A Treasury guy’s tribute to Hamilton

On the 263rd birthday of Alexander Hamilton, the California Historical Society gala — having read the word “gala,” don’t think for a moment that serious issues weren’t spotlighted — paid tribute to the much-honored diplomat/ economist/political coach George Shultz. The honoree is a stalwart Republican, but (should I have said “and”?) a savvy, rational and decent gentleman well-liked by Bay Area pals, even those who lean left.

At 97, he’s crisp as ever, and when I approached him to say hello at the Old Mint on Thursday night, Jan. 11, his mind was on the speech he’d give later in the evening. “I’m going to speak with Alexander Hamilton,” he said. “There are things going on that Alexander Hamilton would not believe. He said ‘full faith in the United States must be beyond question,’ ” that is, he said, that owing nothing must be the basis of healthy economy. “What about the debt?” his conjuring-up of Hamilton would ask him. “It’s in the trillions,” Shultz would answer. “What’s a trillion?” would ask Hamilton.

To illustrate his point, Shultz pulled out a sheet of figures, which he consulted again during his actual speech. “It’s not politics,” he said, “it’s not economics. It’s just arithmetic.” Praising the wisdom of Hamilton, he got into the weeds, too, advocating cutbacks of entitlements, health care and Social Security.

Earlier in the program, and again later, three young men from San Francisco Bay Area Theater Company performed songs from “Hamilton: The Musical.” In one of the adjacent rooms, coin dealer Donald

Kagin of Tiburon was displaying his treasure: the plain obverse quint, first coin ever minted by the United States. It was said that Hamilton, the new nation’s first secretary of the Treasury, had held it in his hands.

It had been a busy day for me, and I hadn’t gotten to follow the national news. On the way home, as my spouse — in the way that spouses do — briefed me, I understood that while Shultz had advocated a traditional position on entitlements, another of his messages addressed the latest news from the White House.

“Incidentally,” he said, “Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant. Everyone here is descended from immigrants.”

The San Francisco pop-up installation of the Carpenters Workshop Gallery, which ends its three-month run on Wednesday, Jan. 17, was at 836M Gallery. That’s a storefront space in a building owned by French venture capitalists Sebastien and Julie Espinard. The two bought the building, said Vanessa Suchar-Marcus, who has been presiding over the pop-up for three months, with the idea of using space for “whatever they love,” art and dance included.

The couple had already owned some of the Carpenters Workshop Gallery treasures, artist-designed furniture and sculpture, created, says the site, by “international rising and already established artists and designers going outside their traditional territories of expression.” There are galleries in London, Paris and New York; Suchar-Marcus created a temporary San Francisco venue, an ultrachic space with only a dozen objects displayed.

On this quiet stretch of Montgomery near Pacific; there’s not a lot of foot traffic. She said she tried to keep the door open, but the day I was there, I had to wave from the sidewalk to get in. These objects are not inexpensive.

With so many of the Bay Area moguls who have money to spend on art not really spending it on clothing or grooming aids, how does she tell a potential customer? “I never judge,” she said. Twenty years ago, when she created a company curating art in private homes, she met a hedge fund guy who looked less than unimposing. “I think the dealers who pushed him away must have eaten their hands,” she said. (She’s French; that must be a translation of an idiom.)

He turned out to be the world’s foremost collector of contemporary art, she said. “I do not judge.”

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “Nearly everything I know about S/M relationships, I learned from adopting a cat.” Man carrying large bag of cat food, overheard at Castro Street bus stop by Mark Abramson

At SFJazz last week, trumpeter Chris Botti’s performance was preceded, as is traditional there, by a pitch for membership. This time, though, Botti paused during the show, asked whether members of the audiences belonged ... and then bought one a membership.

The SPCA sent word that its puppy-and-kitten-filled Macy’s holiday windows resulted in the adoption of 222 animals. The nonprofit this year employed an additional fundraising technique: Animal lovers could pay $10 to cuddle with one of the adoptable pets for 10 minutes. In all, nearly $80,000 was raised.