Chronicle Classic
Cold reality: New Year’s Day was perfect — cold, gray and gloomy. It looked like a day with a hangover, and it was. I walked around the streets with a stubbled face and ran into other guys who hadn’t bothered to shave either. “You look just great,” we lied to each other. I tried to remember what I’d done New Year’s Eve, but it was a hopeless jumble of champagne at L’Etoile, sporadic dancing at somebody’s big house on Broadway, and the fantastic Janis Joplin at Winterland, where the best rock bands in the land (Big Brother, the Jeffplane, the Quicksilvers) played till 9 a.m.; Bill Graham, a brooding eagle, perched on high, keeping a cold eye and tight rein on everybody. Coat collar turned up. I walked among the legion of the lost in the Tenderloin — the lame, the halt, the blind, the poor. Smiles were worn upside down. On a holiday, when everything is closed, the protective coloration of “straight” people is gone from the Tenderloin and you can see the misery pure and uncut. A wonderfully lousy day, unless you are fascinated by tight ends and handoffs on the telly. It was a pleasure to go back to work.
Footnote: Of course, there are always a few fine people around to lighten the pervasive gloom. Jurgen Wolff ’s “holiday” card read: “Due to circumstances beyond our control, there will be no 1968. You are advised to go on to 1969.” Memo circulated in the 51 O’Farrell bldg.: “We regret to inform you that everyone flunked 1967 and we will have to repeat the entire year. All Happy New Year wishes are canceled retroactively. Let’s all buckle down now and make last year the year it should have been!” Newsflash: Peace demonstrators who released a flock of pigeons are being prosecuted for cruelty to animals. And somebody who hates Southern Pacific (imagine) is posting signs in the Market St. headquarters that read “THE GOLDEN SPIKE WAS MADE IN POLAND!”
Nevertheless, the beat goes on: Claude Jarman, who won an Oscar as a child actor and plaudits for the way he ran the S.F. Film Festival, has now won Top Model Maryann de Lichtenberg. They’ll be married here Jan. 22 by State Supreme Court Justice Stanley Most … The Sahara Tahoe casino was almost wiped out New Year’s Eve by a horde of lucky gamblers who walked out with a couple of hundred thousand (one table alone dropped $60,000). Manager Dick Schofield managed a tiny smile: “We made a lot of people even happier than we intended” … The Committee’s Alan Myerson, invited to the International Cultural Congress in Havana Jan. 4-11, has been denied a visa by the State Dept. despite the Supreme Court’s reversal on travel restrictions, and how come? … The latest 49er rumor has John Brodie AND Monty Stickles going to the Vikings for Marlin McKeever, Clint Jones and a draft choice.
Busy-Busy-Busy: That would be Senator Robert F. Kennedy, here for two days to address the Commonwealth Club, look into Indian Education (he’s chairman of that subcommittee), and plug his new book, “To Seek a Newer World,” for which Doubleday paid him a mild advance of $150,000. In his role as friend of the Indian, I hope he will look into Sam Sayad’s report that the Navajos were polled on the war in Vietnam with the following results: five percent voted that we should withdraw from that country: 95 percent voted that we should withdraw from THIS country.
The ’68 identification cards for State Employees bear only one adornment — a double red diagonal line from upper left to lower right — and that IS the bar sinister, isn’t it? State employees are a bunch youknowwhats ... Good morning, Bishop Pike: In his next movie, “The Wild Bunch,” Bill Holden plays the role of Pike Bishop, last of the gunslingers … The S.F. Opera’s dunning letter, signed by Mickey Hellman and Roger Lapham Jr., isn’t too far short of just plain abusive. It begins “You are a season ticket-holder and perhaps you think this expenditure sufficiently represents your support of the Opera” and concludes “If you were sending in your check while we are writing this letter ask yourself if you sent enough.” Hard sell replaces soft soap? … We have been involved in Vietnam for some years now, but there still seems to be a bit of confusion about who’s who. In a Letter to the Editor this week, V.R. Wright of Hamilton Air Force Base writes: “I thought our purpose in Vietnam was to roust out the Viet Cong invaders from South Vietnam.” For the 999th time, the Viet Cong ARE South Vietnamese, and so benighted they probably think we are the invaders. Imagine.
Add infinitems: Paul Berta, who owns that fine little restaurant called Budapest West at Steiner and Union, stepped outside the other night and found a pretty girl standing there. When he walked outside again, an hour later, she was still there. “Uh — waiting for the bus?” he inquired. “No,” she dimpled shyly, “for the bus boy.” Oh … Speaking of restaurants, Curtis Rosa is opening one called Ribeltad Vorden at Precita and Folsom — and whereas that name sounds vaguely German, it’s anything but. For a decorative motif, he gave the Seal of Colombia to a Japanese seamstress to embroider, and she transformed “Libertad y Orden,” Colombia’s slogan, into “Ribeltad Vorden,” a goof Curtis couldn’t resist … A Phone Co. man was working in the Howard Clothing Co. on Market the other day when suddenly the line went stone cold dead. He stepped outside and peered down into the BART ditch, where a worker who had just cut through a cable by mistake looked up and asked softly: “Oops?”
This column originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle on Jan. 3, 1968.