The rise and fall

It’s official. Autumn has arrived in the city of no seasons. The days, like the $5 martinis in the better hotels, are getting shorter. There is a definite nip in the air, biting at your ears. Fur coats, an item almost as endangered as some of the animals who gave their all, are coming out of storage, and many a man is eyeing his topcoat. Still, it is an article of faith among the True Believers that no San Franciscan should ever wear an overcoat. On the coldest days, our heroes head downtown with only their suits and briefcases to protect them from the elements. Noses red, cheeks purple and teeth chattering, they will admit only that it’s “a little brisk today, wouldn’t you say?” To wear an overcoat is a sign of thinning blood and hair, an admission of age. Fetch me the old camel’s hair, Arbuthnot, unless the moths got to it first. Yes, and the leather gloves with the bunny fur lining, too. I’m not out to kid anybody.

The summer of the Giants’ discontent is over and we are riding high with the SuperNiners, bound for glory. It is indeed an odd coincidence that the Giants have a new manager named Roger Craig and the Niners a wonderful ball-carrier named Roger Craig, but nobody does anything about it. There’s a joke there somewhere, but nobody can seem to put it together. As for the eagerly awaited Raiders game, it was a superbore, over almost before it began. You could sense after a few plays that the 49ers had it and that the Raiders have had it. A mismatch. One’s heart — this one’s, at least — went out to Jim Plunkett, with his heroic, agonized face and scarred body, an old lion limping off into the shadows.

These are the good days in the city, the fog meandering in and out on no particular schedule, the big boats at play off the St. Francis Yacht Club, playing hide and seek in the billowing

These are the good days in the city, the fog meandering in and out on no particular schedule.

banks. In his “Grab Bag” column of tremendous trivia, L. M. Boyd notes that “People are said to think and play and work at their best when the 24-hour temperatures average between 63 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit.” That’s us! In fact, which other city fits that formula so snugly? I’m not sure about the “think” and “work” part, but no matter. Play is the thing here, and San Franciscans are good at it.

Supercharged by the salubrious weather, I roam the foggy streets on large flat Ferragamo’d feet (the Italians do make terrific shoes). Backstage at Davies Hall, Leonard Bernstein, wearing a white silk dressing gown, embraces opera star Sheri Greenawald, once Edo de Waart’s great love. Bernstein is carried away. He oozes, coos and oohs as he nibbles her fingers and ears. Laughing merrily, she pulls away. He pulls her back. Sheri’s new husband, a nice bespectacled chap, looks on stonily, but musicians are like that. Very kissykissy. Especially Lennie, even after an overpraised Mahler Ninth.

It is time for night life, restaurants, clubs, the great game of eating out. I am about to give the award for best french fries to the Hayes St. Grill and then the next night I have some equally good at Mason’s, formerly Canlis’, at the Fairmont. Mason’s is a dumb name for a place with such good fries. A new French club has been organized; it’s called Le Livre Bleu, which does not mean your liver just self-destructed, and it meets at Pierre’s, a nice break for this excellent eating place in the otherwise maligned Meridien Hotel on Third St. It is still boggling to eat “Une Belle Tranche De Saumon,” beautifully rendered by chef Joel Guillon, on what so many of us remember sentimentally as the heart of Skid Road.

At the St. Francis’ Compass Rose, the dancers are swaying as romantically as is possible under a battery of powerful spotlights directly overhead. Will the asst. mgr. in charge of cheek-to-cheek dancing please do something about this? However, no complaints about the music: Pianist Abe Battat and Almon S. Walcott III, the impressive clarinet and sax man, are the best around for soft swing; Almon can, in fact, tear your heart out. In the bar at L’Etoile, a man with a paunch is sleeping on a sofa as his wife and another couple chat away and Peter Mintun works his usual midnight magic. The paunchy one sleeps for an hour. Not a waiter or a captain comes along to shake him awake, despite the incongruity in this elegant setting. It is an uncom-

fortable scene. “You think he’s dead?” “Hope so.” Outside, the fog drifts through the towers of Grace Cathedral and gobbles up the P-U Club.

A beautiful Saturday at Stanford for a “pro-celebrity” tennis tourney (a benefit for Cystic Fibrosis) that isn’t as horrendous as most. The cast of “Hill Street Blues” is there, plus real players like Arthur Ashe, Tim Mayotte, Barry MacKay, Matt Mitchell. Veronica Hamel turns out to be a good player despite her odd getup in the 100degree heat: baseball cap down to her ears, heavy sweatshirt, heavy warmup pants. What is she trying to hide? Defeated by Hamel, I drive back through Palo Alto, one marvelous city, all lawns and magnolias and wellkept houses.

Wolfgang’s, Sunday night, the Tubes launching their three-night “retrospective.” The tickets say 8 p.m. but nothing happens for an hour. Then comes a 10-yr-old Tubes video that runs till 10 p.m., when the band finally appears. A good band, a historic band, even, but no longer outrageous. Their first big hit was “White Punks on Dope,” but I didn’t smell even a whiff of marijuana as autumn came to the city by the bay.