House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) visited a San Francisco hair salon for a wash and blowout despite local coronavirus restrictions — a move the salon owner called a “slap in the face.”
Fox News obtained security footage showing the maskless Speaker walking through San Francisco’s eSalon on Monday, August 31. Salons throughout the city have been shut down for months but were permitted to offer outdoor services, beginning Tuesday, September 1.
The salon owner Erica Kious told Fox News that she learned of the Speaker’s visit after one of the stylists, who rents a chair from the salon, informed her of the Speaker’s appointment the day prior. Kious described Pelosi’s action as a “slap in the face.”
According to Fox News:
“I was like, are you kidding me right now? Do I let this happen? What do I do?” Kious told Fox News, while noting that she “can’t control” what her stylists do if they rent chairs from her, as “they’re not paying” at this time.
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“It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know, that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work,” Kious told Fox News, adding that she “can’t believe” the Speaker didn’t have a mask on. (From the footage, it appears Pelosi had some kind of covering around her neck.)
Pelosi reportedly got a wash and blowout, the latter of which Kious noted is a no-go, according to coronavirus safety guidelines for hair salons. A directive from the city’s department of health states that salons and barbershops should “consider temporarily eliminating services that require lengthy blow-drying” — one of the primary services Pelosi reportedly enjoyed.
Kious, a single mom, stated that she has been “fighting for six months for a business that took me 12 years to build to reopen.” She originally planned to reopen the salon in July, taking the necessary safety precautions to adhere to local and statewide restrictions. However, she said, “they never let us open.”
“The fact that they did this, and she came in, it’s like a slap in the face,” she said of Pelosi’s self-care escapade.
“This is for everybody,” she told Fox News. “I am sharing this because of what everyone in my industry, and my city, what every small business is going through right now.”
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill did not deny the Speaker’s presence at the salon, telling Fox News, “The Speaker always wears a mask and complies with local COVID requirements.”
However, Pelosi was reportedly not wearing a proper face-covering, per the security footage, and she was inside the salon — another violation. Certain personal care services are permitted only to offer outdoor services beginning September 1.
Mayor London N. Breed and Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of Public Health, today announced that outdoor personal services will resume in San Francisco, effective Tuesday, September 1, 2020. Outdoor gyms and fitness centers can reopen starting September 9, 2020. Additionally, the Mayor and Dr. Colfax announced that once San Francisco is removed from the State’s watch list, the City’s top priorities for reopening will be the gradual opening of classrooms, services that support the development of children, and other activities that can occur outdoors.
Outdoor personal services that can operate include haircuts, barber services, massages and nail services. Only those services where both clients and providers can be masked at all times are allowed to resume. The City has posted information and guidance in multiple languages for businesses and is conducting outreach to personal services businesses to ensure they have access to the guidance and are able to prepare accordingly.
Pelosi told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in June that a nationwide mask mandate was “definitely long overdue” and chastised the president for not wearing one himself.
“The president should be an example. Real men wear masks. Be an example to the country and wear the mask. It’s not about protecting yourself; it’s about protecting others,” she said.
On Monday, the same day she ventured to the salon, the Speaker criticized President Trump for giving an in-person speech at the White House on the final night of the Republican National Convention, concluding that he “doesn’t care less about the spread of this virus” by “bringing all those people there, no mask, no distancing, and the rest.”
She added that he “slapped science right in the face” and set a bad example.
Pelosi is far from the only politician to act in ways contrary to her own rhetoric. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), a prominent pro-mask advocate, was spotted in public yet again without a face covering in a photo that has gone viral on social media in recent days:
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