Season of love gives way to season of protest

Walking near Crissy Field the other day, Ulf Gustafsson snagged an overheard quote that may have captured the mood of the era:

“I wanted to go out and protest,” said one young woman to another, “against ... whatever.”

So that’s where events of 2017 have led us. Although the Summer of Love is not over officially until Sept. 21, it sure does feel as though it’s lying in the rumpled sheets and having a cigarette. Boomers, the 50th anniversary is history, and it’s time to pack away the feather boas and velvet scarves, all of which may be used to decorate our walkers when we turn out for the 75th anniversary festivities.

The San Francisco Travel Association has sent proud word that its branding and integrated marketing campaign for the Summer of Love has won the U.S. Travel’s Destinations Council Destiny Award, an award in the $5 million to $10 million category, the biggest. The campaign was organized by SF Travel as well as the California Historical Society, San Francisco International Airport and a number of local and national businesses, including hotels, cultural business institutions and more.

An exultant release about the award said the estimated “global media impressions” — the number of times that citizens worldwide were made aware of the anniversary campaign — was 3.475 billion. I think I saw most of the respondents in line for the cable car at Powell and Market.

In San Rafael, Ann Watson thought the company S-Car-Go was involved in the sale of snails. It is, in fact, an auto repair shop that specializes in racing cars.

Responding to a recent item about a NextDoor search for a missing (in Marin County) inflatable unicorn, Julie Mozena forwarded a snapshot that a friend had taken, of an inflatable unicorn floating in Tomales Bay. Furthermore (I guess inflatable unicorns have legs, which in newspaper terms means they inspire more stories), Carol Lankford-Gross, just back from a Croatian island yacht cruise, says that fellow passengers amused themselves with what seemed like an identical plastic beast. This poor unicorn met its maker when “a generously sized guest jumped onto the unicorn from the deck, and alas, it suffered a major rupture . ... We staged a burial at sea with a linen napkin and a baking sheet to slide him into the depths.”

Chris Jehle was aboard a 45-Union/ Stockton bus when he heard a woman tell her friend, “You wouldn’t BELIEVE what I found going through his recycling bin!” And then the two of them changed seats, which “infuriated me,” says Jehle, “because I was dying to know what exactly she’d found.”

Graydon Carter, cofounder of the defunct but much-admired Spy magazine and, for the last 25 years, editor of Vanity Fair, announced Thursday, Sept. 7, that he’s leaving that post at the end of the year. Carter is known, of course, for the magazine’s annual Hollywood issue, best-dressed list, pregnant Demi Moore on the cover, and somehow turning the publication into a glamorous and newsmaking mashup of Vogue, the New Yorker, Forbes and People magazines.

In recent months, his editors’ notes have reflected, increasingly, his hatred for the current occupant of the White House. The same day that announcement of his leaving the magazine arrived, the email contained his comments on the presidency, including, “Our timing in bringing a man like Donald Trump into the White House really couldn’t be worse. The man is clearly unfit for any kind of public office, let alone the highest office in the land.” A bit later on Thursday, the magazine sent a copy of contributing editor David Karp’s farewell essay, “The Years With Graydon.” The main point of that, of course, was Karp’s admiration for Carter’s leadership skills, editorial judgment and style-setting taste. But also included was a list of some of the words and terms that Carter didn’t like, and thus were pretty much forbidden in the magazine: eatery, boîte, scarf (as a verb), doff, eschew, hooker, celebrity, moniker, opine, A-list and jet set.

To mark the one-week (more like 10day) anniversary of the heat wave, this overheard: a vendor to a customer at the Noe Valley farmers’ market, as recorded by Stefan Gruenwedel: “I can’t hear you. It’s too hot.”