Outdoor Diners Shot In Paintball Drive-By

Welcome to p.m. Intel, your bite-sized roundup of Bay Area food and restaurant news. Tips are always welcome, drop them here.

• NBC Bay Area reports that paintball-gun-wielding miscreants are targeting diners at Bernal Heights outdoor dining setups. Two people were reportedly struck by paintballs as they dined at Bare Bottle Brewing Company, and a woman down the street at the Lucky Horseshoe was also hit. Witnesses say the shots came from a white car as it passed by the row of outdoor dining parklets, leaving at least four people bruised and many more frightened. As of publication time, police say that no arrests have been made, nor was any additional suspect information available.
• San Francisco remains in the state’s red tier of COVID-19 risk, but that could change at any time, city officials said in a Tuesday press conference. “We are fast approaching the case count to be reassigned to the purple tier … We expect to be placed in that more restrictive purple tier sometime soon, perhaps later this week,” Department of Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax said. The state is now announcing changes to county tier levels on a daily basis (it used to be weekly, on Tuesdays), and within 24 hours of SF’s shift, reopenings must roll back and the region must go under a 10 p.m.-5 a.m. curfew order. Even if SF enters the state’s most restrictive tier, officials say that outdoor dining will remain open, unless the state issues restrictions that demand otherwise.
• Bay Area grocery shoppers are panic buying because “our social media feeds, television sets, smartphone screens and computer monitors have been deluged by harrowing photos of empty shelves,” which “motivates us to beat out the others, or simply follow suit.” [SF Chronicle]
• Oakland’s Mad Oak Bar “n” Yard is plotting an expansion to Alameda. [East Bay Times]
• Adam Rosenblum, a co-owner of Marina burger spot Causwells, says that he’s making sure none of his staffers are laid off — and that they all hang onto their health insurance and hours. [Restaurant Hospitality]
• In an op-ed, Cafe Ohlone co-founder Vincent Medina reminds readers that “Berkeley and the inner East Bay have always been Ohlone land,” despite “painful colonization and in spite of efforts from Spanish missionaries and Anglo-American squatters to push our people out.” [Daily Californian]
• Santa Clara County bars, restaurants, and other businesses that violate health orders won’t get a grace period to come into compliance over the long holiday weekend, and will face fines that start at start at $250 (and go up from there). [Hoodline]