Trying hard as we can to live up to ‘Thrive’
“Nothing surprises me anymore. I see people mixing Baileys Irish Cream with Dr. Pepper all the time.” Flight attendant aboard a plane from Colorado, overheard by Lynette
Now that Oakland has OKd magic mushrooms, says Matt Regan, that city “could complement Children’s Fairyland with Adults’ Learyland.” As to other nomenclature, the recent announcement that the Golden State Warriors and Kaiser Permanente had decided to name the area around their Third Street neighborhood properties Thrive City — adopted even by The Chronicle’s Justin Phillips in a story that ran a few days after the announcement — should make all the other neighborhoods hang their heads in shame. (Except the one where we the DMV Heights folks wear our neighborhood association T-shirts with pride.)
Thrive City is a name no doubt chosen after consultation with an army of expensive communication and marketing executives (it’s nice to know what the colonoscopy copays are buying). It’s an upbeat verb, it sounded great when spoken by Allison Janney in those TV ads for Kaiser, and it describes the desirable activity that’s supposed to go on there.
So perhaps a number of San Francisco neighborhoods need rechristening. Pacific Heights as IPO-ville, or Noe Valley as Pilatestown?
Tom Sweeney, doorman at the Sir Francis Drake, reports that the Starlight Room on top of the hotel is closed and will remain closed — despite the summer tourist season — until September for $4 million worth of renovations.
Where have all the flowers gone? At the de Young Museum last week, Bertie Brouhard asked a docent about the Bouquets to Art event that ran Tuesday-Sunday, June 4 to 9, which seemed to be later than usual this year. The docent confirmed the observation. “It needed to be moved back to make way for Monet’s lilies,” she said.
Running on the Lafayette-Moraga trail one morning last week, Wayne Phillips passed the Contra Costa County Fire Station 17, which has a nonfunctioning drinking fountain out front. The firefighters had put out “a little pan of ice with bottles of water, free for the runners, walkers and bikers,” says Phillips. “So thanks, fire people.”
“Altamont 1969,” published by Damiani, is the latest book by photographer Bill Owens. He says he “waited 50 years to release these photos of the Hells Angels in action at the Rolling Stones concert.”
Why the wait? “I was in fear that the Angels thought I had taken the photos of the murder at the concert, and would come after me,” emailed Owens. “Actually, it was Beth Sunflower who was onstage and photographed the murder. We both used aliases on different images to protect ourselves.”
Owens recalls that “when Beth and I loaned the negatives of the Stones concert to a book publisher, someone broke into his house and stole everything . ... Remember, Hunter Thompson had glamorized the Angels in his books. I knew better, as I did read The Chronicle.”
And many Chronicle staffers were at John’s Grill recently to celebrate the publication of former Chronicle reporter Duffy Jennings’ new “Reporter’s Note Book: A San Francisco Chronicle Journalist’s Diary of the Shocking Seventies.” Jennings worked at The Chronicle from the late 1960s, when he was hired as a copyboy, through the 1970s, leaving the paper in 1980, reports C.N. a.k.a. Mr. Snoop.
“The room was packed with people who remembered Duffy and his times,” said Mr. Snoop. “It was a bit like a 30-year college reunion. Not everybody looked like their old class picture. But like true newspaper and TV types, they scarfed down the free food and drink, just like in the good old days . ... One man, who was a copyboy in the prime of Duffy Jennings, said he had just applied for his Medicare card. He spoke on condition of anonymity, as we used to say back in the day.”
In Oakland’s Chinatown, Asian Health Services’ Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Dental & Wellness Clinic opened on the last day of May, with ceremonies attended by Rep. Barbara Lee, Assemblyman Rob Bonta, County Supervisor Wilma Chan and Asian Health Services CEO Sherry Hirota. “Gotta love it,” said the Alameda Health Consortium’s Ralph Silber, “an Asian Health Services clinic with a Jewish name.”
In keeping with that, the snacks served at the occasion included skewered portobello mushrooms that had been marinated in Soy Vay teriyaki sauce, which you’re supposed to say aloud.