Norm Howard was listening to KCBS, caught a bit of the debate over the now ill-footed, I mean ill-fated, plan to erect an 18-foot-tall sculpture of a human foot at the foot of Mission Street, near San Francisco's famed Ferry Building.
Says Norm, "A very intense woman explained that she was opposed to the sculpture on the grounds that it very obviously depicted a 'male, Caucasian foot.'"
How she could discern this from a stainless steel structure, I have no idea.
At any rate, the Board of Supervisors, caught in a toe jam, got cold feet and es-shoed the $500,000 project.
If anyone wondered if San Francisco suffers from chronic provincialism, then one need not look further than seeing how Oprah Winfrey got two parking tickets during a visit here last week -- making front page news.
The real item, of course, is how she summarily handed the tickets over to Willie Brown so he could "fix" them. But City Hall says the mayor does not use his office to "fix" tickets, he simply pays them. Sure, he can afford it, but Oprah might have spent a little of her lunch money on purchasing a one-day parking amnesty for the whole city. Now, that would have been classy.
Deb Jarrett, who works in the Marina, has been touched by the pungent scent of politics: "I was in an elevator with Mayor Brown the other day," reports Deb. "I swear he smelled like a French whorehouse."
Goes to show that some things do, after all, stick to Teflon Willie.
Nice line from Coppola's "Godfather III," on the telly this week. Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone, mutters, "Politics and crime. They're the same thing."
Paleotologists, digging in Ethiopia, have found what could be evidence of the "missing link" between monkeys and mankind.
Researchers in the region reportedly discovered the rusty remains of a Thighmaster among fossils of ancient apes. "As for the cell phone," explained a flustered Dr. Anthony Farouche, "one of us may have dropped it there."
As a skeptic, I know that coffee was discovered in Ethiopia when herders noticed the goats were staying up all night after chewing on the coffee plants. Maybe the remains of these subhumans are really people who couldn't get their hands on any caffeine. I mean, who's really human until we get that first cup of coffee? Well, it's just a thought.
Ulrica Hume has a nice, new book out, "San Francisco in a Teacup," about where to find a nice place that serves a nice afternoon tea -- or tea anytime.
Bob Hope talks about one of the secrets of his longevity, "When I was touring in vaudeville, I never would go to the greasy spoons to eat -- it was always tea rooms."
Old ski-nose saw many a performer turned into a colonic casualty from eating in those domains of ptomaine.
The inimitable Dave Burgin, formerly the editor of the San Francisco Examiner, the Oakland Tribune, the Atlanta Constitution and innumerable other dailies, has re-emerged as editor/publisher at Woodford Publications, a SF-based house that's handling Barnaby Conrad's excellently grand art book on John Register and Hank Greenwald's autobiography. Hank was the voice of the San Francisco Giants ball club
The Greenwald memoir made the front page this week after the Giants organization took umbrage over some of Hank's disparaging comments about the team.
Burgin says he just doesn't understand why the Giants would ban the book from their Dugout stores. "Can you imagine?" Dave writes. "Killing 500 copies of Hank's book in the Dugout stores, then accusing us of 'just trying to sell books.' Unclear on the concept."
All in all, it spells hefty publicity for the book. That's a topic Dave handles brilliantly. He very nearly orchestrated Herb Caen's defection from the Chronicle to the Examiner back in the 1980s -- but some in-house politics nixed the deal. Sure would have changed the landscape of the newspaper business here.
Yes, old-timers will recall that Caen left the Chron and worked at the Ex for eight years, back in the 1950s.
NATO looks awfully silly as it puts on its 50th birthday party while this agency of European stability plans a ground war in Yugoslavia.
Organizers downplayed the festiviities. The cork was kept in the Dom Perignon while delegates secretly sipped the Sterno located under the hot hors d'oevres.
Yes, the occasion was a grim one but let's look on the bright side: they won't have to have another one for another 50 years -- or never -- whichever comes first.
Well, have a swell weekend. If you plan to see a movie, check out "Lost & Found," with David Spade. New York Times critic Stephen Holden calls it "a rancid, little nothing of a movie." A deadly ringing endorsement.
Cheers from the City by the Bay -- Bellingham, April 23, 1999
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