The Golden Gate Bridge parking lot was closed, so Samer Mounir and his wife, Sally Agel, kept driving until they hit Sausalito, a sunny beach town where the ice cream shops were open and packs of bicyclists zipped down the streets.

“We’re just walking around,” said Mounir, of Walnut Creek. Smiling, he and Agel strolled down Bridgeway Boulevard on Friday morning with their friend Caroline Bassilly, wearing surgical masks and dangling a water bottle.

In much of the Bay Area, the coronavirus pandemic and strict shelter-in-place rules have kept people in their homes, engulfing whole cities in a sense of disquieting calm. Yet in Sausalito, the sidewalks buzzed.

Parents pushed strollers or trotted alongside children on tricycles. People carried paddleboards and walked dogs. Several said they’d driven in from other cities, a trend that’s provoked tirades on the neighborly social media site, Nextdoor. Some residents lament that their waterfront community has become an attractive place of respite, as parks tighten regulations and leave people with nowhere else to go.

Yet the day-trippers coming in aren’t providing the tourist dollars that traditionally fed this town of 7,500. Instead, the tourist economy has sputtered. Stores are open, but conspicuously empty. Sausalito stands to lose $1.6 million between March and June, a significant chunk of its $17.5 million annual budget. Next year, its general fund could sink by another $4 million or more, owing to a sharp dip in parking revenues and money collected from hotel and sales taxes.

Mayor Susan Cleveland-Knowles has a sober outlook on the future.

“We’re on a complete revenue cliff,” she said during a phone interview Thursday. “Tourism is nonexistent.”

Like other small communities, this North Bay enclave is unlikely to see a wash of emergency funding, since most federal stimulus programs are geared toward cities of 500,000 people or more, Cleveland-Knowles said. She and other officials are bracing for anguished decisions about what programs and services to spare as they patch together a budget for next year.

Some merchants said Sausalito seems eerily empty, despite all the people who come in to exercise or relax by the harbor.

“We used to have loads of ferry-goers — literally boat-loads,” said Shannon Latting, manager of Hanson Gallery and Tasting Room, a boutique that sells paintings, home-brewed cocktails and, more recently, hand sanitizer.

Normally on sunny days, lines would stretch so far down the sidewalk that passersby had to step off the curb, Latting said. Now she bounced and chattered when a single customer came in to buy a bottle of sanitizer. With the transaction complete, Latting pulled a Clorox wipe from a dispenser on the counter, and meticulously wiped the customer’s credit card.

Hanson Gallery has compensated for low foot traffic by selling its artisan liquors and sanitizer online or via a curbside pickup. Other businesses have not been so lucky.

Around the corner on Princess Street, Sausalito Bike Rentals has sat locked up since March 16. Owner Mark Reuben caught COVID-19 and spent several days in the hospital. Now he’s recovering at his daughter’s house in La Mesa (San Diego County), unable to pay rent on the storefront where he keeps a fleet of 50 bikes and runs a gallery of sports memorabilia.

“I’m wiped out financially,” Reuben said. “I didn’t pay my April rent. And now I can’t pay my May rent.”

As the local economy suffers, visitors keep trickling into Sausalito for recreation.

“It’s beautiful outside,” said T.J. Demaree, a nurse who drove up from Redwood City to walk her dog, Zoro, and take in the salty air. Like Mounir, she intended to stop at a lookout point near the Golden Gate Bridge, but the road was closed on the west side. So she, too, wound up on Bridgeway.

Sheltering in place “is a balancing act,” Demaree said, adding she feels comfortable going out as long as she stays apart from other people, doesn’t touch her face, and washes her hands afterward.

On social media, residents bristle at the outsiders, saying the city should enact more stringent rules.

“I’m a little surprised to see that the visitors have continued,” said Evin Wallus, who has lived in Sausalito for four years.

She noted that parking became unusually scarce over the last couple weeks. And last Saturday she confronted a group of four or five cyclists who said they had driven in from Sacramento.

Wallus and some other residents would like to see enforcement on the order of Santa Cruz, another getaway spot where police fined seven Fremont men $1,000 each for crossing county lines to get “essential” drinks at a 7-Eleven.

Others seem more resigned.

“We’ve definitely seen some people walking around with cameras,” said Ethan Hoerneman, who was sauntering down Bridgeway with his 3-year-old son, Sebastian. “And we roll our eyes a little bit, but mostly I’m not too bothered,” he continued. “Unless, of course, they came in our backyard and started breathing on us.”

Cleveland-Knowles said she followed up with the police after a few residents complained to her about visitors exhibiting poor shelter-in-place etiquette. A few officers patrolled the sidewalks Friday, reminding people to keep their masks on and stand 6 feet apart.

“Everyone is experiencing a lot of concern and fear and wants to protect their communities, and that’s a really great instinct,” Cleveland-Knowles said. She noted that Sausalito has one main thoroughfare, and people who live along it experience “a fair volume of folks coming in.”

Business, however, remains slow.

Rachel Swan is a staff writer for The San Francisco Chronicle. E-mail: rswan@sfchronicle.com