandalism in Martinez recently, with some midnight painters daubing “White Lives Matter” on Howe Street in that city. We also tried to downplay the actions of a guy in red, white and blue attire pulling a firearm on counter-protestors after “Paint Roller Karen” and a male videographer documented their attempt to blot out the “Black Lives Matter” messaging on Court Street.

We’ll just say that after our initial rollout of the “Make America Great Again” Paint Party story people on both… all… every side of that issue took to their keyboards and threatened all sorts of actions and repercussions, some of them not very pleasant at all.

As unseemly as that may be we let a lot of the Interweb’s Viking Call to Arms sound without interruption unless imminent harm was threatened or overtly racist screeds were posted. Frankly, we were surprised by a lot of it – happening to like Martinez and its villagers – and after a while determined that there was something to learn from what was being said. This was noted by many residents, who appeared as surprised as we were about the vehemence and extreme nature of many of the expressed positions.

As we told many of you who wrote us about these incidents, we felt it was better not to have thrown gasoline on a spreading fire – even if journalists from as far away as Germany were suddenly asking about “Paint Roller Karen.”

The upshot of it all appears to be there’s a lot for folks to work out, hopefully before what portends to be a sizable demonstration by pro-BLM, anti-racism factions promising to show up for a rally and march in the city on Sunday. Things have been a little more than testy out there lately and we’re keeping our fingers crossed that everyone stays as cool as Martinez usually is.

We were also rocked by a couple of beyond sad stories with Danville ties this week – the loss of a local woman on Mount Diablo and the random killing of a Danville physician near Downieville. Both incidents were real heartbreakers and not much helped, even the very human stories we received of folks bending over backwards trying to help grieving family members during this worst possible time.

Apparently, Sierra County law enforcement – not the largest agency of their kind in the state – opened their homes and their hearts and, ultimately, their wallets to help out the Gershman family after unbelievable tragedy befell them on a dusty Jeep trail over the Fourth of July weekend.

We’re grateful to all those folks for taking care of our neighbors.