Join Sacramento mayor for a virtual St. Paddy’s Day drink amid coronavirus closures
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg invited everyone to join him for a virtual drink to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day safely during coronavirus closures and help bars and restaurants who will be experiencing a huge financial loss as authorities try to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“Staying home may be a new normal, and we’ve got to adjust. We have to think about how we can re-create social interaction while protecting each other,” Steinberg said Tuesday in an email to The Sacramento Bee. “Certainly social media and the internet and the ways that people can interact with each other virtually is something I really need to explore and have fun with.”
It’s part of a campaign known now as “Sac Virtual Outings,” which would bring Sacramento residents together online in Zoom chatrooms, said Mary Lynne Vellinga, spokeswoman for Steinberg’s office.
This virtual St. Patrick’s Day drink is expected to begin about 7 p.m. Tuesday and will be streamed on Facebook Live and Twitter Live. The mayor invited residents to like, share and post comments and videos of their own St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.
The mayor’s video stream will include a link to a GoFundMe account created to help local bars and restaurants shuttered as part of efforts to slow the coronavirus and protect those most at risk of a serious illness.
The idea of creating a virtual campaign that keeps the Sacramento community connected and helps closed local businesses, was brought to the mayor’s office by Sasha Abramsky, a freelance journalist and author.
As the coronavirus unfolded, he and his friends had recently started meeting for social get-togethers online. They would sit in front of their computers, in Zoom online video conference rooms, and talk over a beer or glass of wine.
Abramsky’s idea was to encourage others to set up virtual drinks with their friends. But instead of buying two or three beers at their favorite bar or restaurant, they can sit at home and still interact. The money they saved on staying home could then be donated to their favorite bar or restaurant.
“There are an awful lot of Sacramentans who don’t want to see all their beloved pubs/bars/restaurants go out of business,” Abramsky said in his written pitch to the mayor. “It would be an exercise partly in altruism, but partly in self-interest; since it would help these bars to keep their employees and their leases and to be able to open for business again down the road.”
Abramsky has written extensively about crowd behavior, fear and ways of maintaining social solidarity. He said virtual outings in Sacramento could work.
“It would, at the very least, be worth a shot, since the alternative is mass bankruptcy in the restaurant and bar industry, and a huge number of our neighbors out of work,” Abramsky told the mayor’s office.
This story was originally published March 17, 2020 at 7:03 PM.
