Jun 27, 2023
When COVID hit, in March 2020,
Babylon Burning kept working.
In Part 2 of our episode on San Francisco's oldest screenprinting
ship and their new location on Howard Street, we talk with owners
Mike Lynch and Judy Tam-Lynch
about the several years of hardship that lead to their new
location. It started with the worldwide shutdown back in 2020.
They were lucky enough to already have orders from essential
businesses around The City. Two that Mike cites are Cheese
Plus and Balboa
Theater. Then they started to pick up schools around town. And
then, the City and County of San Francisco. And so on, and so
on.
We rewind slightly to establish the COVID timeline for Babylon
Burning:
- Love Letters to The City (our show), Jan. 11 thru Feb. 14, 2020
- first citywide shutdown, initially for two weeks, March 17
- stay-at-home orders extended through May, March 31
Around the time that PPP loans
started to disburse, they had been coasting in low gear, doing just
enough business to pay their employees and their landlord. Those
loans saved them, just barely.
Winter 2020 brought more shutdowns and hardship, but they weathered
the storm. Vaccines started rolling out, and that provided another
upswing. Toward the summer of 2021, they started doing outdoor
shows and other events on Bluxome Street (Jeff went to one of these
and they were awesome). These street parties made it feel like they
had turned a corner.
The new clients—essential, small SF businesses and schools—came
back for more. Thanks to the boom in business, they were able to
retain or replace their staff, some of whom have been with Babylon
Burning for more than 15 years. And the printing veterans are
able to teach the rookies.
They were coasting along, recovering from the deepest impacts of
the pandemic. And then, on December 4, 2022, a whole new tragedy
struck. Early that morning, Bay Alarm called Mike. "You have an
active fire at your shop. It's pretty bad." (Coincidentally, there
had been a small arson fire outside the shop door about three
months earlier, which prompted Mike and his crew to check up on
their fire insurance.)
Mike raced down 280. As he approached the Sixth Street off-ramp, he
could see the fire. It was bad. Really bad. As
he turned the corner onto Bluxome, the small street was lit up with
flashing SFFD lights. He was brought to tears seeing it all. The
fire had run through the upper levels of the building and its roof.
The fire department used 500,000 gallons of water to extinguish the
flames.
Mike ends Part 2 with a vivid description of firefighters' efforts
atop ladders to put the fire out while also risking the entire
roof's collapse.
Check back next week for Part 3 and the conclusion of our episode
on the new Babylon Burning.
We recorded Part 2 of this episode at Babylon
Burning on Howard Street in SOMA in June 2023.
Photography by Jeff Hunt