Sure, March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day, but it also marks four years since Nevada went into lockdown, closing “non-essential” businesses to encourage social distancing and fend off the spread of COVID-19. Is it possible to have nostalgia for a pandemic? Not really. Nobody wants to go through that again. But I must admit, there are a few things I miss about it.
🛒 Sanitized Grocery Carts
I knew the pandemic was over when Whole Foods stopped sanitizing grocery carts for customers (and I knew it was really, really over when food samples started showing up again). Now, I grimace every time I pull out a cart that’s got some mysterious dirt or dried liquid on it with a wrinkled up napkin in the corner 😣 Having an employee on “sanitation duty” was totally something worth keeping around.
😷 Face Mask Fashion
Yeah, nobody liked wearing face masks, but they had some perks beyond the health benefits. We all had at least one of those moments when we had to suddenly run out on an errand without taking a shower or dressing up nice. Messy hair? Didn’t care. All you had to do was pull out that wadded-up face mask from the glove compartment and relish the joy of anonymity without the fear of running into somebody you know.
- Side note: I struck gold when I found KF94 face masks inside a pharmacy at Korea Town Plaza. Stylish and effective!
🤝 Not Shaking Hands
I was never big on shaking hands to begin with. I don’t know where your hands have been. You don’t know where my hands have been. Why are we doing this? My biggest pet peeve: when someone wants to shake hands in the middle of dinner 🙄 Remember the elbow tapping thing? We should’ve stuck with that long after the worst of the pandemic was over.
🍸 Booze to Go
Everybody became an at-home bartender during the pandemic, whether leaving the house or not to pick up supplies. I recall the moment alcohol delivery was approved for Nevada, making it easy to perfect that Negroni variation with some random vermouth you found online. I also vividly remember the joy of El Luchador offering pre-made Margaritas “to go” with takeaway food and breweries like CraftHaus getting creative with pickup orders.
🚗 Lack of Traffic
Getting to the Strip in 10 minutes or less feels like a dream right now.
❤️ A Sense of Community
Whether you hate shaking hands or love clean shopping carts, the pandemic was a sobering moment that made us appreciate the little things, expand our range of empathy, and take some degree of solace in knowing we were all in this together.
On the day the lockdown became official, I found myself in a line outside Smith’s that wrapped around the corner of the building. Nobody rushed. Nobody got aggressive. And after getting inside, I saw the most in-demand items — paper towels, toilet paper, and water — were ON SALE and handed out in an orderly fashion. It may seem insignificant now, but it was inspiring at the time. And during a pandemic or otherwise, we’ll take inspiration wherever we can get it — especially in that rare moment you’re not getting price-gouged in Las Vegas.
➕ Relive the pandemic further with a scandal over COVID testing in Nevada. [City Cast Las Vegas 🎧]
