SF Weekly: San Francisco Dog Walkers and the Economy

Short Leash

The local economy is going to the dogs.

By Herman Wong

published: November 19, 2008

In the same way dogs can sense earthquakes, professional dog walkers can sense the tremors of bad times ahead. Since the summer, Lorrie Baranco, a 39-year-old with an American Staffordshire Terrier tattoo running up her left arm, has seen clients of her 9-year-old business, Bone-afide, cut back on hours. One longtime customer – an Internet-made millionaire – just handed his Labrador’s leash to his nanny to save money. “It’s the slowest I’ve ever been,” Baranco says.

San Francisco has an estimated 300 to 500 professional dog walkers, according to the San Francisco Professional Dog Walkers Association. In a city with more than 120,000 canines, dog walkers’ work connects them to all walks of life – gray-suited lawyers and hoodie-cloaked graduate students, financial types and high school teachers -making them a barometer of San Francisco’s economy.

SFWeekly.com: Against the Odds, One Man Campaigns for McCain in San Francisco

Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 09:40:22 AM

By Herman Wong

San Francisco—long a center of counterculture and tolerance—seems the perfect home for Gus Armstrong, a man with a small and wayward cause. A security guard by trade, Armstrong has for the last month taken up the banner for a minority among minorities. Just last Wednesday, Armstrong paced along the concrete island divider separating traffic on Van Ness Avenue off Market Street. He looked like an aging lounge singer version of Pete Seeger: a man with a mission in an oversized white tuxedo jacket worn over a white t-shirt, baggy black slacks, and white Adidas sneakers, topped with a pair of aviator sunglasses. In a way Armstrong was a protester, walking the island divider, in the middle of the swirl of cars and buses and pedestrians, in the heart of Obama country, holding a blue sign with the bold white words “McCain/Palin.”