Watching City Hall #222, SEPTEMBER 19, 2003 “It was a dark and stormy night and … everyone was naked.” (setting the mood) OK, everyone wasn’t naked. … Least, not where I was. … However, the weather was great this morning. … My friend (& SF Call Publisher), Betsey Culp put me up in her spare bedroom the past few days and it was great. … You go down a bunch of stairs and think you’re going to be in a dank basement and there you are with a garden and lemon trees right out the sliding door and a full, private bath behind you. I got up early and stayed up late to sand my feet with the various grades of sand paper I brought and trim and dig at my nails. I had a wonderful time. … Only one who didn’t like it was her cat (we never met, but he did piss next to my backpack in the can to let me know he knew I was present and he didn’t approve – for a cat, that’s kind of like a severed horse’s head or a dead fish wrapped in your ‘Recall Willie Brown’ ‘t’ shirt) … You get the idea. The weather was magnificent every day at Betsey’s. Does Bernal get no fog? … Naw, the entire City has been blessed the past few days. … We are definitely into Indian Summer. Upon splitting this morning, it was so beautiful that I decided to walk the 2 miles or so from her Bernal Heights crib to Matt’s headquarters on Lower Haight (Horseshoe Café) … I kept to the sunny sides of the street and stopped to have a beer at La Bohemme on 24th at Mission. I first came to this place over 20 years ago. We used to sit and watch Robert Krum sketch while we drank Dos Equis. … The same lady was still running the counter (wow!) … They still had Dos Equis. Krum was not around (he traded the sketchbooks he did in the early era when we watched him for an estate in France) … I loaded a pipe of pretty good weed from the stash Eileen gave me when I hit the metro-couch-tour I’ve just begun. … The weather and early buzz decided against the bus and I decided to head for Delores Park and check out the dog scene. … It was cool, as always. There was an impromptu performance of a small off-shoot of the SF Mime Troop practicing by the children’s playground … clowns dancing and a couple of percussionists (one had an entire set of copper bottom sauce pans mounted on a drum stand) … I watched em play, then wandered up to the top of the hill where the full blast of the near noon sun made Mission High below, look glorious. Then, a funny thing happened. The slope running from the graded slope of Delores Park down to the flat plateau upon which the high school sits is steep. I paused and leaned against a tree to survey the scene. There was a young drunk asleep 20 yards or so from me on the edge of a small plateau cut into the Delores slope. It was a peaceful scene. … Below a pair of lady joggers caught my attention as they loped with their dogs in circles below us. A quick movement to my right caught my eye. … Talk about funny! Talk about funny! Don’t get me laughing. … The young drunk on the hill (let me emphasize that again – all of the passed out people in the streets and parks aren’t old dogs like me) … the guy had turned in his sleep (he had his shoes and socks off which made it funnier for some reason) … he’d turned in his sleep at the edge of the precipice and … still asleep … went rolling sideways down the steep incline. … I mean, try to imagine waking up rolling down the side of a hill! … At first, you gotta think it’s a dream, right? … LOL, as Angela Alioto says (‘laugh out loud’) … Here’s this guy lying at the bottom of the incline, next to the track, barefooted, looking around to see if he’s in Heaven or Hell when the joggers’ dogs race over to sniff him. … He turns to look up the hill and there stands Eileen Left who’d snuck up in my blind spot and kicked the poor bastard over the edge. … Nothing surprises me about the girl anymore. Local climate, flavor … over I was thinking as I went through the thousands and thousands of words put out daily by the offices of the various candidates for mayor that they were getting pretty undistinguishable from one another. … I started to look more closely at them and realized that what they all lacked was simple. … They lacked Sex! Eileen Left does ‘Position’ papers Muni? Natural Areas? Bike lanes? IRV? You name it, the candidates have generated favored positions on every issue imaginable. … Except, of course, the only ones of concern to the average voter. So, I sent ‘crack’ reporter, Eileen Left out to query the field on matters of real import to you and I. She caught up with candidate and Board President, Matt Gonzalez who was helping fill sandbags along Crissy Field to protect the delicate new Natural Areas ecosystem from Hurricane Isabel. Eileen: “Supervisor! … Supervisor! … The hurricane is coming in 3,000 miles from here on the EAST coast!” Gonzalez: (Looks to campaign manager, Enrique Pierce, who shrugs) “Well, you can never be too careful … plus, my new tidal energy plant will be right over there (motions toward bridge) and I want to protect it.” Eileen: “Matt, Matt, the plant will be 300’ beneath the surface of the ocean and should actually run better during a hurricane.” Matt: “Really?” … (stops filling the bag and gazes again at Enrique who pretends to be reading from an appointments book) … “Well, (beginning to unroll the legs of his trousers) … how can I help you, Eileen?” Eileen: “Just one question, Mr. President.” (he’s President of the Board of Supervisors, you know) … “We were going through your position papers and we couldn’t find anything on the ‘missionary position’ … what are your feelings on that?” Matt: Grins. (he is sitting on an old weathered piece of some lost ship that has washed up on the beach cleaning the sand off his feet) … “Well, you know, I had a regular job at 16th and Valencia at one time.” Eileen: (quizzickly) “And?” Matt: “Well, everday I went to a position in the Mission.” OK, they weren’t all that quick, but they were all equally instructive as to the candidates’ personal beliefs as regarding truly pertinent positions. … More: Eileen caught up to Tom Ammiano who was at Dugan’s Parlor having a makeover. Eileen: “Supervisor, supervisor … what is your position on the ‘doggie position’?” Tom: “It depends upon what the ‘dog’ looks like. … … This is from ‘Blade Runner’ again, isn’t it?” (You apparently had to be there for many of these, and, I wasn’t.) Eileen, (her Suzuki bike in top form) raced to North Beach where she caught Angela Alioto coming out of a bakery with an armful of fresh bread. Angela: “Hey, Eileeen!! … What’re you up to?!” Eileen: (pulling off her helmet and tossing her hair) … “Just one quick question, doll. … What do you think of fellatio?” Angela: (Tears off the end of a loaf and begins to chew.) … “I think he was one of the greatest Roman Emperors of all time.” (This girl could definitely be mayor.) Sticking with her Latin vein, Eileen caught Gavin Newsom at a going-away fundraiser for his wife. Eileen: “Gavin, Gavin … what are your feelings on cunnilingus?” Newsom: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” (Hmmmm, no wonder his wife is leaving.) Welll, I was going to cover ‘endorsements and what they really mean’ today too, but the night’s couch surfer hostess just phoned and I gotta get going. Practice safe week-end: