Posted on 03/21/2003 6:56:02 PM PST by Tomalak
FRIDAY, MARCH 21 -- "Good Lord," said Strange de Jim yesterday in the Civic Center, "all these people protesting the opening of the Asian Art Museum?" ... A demonstrator bearing a sign reading "No Blood for Oil" paraded in front of the Museum. "I hope the protesters know we have no connection to world politics," said PR whiz Martha Shaughnessy who was working the opening for Landis Communications. "We have oil paintings -- but not crude oil paintings." ... A tourist who had somehow wandered into the Civic Center from the Tenderloin saw the be-helmeted, truncheon-toting SWAT squad posted in front of the museum and said, "This is a city that protects its culture."
Those may be the only jokes to come out of yesterday's demonstrations. In the Financial District, the demonstrators were of the traditional kind -- fatigue jackets and granny dresses. Indeed, around Montgomery & Market, the happenings had the air -- the sexy air -- of old Berkeley. But at the Civic Center, at traffic intersections around Mish, 7th, 8th, and along Van Ness and up through the Tenderloin, things were absurd and self-indulgent. The demonstrators were of the freakish sort: clown clothes, bicycles, and cans of plastic string. But it wasn't fun.
At 7th & Mish, by the U.S. Court House, I sat in a van driven by Nathaniel Shelton, who transports patients to and from Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. We were stuck, along with a fleet of Fed Ex drivers, just after 9 a.m., as demonstrators rode bikes in a circle in the intersection, closed it off with colored string, and berated the truck drivers.
"It's almost as if they were protesting us," said Shelton. Indeed, the enmity and ridicule of the protesters was directed at working people trying to get their work done. The massive Court House, a seat of government power, was ignored. At the Civic Center, a group of demonstrators defecated. Then they left, leaving the mess to be cleaned up by others. Not only disgusting, but this idiocy belittles the proud tradition of civic protest in our national history ... Sigh ...
Unclear on the Concept? "Turn off all your cars," a demonstrator shouted to motorists who were stalled by protesters who had blocked Larkin at Turk. "You're wasting gas!" Huh? ...
Bernard Loiseau, the French chef who died Feb. 24, will be honored at a memorial dinner April 6 at Fleurs de Lys. "This will be the American remembrance," says Bill Boyd, who is arranging the commemoration. Boyd was both Loiseau's friend and lawyer. "Bernard Chirent of the Fairmont will prepare the first course. Roland Passot of La Folie, the second. Fleur de Lys chef Hubert Keller will do the third course. And Gary Danko, Bernard's dear friend, will take the helm for the fourth course." Among the other chefs planning on attending the unique memorial are Michael Mina and Kurt Grasing.
Loiseau was a three-star chef who died by his own hand in Burgundy. Stories abound that he spun into despair after his restaurant in the hamlet of Salieu dropped two points, from 19 to 17, in the 20-point rating system presided over by the restaurant guide, Gault-Millau. Chef Paul Bocuse charged that the gastronomic publication "killed" his friend. But Boyd and others say Loiseau was snared by illness: depression. "If you didn't know Bernard intimately, you would never know it," recalls Boyd. "Various things acted as a trigger to take him to a place he could not get out of. Bernard was an extraordinary person but he was beset by the demon of insecurity."
A recent visitor to Loiseau's Hotel de la CÙte d'Or remembers a vibrant, exuberant man who peeked out of the kitchen, smiling at his guests. His friend, Gary Danko, recalls a man of enthusiasms. "I took Bernard on his first tour of the Bay Area," Danko recalls. "I took him to Chez Panisse and Alice Waters happened to be in the kitchen that day. It was wonderful. Bernard marveled over the opulence in America. 'Everything is so big,' said Bernard. 'Even the melons are gigantic.' Danko also cooked in Loiseau's Restaurant, La CÙte d'Or. "I was the only chef ever allowed to send food out of his kitchen for the public," Gary remembers. ...
Warren Keene was hanging on the side of the cable car the other morning. "I'm in San Francisco only for the day," said the thirtysomething fellow from New Zealand. "I've just been to South Africa, then to the Middle East, then Europe. A lot of people around the world are very pissed off at your Mr. Bush." Keene works in a large bakery in Auckland. "San Francisco is such a great town," he said, looking at the top of Nob Hill, to the west from Powell St. "New Zealand is beautiful, too. I try to concentrate on beauty these days." ... You do the same, OK? ...
Oliver Stone was responsible for Platoon. Francis Ford Coppola directed Apocalypse Now.
They'll probably eat their own excrement. It is Sodom by the Bay, after all, overpopulated with sphincter fetishists.
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