For some people, the scarier the better when it comes to Halloween decorations. A zombie girl with glowing eyes who rips the head off her teddy bear? OK. A 6-foot-tall, chainsaw-wielding hulk who emits bloodcurdling screams and buzzing? Trick or treat!

Decorating with scary stuff can be part of the fun.

But other people, including those with little kids, find the aesthetic disturbing, and prefer their Halloween without the gore.

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“I want to preserve my little ones’ innocence as long as possible, and the creepy, mischievous, evil side of Halloween brings up topics I don’t want my child to know about until they’re old enough to understand it’s fake,” says Jamie Morrissey, who has three children under 3 in suburban New York.

For those after a more dialed-down but still spooky and dramatic look, there are plenty of decorations and themes.

Some play off of old science and wizardry, with celestial illustrations and apothecary elements. Some take a playfully gothic turn. There’s the traditional orange-and-black color scheme, but no reason to stick only to that.

(Note: As for fake cobwebs and dangling lights, wildlife experts urge people not to put them up. Animals can get tangled and trapped in them, leading to injury or death.)

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BASIC BLACK. OR A HALLOWEEN RAINBOW

Jessica Dodell-Feder, HGTV Magazine’s executive editor, bleeds the color from her decorations.

“I love keeping everything black and white, then using natural elements that have a little bit of a creepy factor like bats, snakes, bugs or Venus fly traps,” she says. “Think black-painted branches sticking out of an urn; framed faux moth specimens; black-painted faux snakes ‘crawling’ across the center of a table like a runner.”

At the other end of the spectrum, if you want to take your Halloween a little bit ’90s, a little bit Barbiecore, then professional crafter Kara Whitten of Austin, Texas, has some zingy, rainbow-hued, Halloween-themed ideas at her site, akailochiclife. She offers garlands of multicolored pumpkins or phrases, like “Hocus Pocus” or “I Put a Spell on You.” She has instructions for spatter-painting faux pumpkins in day-glo colors.

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Another craft idea that kids and adults can do together:

Submerge a few white tapers in warm water until they’re soft enough to bend into curvy shapes. Then with a permanent marker add facial features. Once they’ve cooled and hardened again, you’ve got some candle ghosts for the table. There’s a DIY video on Whitten’s blog.

Betsy Cribb Watson, Southern Living’s senior homes and features editor, favors fall colors.

“I’m not huge on Halloween, so I love leaning into the season’s abundance of natural colors instead: sage greens, burnt oranges, golden yellows and chocolate browns,” she says.

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“Plus, when you skip the zombies in favor of fall color, you can enjoy your decorations from the start of the season through Thanksgiving.”

GHOSTS, JACK-O’-LANTERNS AND OTHER STALWARTS

But Watson acknowledges it’s no fun to be a Halloween Scrooge, either.

She finds the handmade ghosts from Mollie Jenkins Pottery “just the right mix of sweet and spooky.”

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Jenkins is a Columbus, Georgia, ceramic artist who found herself with a little extra white clay one fall semester while pursuing her B.F.A. at Auburn University.

“My mom’s always loved decorating for the holidays, and growing up we had spooky Halloween candlesticks along with big terracotta jack-o’-lanterns. I took a spin off of those, creating my whimsical ghost,” she said.

Her little specters have developed a following, and sell out every year on her site.

DECORATING FOR A PARTY

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Inviting some friends over for a spooky soiree?

For a Hogwarts feel, hang some of Balsam Hill’s battery-operated “floating candles” over a party table or entry. The retailer also has stacked black pumpkin lights with cat faces, and glittery black twig trees.

Crate & Barrel’s got a twiggy, matte-black wreath for a mantel or door. Or create a modern Halloween village with a few of their matte-black haunted houses.

Lauren McIntosh, an artist in Berkeley, California, has created a collection of glassware and napkins for Anthropologie with illustrations including a fortune-teller’s palm, ravens, night-blooming flowers, and mystical moon and star patterns. Also for Anthropologie, London ceramicist Francesca Kaye has an endearing array of bats, cats, owls and ravens on trays, mugs, lanterns and a candelabra.

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Dodell-Felder shares a party idea connected to the movie “Beetlejuice,” which gets a new installment as early as next year.

“I’m a huge fan of Tim Burton, and recently ended up purely by accident at a Beetlejuice-themed bar. It had black-and-white striped décor with neon green elements. The drinks were served on dry ice, and they had old-timey portraits on the walls. You couldn’t look away!” she says.

For “an elevated Halloween party,” The Spruce’s editorial and strategy director, Caroline Utz, suggests setting up a tablescape with luxe textures like velvet, and adding orange, purple and green candlesticks in different shapes and sizes. Sculptured Greek or Roman busts might add a “Night at the Museum” vibe.

CREATIVE BUT GENTLE

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In San Francisco, Emily Reaman works in interior design, and she’s also got a preschooler. While he loves some “spooky” things, she’s careful about her decorating.

“I don’t have cobwebs or skeletons hanging by my front door,” she says. “But I do add lights to the trees, and my son and I decorate gourds with paint and glitter that we keep out during Halloween, then use on the Thanksgiving table.”

New York-based writer Kim Cook covers design and decor topics regularly for The Associated Press. Follow her on Instagram at @kimcookhome.com.

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Autodesk is downscaling its physical presence in San Francisco and Marin County, another sign of how some large Bay Area employers are reconfiguring their plans for the workplace in the pandemic.

Autodesk recently decided to consolidate some of the office space it occupies around its San Rafael headquarters and in San Francisco, according to a spokesperson. The software developer is exiting two locations — 3900 Civic Center Drive in north San Rafael and at 300 Mission St. in San Francisco — and consolidating employees into surrounding buildings.

“Rather than a departure, these two closures represent a reallocation of Autodesk’s investment in the San Francisco market,” wrote Stacy Doyle in an email. “We remain committed to our presence in the Bay Area.”

Company hiring during the pandemic has increased because of company growth and turnover, said to be below industry average, Doyle wrote. But the company has accelerated its “flexible workplace” program in recent months, working from quarterly input from workers.

“Based on insight gained via direct employee surveying, there is a growing preference to carry out individual work remotely, and conduct team meetings or collaboration-based work in offices,” Doyle wrote. That preference have been over half on some of those polls.

Autodesk announced the opening of the 117,000-square-foot office at 300 Mission last year, and the lease for the nearly 47,000-square-foot 3900 Civic Center building commenced at the beginning of 2020, according to San Francisco Business Times and North Bay Business Journal reporting.

According to its latest annual report, the company’s San Rafael facilities included about 162,000 square feet under leases with expiration dates ranging from December 2021 to December 2024, and its San Francisco facilities consisted of around 284,000 square feet of leases with expiring December 2022 to June 2026 Corporate real estate totaled 2.1 million square feet in 100 US and global locations.

In its fiscal third-quarter report, released in early December, the company said it expected to take a roughly $180 million impairment charge for the adjustments to its real estate because of the pandemic.

While larger employers in the Bay Area and Marin generally are being more cautious about their plans to reoccupy their offices, a number of smaller firms have been getting back together in their corporate spaces, according to Whitney Strotz, who overseas commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield’s San Rafael location.

“This recent spike in omicron seems to be putting things on hold in the short term, as we go through a relatively steep spike in cases,” Strotz said about large companies’ plans to expand their local real estate. But rather than nixing those goals, those employers tend to be slow-rolling their site searches, he said.

One trend in those site searches that has been gaining momentum in the pandemic is the shift from central offices in urban areas to a hub-and-spoke model, with a smaller central office there plus even smaller satellite locations in surrounding suburbs closer to the employees ‘ homes, according to Strotz.

He’s currently working with a handful of San Francisco firms that are looking for multiple locations of about 4,000-5,000 square feet in Bay Area suburbs.

“Sales organizations have seen success with this model for a long time,” Strotz said. That arrangement typically includes a regional office staffed with a management, human resources and operational support, then small offices in surrounding markets. “What’s different now is we are seeing other kings of organizations looking for similar space.”

Haden Ongaro, who leads Newmark’s North Bay commercial real estate brokerage team from San Rafael, said the rebound of rents and occupancy rates in higher-class office space in Silicon Valley, San Francisco “viewspace” (with window views above surrounding buildings) and southern Marin prime complexes are signs of the market for such space is recovering.

“We are seeing a flight to quality in the Bay Area,” Ongaro said. “Buildings in southern Marin have done well and maintained high lease rates and low vacancy — in some cases below 5% available (to lease).”

One company that gave up sizable Marin County office space earlier in the pandemic was jobs online marketplace Glassdoor, which moved its headquarters to a San Francisco high-rise as part of a Bay Area consolidation. But the company’s 40,000-square-foot former head office at 160 Shoreline Parkway in Mill Valley is in late-stage negotiations with three undisclosed companies in various industries to occupy the space, according to Ongaro, who is part of the team brokering the deals. And one of those companies also is interested in adding another 15,000 square feet in an adjoining building.

Yet the 3900 Civic Center space Autodesk is moving out of may have a tougher time on the market, according to Strotz.

“Larger blocks of space have not seen as much action since COVID,” Strotz said. “That’s a soft spot in the market. Medium- and smaller-(sized) suites have seen the most action in the last 24 months. I’m hopeful that as we move from the pandemic to the endemic stage soon, we will see larger blocks get more interest again.”

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Before the Business Journal, he wrote for Bay City News Service in San Francisco. He has a degree from Walla Walla University. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.

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After months of intense pressure from families concerned about learning loss and mental health implications, starting April 12, San Francisco public schools are approaching the personal greeting of a small segment of students.

But not everyone wants to go back yet. While those eager to return have been getting louder in recent months, distance learning is working well enough for some families in the San Francisco Unified School District while others still have health and logistical concerns about returning this spring.

By late February, 57 percent of families that responded to an SFUSD survey – about 6,700 out of a total of 11,600 eligible for the first round of return – plan to send children back to physical education. A significant number of families choose to stay on distance learning, even though 19 percent of families have not yet responded to the survey sent out in December.

According to the survey, preferences vary due in part to demographics. About 80 percent of white families, 62 percent of non-English learners, and 83 percent of students in Korean language pathways said they would return in person. On the other hand, 36 percent of Asian families, 41 percent of Filipino families, 19 percent of bilingual Cantonese program students, and 48 percent of socio-economically disadvantaged families have de-registered.

For Jose Victor Luna and Maria Anabella Ochoa, parents of a first grader at Dolores Huerta Elementary School, their daughter’s health remains a top priority. Jazmin was born with various medical conditions, fought leukemia and has Down syndrome. Colds make her very sick and she has problems wearing a mask, they told the examiner in Spanish through a translator.

“It’s really important for us to be able to keep her at home,” said Anabella Ochoa. “Your health is very fragile. We have to do our part, but it’s also very nice because we can learn more about how she learns and be an active part of her learning. “

It was also a great experience for the Tenderloin family, which includes a third grader at the Tenderloin Community School. They have developed a new tradition of spending afternoons together in Golden Gate Park. Anabella Ochoa works part-time and Victor Luna is dependent on disability assistance due to an injured arm.

“We can’t have many things, but we can have the things we need,” said Victor Luna. “I’m not currently working, but I can spend all of my time supporting my daughter. It’s a sacrifice well worth it. “

They don’t consider the right time to return until the prospects are more certain. The parents expressed their deep gratitude for their teacher, who provided them with materials and was very attentive.

Health is also a top priority for Marlena Cohen, mother of a fifth grader at Dolores Huerta. Cohen has her daughter Rikkie-Nicole Jones on a disciplined schedule to wake up and get dressed at the same time as she would for sports school, with a no-pajama policy. Despite missing her friends, Cohen said Jones continued to perform well in school and even performed better on some tests.

“This whole pandemic showed me that there was a mature side to it that I didn’t know about,” said Cohen, who works with grandparents from home to help out in Portola. “I can see that she is really fine and that we are spending more time together. In the beginning it was very difficult. “

However, Cohen has serious classroom safety concerns at SFUSD, which dates back to the fall, and is applying to private schools that have shown they can work safely since October.

“I’m just very nervous,” said Cohen. “I don’t know if the schools are ready for it. When I see something in writing, the headmaster is holding a town hall in his hand via Zoom and I see how it will work, then I can relax a little. “

Feeling that he is out of date and lacking clarity also makes Eduardo Abarca hesitate to send his nephew, an English learner in kindergarten, back to Cesar Chavez Elementary School this spring. But distance learning doesn’t work well for his family and they are concerned about the boy’s language development, socialization and lack of structure.

“It was a very challenging time to be inside and locked in,” said Abarca. “Our hesitation [to return in spring] isn’t so much COVID, at least for our family, it’s the mess that is going to happen in school and not knowing how to do these things. We would like a focus on outdoor education, a focus on smaller class sizes, and a focus on ensuring stronger parental upbringing. “

Abarca admits that he and his brother, who have both parents, didn’t complete the survey and were a little disconnected from district communications, but says they still felt inundated with information. After losing a family member to coronavirus, they know the aftermath of the pandemic but have had to keep working and are generally concerned about the implications for mental health.

Diana Hadeed, 70, is vaccinated, but it is uncomfortable for her to personally send one of her five grandchildren back with variants in the picture – at least not until the teachers are vaccinated. School staff became eligible earlier this month and The City released vaccination codes for SFUSD this week to help prioritize appointments.

“I’m in no hurry to send someone to school,” said Hadeed. “I will not risk myself. What are you doing in half a day? “

The grandchildren, whose mother is disabled, are between 7 and 17 years old and have excelled academically just as they did before the pandemic. Hadeed said her five grandchildren help each other with homework and she always helps, usually with the youngest in first grade, but she doesn’t mind at all. One of the students doesn’t want to return in person at all, she said.

Superintendent Vincent Matthews acknowledged that distance learning worked better for some students, and said the district would look for ways to incorporate these lessons.

“We’re learning a lot about the way students learn, especially online,” Matthews said Tuesday. “This makes us think and think about how we can move education forward.”

imojadad@sfexaminer.com

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