What's Happening off the Floor

By William R. Doerner

Some of the best shows in town are far from the podium

Viewers of a national political convention are sometimes encouraged to believe that the proceedings themselves are all-consuming, that life outside the convention hall somehow grinds to a halt while the party goes about the momentous business of drafting a platform and picking a ticket. Delegates know better. Like tourists everywhere, they are eager to sample the sights and sounds of the host city. So numerous are San Francisco's attractions that it may be difficult to lure delegates into the convention hall. Herewith a compendium of people, places and things that figure to be conspicuous during the Democrats'week:

City Scribe. "Once you're a habit, you've got it made," says San Francisco Chronicle Columnist Herb Caen. By that measure, the Sackamenna Kid, a bowdlerized self-reference to his Sacramento origins, has it made in three-dot spades: Caen's column has appeared in San Francisco for all but three of the past 46 years, and its six-day-a-week mix of gossipy tidbits, hand-me-down gag lines and occasional nuggets of hard news, all separated by three-dot ellipses, is the closest thing to universal wisdom in the variegated Bay Area. Yet for all his clout as San Francisco's arbiter of the quotidian, Caen makes modest claims for his 1,000 words of items and sightems. "A lot of people time their boiled eggs by my column," he says. "It's just the right length."

Readers of Caen soon learn more than they may want to know about his dietary habits (Shredded Wheat for breakfast), his haberdasher (Wilkes Bashford) and his favorite restaurants (Le Central and the Tadich Grill). Some of his word gags not only time eggs but also lay them ("bumpersnickers," for the compendium of auto-born humor that he occasionally shares with readers; "LActress," for L.A. actress). But Caen comes up with more than his share of winners. He claims to have coined the word beatnik, and his elegies on the bygone charms of San Francisco are usually models of crisp journalistic prose. He has learned to take himself a little less seriously than he used to. Describing how he will cover the convention, he cracked, "I'll be going to a lot of parties and I hope to pick up what I can, except the check." He may be 68, but he is au courant: "What do Michael Jackson and the Giants have in common? They both wear gloves on one hand for no apparent reason."

Strange Brew. The unofficial thirst quencher of the convention will be Anchor Steam beer, a locally produced suds that will be handed out gratis to delegates and visitors, gavel to gavel. Few takers are likely to mistake it for their steady brew. In a nation where the major beer brands are lager light and getting lighter, Anchor Steam turns out a product that is dark, dense and slightly bitter. It is the antithesis of what Brewer Fritz Maytag, a scion of the washing-machine family, calls "lawnmower beers." Some authorities, not all of them locals, call it the best beer brewed in America.

Produced in San Francisco since 1896, Anchor Steam acquired the second part of its name--or so legend has it--because early batches tended to geyser out of their wooden kegs when tapped. The brewery fell on hard times during the rise of the national brands, and it was about to go out of business when Maytag bought it in 1965. A novice, he became a master brewer and turned what some considered a wealthy man's hobby into a serious business. Last year Anchor Steam produced 33,500 bbl. of beer, and while most of that is sold in California, it is available in at least some stores in 22 states.

With a retail price of $4.99 a sixpack, Anchor Steam is not exactly a poor man's tipple. That should make the convention freebies taste all the better. Says Maytag: "When the beer is free, it usually sells fairly well."

Reddi-Wip Fog. Though July is one of the hottest months of the year for most of California, temperatures in San Francisco reach an average high of only 64DEG and fall to a dank and chilly low of 53DEG. Mark Twain, who lived in the city in the 1860s, is said to have remarked that "the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." The reason is a stratum of fog that blankets the city for part of nearly every day, dropping temperatures as much as 15DEG. Many San Franciscans dress in layers of clothing that can be peeled or added as the sun goes in and out. San Francisco fog does not arrive on little cat's feet. It sluices toward the city from the Pacific Ocean in low, thick clouds that frequently obscure all but the top posts of the Golden Gate Bridge. A local radio announcer once described the approach of a summer fog as "seeing God out there in the ocean with a Reddi-Wip can in his hands."

The fog is caused by the collision of warm winds and cold water along the Pacific coastline, resulting in the formation of huge, low banks of moisture. Then, as temperatures rise and the atmospheric pressure falls in the Central Valley to the east of the city, these formations are sucked inland. Since San Francisco Bay is the only sea-level passage through Northern California's coastal mountain chain, the cool ocean air carrying the fog funnels into the city en route to the valley. The fog's swirls and twirls produce "microclimates," neighborhood-to-neighborhood variations in sunlight and temperature.

Culture Clash. Touches of Little Italy and Chinatown. The Beat-era City Lights Bookshop, where Jack Kerouac gave drunken poetry readings, and the Purple Onion, the takeoff nightspot for Phyllis Diller and the Kingston Trio. Iced Campari among jet-setters at Enrico's Sidewalk Cafe, and hamburgers among Oriental teen-agers at Clown Alley. White-shod tourists and Mohawked punks. Saints and sinners bathed in the garish glow of strip joints. This is the cultural clashpoint known as North Beach. Here, on a three-block stretch of Broadway, the barkers compete hoarsely for the business of the leery and the leering. The price of admission is free, the two drinks usually required are not (tab: $6.50 each), and the "entertainment is degustibus --belly dancers at the Casbah, simulated live sex at El Cid, and female impersonators at Finocchio's.

The most famous architecture in North Beach belongs to the Condor Club's Carol Doda, who began baring it 20 years ago just before the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, and will provide affirmative action for the Democrats four times a night next week. It is not an anniversary that many aging strippers would want to make a point of celebrating, but Doda says coyly, "I agree with Einstein, who said time is kind of a relative thing." Perhaps, and as long as the famous silicon implants that swelled her bustline to 44 inches remain a permanent thing, she may be right. But the Broadway strip scene gets a little seedier every year, and even Doda admits that change is inevitable. Says she: "You gotta go with the flow or stay stuck."

Yuppies and Yussies. For the convention's cosmopolites, there should be a shuttle service between the Moscone Convention Center and a five-block stretch of Union Street at the foot of Pacific Heights. Once a teeming singles scene, Union Street and its environs now offer a wide variety of trendy, late-night dining spots. The growing clientele of Yuppie couples at neighborhood drinking hangouts has muted the action, but Yussies (young unescorted singles) are not quite an extinct species. Perry's, which brought the singles to Union Street 15 years ago, is still worth a scan, and Rocker Boz Scaggs has opened a bar and country-cookin' restaurant across the street. A couple of blocks west on Fillmore, there are chance encounters aplenty at the Balboa Cafe and the new Golden Gate Grill.

By day, Union Street becomes one of San Francisco's most sophisticated shopping areas, with a pricey mixture of antique shops, clothing boutiques and luxury delicatessens. Some of the best bread in the city comes from II Fornaio bakery. The neighborhood supermarket. Jurgensen's, stocks fresh beluga caviar and Maui onions. Says Alain Assemi, owner of a French and Italian women's clothing boutique: "Union Street is the Rodeo Drive of San Francisco."

Celebrity Saloon. If things go as Walter Mondale hopes on nominating night, he will head for his favorite watering hole in San Francisco, the Washington Square Bar and Grill in North Beach. Since it opened a decade ago on the site of a former tavern, the Square has become the saloon of choice for San Francisco politicos, media types, sports figures and an assortment of others who can either shout above the din or do not mind it. Walter A. Haas Jr., executive committee chairman of Levi Strauss & Co., celebrated his 65th birthday during a surprise party at the Square in 1981. Last year Mayor Dianne Feinstein presided over a good-luck staff lunch at one of its dining room tables just before her triumph over a recall attempt. She received a standing ovation from the house as she entered.

Presiding amiably over the chaos are three transplants--St. Louisans Ed Moose and his wife Mary Etta and New Yorker Sam Dietsch--who shared a goal of "opening a joint, a bar with some food," in Dietsch's words. The food is Italian mezzo frillissimo. Though much convention business will doubtless be conducted around the Square's white-clothed tables, Dietsch declines to use the term power lunch. Says he: "Power lunches are for those who have enough power not to go back to work." The house softball squad, Les Lapins Sauvages, plans to come out of semiperpetual retirement during the convention to take on an Eastern media team headed by NBC Anchorman Tom Brokaw. Eligibility rules for the Square squad should give Brokaw cause for optimism. Says Dietsch: "You have to be a drinker and over 40, or at least have a doctor's certificate to prove partial liver damage."

Top Cop. As the man responsible for maintaining law and order at the convention, San Francisco Police Chief Cornelius ("Con") Murphy will not only command his own 2,000-member police force but also oversee 200 deputy sheriffs, 70 California highway patrol officers and 200 FBI agents. He has ordered work shifts extended to twelve hours a day, introduced a 229-member squad specially trained to disperse rapidly and arrest violent demonstrators, and overseen the planning for every contingency from tipsy delegates to terrorist attacks. Says Murphy, whose headquarters will be at the police command post across the street from Moscone Center: "We foresee traffic as being our biggest problem. But no matter what happens, we are prepared to deal with it."

Murphy's 32 years on the force give him high seniority everywhere but inside his own family: his father Cornelius Sr. retired in 1965, after 38 years, with the rank of deputy chief, and his brother Daniel is chief of the department's intelligence division, with 34 years of service. Since winning the top job in 1980, Murphy has worked hard to instill discipline in a department that is relatively inexperienced (70% of its officers have been on the force five years or less) and that on occasion has lost control of crowds, most recently during a speech given by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in April. Soft-spoken but decisive, Murphy drives his own unmarked car and practices what he calls "management by walking around." Says he: "I know my department, and I know my city. There's a relationship there."

French Suite. When French President Franc,ois Mitterrand visited San Francisco in March, he chose to stay in the $1,500-a-day presidential suite of the Hotel Meridien because it is owned by a French consortium. Walter Mondale had other reasons for picking the same digs as his headquarters during the Democratic Convention, starting with its location one block from Moscone Center. By contrast, the other two Democratic presidential candidates will be staying a traffic-clogged half-mile away on Union Square -- Gary Hart at the venerable Westin St. Francis and Jesse Jackson at the high-rise Hyatt.

The 35-story Meridien, opened last October, offers such determinedly Gallic touches as hand-milled French soap, breakfast croissants and a bilingual staff. From his four-room suite on the top floor, Mondale will have a panoramic view of San Francisco Bay to the east. The master bedroom is equipped with remote controls for opening and closing the draperies and for raising and lowering a television housed in a lacquered cabinet. The choice of ablutions includes a Jacuzzi-equipped bathtub, redwood sauna and multijet shower, all within reach of one of the bathroom's two telephones. The Democratic front runner apparently has only one misgiving about his hotel: according to Herb Caen, he has already sent his daughter Eleanor on a scouting expedition to find a decent cheeseburger.

Sister Boom Boom. No large gathering in San Francisco's homosexual community, including the gay rights march planned for the day before the convention opens, would be quite complete without the appearance of a figure clad in a hiked-up nun's habit, black fishnet stockings, and a tightly drawn wimple that sometimes fails to hold in an unruly shock of red hair. These have become the transvestite trademarks of Sister Boom Boom, member of the Order of Perpetual Indulgence, and the drag creation of a 29-year-old astrologer named Jack Fertig. Part put-on artist and part self-promoter, Boom Boom sparks reactions that run the gamut from righteous outrage to raucous approbation. Outside San Francisco, Fertig's bizarre alter ego has come to symbolize a climate of tolerance gone haywire.

Boom Boom's "order," which consists of about 20 other "nuns" who go by names like Sister Mary Media and Sister Sadie Sadie Rabbi Lady, has performed legitimate charity work by raising funds for AIDS victims and gay Cuban refugees. Fertig ran for the board of supervisors in 1982; with five seats open, he placed a respectable eighth, collecting 23,124 votes. Even some gays find it offensive when he wears a cross as part of his costume or mocks the sacred. But Fertig insists that he is genuinely, if not conventionally, pious. "The sisters share my own sense of absurdist theater," he says. "I believe that you can reach God through your own means."

Monster Bash. The convention's biggest party will be Monday night, when 10,000 delegates, alternates and guests will move directly from the official proceedings to Pier 45, near Fisherman's Wharf, for an extravaganza dubbed "Oh, What a Night." Amid miniature replicas of Telegraph Hill's Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Park's Japanese tea garden, Ghirardelli Square and 13 other San Francisco landmarks, conventioneers will wander among open bars and mountains of ethnic foodstuffs from 9 p.m. to midnight in an area the size of four football fields. The $250,000 fandango, paid for by private and corporate donors, is the brainchild of a master politician for whom partying is a way of life. Says California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown Jr., the state's most powerful Democrat: "If you can't drink it, drive it or wear it, it's not worth having."

The son of a Mineola, Texas, domestic worker, Brown grew up poor in a house with no indoor plumbing. After graduating from Mineola Colored High School in 1951, he followed a gambler uncle to San Francisco, worked his way through college as a janitor and shoeshine boy, and graduated from Hastings College of Law.

Brown's early clientele was prostitutes and pimps, but since his election to the state legislature in 1964 his list of clients has been consider ably upgraded. The speaker is not exactly modest about his income or his influence: he drives a 1984 Jaguar, buys Brioni suits costing $1,000 to $1,800 by the closetful and plays shamelessly hardball politics in divvying up the $1.5 million legislative campaign fund he controls. "I'm a pretty good bluffer," Brown allows.

With reporting by Michael Moritz, Dick Thompson