With anxieties rising about the Delta variant and the current surge of COVID cases, more SF bars and restaurants are going to start carding — looking for your vaccine card along with your ID.

Most of the Bay Area is masking back up, at least in some situations, and tensions are high as COVID cases and hospitalizations tick up. But things continue to reopen, and events are still happening.

We have news of a taker for the prominent corner space that was briefly home to AL's Deli (598 Guerrero St.), and beloved doughnut spot The Jelly Donut at 24th and South Van Ness is finally back alive.

A new wine bar with dance bar aspirations is coming to the former Thieves Tavern space at 496 14th Street (at Guerrero), and it's called Bar Part Time.

SF's music venues are finally popping back alive, and the beloved Divisadero spot The Independent makes its resurrection official on Friday, July 9 with a show by Bay Area soul, psych-rock, and R&B band Con Brio. 

As businesses in Mid-Market and SoMa slowly come back to life, the Namu Gaji/Namu Stonepot/Sunset Squares team of Dennis Lee, David Lee, and Daniel Lee are opening up SSP Beer Hall (59 9th Street). Also, there's a Sunset Squares Slice Shop opening on Divisadero, in the former Namu Stonepot space.

Starting next week, San Franciscans don't have to go to Cow Hollow to get your Shake Shack fix. The chain is opening its second San Francisco location in the heart of downtown, at the Westfield San Francisco Centre mall (845 Market St.), just a hop and a skip from the Powell Street BART station.

SF's kitschiest Tiki bar experience, The Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel (950 Mason Street), will be welcoming guests and people who just want to Instagram the rainstorms starting July 9.

As (some of) the masks come off, here's some news this week about more things reopening in SF and elsewhere around the Bay.

The Stinking Rose (325 Columbus Ave.), which opened in 1991 in North Beach and maintains a loyal clientele of tourists and garlic-loving locals, has been closed throughout the pandemic. And now we learn that it won't reopen unless a new owner steps in and wants to keep the concept going, with the original owners deciding to retire.

Namu Stonepot (553 Divisadero) is no longer serving its loco moco bowls and stonepot rice from the Divisadero space where it's lived since 2017, but the menu is still being served at Dolores and 18th, and will be appearing at a new food-hall concept the team is opening soon on 9th Street.

Osito, a much-delayed restaurant with a celebratory, communal tasting-menu concept centered around live-fire cooking of meat and fish, is finally taking shape and aiming for a fall opening at 2875 18th Street (at Florida).

We all knew that the Stacks space (501 Hayes St.) at the corner of Octavia and Hayes likely wouldn't stay empty for long, and as the pandemic wanes we learn that the owners of Cow Hollow's The Brixton (2140 Union St.) are set to open a new location — their third — there in the coming months.