The Fourth of July in San Francisco has always seemed a bit strange to me. I grew up in Ashland, Oregon - a small town with a wonderful Independence Day celebration which includes a morning run, a big parade, festivities in Lithia Park with food vendors, a crafts fair, live music at the bandshell, and then at night, a fireworks show.
In San Francisco, the Fourth of July includes none of that except a fireworks show. And while the fireworks show in SF is amazing, it is often obscured by the fog that usually makes an appearance here in the summer. Unfortunately all Fourth of July celebrations were cancelled in 2020 in Ashland and San Francisco because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Ironically, there was no fog in San Francisco this year.
Every year, people set off their own barrage of illegal fireworks all over the San Francisco Bay Area, and for some reason there were more of those than ever in 2020. It sounded like we were in a war zone. This just added to the strange vibe in the City with everyone wearing masks and many businesses closed and boarded up.
The Fourth of July came and went, the days of summer dragged on without any tourists, and San Francisco continued to struggle under the weight of the COVID-19 restrictions.
Here are a few images my camera captured the first week of July.