Space City Safe

I wholeheartedly endorse this.

A new crowdsourced website that allows Houstonians to vet a business or restaurant to see if they are following COVID-19 guidelines has exploded with responses.

The website, Space City Safe, is the brainchild of 25-year-old Heights resident Chris Haseler. Haseler, who works as an engineer, created the website the weekend after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lifted the statewide mask mandate and opened Texas back up 100%.

“I think a lot of Houston was caught off guard by the governor’s announcement,” Haseler said. “A lot of people don’t feel safe quite yet.”

Haseler’s website allows users to input information about a Houston business or restaurant, including if they are requiring masks, social distancing and their capacity level. It also lets users leave comments about their experiences, link to where they got their information (such as a restaurant’s Instagram page), and make corrections.

“One of the integral parts of the website is being able to specify the information source, it sort of adds a level of accuracy,” Haseler said. “So you’ll notice for a lot of the website, it’s the business owner themselves who have put up their COVID restrictions.”

The site has grown to house just over 600 businesses. The boom in responses is not something Haseler expected – he created the website as a challenge for himself, “just for fun to learn about something new.”

“I certainly was not expecting this to take off at all,” Haseler said. “The fact that it has garnered so much attention and so many users has been a surprise and a lot of fun to deal with.”

Hey, if it’s up to businesses to decide how they want to handle it, then it’s up to the rest of us to decide what kind of response from businesses we want to support. I’d much rather know this ahead of time. The one piece of data on the site that I’d have included is whether there’s an outdoor option, but this is fine. I applaud the effort. If you don’t see your favorite place there, you can send its info to Space City Safe yourself. At some point we’ll need websites like this less, but we’re not at that point just yet. In the meantime, keep yourself informed so you can keep yourself safe.

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14 Responses to Space City Safe

  1. David Fagan says:

    I support the grading systems other cities have for cleanliness also. This is a good idea.

  2. Jason Hochman says:

    Sounds like a bad idea, because I could put up disinformation about my enemy and his little pierogi stand. It also sounds like a lot of nervous nellies that are worried about “germs.” The germ movement started some time ago when they lied about the flu being so dangerous (a paper by Jeremy Samuel Faust admits that flu is not very dangerous, but they exaggerated it to scare the public).

    It’s good to know if a place is following the science and not having people wear a mask, because, I’ve gone to places that require a mask and most of them give out masks (probably made in sweatshops) for free. But a few places don’t and I had to go find a mask outside on the ground in order to shop there.

  3. Jen says:

    Jason it is a good thing you know about disinformation and that you never, ever tell lies about science, masks, germs, or anything else.

  4. Jen says:

    I guess what I knew about germs is wrong. Please, what are ‘germs’ and the germ movement?

  5. Jason Hochman says:

    Jen, it’s like Obama said: “clinging out of fear to their masks and hand sanitizer.” There is not a maskless mandate, you can wear a mask whenever you wish. We have come to a point where fear is now a virtue signal, and a little courage is bad. Where being a victim is great, but personal responsibility and self actualization is bad.

    The germ movement is the people who started carrying hand sanitizer everywhere about 10 years ago when the H1N1 flu came out. And that use a paper towel to open the door. You can also watch George Carlin talk about the germ movement.

  6. Jen says:

    Well you know wearing a mask protects you to an extent, but mostly protects other people from your in-person spew (as opposed to online spew) so what you are doing by mask-wearing is demonstrating common courtesy in addition to a basic understanding of public health measures. This is simple for Democrats to grasp.

  7. Jason Hochman says:

    Lets just say that Democrats are simple. The study that Manny linked that showed some benefits from masks showed benefits to the wearer, but nothing supporting that it protects others. And it only protects others from you if you are sick. You can’t be infected with the Corvis 19 from someone who is not sick. The Democrats are able to easily grasp what they are told by CNN and MSNBC and other people that instruct the Democrats with instructions to follow without question. This unquestioning nature is the basis of the Democrat Party.

    When my sister was born, I wanted to have a baby of my own, just like my mom had. My parents were progressive enough to buy me a doll with red hair, just like my sister. I carried my baby while my mom carried her baby. If this had happened today, my unquestioning parents would have put me on hormone blockers and lopped off my genitalia.

    The Democrats are not at all bothered by the Biden Cages. I think every day about Biden, how he grabs the kids away from their parents with his gnarled talons, sniffs their hair, and determines which children will be given to his boss, Mrs. Harris. When the children who have been sniffed are sorted, Mrs Harris cackles and gets her cauldron boiling…

    Meantime, the bombing of Syria has caused Islamic terror attacks throughout the US. And where is the 25rth amendment these days? Yes, let’s just agree that the Democrats are simple.

  8. Jen says:

    Where is common courtesy? Selfishness and stupidity in the face of everything are the new Republican virtues.

  9. C.L. says:

    Jason, I really need some of whatever it is you’re smoking.

    That being said, my experience with the Reefer Madness was such that it made me concentrate on the most mundane of things – Led Zeppelin II, the way the clouds rolled across the sky, Yes’s Fragile, the green leaves on the bushes in my front yard, etc. Your drugs seem to be having the opposite effects on you. On second thought, me thinks I really don’t want whatever it is rolled up in your ZigZag’s.

  10. Jason Hochman says:

    C.L. so you don’t believe that Biden is keeping kids in cages? I want to go down there to see the Biden cages, but they won’t let anyone in. Not even someone as powerful as Ted Cruz, our future president, could get in to see the cages.

    Wasn’t there a bombing of Syria? Or did I smoke that up too?

  11. Manny says:

    Jason and Bill, resident fascists and outright crazies. They do make for interesting entertainment.

    The questions are is Bill a paid Troll?

    Is Jason even a person?

  12. Jason Hochman says:

    We are supposed to ignore the kids in cages now? And the bombing of Syria? And all the mass shootings? Just because a bad orange man is not president?

    I can’t trust anyone who wants a government that will force everyone to wear a mask, but who thinks that it is draconian to ask voters to have an ID.

  13. Manny says:

    Jason, I have been voting since 1970, we were always required to show an ID to vote in person. The type of Id has varied.

    I voted by mail for the first time last year, I did not have to submit any type of ID. If voting by mail was such a problem why didn’t the fascists/republicans do something about it a long time ago? Because they were the beneficiaries of mail ballots.

    Jason, I don’t recall your concern about “kids in cages” when the orange buffoon was in charge? Why do you care now?

    Jason, you didn’t care when the orange buffoon was killing people with bombs, why do you care now?

  14. Jason Hochman says:

    I didn’t have to care about the kids in cages when the Orange Buffoon was buttoning up the cages, because the media made sure that we were reminded of it every second, and kept the outrage pumping. Now, there is silence. It is up to the good people to raise the alarm of the Biden Plexi Glass Cages.

    The Orange Buffoon didn’t start any wars, just maintained. Now that the US started a war with Syria, a person of Syrian descent perpetrated a mass shooting in Colorado. Once again, the Biden divisiveness has caused this.

    There is a lot of outrage about the Georgia law. It’s 98 pages long, so I haven’t read it myself. But the requirement to have ID is one of the alleged racist requirements.

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