San Francisco's Marina District Ignores Its Seismic Plight

A few months ago S.F. location manager Cathryn "Catbird" Blum called and asked if I'd like to be interviewed for a BBC "programmme" about geology called "Journeys From The Centre of the Earth." I was a little surprised. Why would a show about geology be interested in talking to me? For what do I know about rocks? The only real qualification I might have is a long, yet ancient, history of getting stoned in Marina saloons.

Though that might have been a side effect of being in a major earthquake, the more salient point was that I, as a radio reporter, extensively covered the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989 for KQED-FM. Yes, I lived on Chestnut Street at that time. I saw the fire at Beach and Divisadero, the collapsed homes, the terrified residents, the dazed, empty gaze of the helpless locals as they watched their homes being "red-tagged," that is, condemned. Some were lucky enough to have a couple of minutes to run upstairs and gather what possessions they could. I also knew the woman whose baby was crushed to death in her arms when the building came down at Fillmore
and Cervantes.

The BBC will be airing their show on earthquakes to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Big Quake of 1906 this month. The thrust of their interest lies in how well Marina residents are prepared for another quake and why would they live here in the first place, given the dodgy geologic track record the Marina has for seismic calamity.

I met the film crew under the rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts on a cold, rainy blustery day. Iain Stewart, the convivial Glasgow-born "presenter" of the show, said the weather reminded him of the Highlands. I kept thinking about what would happen if a quake struck while we were standing there, would the rotunda come tumbling down around our ears? The Marina is ground zero for another major quake. As a geologist, Stewart knows where the action is -- or could be.

The Brits, who live on the seismically-settled island of Albion, seem puzzled that we would live here with the Sword of Damocles hovering over us, with an inevitable catastrophe waiting to destroy the City, as it did a mere 100 years ago -- a snap of the fingers in geological terms.

"Don't people here in this Marina District worry about a quake recurring?" Stewart asked. "Why would they buy homes here, knowing what happened in 1989?"

Some may or may not recall that the Marina took a big hit in the Loma Prieta. Many homes, particularly those with garages on the first floor, collapsed. Edifices on the street corners were also vulnerable. But weirdly, much of the damage was seemingly random. One house was battered and twisted, another next door seemed untouched. We now know this had much to do with the quality of the landfill underneath the homes. The lagoons used to run through the what is now the Marina.

There was no Marina, as we know it, before the land was created with debris, much of it from the detritus left by the destruction from the Great Quake of 1906. Broken sinks, toilets, burnt lumber, and so on. A great irony. The man-made landscape set the scene for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, a spectacle that was designed to show the world that San Francisco had literally risen from the ashes. Yet another irony. When the fair was dismantled a year or so later, a very nice new piece of real estate had emerged. Pretty but precarious.

That's what's so fascinating to Iain Stewart and his BBC clan.

"Don't people know about the quake that hit here in '89?" Stewart
wanted to know.

"I don't know. It seems many younger Marina residents don't seem to know about it or just don't think about it. There's a great denial in this town."

Stewart, a little amazed, pressed on. "What about precautions? Are San Franciscans prepared for the inevitable?"

Mostly, no. It's no secret that a major quake--one that exceeds 6.5 on the Richter Scale and is centered anywhere around here--will leave The City helpless for time, without outside resources. That could be for days. We saw what happened with FEMA in the Katrina. But the people who suffered from damage from Loma Prieta have already learned how impotent and useless FEMA can be. FEMA became a four-letter word.

The bridges to San Francisco will likely be down. We'll have to fend for ourselves. What I did see in the Marina during the days that followed the Loma Prieta quake was a fervent, kind cooperation between neighbors -- with many gestures of cooperation and generosity. It seemed to bring the best out of San Franciscans--for a while. Let's hope we'll at least have that going for us when the next Big One hits. We might lose our City again, but God help us if we lose our humanity.

San Francisco Looks Back at 1906 Great Quake and Fire

The City will be all aflutter this month while celebrating its greatest natural disaster, the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. This was the Big One, it even garnered the name, The Great San Francisco Earthquake, a world-famous event. That's because the epicenter of the temblor was so close to the City itself, though it also caused massive damage to places as far away as Santa Rosa and Palo Alto.

In London, many years ago, I even encountered a pub called The Great San Francisco Earthquake. The tavern was bedecked with photos and memorabilia of the catastrophe that still holds a universal fascination. Those in San Francisco who survived the initial 48-second drubbing while the ground shifted so violently -- the collapsing buildings, the raining shards of glass, the chandeliers crashing to the floors -- later witnessed their City be consumed by a fire of biblical proportion. It devoured the town, neighborhood by neighborhood, like a demonic behemoth. There was little water to fight the huge fire. The Army began to blow up buildings with dynamite in hopes of starving the flames.

Today, there is no 6th Army at The Presidio to help restore order, and most of the National Guard is probably in Iraq. We might want to stock up on water pistols in the event the Big One hits. I don't recommend stockpiling dynamite. Homeland Security will give you a hard time for
that. Oh, did I say "in the event"? Silly me. Yes, another Big One is inevitable.

Back in the 1970s, the BBC produced a documentary about San Francisco called "The City That Waits To Die." I'm sure the Chamber of Commerce did not like that title and would have preferred "The City That Will Survive Again," though it does quite have the same ring to it.

Years ago, I interviewed George Will for a radio show. After the program, he got up and looked down at the sidewalk, 32 stories below Embarcadero One. Looking a little pale, he said, "I heard that if a big quake hit, this conference table could slide across the floor and pitch me right through these windows. Is that true?"

"Yes, I suppose that could happen, yes."

"Well," Mr. Will cried, "how could you possibly live here, knowing that?"

I replied, " I guess it's still better than living in Kansas and dying from ennui."

He mulled over this smart-ass remark for a moment and finally said, "You have a point there."

Living with nonchalance in an earthquake zone is part of the what gives San Francisco its reckless and wanton reputation for flaunting our lives with impunity before the Almighty. Some liken it to gambling.

Some consider it a test of faith. Many more probably don't think about it at all. It fades from the memory until the next shaker shakes.

When the Great San Francisco Earthquake hit, Ambrose Bierce, the great cynical writer had already quit this City and had moved to New York. True to his unforgiving self, he snarled when he was asked about San Francisco's future following the catastrophe, "What San Francisco needs is another quake, another whiff of fire, a steady tradewind of grapeshot."

I have moved to higher ground during the past few years. But even on Nob Hill, I'll not be immune from a steady tradewind of grapeshot, nor the blustery gusts along Clay Street, nor the rising rent that presses against the front door. But the house is built on bedrock, probably high enough to escape the tsunami, and close enough to set up a temporary shelter at the bar of the Big 4.

Of course, if we're hit with another Big One, an 8.1 on the Richter Scale for example, all bets are off. The widening gap between rich and poor will be reduced to a more level playing field in a matter of seconds. For those of us who have come to San Francisco in order to reinvent ourselves, an earthquake as powerful as the one that struck 100 years ago will teach us what that really means.

Good night and good luck.

Our Man, Sir Godfrey

Several years ago, Herb Caen, the late, great San Francisco columnist, asked me, "Bellingham, what is your university experience?"

I was eager to tell him the truth: I went to music school but that was hardly an ardent excursion into scholarship. Between classes, I had to go on my own to San Francisco's City College to get a decent encounter with the German language. I went to New York University's Film School -- for about ten minutes. Not even long enough to complete a short subject. I dropped out to work at a movie house, the Bleecker Street Cinema. At least I could watch movies that way.

"Gee, Herb," I told Caen, "I guess you might say I'm an autodidact."

"Oh, I know what that means, " Caen shot back instantly. "That's when you drive yourself crazy."

Herb was always very quick. When I spent time with him, I often felt like George Fenneman trying to keep up with Groucho Marx. But I did all right.

I always take an interest when I hear successful stories about people who are largely self-taught. But few are as vivid as the biography of Britain's Sir Godfrey Hounsfield who never went to university but was the preeminent leader in computer technology and later developed the CAT scan. He claimed a Nobel Prize for the latter. It goes to show: who needs to do homework? There is more than one way to scan a CAT.

Perhaps a formal education might have gotten in the way of his genius. And just imagine the lives he saved along the way. He just had an understand of mathematics and physiology that defies explanation. He got most of his inspiration while taking long, country walks. This is one part of the Hounsfield psyche that I can understand. If the world took more long walks, we would have a much more serene planet.

Like most great inventors, Hounsfield had unlimited courage. When it was time to put the kosher cow brains aside in the laboratory and turn to human trials, he placed his own head in the device that would later be known as the CAT scan. God knows he risked having his own brains reduced to the intellect of a kosher bovine. Mezuzah done told me.

And he was modest. Hounsfield was uncomfortable with the awards and accolades that he received over the years. He was even invited to join the Royal Society. It was unheard for this long-entrenched scientific community to accept a chap who did not accrue a panoply of academic credentials. But his genius was undeniable. It's unfortunate to note, however, that from time to time his fellow Royal Society members would gleefully and cruelly lock him in the bathroom as a lark. (Yes, I made that up for the hell of it.)

Further proof of his humanity was found in his piano playing. Yes, he taught himself that, too. It's stunning to note what a human being can accomplish with drive and celestially-endowed talent.

One subject, though, seemed to have escaped him: marriage. Perhaps it was too complex for the fellow. It defies formulas, equations and exact dimensions. Not to worry, Sir Godfrey. No one seems to be able to figure that one out. All the same, Sir Godfrey Hounsfield apparently did not need a life partner in order to share a life well-lived with the world.

Bruce Bellingham, San Francisco

From the London Telegraph
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield
(Filed: 17/08/2004)

Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, who died on August 12 aged 84, led the team which developed Britain's first big solid-state computer before inventing the computerised axial tomography (CAT) scanner for use in clinical diagnosis; in recognition of this latter achievement he was awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine.

Hounsfield conceived the idea for a CAT scanner in 1967 during a weekend ramble in the country. Initially it had nothing to do with medicine, but was simply "a realisation that you could determine what was in a box by taking readings at all angles through it".

On his return to EMI's research laboratories at Hayes, in Middlesex, he began working on a device that could process hundreds of X-ray beams to obtain a three-dimensional display of the inside of a living organism.

Combining computer and X-ray technology, and practising "on a brain of a cow my colleague got from a kosher house on the other side of London" (he submitted his own head for the first human trials), by 1972 Hounsfield had evolved a machine that could produce detailed images of cross-sections of the brain in four and a half minutes.

Introduced in 1973, early CAT scanners were used to overcome obstacles in the diagnosis of diseases of the brain, and Hounsfield subsequently modified his machine to enable it to scan the whole body.

Unknown to Hounsfield, a South African nuclear physicist, Allan Cormack, had worked on essentially the same problems of CAT, and in a paper published in 1957 had suggested a reconstruction technique called the Radon transform. Although Cormack's work was not widely
circulated, and he and Hounsfield did not collaborate or even meet, in 1979 both men shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the development of computerised tomography.

The invention of the CAT scanner was a remarkable achievement, not least because of the complex algebraic calculations involved in the computer programming. Other research teams with larger resources than EMI had already dismissed such a device as impossible to develop, and one prominent British scientist remarked that Hounsfield's machine used "mathematics I wouldn't pretend to understand now or at any stage of my career".

Yet Hounsfield had never been to university and was largely self-taught.

Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield, the youngest of five children of a farmer near Newark in Nottinghamshire, was born on August 28 1919. At an early age he became intrigued by the farm's mechanical and electrical machinery, and by the age of 11 he had begun to experiment, constructing electrical recording machines and launching himself off the top of haystacks with a home-made glider.

At Magnus Grammar School in Newark, he confessed to responding "only to physics and mathematics with any ease and moderate enthusiasm". But as with so many of Britain's great post-war scientists, his opportunity came with the outbreak of the Second World War.

Hounsfield joined the RAF as a volunteer reservist, hoping to become involved in radio. Having perused some RAF books on radio mechanics, he sat a test and was amazed when he was then taken on as a radar-mechanic instructor and moved to the then RAF-occupied Royal College of Science in South Kensington, and later to Cranwell Radar School.

There, in his spare time, he passed the City and Guilds examination in Radio Communications. In 1945 he was awarded the RAF's Certificate of Merit. His work impressed Air Vice-Marshal J R Cassidy, who was responsible for obtaining a grant for Hounsfield after the war which enabled him to attend Faraday House Electrical Engineering College in London, where he received a diploma.

In 1951 Hounsfield joined the research staff of EMI at Hayes. For a awhile he worked on radar and guided weapons, then ran a small design laboratory, where he soon became fascinated by the emerging field of computers. Starting in about 1958, he led a design team which built the first all-transistor computer to be constructed in Britain, the EMIDEC 1100.

In those days the transistor was a relatively slow device - much slower than valves, which were then used in most computers. However, Hounsfield was able to overcome this problem by driving the transistor with a magnetic core. This increased the speed of the machine so that it compared with that of valve computers and brought about the use of transistors in computing earlier than had been anticipated.

When this work finished, Hounsfield transferred to EMI Central Research Laboratories, also at Hayes, where he began his work on CAT scanners. This work, and the development of progressively more sophisticated prototypes of brain and whole body scanners, kept him occupied until 1976.

He remained responsible for long-term thinking about medical systems at EMI's research laboratories while others managed the Research and Development effort supporting his scanners. In his later years with EMI, he broadened his interests into related fields of diagnostic
imaging, such as nuclear magnetic resonance.

After his official retirement in 1986, Hounsfield continued to work as a consultant for EMI, and also to various hospitals, including the National Heart and Chest Hospitals, Chelsea, the National Heart Hospital and the Brompton Hospital.

True to the archetype of the shy, retiring bachelor boffin, Hounsfield found the public interest in his invention "most embarrassing". He won numerous awards and honours (35 in the 1970s alone), among them election to the Royal Society, a rare accolade for someone who did not possess a university degree.

A frugal man, Hounsfield spent very little on himself and always refused EMI's offer to let him take a sabbatical. When presented with the 1972 MacRobert award from the Council of Engineering Institutions, he said he would keep his £25,000 prize in reserve "in case some new
research idea turns up, in which case I can plough it back". He did, however, spend a little of his Nobel prize money on fitting out the living-room of his small semi-detached house in Middlesex with scientific equipment.

Apart from his work, Hounsfield's greatest pleasures were walking in the mountains and leading country rambles. He enjoyed music and played the piano "in a self-taught way". In company, he confessed to enjoying "lively, way-out discussions".

On the day he won the Nobel prize in 1979, Hounsfield had some home-spun words of advice for all would-be Nobel prizewinners: "Don't worry too much if you don't pass exams, so long as you feel you have understood the subject. It's amazing what you can get by the ability to reason things out by conventional methods, getting down to the basics of what is happening."

Godfrey Hounsfield was appointed CBE in 1976 and knighted in 1981. He was elected to a fellowship of the Royal Society in 1975.

He was unmarried.

Phyllis Diller Has Her Day In San Francisco

As her 89th birthday approaches this July, Phyllis Diller is still one of the funniest people on the planet.

She was honored last month in The City where it all began for her back in 1955. Mayor Gavin Newsom proclaimed February 5, 2006 "Phyllis Diller Day in San Francisco." It was marked by a gathering at the Pier 39 Theater where a Phyllis Diller look-alike contest, sort of, was held, and a new documentary film about her life, revolving around her farewell performance in Las Vegas in 2002, was screened. Ms. Diller, who doesn't travel much anymore, checked in from her home in L.A. by way of a conference call. The proclamation was read to her in the lobby and giddy fans shouted out their praises for the legendary comedienne.

"Ah, San Francisco," she growled into the phone. "That's where a mixed marriage means a man and a woman." She punctuated the line with her trademark cackle.

Afterwards, a dozen people took turns on the stage doing impersonations of Ms. Diller. Each got a gag to read, provided by host Lucien Stern, who described Ms. Diller as "the mother of stand-up comedy." The winner got a genuine Phyllis Diller purple boa to take home. The participants took turns vamping with the boa. It was all very silly and fun. Campy, as they used to say.

Fifty-one years ago, Ms. Diller, who was working at radio station KSFO, when the studios were located in the Fairmont Hotel, took a brave step and mounted the stage at the Purple Onion to take a stab at stand-up comedy. The club was a launching pad for many famous acts – including the Smothers Brothers, Johnny Mathis, the Kingston Trio and Barbra Streisand. Ms. Diller was booked at the Purple Onion for three weekends. She stayed for 89 weeks. After an appearance on the Jack Paar Show, her career took off like a shot. "I miss Paar," said Ms. Diller.

"He was artful, highbrow, a touch of class." She became a household name when Bob Hope made her a regular on his TV comedy specials. She made a few films with him, too. She had her own TV show, The Phyllis Diller Show, during the 1966-67 season. Recently, she appeared on 7th Heaven and the controversial, quickly canceled The Book of Daniel.

She managed to maintain her dignity in the foul-mouthed epic, The Aristocrats. Her autobiography is called Lampshade in a Whorehouse, a phrase she uses to describe her stage persona. She's still proud of her 1961 role as Texas Guinan, the speakeasy queen in Splendor in the Grass.

"I read in the L.A. Times that Phyllis Diller was retiring," filmmaker Gregg Barson said at the theater. "I thought that perhaps she might agree to be a subject of a documentary. My wife Julie Ashton, a casting agent) and I met Phyllis at The Palm. She was dressed all in powder blue, matching dress, hat and purse. There were a lot of martinis."

Barson said he was struck by Diller's natural intelligence. "She's never ‘on,' she's naturally funny." A tour of her sprawling Brentwood mansion revealed a myriad collection of prizes and awards; a Picasso hangs next to her treasured photo of herself with Charlie Chaplin, and there's a file cabinet containing thousands of cross-referenced gags that she's written.

Barson's movie reveals an artist who approaches her craft with impeccable care and precision. Nothing is left to chance. She discusses everything with the stage crew first – sometimes in a very firm tone.

It explains the perfect timing that she's cultivated with decades of experience. It gets the audience into a crescendo of uncontrollable laughter. She fires off jokes in a volley, many of them self-directed: "When I was born, I was so ugly, the doctor slapped everyone in the room."

"If I have one more facelift, it'll be a caesarian."

About retirement: "I have outlived most of my body."

San Francisco is always good for material: "I went to my first gay wedding. What upset me was I caught the jockstrap."

In a phone interview, Ms. Diller told Northside that she now spends most of her days painting; she's had many shows. She also takes great pride in the fact that she finally got to use that music degree from the Chicago Conservatory.

"Just by chance, I was booked by the Boston Pops," she said. "‘Oh, good,' I said, ‘I'll play the piano.' There was a silence at the end then finally, they said, ‘That's fine.'" They really wanted me to do my stand-up act. This fluke led to my performing for 10 years with 100 symphony orchestras around the world. Not bad, not bad at all.

"I have to tell you this about my life. I made every minute count."

Northside Arts & Entertainment editor Bruce Bellingham is one of San Francisco's best loved scribes and the author of Bellingham by the Bay: Bits, Bites, Adventures in Radio and Real Life.”

Pat Kelley: The Face of the PlumpJack Dream

The Balboa's Hostess Is More Than Meets The Eye

When it comes to telling stories, few can beat the vivacious Pat Kelley, who knows just about everyone in San Francisco.

"She's the exquisite Rolodex," says the legendary statesman Hadley Roff, who has worked for six San Francisco mayors and now consults for the Political Science and Urban Affairs departments at San Francisco State University. "Without Pat Kelley, the character of the Balboa
Café would be lost."

Over the years, columnists have quietly called Pat to ask her the "what's what" and the "who's who." It's a rare day when she doesn't have an answer. If she doesn't have an immediate answer, she'll graciously call back and rattle off a list of names and a constellation of characters that require a scorecard to follow. Fact is, Pat is one of the most fascinating of all San Franciscans on her own merits. Splashy and dazzling in her ingenue days, she takes her place among the local legends over the epochs, such as Alma Spreckels, Lillian Hitchcock Coit and Lola Montez.

She's played the part of courtesan and eminence grise. She gives the term "working girl" new meaning.

Yes, Pat was known to dance on the bar, martini glass in hand, until the cows came home. Her old friend, Herb Caen, would describe her as "the blond bombshell" or simply, "La Kelley." Sure, she could put away the martinis. But now, she's put them aside.

Today most people know Pat as the poised, graceful woman with the twinkling eyes and the elegant scarves who seats people for lunch at the Marina's storied Balboa Café -- a nexus for politicos, socialites, the shamelessly successful, and the rest of us. The current incarnation of the Balboa is part of the PlumpJack Group that was founded by Gavin Newsom. Among the investors are Gavin's childhood chum, Billy Getty, and various members of the Getty family. Gordon Getty is the patriach. At first glance, Pat appears to be a highborn lady who has a hostess gig in order to occupy her days and mingle with her well-heeled Pacific Heights friends.

That's not the case. Pat has made and lost fortunes without benefit of inheritance or husbands. She has always worked hard; was a "single mom" and a "career woman" -- before the terms were invented. In fact, she was the first female stockbroker in San Francisco and was one of the most successful real estate people in town. She achieved that through a combination of smarts, charm, and absolute fearlessness. She modestly calls it "naivete."

"I never really knew about the big picture," says Pat. "that I might have been ahead of the pack."

It was 1962. Tired of her meager wage at Allstate on the Peninsula and with a child, she went to the personnel manager to ask for more money. Pat was told she would not be able to go any higher in the company because she was a woman.

"When I asked about being a manager, a higher level, I was told that women weren't managers," Pat recalled. "The woman in personnel was stunned when I quit. I had no child support, and now, no job."

In Menlo Park, Pat approached a small investment firm run by Sheldon Luce, of the famous family. Again, she encountered a woman in personnel.

"Any college?" she asked.

"No."

"Can't use you."

Pat came back the next day.

"How much typing?"

"Not much."

"Can't use you."

Determined, Pat returned on Monday and asked to talk to Mr. Luce. "He hired me," Pat says, "for my persistence."

That persistence rarely left her. Luce gave her advice, such as, "Don't read other people's theories and never tell anyone what you do for a living."

Then one day, she said, "Mr. Luce, I was thinking over the weekend ..."

"Don't ever think," he shot back. "If I wanted someone to think, I would've hired a man. Maybe you should be a stockbroker." He gave her a list of names.

She landed a job at E.F. Hutton. They sent her to New York for training. There were 100 men and Pat Kelley in the room. Pat became the first female registered stock representative in San Francisco. In the first year, she was third best producer in the San Francisco office.

"All the other stockbrokers wanted to get through the day and go home," Pat recalled. "But I'd stay in the office until eight o'clock at night, picking up all the walk-in business."

These days, Pat gets to the PlumpJack Management office on Fillmore Street at six in the morning. There she handles all sorts of paperwork for the company. At 11:30, she crosses the street to the Balboa and begins her "mayter-dee" (as Herb Caen would say) duties until late afternoon.

"Pat was really the backbone of PlumpJack at its birth," Judge Bill Newsom, Gavin's dad, said the other day. "She had the breadth of experience that Gavin and Billy lacked -- in retail, in wine, and in food. She still is the public face of the PlumpJack enterprise."

Since her E.F Hutton days -- she was a broker for 12 years -- Pat says it has all been "a kaleidoscope." She made lots of friends, went to lots of places.

"In 1970, I met Herb Caen and Billy Gaylord (crown prince of interior design), " Pat says, "I always had interesting friends who are interested in people, people who are doers. Harry de Wildt (Caen dubbed him "Sir Lunch-a-lot") would give parties two nights in a row and sometimes not even show up."

She went along when real estate mogul Vincent Friia would take 25 people to Paris to celebrate New Year's with a midnight supper at Maxim's several years in a row.

There were the best of times and it seems they couldn't be better. She took her stock money and bought real estate, was at the vanguard of condo-conversion, went into the wine store business -- she called the shops Crane & Kelley --and a hardware store at Polk & Pacific.

"I always wanted to own something that was somewhere between the Crystal Palace and Harrod's," she says. "So I created the Oakville Grocery with Joe Phelps (of winery fame). With that, another Crane & Kelley, and La Cuisine, a cooking school that included instructors such as Marion Cunningham, Carlo Middione, Marcella Hazan, Giancarlo Bugialli, Flo Braker, and Jeremiah Tower.

Pat and Jeremiah became an item. On a trip to Honolulu, they actually discussed marriage. Kelley recalls those days: "Jeremiah was going through -- how shall I say? -- an ambivalent stage. Back at the Balboa, I finally said, 'Jeremiah, I've been thinking. I really don't think we should get married.' He sighed and blurted out, 'Thank God!' in relief."

Tower, who lives in Merîda, Mexico, in the Yucatan, is now writing and consulting. He recalls cooking for Pat's dinner parties on Russian Hill and in Napa in the old days:

Pat was the first high-flying member of some part of San Francisco's society to invite me to sit down to dinner at her table afer I had cooked the dinner, even when other people at the table, some of those flying in that town's highest circles were appalled to sit next to a cook. Later, of course, with my local fame as a superstar and chef, some from society wanted to sit next to me."

Pat says the Oakville Grocery was her dream come true.

"And it didn't even have parking." Her eyes sparkle as she speaks. "We had the best produce in town. We sold 100 kinds of mustard. Cyril Magnin came in every day. Then the union struck us over a dispute that was about our using novices. Genteel ladies did not like crossing a picket line and being called names like 'scumbag' by nasty people. It took them 18 months to put us out of business."

The real estate business also went south.

"I'm still not sure what happened, but I spent five years as a defendant, and wound up without a dime."

She went to work for Cliff Abbey, the St. Helena vintner, who then owned the Trattoria Contadina in North Beach.

Says Pat, "This was my college experience when it came to the restaurant business, from washing pots and pans to all the rest." Pat confesses she actually switched the place cards at a dinner so Cliff could sit next to her friend, Clare Boothe Luce, granddaughter of the famous playwright and congresswoman. Clare and Cliff, now married, "haven't been out of each other's sight since that night."

Yes, Clare is from the same family as Sheldon Luce, who gave Pat her a break in the finance world all those years ago.

She opened the Dixie Café for Tom Clendenning and opened Rosalie's on Van Ness Avenue. It closed. She reopened it as Rosalie's Redux with Harry de Wildt. It closed. "I think Harry accidentally wandered into the kitchen and recoiled at the sight of the butcher in a bloody smock. It was all over."

Pat went back to work for Cliff Abbey, producing jeans on Potrero Hill.

One day, Pat and Gavin had a chat at the Balboa about opening a wine store in the Marina. What would they call it? Gordon Getty had composed an opera called "Plump Jack." Pat thought it might be a good name for the shop, considering the Gettys were involved. After a protracted battle with some neighbors who didn't want another wine shop in the area, PlumpJack Wines finally opened.

Kelley retains undying respect and loyalty for Mayor Newsom. The feeling is mutual.

"Gavin is awfully smart, a self-taught businessman," Pat says. "He exudes honesty and loyalty. In turn, he expects commitment. We made it with pluck and hard work -- not always knowing what we were doing.

Sure, we had advantages -- people wanted to see what the Gettys were doing. I was perfectly happy. Two years into the wine store, I hear from Gavin, 'We're going to buy the Pixie Café. I need a challenge."

That became the PlumpJack Cafe on Fillmore.

Meanwhile, Jack Slick and his partners, Cathe and Doyle Moon, were running the Balboa Café, which had been a funky neighborhood bar in the old days, frequented by sodden merchant sailors. Jack, Cathe and Doyle took it over and it became a very hip spot. Boz Scaggs, a friend of Slick's, was among many musicians often seen at the Balboa. Yes, Pat worked for Jack at one time, too. (Slick now owns a bar in Sacramento.) The Jack Slick days became quite notorious for his bizarre, rambunctious behavior. Herb Caen reported the time Slick dragged a man out of the bathroom with his pants down, holding a syringe. Slick screamed, "I don't want any junkies in my bathroom!"

The man was a diabetic. The syringe contained insulin. The restaurant paid the man a $600,000 settlement. It was another blow to a foundering ship. Kelley suggested to Gavin that the PlumpJack people pick up the Balboa, that it could be as great as it used to be. They got it for a song.

Pat's not comfortable with the moniker of "kingmaker" but she's undoubtedly and relentlessly imaginative. One fateful night at the PlumpJack Cafe, Pat Kelley introduced then-Mayor Willie Brown to Gavin. Later, Pat nudged Willie with the notion of appointing Gavin to a commission. "After all," Pat said, "You gave Billy Getty a commission."

Mayor Brown appointed Gavin to the Parking and Traffic Commission. The rest is political history. Gavin was later appointed supervisor in District 2. Then he was elected to the office. When Newsom was elected mayor, he had to relinquish his PlumpJack holdings in San Francisco.

Today Pat has a 28-year old son, Kevin, a real estate agent at Sotheby's. Her daughter, Kathleen, 44, is married with three boys.

What's left for Pat Kelley to conquer? She might conquer the English lexicon. She has passion for words. A dictionary remains open on the counter in the kitchen of her cozy Marina apartment. "I try to learn a new word every day. Aside from that, "I'd like to go another NCAA tournament. I'd like to meet Frederick Larsen (the Chronicle photographer); I want to have lunch with Lance Armstrong and Wayne Gretsky. I've met Domingo, Pavorotti and Joan Sutherland. Who's left?

I'd like to get backstage and meet Donald Fagen when he comes the Paramount in Oakland on March 28th. There are so many challenges and wonderful things yet to do."