How to hug a feathered friend

At Rosamunde restaurant in Oakland, Michael Aidin overheard a young man telling his young female companion: “The era of control over esoteric information has come to an end.”

In keeping with that, here’s a bit of esoteric information: how to receive a hug from a duck.

Walking up Baker Street in the Haight the other day, I encountered Hendrix ,a student at William L. Cobb Elementary, walking home with Lil Wayne, his pet duck. The duck, who was not on a leash or in any way tethered, more or less obeyed its owner’s requests to step lively. Lil Wayne’s infancy was spent in Oklahoma, where Hendrix’s family had adopted him as a baby, a ball of fluff. He is used to humans, and allowed neighbors and passersby to reach out and touch his glossy black feathers. Lil Wayne is a familiar guest at Peet’s coffee in Faletti’s and at Escape from New York Pizza on Haight Street.

And there on the sidewalk, for one passerby who’d stopped to pet him, Wayne approached, then stretched his neck snakelike, along the length of his admirer’s arm. This is how a duck hugs, said his owners.

If you want to get cozy with a duck, reach out to him. In some cases, this works for humans, too.

As to that second wreath laid on Lotta’s Fountain last week: It was from the San Francisco History Association, says board member Ed Baumgarten. “We also take this wreath each year to the fire hydrant at Church and 20th Streets and leave it there after all in attendance spray it with gold paint,” he emailed. So it doesn’t matter that it was jammed over the other wreath; its placement at Lotta’s Fountain was only temporary.

Riding his bike in San Francisco D. Marc Capobianco saw a woman driving a Honda Accord with a vanity plate reading “PRE IPO.” City Hall, which had been glowing blue and gold for the Warriors, glowed purple Thursday night for Prince. That morning, just after Aaron Peskin and his staff learned about the star’s death, Chief of Staff Sunny Angulo called and “we made that request,” said Peskin.

The idea met with no resistance, which Peskin says is symbolic “of the new-found spirit of cooperation between the Board of Supervisors and the executive branch.”

Meanwhile, music man Narada Michael Walden never produced a Prince recording, “because he was his own producer, his own jack of all trades.” But Walden got to watch Prince work in an L.A. studio, recording “Gigolos Get Lonely Too.” He was overdubbing his guitar, said Walden, and was in a “really cool groove.”

Prince had a cold that day, so there was a humidifier in the room, which became quite steamy. And after a while, he went outside to get some fresh air. Walden and Morris Day went outside, too, joining him to play hoops. Prince “got 21 points immediately; Morris Day got 16; I got 13. This all happened while he had a bad cold, was wearing 7-inch heels and had his hair in his eyes. It didn’t matter. He was only 5’2”, but he tore us all up, killing us all in basketball.”

Prince played in junior high, and was an avid fan who attended a Warriors game in March, as The Chronicle’s Al Saracevic described. Prince gave all the players tickets to the next day’s concert, and Draymond Green told ESPN that his parents had been big fans, and that he’d become an admirer, too.

P.S.: On Thursday, April 21, the day Prince died, Tim Curley received a new issue of Acoustic Guitar magazine, containing a news note about the auction of a 1959 Gibson acoustic guitar “that Prince used to sketch out some of his earliest songs.” It was put up for auction by Mayte Garcia, Prince’s ex-wife, and Owen Husney, his former manager, on March 14, with a minimum bid of $60,000. But three days later, when the auction closed, no one had bid. Curley’s betting it would sell now.

“It wasn’t a bad visit after all. I only had to eat kale once.” One elderly bar patron to another, overheard by Alison Owings