By Dave Donnelly
Tuesday, November 12, 1996
Soledad O'Brien, Mort Sahl
Soledad O'Brien, Mort Sahl
IT'S become something of a joke every time I visit the Bay area that some kind of disaster hits. It's alleged I brought the droughts of some years back, the earthquake of '89 while I was at Candlestick, the huge fire in the Oakland Hills two years later, a building blowing up two blocks from my downtown hotel, a police shootout around the corner from where I stayed on another visit and sinkholes that swallowed cars and autos. "What's it going to be this time?" I was asked. Hello, oil spill in the Bay. Hi there, E coli bacteria outbreak in Oakland. Now I know why I'm often greeted with the words, "When are you leaving?" ... ‘Destructo Dave’
strikes againBESIDES the usual gaggle of expatriate isle folks I usually see when in S.F. (Tom Horton, Mike Sweetow, Arnold Kaleszewski, etc.), I met up with Star-Bulletin writer Greg Ambrose and his wife Norene, and while sitting in Seal's Cove at Pier 33 who should tap me on the shoulder but former S-B business editor Ron Daines, now living in Utah, but in town on vacation. In Moose's, a popular Washington Square eatery, I ran into Guenoc Winery owner Orville Magoon and wife Karen having dinner, and while dining at the Washington Square Bar & Grill across the square who should walk in but John Cavanagh, former head of Fawcett McDermott Cavanagh locally and now heading up the Cavanagh Group, which does advertising and public relations solely for plastic surgeons. He's based in Santa Rosa, but is opening up an office in the City ...
THE arrival of Cavanagh was in the midst of my dinner with Soledad O'Brien, which should make viewers of "The Site" on MSNBC envious, since she's developed quite a following on the World Wide Web as well as on the fledgling MSNBC network. In fact, the cosmopolitan hostess of "The Site," must-see TV for web browsers, has her own e-mail and bulletin board on the web and is constantly having to tell webheads that she's married and kindly stop e-mailing her for dates. Our dinner was set up by S.F. writer Bruce Bellingham, an old pal who also wanted to meet Soledad, whose mother is black and Cuban, and whose father is Irish-Australian. This bright, Harvard-educated young lady has a big future in broadcasting ...
FORMER Hawaii resident Tommy Ryan invited me to Seal's Cove for a lunch that included Mort Sahl, who looks pretty much like he has for the past 40 years. Sahl's one-man show has the same cachet as his old "hungry i" stand-up shows of the '50s and '60s, though now in a much larger venue. He still strolls on with a V-necked sweater and carries the local paper, from which he gets a lot of his schtick. Sahl was a delightful luncheon companion, showing great talent as a listener as well as performer who's conversant on any number of subjects: politics, movies, jazz or whatever. He floored me when he mentioned he used to live in Honolulu before the Pearl Harbor attack and attended Stevenson Intermediate School. Sahl lived near King and McCully where an explosion on Dec. 7 blew up a drugstore ... Sahl support
MY old pal Mike McCourt, the irascible Irish bartender at Seal's Cove (invariably referred to in the press as "celebrity bartender"), took in Sahl's show at the Alcazar Theater with me, and the cab ride there was nearly as funny as the show. The Asian driver didn't know where the theater was and kept asking if we wanted the Cable Car Theater, or ACT? "Alcazar" we repeated and he finally blurted out, "Oh, you want to go to Alcatraz?" ...
WHILE seated at the Bus Stop, the sports bar at Union and Laguna, I saw a scene right out of "Seinfeld." A woman was trying to back into a parking spot in front of Wells Fargo Bank at the same time a couple was trying to pull into it front first. In the ensuing battle, the woman spit in the face of the man driving the car behind - twice. A motorcycle patrolman finally sent the spitter on her way. As the car behind pulled in, I noticed the indisputable Hawaii license plates. Hawaii finally won something ... Parking at a premium
