 Hi, this is Roger McGuinn and you're listening to KDRT in Davis, California. Well, welcome back to Davisville. I'm Bill Buchanan and we're back on the air this week after taking a week off to adjust to the temporary closure of the KDRT studio because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This program today, by the way, might sound a little different because I'm recording it with my computer from home over the internet without the benefit of the studio or the sound engineer. But we'll keep the spirit of the show intact even if the sound is a little different and we don't have our usual music for a while. As always, thank you for listening. Well, my guest today is Wendy Weitzel. She is the Cummings and Goings columnist for the Davis Enterprise. She has been writing about merchants in Davis for many years and has lately, just say the last few weeks, been focusing on how they're faring amid the coronavirus pandemic that has curtailed or even closed businesses throughout the town. She's joining us remotely today from her home. So Wendy, thank you for talking with us today. Thanks for having me. All right. So you write about merchants in Davis and I should mention your writing is also available online. I read it in the enterprise but people can find it on Facebook and elsewhere. Anyway, obviously, this is a tough time for everybody. Today, we're focusing on the merchants in Davis. They bring life to the town. They make downtown attractive. They bring revenue to the city and most of all, of course, they're friends and neighbors who are trying to get through the pandemic like the rest of us. I'd like to start with just an overall question. You talk to a lot of them. You write about them. What's your overall sense of how they're doing? Well, I think they're all struggling. Every one of them, whether their business is open or temporarily closed and worrying about the future, I mean, we all are. But it's a really tough time to have a small business and trying to pay rent and keep your employees paid and that kind of thing. I really feel for them. Yeah. And I get a sense that it probably changes week to week like it is for all of us. Something that seemed, I don't know, unusual at first starts to seem a bit more normal even if it's sort of fundamentally weird. You're writing mostly about retail, right? Right. Retail and restaurants for the most part. And in fact, I think you said we were talking about setting this interview up that you focus more on the restaurants these days, I suppose, because that's one of the big questions people have is if they're open or not. Yeah, that's why I tried to start doing because really only as far as retail, only the essential businesses are open and I do talk about them when I can. But it's trying to spread the word of what restaurants are still open and so people can go support them. That was my main focus and has been for the last three weeks. Yeah. And in fact, you're writing your column more frequently. I understand temporarily. Yeah. It was cut down to every other week a couple of years ago, but now I'm writing every week and the enterprise gratefully is supporting that effort because they think it's important to support businesses and let people know how they can do that. Yeah. So how do you do you work? Do you check in with the businesses each week or I imagine some contact you probably if they want to get word out about something? How do you go about your job? Well, I mean, I live here and I work here and I shop here. So that's my key advantage. But I also, since I've been doing this column since 2001, I get a lot of tips, which are super helpful. And then I just when I see something, I take and make note of it and I do, you know, quite a bit of emailing and calling and checking in and just walking around if I can, which is less lately, but calling and checking. That's how I get my information. Yeah. So one of the questions, of course, is how to help businesses in a time like this. One of the obvious ways is to patronize them as much as possible. You've written about this. Do you have a sense of how that's working or are there other ideas, maybe things that people could do to help businesses through this, the ones obviously that they want to support? Well, if my suggestion is to call and check to see if they're open. And if not, you know, or check their social media, check to see if there is a way you can support them, even if their brick and mortar store is closed. There's so many stores like, you know, the wardrobe, women's clothing store just started offering Zoom, personal shopping. So you can meet with the owner and kind of almost virtually try things on and she will help you pick things and deliver them in a clean way. Avid Reader is really launching into an online operation where they're selling a bunch of puzzles and toys and books and things like that. So they're adapting to the situation. Fitness centers are doing online. Classes, but you can also support them by buying gift cards. There's some different methods. You can do that. There's a Dapit app that allows you to buy gift cards to local restaurants and all kinds of different stores. You can buy downtown Davis gift cards that would go to, you know, folk, any of those downtown merchants. So in a variety of different ways, you know, in your column in early April, and we're talking on at least track of days, we're talking on Wednesday, April 8th, I think, we're recording this in advance to air. But in your column in the enterprise a few days ago, you wrote about people scolding merchants for staying open. You mentioned someone even calling the police on people at the farmer's market. I don't know if it was, you know, on the market itself, but of course the market's considered an essential business. It can stay open. You know, I've been there. I've seen the Lions. I've seen people keeping distance and all that. You know, I'm wondering, are you hearing about a lot of things like this or is it mostly just a few cases or what's your sense of that? I'm seeing a rise in trend and I think other people are too, whether it's against businesses or just in people in general, people are agitated and they're nervous and they're anxious. And so naturally it's hard not to lash out and jump the gun. But I think we've got to dial back on our judgment and shaming and worrying about placing others. We need to have some empathy. And, you know, we don't know the story, everybody's stories. You know, somebody might be at the grocery store just buying a few things, but they might, and that might be their second or third time this week, but maybe they're shopping for an elderly person or, you know, we just, there's all this negativity right now on social media and elsewhere. And I think we need to be a little more forgiving each other, less judgmental and stop. It's just adding to our own anxiety, I think. You know, I mean, there certainly is a lot of anxiety out there. And of course, I suppose if someone sees something that is, you know, genuinely countered to the spirit and the law of the ordinance, but that's not really what you're talking about here. No, I was getting a lot. I'm getting a lot of emails even or talk on my Facebook, Cummings and Goings Facebook page with people trying to shame businesses for being open or such and such shouldn't be doing this and that. And they're probably, and they're talking about like essential businesses. And that, yeah, that we, the Davis Farmers Market got a message from the chief of police saying, you know, they had multiple reports of people wanting to shut down the farmers market and the farmers market's taken all kinds of precautions. So, and it's an essential business. It's, you know, so I just, yeah. In fact, I think that was farmers markets in general are called out specifically and at least a lot of the orders I've seen that say that these are essential businesses because they sell food. And well, in certified farmers markets that they've, that's actually been laid out by the governor and the health departments that they are exempt. I've seen as someone who, you know, lives in shops and Davis myself, it seems to me that in the last few weeks I've seen businesses being more, I don't know, sort of deliberate people probably getting better at their game in terms of, you know, clearly delineating where you can step, you know, the plexiglass shields going up at grocery stores, things like that. I mean, it strikes me that people are trying to work within the system and, you know, make it, make it function the way it needs to. The hours for senior shoppers at the grocery stores, you know, another example of that. I've been trying to list those, those special kind of hours in my column as well, because they sometimes have been changing or stores have been adding them. So, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of creativity, I guess, is part of the point at a time like this. People find ways you're mentioning businesses, finding ways to do things online, you know. It has occurred to me that in some respects, maybe we're fortunate that this didn't happen five or 10 years ago, because the online connectivity is a lot better than it would have been. Well, if you go back farther, I can't imagine doing this with dial-ups. You know, you wouldn't be able to, well, even what we're doing, talking over computers. This is for a radio show, but it's entirely outside of the radio station right now. And we're, you know, we're used to maybe getting delivery of more than just pizza these days of food and groceries. And so it's nice that there's that system already built in already. You know, I imagine merchants would be like anybody else. Most of us are thinking pretty short term these days just trying to get through the day or the week or maybe looking ahead a little bit. I do wonder how much they're thinking about what lies ahead. I mean, there's this thought that the change that we're all going through right now, learning to do things online. Well, this will take it out of retail altogether, but I've heard people talking about, well, with so many people working at home, it sort of changes the view people have about working at home, you know, that maybe that there are ways that more people could work remotely and still be productive and so on. You know, an employer or an institution that might have been more suspicious of that idea before maybe is less so once they have to send their workforce home and find that it's still is performing. Although I've always been working from home or no wealth for the last, you know, 10 years or so. And now that my whole family is at home, it's not as conducive, but that's all right. Well, that's true. I guess there's a couple of things there. One's just the tactic and then one is the conditions. And yeah, sharing a home with people who are trying to go to school and work and all, you know, little cabin fever can set into. But I guess my point is this may reset some things. And, you know, you've got retailers now who are doing more things online at the moment. That's kind of their, their lifeline for some of them is, you know, selling things online for curbside delivery or delivery in person or take out meals. But I think people, although we naturally were used to shopping online and Amazon is so popular, I think we need to take a breath and look at if we're buying something on Amazon. Is there a chance that maybe we could support a local retailer? We actually have the time to do the shopping and the research and right now. So we know that I mean, I can easily predict that Amazon's still going to be around when COVID quarantine is over, but many of these local businesses might not. So anything we can do to help them, even if it's buying their products at the grocery store or ordering directly from their website or buying them a gift card or whatever, buying a gift card to support them. I think that's an important thing we need to acknowledge. Be really thoughtful of where we're spending our money. Quick station ID. This is Bill Buchanan. The show is Davisville on KDRT LP 95.7 FM in Davis, California. We're talking with Wendy Weitzel, who is a freelance writer. Well, she's a variety of things. Used to be managing out of the Davis Enterprise back in the day. And we're talking about basically retail merchants in Davis because that's something she writes about in her column. Well, yes, to your point about online, I would imagine that maybe to the degree that we've thought online is Amazon, online is somewhere far away, maybe it changes a little bit now if people can think about local merchants also being online. I guess I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It just strikes me that there is a reshuffling going on and maybe that creates opportunities for local merchants either out of necessity or simply out of insight. And I don't know if you're hearing much along these lines. Again, it's early. We're all, I'm sure they are too, still in the coping stage. But at some point people are going to start looking ahead. And I think that might be interesting to see what ideas emerge. Right. I was part of the Downtown Davis Business Associations Marketing Committee meeting last week. And one of the merchants Shu Shu, who owns Shu Shu's clothing, it's a women's retail boutique. She says, the changes she's making are ones, aren't just knee-jerk reactions. They're ones that are going to help her later. Setting the things she's trying to set up online will help her later. And she's trying to think of it in that perspective, that there are investments in the future, not just investments of saving my skin right now. And so that's one of the things she was doing is trying to really push this local app called Nitch that helps you shop locally. It helps you, like if I wanted to buy a white sweater and I was looking to buy it locally, I could put it out on this app and basically other local merchants would almost bid or show what they have available in my size or something like that. That sounds creative. That sounds like a creative response to it. Well, and if people are thinking more deliberately now about shopping in Davis, in other words, you start to value what you risk losing. And maybe that'll be part of the change too when the whole thing is over. I've been waiting for people to do that with newspapers as well. Well, yes. I have a newspaper background as well, of course, as you know, and they're a whole different category. And then of course, the enterprise is facing all this too. They're not strictly speaking a retailer, I guess. If I recall, back in the day, they used to be considered factories because they produced newsprint. I might be wrong about that. I might not remember that correctly, but they're obviously in a struggle too. I wonder, students of course have been a big part of the business in this town. And I don't have a sense for how many students are gone right now with the campus being remote learning only for spring and possibly after that. But of course, if they're not in town, they're just gone. I mean, they could still order some things online, but it wouldn't be food, wouldn't be restaurants. I know. Yeah, my niece goes to UC Davis and she's back home in Roseville because it's safer to be in her own room and then, you know, sharing a room with close quarters with other roommates. So I think a lot of them are doing that. A lot of students have left if they can. And I guess on my point is that it's got to be a particular challenge for some of the merchants particularly or the restaurants that have been very student focused. And that observation has been made before that a lot of the restaurants in Davis really aim at the student market. It's a large market. And it's a different market perhaps somewhat than the folks who live in town year round. And I would imagine that's probably an area at greater risk. Yeah, I think what we can do is try to keep up our habits of if we went and got coffee or if we went and got sandwiches at Zia's all the time or whatever it was, we should try to keep that up. And even though we can't go relax and sit in the restaurant and eat it, if we can maintain that we're at least doing our part of what supporting how we did before. I'm wondering, you've mentioned actually something that could answer this question already, but I'm wondering if you're seeing any positive trends among the city's merchants. You had mentioned a moment ago about the shop owner who said, you know, I'm going to build things for the future. Other things along those lines. I do think they're adding more on it's forcing them to take the time to have a more online presence and delve into things like delivery. But they're also just trying to survive. And hopefully, you know, they can do that. There's some pretty strict, there are, there's a lot of things available to them with these, some of these new loans, but there's a lot of restrictions tied to them. So I don't know how. Yeah, I was going to ask about the loans. You know, I think I'm by no means expert on them. I think details are probably still emerging. But if I understand the part of the idea of the small business loans that will be coming out of Washington is that they're forgivable if, you know, the recipient meets certain conditions. I take that to mean that basically it's a grant if you use the money in a way they consider, you know, supporting the economy and responsible, I guess, as opposed to somebody running. And if you're not, if you don't lay off your workers, but if you don't have work for them, you can only string them along for so long. And then I was just talking to a contractor who said, you know, they're, you know, you're forced to go to your bank first for those loans. And, you know, his bank was, was trying to sell him or saying that there were these other benchmarks that they had to have a, a credit card with that bank first and all these, you know, and also contractor, he can't, you know, there's, he can't start new projects right now. And so he's, it's, so he wants to be able to do one of these forgiven loans, but he's not sure he's going to be able to qualify if, yeah, anyway. It's tough. So the help might be available, but not necessarily in a format that actually works for some folks. But I'm wondering if there's anything maybe we haven't talked about yet that particularly alarms you with regards to what you write about in Davis. Anything that we haven't covered yet that people want to know? I think we've covered a lot of that is, you know, I think what alarms me is the negativity and the automatic, everybody's automatic mindset to just go to the big businesses that they know, like shopping on Amazon. And I mean, I shop on Amazon too, but, but, you know, I try to be deliberate and it and I'm trying to be stay positive and empathetic to the situation. You are sort of a business yourself. I mean, you're a freelancer, since a lot of freelancers are businesses. What do you, what's your own experience in that regard? What are you hearing maybe from, you know, some of the people that you work for or do work for? Well, I've, I've actually been busier for a little while. I do, I do some work for the Davis Farmers Market doing press releases. I do, so right when this started, there was a lot of press releases for that. There's press releases about events changing. I'm doing work for the Davis Pride Festival and the Terry Blossom Festival. And those both had to be postponed, so had to write press releases about that. So I've been actually busier than usual, putting in more client hours than usual for those type of things. That eventually might not be the case, but it's... Well, yeah, I guess that's the question is, I mean, so much of the impact of this will depend on how long it lasts and then what happens afterwards. And I don't, I haven't seen anything that strikes me as reliable. You know, you hear things like, well, the peak might be in mid-May, but, you know, in terms of the effect here, but then what does that really mean? Do you then loosen up a little? This is getting way beyond what I know, although I will say, if it KDRT has the COVID report twice a week at noon and five with Automobile Renault, and she's putting a lot of information out about that as it goes, and I'm sure they'll be more there. Yeah, I think it's encouraging that well, the UC Davis has, you know, put out an announcement that it's not laying anybody off, but it's, it sounds really good, but it's only through the, through this fiscal year. So it's just through the end of June, that's not a very long promise. So my husband is a long time employee of over 30 years employee of UC Davis. So that's... I've seen the note as well. In fact, it says career staff. And of course, anybody UC Davis knows not all the staff are considered career. That's right. Contract and things like that. So, yeah, well, that's, that's part of the conditions that we're all in right now, which is frankly, one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you about this piece of it, because it matters in Davis, right? It matters if our local businesses and retailers are doing okay, or how they're doing. No one's really being doing okay right now. A general question, I wanted to ask and put a pandemic aside for a minute. There's a lot of things you could write about a lot of subjects. Why, why do you write about business? Why do you make this your specialty? Well, back when I was managing editor at the enterprise, we, I'd see new businesses open and I'd tell, I'd try to assign it to a reporter. Hi, can you just write a quick brief at least or something that, that this new business is open people, you know, should know about it. And they're like, yeah, yeah, I'll get around to it. And and then it just sat there. So I, I realized that this is something that needed to be that, that people wanted to know and or I did anyway. And so I was naturally curious. And so I just decided to start collecting them in little bits in it. When I first started it was just sort of whenever I had enough and I put them together as a column, you know, once a month or something like that. And it kind of took off and in popularity and I got more and more tips and that kind of thing. So that so it's been fun to write. It's more, I mean, it's my I've always wanted to be a journalist and I always have been in some way. Right now I'm more of a, it's more of a hobby almost, but because it's just this column once in and now right now it's once a week, but it's not my livelihood by any means. But, but it is my where my heart is in it and the feedback I get from people is really valuable. And so that feeds me more than anything. My parents owned a small business. So I it's in my heart as well. So yeah, it's a subject that just called out to you. And that sounds like a lot of newsrooms I've worked into where, you know, journalists can seem like, you know, we're all think the same way, but not at all. I mean, there's some really drawn to science or sports or business and a lot of others who aren't and you're one who's drawn to business. We're very near the end. I did want to mention you've got it's also visible your show, your columns also available online. Where can people find you on Facebook? It's just Cummings and goings on Facebook. And if people want to contact you, they can contact you through that or also at the end of your column in the enterprise. Right. Yeah. Email's preferable. The best is the best way to reach out to me and the best way to keep track of what for me to keep track of what I get. But yeah, and subscribe to the enterprise. We'll have to end it there. Wendy White-Sola has been our guest today. Thank you very much for appearing on Davisville. Wendy, I appreciate it. Thanks. I'm Bill Buchanan. This is Davisville. Again, it's a different kind of recording, so we don't have music at the end, but we will be back. Thank you for listening.