When you go to Filamento's, a very fancy furniture store on Filmore, one thing is immediately apparent. No one on the planet can afford to buy the cast iron chairs that look like real wood, or the gold plated silverware that looks like gold plated real wood, or the maple-cherry-oak-ebony inlaid rosewood bedroom sets with mirrors shaped like jalapeno peppers.

What you might be able to afford is a bar of soap that looks like a piece of gravel-inlaid tarmac that has been handplucked by native middle-aged Americannes from ancient Mayan air strips. And you can take your anti-Ivory soap home and put it in a grass basket or a shell, and savor your proximity to glamour.

I was with the palpitating throng down at Fisherman's Wharf on the night of the Coronation. I, too, read in the paper that 100,000 people were expected at the Crowning and that there were going to be exactly 100,000 morsels of free food available. I felt the turbulent zeitgeist of the moment I saw the long red carpet leading up to a huge portrait of Willie Brown. For a moment I thought I saw his mouth move, I thought heard him laugh. What ho, a funhouse. I felt warm. And then I was in the shed with a shitload of people. There were bells in the air, but I never heard them ringing, no, I never heard them at all. I was too busy trying to find the line that would lead me to my morsel. My morsel, my morsel. I ignored the music, I paid no nevermind at all to the SF Mime Troupe, who I couldn't hear anyway. My beloved fought the throng as I waited all atingle and when he returned with Four Morsels, I felt like I had just bought the tasseled velvet ottoman at Filamento's. We sucked the calamari to death, as morsels were available but utensils were not. Then, fortifying ourselves for a night of glamourous frolicking, we chewed on the bread. It was oddly shaped and rather dense. I chewed and as my teeth ground, my feet moved. My beloved led me out of the stream and on to the banks, determined to hunt and gather more morsels. I continued to chew, thinking "This is fine bread." It came in a nice paper bag.

Next to me was a homeless man, sitting on the floor of the shed by a puddle of water. He had a nice paper bag in his lap and his was empty. The fur encased woman next to me also had bread in a bag, but she had put hers inside her fancy leather purse. She met up with another clean woman in fur, who wanted to know what the other had "got." First Fur pulled the bread out and Second Fur looked at it. "Oh, well, yes, but what do you have to eat?" First Fur looked bewildered. She must have thought that one could eat bread. Second Fur opened her white clutch and pulled out a loaf. She took the loaf from the paper bag and waved it in First Fur's face. "It's the KEY, the KEY to the CITY. You don't EAT it, you SAVE it. Someday your grandchildren..." ("Ooh, grandma, you always have the best stuff at your house...we love you the most.")

I looked at the homeless man. All that was left of his key to the city was a pile of crumbs. (He would probably WASH himself with soap from Filamento's.) I myself had chewed through the part of the key that would actually fit into the keyhole of the city. Either way, it was apparent that the homeless man and I were not going to get into the city.

Before I knew it, I was spawning with the crowd from the entrance of the shed to the back. There seemed to be an unwritten law that no one could stop. We paused in front of each stage only long enough to identify the performances, then back into the snaking throng. We bagged stages like animals in Lion Country Safari. Everyone was bagging them, out to conquer the sheer magnitude of this collection of daises and platforms, amplifiers and bunting. We had to see it all, everything Willie had to display that day, for us. The breadth of his love, the money he'd spend, we had to know how far he would go.

It was clear how much he loves us. He gave us Huey Lewis AND Santana, his best suit and a walk up that red carpet. What is it about a quiet man who takes charge ("I and I alone make the announcements..."), who knows how to run the political machine like a violin, who knows that what San Francisco wants is no more than a great suit, an expensive fedora and a party. What is it about a man like that, who can make San Francisco roll on its back and give it all up, clutching its sourdough-keys-to-the-city in such a close approximation of politics?