The papusa place, we called it. Particularly my siblings. Whenever they came to visit, we often headed to the Nicaraguan restaurant on Mission Street. Papusas are stuffed cakes made with sweet corn flour. The stuffing includes cheese, pork or an edible central American flower. Naturally, everything comes with the standard regional accompaniment, rice and beans. Not to mention cerveza. But there’s more.

The restaurant is run by a family. In an era in which San Francisco has become terribly haute, this small place remains down to earth. In the middle of the restaurant a series of long tables are joined cafeteria-style. At those tables, everyone eats together, of course. The place is crowded. There is often a wait.

There wasn’t this morning when I arrived at about 11:30 AM. I simply had to have something. Brunch or an early lunch. It didn’t matter. I hadn’t been to the restaurant La Santaneca in something approaching two years. The place reopened in early July. This visit was overdue.

I had invited a friend, but he had told me that he wasn’t ‘ready for the Mission.‘ Something about this bothered me. The Mission district in San Francisco has, it is true, had a higher rate of COVID-19 transmission than other neighborhoods. This is understandable. The area is not rich. And with rents high, people jam together.

They also build lives together, given half a chance. And that’s the wonderful story of the Mission during the pandemic. The San Francisco health department understood the neighborhood’s potential problems early. It responded with an aggressive testing program. It identified people who were working in jobs or traveling distances that made it hard to isolate — and it re-housed these people. San Francisco’s hotel rooms were empty anyway. Some of them temporarily filled with people from the Mission.

Still, although the neighborhood is in rolling distance in my wheelchair, I hadn’t gone there for months when I suddenly had a very good reason in February. The University of California had set up vaccination and testing sites in the open air, just around the corner from La Santaneca. It did the heart good, not only to see that the vaccine was being administered by people of Mexico and central American descent. But because this was the locus for public health. People from rich neighborhoods in the canyons of Twin Peaks journeyed here to get their vaccinations. Somehow the ‘problem‘ Mission District had become the solution.

The restaurant is only one subway stop from mine. The ride takes three minutes. Still, it felt exotic. The subway train was not quite as empty as the last time I rode it. Which was about a month ago. It still feels a bit daring. Getting in the elevator, an enclosed space, feels even more daring. But there was a pleasant surprise. New elevator doors. Years overdue. The subway company, BART, had taken advantage of the pandemic to change them. Finally.

The doors opened on Mission Street, and I rolled into a small Central American mercado. The brick plaza above the subway station was bustling with people hawking their wares at card tables and from blankets on the sidewalk. Toothpaste with Spanish labels. Cut flowers. Electronics. It was all for sale. And an absolutely fascinating detail: virtually everyone wore a facemask. The latter are no longer required. Just strongly advised. And in this neighborhood everyone had gotten, and taken, the advice.

No wonder I thoroughly enjoyed my lunch of chicken flautas. Half the tables in the restaurant were gone. Especially the big one in the middle. La Santaneca had beautifully adapted to COVID-19. And I was happy to adapt to them. The waiter told me they hadn’t served food at the tables in 16 months. I thanked him, reversed my wheelchair and heard a pop. I had hit something. Stacked chairs behind me. The waiter handed me a piece of plastic molding. A man at a table across the room showed him where to snap it into place behind my rear wheel. I thanked him too. I thanked everyone for being who they were and acting like a community