![Salon owner slammed by Pelosi officially closes down her business, is 'afraid' to return to San Francisco](https://www.theblaze.com/media-library/salon-owner-slammed-by-pelosi-officially-closes-down-her-business-is-afraid-to-return-to-san-francisco.png?id=23904539&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=5%2C0%2C6%2C0)
Image Source: Daily Mail video screenshot
'I'm actually afraid to go back'
Erica Kious, the owner of the San Francisco salon visited by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week in violation of city health guidelines, has announced that she is officially going out of business.
Kious told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the controversy surrounding Pelosi's visit on Aug. 31 has effectively destroyed her business in the city.
"I am actually done in San Francisco and closing my doors, unfortunately," the single mother of two said during an interview Wednesday.
Kious claimed that after exposing Pelosi by releasing surveillance footage of the lawmaker visiting the salon and waltzing through the store mask-less, she was hit with an onslaught of negative reviews and threatening messages.
"I started to just get a ton of phone calls, text messages, emails, all my Yelp reviews ... saying that they hope I go under and that I fail," she claimed. "So just a lot of negativity towards my business."
Last week, Kious even revealed to Carlson that she had received "death threats" as result of the incident.
On Wednesday, Kious said that she is "actually afraid to go back" to the city where she has lived and worked for more than a decade.
"It's a little scary and sad," she added. "I do have a lot of positive calls and text messages from clients. But other than that, nothing but negativity."
Pelosi was reportedly serviced by an an independent stylist who rents space at Kious' salon and later claimed she was led to believe that one-on-one appointments were permissible.
That, of course, was not the case under San Francisco rules which, at that time, barred personal service providers from performing any services indoors and/or which required a mask to be worn.
Pelosi should have known that, yet after the footage was released, she responded by claiming she was the victim of a "setup" and that she was the one who was owed "an apology."
"I take responsibility for trusting the word of the neighborhood salon that I've been to over the years many times," Pelosi said. "And that when they said 'We're able to accommodate people one person at a time' and that we can set up that time, I trusted that. As it turns out, it was a setup, so I take responsibility for falling for a setup."
Kious has vehemently denied that she set a trap for the speaker and has called that allegation "absolutely false."
After the incident a GoFundMe page was created in effort to raise funds for Kious to "pay off any debts from the business that she is forced to shut down [and] expenses to relocate and reopen in a new location."
So far, more than $336,000 has been raised.