Run on ‘Nutcracker’ tickets for tykes
Break out the velvets and tutus. The San Francisco Ballet is offering a special kids’ package on Dec. 11: a holiday lunch with Christmas tinsel and festivities, followed by a performance of “Nutcracker.” The $750 Sugar Plum Fairy Circle is the least expensive ticket; Snow Queen’s Court tickets are $1,250; and Nutcracker Suite tickets $2,500. But it’s too late to buy them. Through word of mouth, 325 tickets (including $25,000 tables) sold out — stocking stuffers for millionaires’ munchkins? — even before invitations were in the mail. To thwart overexcitement, Kelsey Lamond (who with Christine Leong Connors conceived of this fundraiser) said the luncheon menu has been planned — no offense to that Fairy — so as not to include a lot of sugar.
And in keeping with the above: Taking his grandchildren shopping, Phil Abrams was driving and “lecturing them about how privileged they are. I defined the concept of being privileged, how lucky they were to be able to travel, have a nice house, new clothes, all the special programs and classes that their parents pay for that others don’t have, etc. etc. blah blah.
“Then as I looked in the rearview mirror, I was not so sure our 6-year-old grandson, Jude, was listening. I offered, ‘I will give you a dime if you can tell me what I just said.’
“‘A dime?’ exclaimed Jude. ‘How about a dollar?’ ”
The Monday Lunch, at which invited speakers discuss issues and ideas, was at Park Tavern on Monday, Sept. 26, and it was the biggest lunch ever. The speaker was Jeff Kositsky, director of the city’s new Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. The issues are pressing, and the guests (mostly women) included community leaders, cultural leaders and people involved in nonprofits as administrators and volunteers.
Kositsky was energetic as he began his talk by describing the roots of the problem in the late 1970s, when the federal government decided to “walk away” from housing issues. “The budget of HUD is 20 percent of what it was in 1978,” said Kositsky, going on to recite the disturbing statistics: “One in every 25 kids in San Francisco is homeless or unstably housed”; there are 95 beds for every 100 homeless people in New York; there are 35 beds for every 100 homeless people here.
The problem, of course, needs to be solved in a multitude of ways, large and small. Individuals, he said, should apply common sense to their consideration of policy. They can step up to the plate by supporting nonprofits with volunteerism or money and can “be radical with their compassion.”
At the end of the meal, as people rushed to meet him and respond to his talk, a happy buzz spread around the room. Before the meal had begun, we all sang “Happy Birthday” to Charlotte Shultz, who had been presented with a cake. Afterward, word spread: Vitka Eisen of the nonprofit HealthRight 360, a nonprofit health provider for the underserved, was among the guests, and it was said that Shultz had donated her cake to the homeless.
Speaking coach Ruth Sherman had a few comments about physical signifiers in the Monday, Sept. 26, debate, which Jessica Cole described as “watching a college professor debate an exploding squirrel”:
During the first greeting, says Sherman, when both candidates walked out onstage, Clinton “asserted control from the start . ... It seemed she pulled her hand back from Trump’s once he put his left hand on her upper arm.” What I noticed was at the end of the debate: After the candidates shook hands and walked to the back of the stage, Trump put his hand in the middle of Clinton’s back.
I’m pondering that gesture: Was it intended as a patronizing assertion of control? Where exactly was that hand? High, a gesture perfected in middle school to determine whether she was wearing a bra? Or low, to see if she was wearing Spanx? Would her likability factor have gone up or down had she responded by goosing him on national TV? Discuss among yourselves.
As to the controversial lyrics to “The Star-Spangled Banner,” tour guide Gary Holloway notes that all four verses are engraved on a Francis Scott Key memorial at the east end of the band concourse in Golden Gate Park. The memorial was given to the city by James Lick in 1887. He paid $60,000 to have it made; in today’s money, that is $1.5 million.
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “What Millennial stereotype am I?” Young woman overheard at Pegasus bookstore in Berkeley by Mike Palmer
Open for business in San Francisco, (415) 777-8426. Email: lgarchik@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @leahgarchik