Gavin Newsom has regret about lockdowns? You dont say

Gavin Newsom says that he may “regret” some of the lockdowns he imposed on California in 2020.That’s nice.It’s also far too late for those of us still suffering the nightmare that caused in our lives.I opened my cycling gym, Spin 360, in 1998, on Arrow Highway in Glendora.

Indoor cycling was new.There were no other spin studios nearby.

People came because they wanted something different, and they stayed because it became a community — faith, sweat, and the same faces week after week.The biggest news, opinion and culture shaping California right now.

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Never miss a story That community is what the state of California tore apart.California had the longest COVID lockdowns in the country.My studio was forced to close for 58 weeks.When we were finally allowed back, it was not a reopening.

It was 5%, then 10%, then 15% capacity.Masks.

Plastic barriers.Inspections.

Fines.Customers who had been loyal for years were told to be afraid of one another.

Many never came back.I lost 87% of my members.Then came the loan.

It was supposed to be a lifeline.It has become a leash.The US Small Business Administration (SBA) Economic Injury Disaster Loan was calculated off my 2018 and 2019 tax returns — the years the business was healthy, before anyone had heard of a pandemic.

There was no pandemic in those numbers.There was no 58-week shutdown in those numbers.

There was no lingering fear in California in those numbers.The money arrived at the end of 2021 into 2022.By then I was not running the 2019 business.

I was starting over — worse than starting over — because the customers who used to fill the room still carried the fear the state had spent a year and a half teaching them.Payments came due on a schedule built for a gym that no longer existed.The SBA’s answer to that gap was a short hardship window.

Six m...