Will City Hall be going to the dogs?
The American Kennel Club survey of San Francisco’s most popular dog breeds named (in descending order) French bulldog, golden retriever, Labrador retriever, Pembroke Welsh corgi and poodle. But perhaps more fascinating, the club broke down the data by neighborhood: The French bulldog reigns supreme in SoMa, the Castro, Potrero Hill, Nob Hill and the Mission. The golden retriever is most popular in Pacific Heights and NoPa.
Pondering the shared preferences of Nob Hill and the Mission, Pac Heights and NoPa spurred me to wondering about the mayoral wannabes as dog owners.
A quick survey of four front-runners found that Jane Kim, London Breed and Mark Leno are dogless. but Angela Alioto has eight dogs (terrier, toy poodle, two dachshunds, French bulldog, ridgeback, goldendoodle and cavapoo). Leno said he used to have three parrots.
At the coming San Francisco SPCA 150th anniversary gala — on April 18 at City Hall — Leno will receive the SF SPCA Impact Award for his work on legislation, for instance, that bans the use of dogs to chase and harass bears and bobcats. Gov. Jerry Brown, who the SPCA says is the No. 1 governor in the country for signing animal welfare and protection laws, receives the SF SPCA Humanitarian Award.
He won’t be there in person, but he is sending Colusa, his Pembroke Welsh corgi and border collie mix, in his stead.
Sunday was a lovely day in the park for the Hunky Jesus and Foxy Mary contests, organized by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and emceed by Sister Roma. There were the usual sexual references and not exactly shy displays of body parts. The smell of weed was in the air, but when a plate of jelly beans was passed around to spectators in the area where I was standing, I didn’t see anyone brave enough to test whether they were laced with non-jelly-bean substances.
When it got down to the serious business of the day, the most popular Hunky Jesus contestants were the ones who spoke to serious issues. The winner was Puerto Rico RefuJesus, who threw rolls of paper towels into the crowd (spy Adda Dada identified him as Rolando Rasco Saenz); runner-up was Gun Control Jesus, whose sign won’t be quoted in a family newspaper. Foxy Mary already had been chosen by the time I got to the park; I’m told she was Karen, the Balloon Babe from Cincinnati, who was “Grandma Mary.”
P.P.S.: And irresistible signs gleaned from attendees at the recent anti-gun march. Held by a kid: “I can’t even bring peanut butter to school,” accompanied by a picture of a gun with a line through it. And seen by David Ogden in Walnut Creek: “Too many things wrong to put on one sign.”
P.S.: And in other religious notes, in a discussion of Passover, Jonathan Bayer asked 3½-year-olds at the Congregation Emanu-El preschool what Moses did when he got very angry. One little girl raised her hand to say, “Took a deep breath.”
The Museum of Performance and Design gave Berkeley Rep Artistic Director Tony Taccone its 2018 San Francisco Arts Medallion, recently at the Battery. Taccone, who came to Berkeley Rep after co-commissioning (with Oskar Eustis) the first production of “Angels in America” at the Eureka Theater, has been the Rep’s artistic director for 22 years.
In conversation with Ken Fulk ,he was his usual outspoken self. When Fulk asked him about encounters with celebrities, for example, he said he didn’t care much about them. “It’s hard enough to make a play with your friends, rather than someone who doesn’t give a s— about you . ... Berkeley Rep is an artistdriven institution.”
But he was at his most poetic when we chatted before that conversation, when he described the pleasures of being a director, a job in which you go “into a dark room with people you admire and respect, and try to invent something.”
Taccone described reading a script: “As a director, you imagine its world before anyone does. The seminal act of creation comes at that moment.”
Is that like imagining the characters in a work of fiction you’re reading? “Reading a novel is always better,” said Taccone, who, although speaking at a theater event, once again demonstrated his inability to pander. When reading a book, “You own it.” When someone else makes it into another art form, like a movie, “it feels like a betrayal.”
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “This city is a distraction for personal goals.” Woman to woman, overheard at Starbucks by Joe Mac