Netflix going to wag Maupin’s ‘Tales’?

Laura Linney will still be Mary Ann and Olympia Dukakis will still be Anna Madrigal in a Netflix version of “Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City” in development. The project doesn’t have a formal go-ahead, but the first of 10 scripts for installments has been written by “The Hours” novelist Michael Cunningham, according to Maupin, the series’ executive producer.

Cunningham, who’ll be lead writer, “is committed to capturing the flavor of ‘Tales,’ ” Maupin said in an email, “while creating new, younger characters to join the regulars at 28 Barbary Lane. The story employs elements and characters from my last three novels, which were written over the last decade. Mary Ann’s still at the center, 53 and still drop-dead gorgeous.” She’s recently returned to San Francisco with a “troubling secret,” he added, dangling a come-on to make serial watchers sit up and beg.

“It will feel both new and familiar, I think,” Maupin said.

Eight Grammys and an Emmy won by SFS Media, the San Francisco Symphony’s in-house recording label, made for a gleaming display in the Wattis Room at Davies Hall at its 15th anniversary party on Wednesday, June 28. Oliver Theil, who runs the ia label, said it “has had incredible success” because of the “unshakable belief that what the orchestra is doing under Michael Tilson Thomas is meaningful and worth capturing”; because of its “willingness to take risks, going out on its own”; and because of all its staff ’s “knowing we have to strive for the absolute best.”

SFS Media has produced live concert recordings, documentaries and concert films, with guests who have included musicians, editors and producers who had worked on every aspect of those. The speechifying took a particularly intriguing turn when piccolo player Catherine Payne, talking on behalf of the musicians, ventured into territory not often revealed in public.

For one Tchaikovsky recording, she said, her part included a passage in which she had to play 21 notes in three seconds, a feat. She blew it, she said (at least by her own reckoning), but musicians had been directed to smile for the video and smile she did. Recording engineer and SFS Media recording producer Jack Vad was able to patch in a better recording of the passage, she said, sounding awestruck by his skill. Some time later, when she was forced to watch it, she noted one listener: “Catherine Payne nailed it. Look at her smile.”

Her charming story led maestro Thomas to recall the orchestra’s having once made an ad for MasterCard, which realized, after it was shot, edited and shown for two days, that the music was not in the public domain. MasterCard pulled it off the air and substituted the music, using the same video footage. “There’s no hiding from our sins,” said Thomas. Nor SFS Media’s achievements.

Sign spotted by Thomas Matson in the restroom of Slurp, near the Castro Theatre. “Please don’t flush with your feet. Grab a paper towel, flush and discard. Thank you!” I had never before heard of anyone using a foot to flush ... possibly because the one-foot balancing act necessitated by that move might result in crashing to the floor and sitting there on one’s behind. In any case, what’s wrong with washing one’s hands?

Although it’s a wellorganized event, Flower Piano, which brings professional and amateur players to the San Francisco Botanical Garden to make music at instruments scattered through the grounds, is probably the nearest thing we have to the spirit of random pleasure we think is epitomized by the Summer of Love. This year’s event is July 13-24.

One featured performance harks back to that time 50 years ago: Billy Philadelphia playing for a Summer of Love music sing-along (with lyrics distributed) from 4 to 6 p.m. July 21. And one event harks forward (can one that?) to the present and future, and need for support. Flower Piano is free to San Franciscans, but from 7:30 to 10:30 p.m. July 22, pathways will be illuminated for a $40-aperson NightGarden Piano, when pianos will be played by all-stars and amateurs, and food and drink will be available for purchase.

Featured that night will be a demonstration at the fountain plaza of the Great Meadow, of the Luminescent Grand, a glowing instrument created for Burning Man in 2013. For that evening, think of “Garden Piano,” which sounds utterly refined, as a sandless Burning Man.

“If I’d had kids, they would have been affectionate and loving. Trust me.” Man to woman, overheard outside Peet’s on Fourth Street in Berkeley by Andrea Behr