Acting Mayor Kim Janey ducks questions about maskless photo on first day of her mandate

Acting Mayor Kim Janey wouldn’t address the photo causing a stir online that showed her smiling unmasked in a North End restaurant Friday night — just about half a day after she implemented an indoor mask mandate.

The owner of Arya Trattoria on Friday night posted a picture of himself smiling with Janey in the restaurant on Friday.

Asked at an event on Saturday if that is a bad look to be shown less than a day after she implemented a citywide mask mandate for indoor public areas, Janey told the Herald, “We all have to continue to wear our masks. I wear my mask even outdoors.”

She wasn’t wearing a mask for most of the outdoor event on Saturday, as she making art with kids and hugging Wally the Green Monster.

“In restaurants, when you’re drinking and eating, you can take it off,” Janey continued. “I want to continue to encourage all Boston residents including our visitors to wear their masks. Certainly indoors, in public spaces and even outdoors, when possible, when you’re in crowded areas. I think that is the way that we get through the pandemic — that we slow the spread, and that we keep each other safe.”

Upon a follow-up question noting that Janey wasn’t eating in the picture in the North End restaurant — she was just standing and smiling with the restaurateur — she said “thank you” and left.

Local blog TB Daily News first published a story about the photo, which began circulating on Twitter on Friday night. The restaurant’s Instagram account still had the photo available to view Saturday morning. The owner also snapped maskless shots with some other patrons, including New England Patriots fullback Jacob Johnson.

Janey announced a mask mandate last week that went into effect 8 a.m. Friday in Boston as coronavirus cases rose again.

Last year, Janey’s predecessor then-Mayor Martin Walsh, now the U.S. Labor secretary, found himself in hot water for essentially the same thing — implementing a mask mandate and then getting photographed bare-faced and smiling in a photo at a wedding.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3t2SKXq