It’s Illegal to Visit a Salon in California, Unless Your Name is Nancy Pelosi

You can’t go to a salon or barbershop in San Francisco to get a haircut or blow-out. This is, unless your name is Nancy Pelosi.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., visited a hair salon on Monday, even though an ordinance for the city prohibits any indoor personal services. California also requires masks to be worn indoors. However, in a video obtained by Fox News, which first reported the story on Tuesday, Speaker Pelosi can be seen walking around inside the salon without a mask on.

The speaker has since blamed the business for, allegedly, setting her up.

A recent guidance from the San Francisco mayor’s office, dated August 28, allows “outdoor personal services” to resume starting September 1. However, it states that services can resume only if both clients and providers wear masks “at all times.”

The video from a security camera shows Pelosi walking around inside the salon, which is illegal, without a mask on, which is also illegal.

The owner of the salon, Erica Kious, told Fox News that she sees Pelosi’s visit as a “slap in the face.” Pelosi “feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work,” Kious said. “We’re supposed to look up to this woman, right? It is just disturbing.”

While the guidance from the mayor’s office allows for clients to be served outside, a memorandum from the California Department of Consumer Affairs prohibits chemicals from being used outside.

“Chemical hair services and shampooing cannot be performed outdoors,” the memorandum stipulates.

Kious said that this is the reason she hasn’t been able to reopen her salon, even outside, since her salon specializes in hair color, which requires chemicals that are prohibited by the state for outdoor use.

Apparently, one of the stylists who works at the salon informed Kious that he was going to open it up for Speaker Pelosi, because the speaker had requested it.

“What do I do?” Kious told Fox News that she had thought to herself, adding that she can’t control when her stylists go into work.

“The Speaker always wears a mask and complies with local COVID requirements,” said a spokesperson for Speaker Pelosi originally claimed in a statement to The Hill. “This business offered for the speaker to come in on Monday and told her they were allowed by the city to have one customer at a time in the business. The speaker complied with the rules as presented to her by this establishment.”

However, Speaker Pelosi has since placed blame on the business for allowing her to come in.

“I take responsibility for trusting the word of the neighborhood salon that I’ve been to… many times… It was a set up, and I take responsibility for falling for a setup. I think that this salon owes me an apology, for setting me up,” the speaker said on Wednesday.

On his show Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson lambasted the speaker for the double standard for herself as compared to regular Americans.

“It’s too dangerous for you to vote in person, but Nancy Pelosi knows it is safe for her to sneak into a hair salon when no one is looking… Nancy Pelosi went inside, and she can do that because she is the Speaker of the House, third in line to the presidency. You cannot because you don’t have as much power as Nancy Pelosi,” Carlson said.

Earlier in the coronavirus pandemic, Texas salon owner Shelley Luther was jailed because she refused to close her salon.

Many Americans are likely wondering why a regular American is sent to prison for trying to make a living and keep her salon open, while a politician gets off scot-free for using one?

This episode by Speaker Pelosi is reminiscent of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot who originally shuttered salons and declared them “not essential,” but then went and got a haircut. “I’m on national media. And I’m out in the public eye. I take my personal hygiene very seriously. I felt like I needed to have a haircut,” Mayor Lightfoot said.

In the days of COVID-19, apparently our new national motto is this: “A blow-out for me, but not for thee.”

You can follow this author on Twitter @MettlerZachary

Photo by POOL New/REUTERS

 

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