This week, our Mayor-about-town seemed especially mobile. He not only made it to SFO's new Terminal 2, but he also got all the way out to Oakland for a charity dinner honoring basketball great Bill Russell. He must really like Bill Russell because he didn't once complain about Oakland (only a light ribbing on Oakland Mayor Jean Quan who got up to speak about the "abysmal graduation rate for African Americans). Nor did he bother to rate the cuisine at the dinner on a scale of one to McCall's. How, Mr. Da Mayor, are we supposed to know if this fundraiser was any good?

Willie was also in attendance at the Four Seasons for the Cal Shakes festival SFist mentioned last week and he gave more love to the folks from the East Bay who came in to the city "dressed to kill" and eager to get tipsy and donate after a couple hours of cocktails. But there's some foul play afoot - Willie suspects the puppet-like auctioneer Greg Quiroga, who must be a famous auctioneer or something, inflated the donations with a little help from a lady member of the Getty clan. He declines to actually name which Lady-Getty it was because Willie would never be so tacky as to namedrop Vanessa Getty. Comeuppance was served when Quiroga called out Da Mayor for not bidding on anything.

Speaking of namedropping, Willie had what sounds like a romantic dinner with Temporary Mayor Ed Lee the other night. It was "just the two of us" at Alfred's Steakhouse, he says, but his favorite part wasn't the cut of meat he dined on. (Did Ed Lee have the tenderloin? Please tell us Ed Lee had the tenderloin.) Instead, he most enjoyed the fact that he wasn't the one who had to answer when people came to the table to say, "Hello, Mr. Mayor." Which makes us wonder if he was answering to "Mr. Mayor" the whole time Newsom was in office?

The former Mayor also had something of a book review this week - he mentions local novelist Jennifer Egan won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction this year. It doesn't sound like he actually read the book A Visit From the Good Squad, but it does provide the opportunity for him to mention Egan is the daughter of the hotelier behind Kimpton Hotels, in case you were wondering why he felt it necessary to include that in his column.

In movies this week, Willie enjoyed Bradley Cooper in Limitless which is a thriller about some kind of amazing adderall or something. Our snap judgement based on the previews isn't really fair though - as Willie says it's a lot more thoughtful than you'd expect. Is it thoughtful because it's about a drug that makes you a genius? (Honest question!) Meanwhile, Matthew McConaughey-as-a-lawyer flick The Lincoln Lawyer is apparently a "guy flick" despite it's lead actor.

Finally, over on Inside Scoop, Willie is complaining about dining problems again. Apparently it's a total bitch to ride around while your driver looks for a place to park near Blue Plate in the Mission. So he recommends you just eat in your car and suggests the restaurants of Valencia band together and figure out some sort of valet parking deal. We probably didn't need Willie to propose valet parking on Valencia to figure out that the man might be slightly out of touch with how regular people operate in the city and we don't really feel sorry for him because strong-armed the staff in to having his table dressed with a tablecloth before he arrived.

On the other hand, at the last of his many birthday dinners - this one at Piperade - he ended up with the only table in the place that was cloth-less. While we're usually amused by Willie's insistence on only the finest table dressings, we're sad to hear it prompted apologies from the chef/owner Gerald Hirigoyen. Perhaps feeling the need to make up for the oversight, Hirigoyen offered to read the menu to Da Mayor, which seems to indicate Willie's food blog must be have achieved necessary reading-status among San Francisco restauranteurs. Congratulations, Mr. Brown, you've finally made it.

[Chron]
[InsideScoop]