S.F. fulfills wish to honor dancer Tan
In accordance with a decision made by Mayor Ed Lee before his death in December, Mayor Mark Farrell announced on Friday, Jan. 26, that San Francisco Ballet principal dancer Yuan Yuan Tan will receive the 2018 Mayor’s Art Award on April 9. The award will be given at a benefit reception hosted by ArtCare: Friends of the San Francisco Arts Commission, which supports public art in San Francisco.
Born in Shanghai, Tan was recruited for the San Francisco Ballet by artistic director Helgi Tomasson, who had seen her dance in a competition. Within two weeks of immigrating to the United States in 1995, she was dancing with the Ballet. “Throughout her life,” said Tom DeCaigny, San Francisco director of cultural affairs, “she has given back to her adopted city and the international ballet community, whether it be championing education, cancer prevention or supporting young dancers.”
Writer Terence Clarke, whose new book of short stories is “New York,” was born and raised in Oakland, and lives in San Francisco. But the three years he lived and worked in Manhattan had a profound effect on his literary imagination, expressed in this collection of tales. While he was living there, he said at his Sunday, Jan. 28, Book Passage appearance, “People thought I talked funny. They said, ‘Get to the point. What do you want?’ ”
Returning home Sunday night after the reading, and switched on the Grammys. My perceptions were filtered through something of a still-flu-riddled haze. Overproduced, I thought, boring. And then I saw Bono and the Edge on a barge with the Statue of Liberty behind them, and heard the words of Emma Lazarus’ poem. Never mind awards shows and gowns and self-congratulatory ego-stroking. That was the point.
Who’s that chirping on Stuart Street? A few human regulars on the block between Mission and Howard report there’s what seems to be a mechanical avian presence — “driving the neighbors crazy,” says one earwitness — on the block. Apparently, the chirping is supposed to ward away undesirable birds. Wise owls are welcome everywhere, as are noble eagles and other dignified species. Pigeons? Maybe not so much.
Noting that Sacramento Kings coach Dave Joerger, feeling woozy, fell to one knee during a televised game on Sunday, Jan. 28, Cal Zamansky wondered if that would enrage the tweeter in chief. Which made me think, with Valentine’s Day approaching, that the White House might ban traditional one-knee proposals.
“If you are a Trump supporter,” began the bumper sticker Eileen Denny spotted in Mill Valley, “Stay back 500 feet! I don’t trust your judgment.”
Phil Semler’s been traveling in China for a month, during which, he emails, he’s not “seen a single SF logo ... and I miss The Chronicle.” But walking in the hutongs (lanes between old-fashioned Chinese houses), he came upon an Anta shoe store selling a sweatshirt paying homage to Warriors All-Star Klay Thompson and his dog, Rocco (“mentioned perhaps,” says Semler, “because it’s Year of the Dog”). He bought the shirt, and wearing it has attracted many thumbs-up from passersby, he says.
Consuming interests: At the Claremont Safeway in Rockridge, Renee Goldhammer overheard two young men in conversation. One suggests buying Jell-O. The other responds, “Nah, it’s too hard to make.” This Overheard is presented as a description of what it’s like to have the flu.
Driving north along 101 in a rainstorm last week, Mick Griffin saw a rainbow that stretched from Mill Valley to Tiburon. “If you own real estate here,” he thought, “there really is a pot of gold at both ends of the rainbow.”
Terry Brumbaugh, owner of the Union Street Goldsmith, is retiring, and the store is closing on Feb. 17. Signs advertising “No reasonable offer will be refused” during a going-out-of-business sale prompted one customer to ask, “Would that include taking me back to the vault for a little safe sex?”
Having read on Sunday that Ingvar Kamprad, founder of IKEA, had died at 91 and that “funeral arrangements were not immediately available,” Randy Alfred, a regular contributor to this column, sent a wisecrack: “First they have to assemble the coffin.” Not the kind of joke I’d usually use.
But on Monday, Jan. 29, I read the New York Times obit, which began, “Ingvar Kamprad, a Swedish entrepreneur who hid his fascist past and became one of the world’s richest men ...” The hell with him.