Inside a Bay Area Buffalo Wild Wings, one day after all of sports was cancelled What happens when a bar entirely designed to show sports doesn't have any sports to show?

The exterior of a Buffalo Wild Wings in Haward, Calif. the day after the NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS and NCAA either suspended or outright canceled their seasons due to the spread of the coronavirus, which is now a global pandemic according to the World Health Organization. less The exterior of a Buffalo Wild Wings in Haward, Calif. the day after the NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS and NCAA either suspended or outright canceled their seasons due to the spread of the coronavirus, which is now a ... more Photo: Blair Heagerty/SFGATE Photo: Blair Heagerty/SFGATE Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Inside a Bay Area Buffalo Wild Wings, one day after all of sports was cancelled 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

It’s the day after the NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS and NCAA either suspended or outright cancelled their seasons. Coronavirus is now a global pandemic, according to the World Health Organization. And still, there’s a five-minute wait for a table at Buffalo Wild Wings in Hayward, Calif.

But not because it’s crowded. I count 32 open tables and just five with people seated at them, but there’s only one person waiting tables and one behind the bar.

According to server Maria Montano, who has worked here for three years and shows up at 12pm to increase the wait staff to two, it’s actually pretty busy for a Friday lunch.

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“Believe it or not — this is going to sound crazy — people shouldn’t even be going out like this, but we’ve been more busy ever since they started canceling everything else,” she says. “I was thinking when they started canceling everything, everyone’s gonna come to Buffalo,’ and they have. It’s been more busy on our slowest days.”

Which is wild when you look around at the 50-plus TVs on the wall. A bar that was entirely designed for maximum sports watching has basically nothing to show.

The NHL Network is showing a grainy Philadelphia Flyers-Edmonton Oilers Stanley Cup final from 1987. ESPNU has a 2001 Maryland-Duke game with a fresh-faced Shane Battier in it. NBA TV has a weird sit-down conversation between Dwayne Wade and Kevin Garnett replaying. And ESPNNews has wall-to-wall coverage of Justin Herbert’s Pro Day yesterday, a Pro Day that very likely wouldn’t normally deserve wall-to-wall coverage. ESPN and ESPN2, meanwhile, are both covering the fallout of the coronavirus spread and the potential economic impact on the sports industry.

Outside of the Players Championship, which is only on two TVs because, well, golf, there’s not a whole lot to actually watch unless you are into vintage, discolored Wayne Gretzky/Mark Messier highlights.

There’s yet to be a confirmed case of COVID-19 tied specifically to Hayward, which has a population of more than 160,000, but Alameda county has reported seven total confirmed cases.

And the Wings empire is intent on not being responsible for that changing.

“We have to wash our hands every 30 minutes, and every 30 minutes we have to wipe down everything,” Montano says. “[Corporate is] calling us every who-knows-what to make sure we’re doing what they’re saying — we need to be wiping down everything.”

And while that means the restaurant is clean, it hasn’t stopped Montano — who comes in contact with dozens of guests every day — from worrying about herself.

“I get home and I take 2-3 showers,” she says.

While guests at the tables appear to be here mostly just for lunch, the bar actually is somewhat lively — half of the U-shaped bar top is packed, with most patrons enjoying mid-day beers. Some are shoulder-to-shoulder, some have a seat buffer between them — virtually all of them have a plate of wings in front of them and the sauce-covered fingers to prove it.

“Only reason it’s like that now is there hasn’t been anything happening in Hayward yet, there hasn’t been a reported case,” says Montano, who’s also a student at Cal State East Bay.

But she knows they will develop due time as more testing kits become available and people continue to be cavalier with their public health. And then all bets are off.

“If it gets slow, we all know hours are going to get cut,” she says. “I still live with my parents so I feel like I don’t have as much of an issue, but others who have to pay rent and all this other stuff, that’s where I’m trying to figure out how they’re going to make it work with them.”

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Grant Marek is the Editorial Director of SFGATE. Email: grant.marek@sfgate.com | Twitter: @grant_marek