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I'd like to tell you I spent Friday night doing something cultured. Instead I spent it watching a livestream of a dozen men in hard hats assemble scaffolding, very slowly, in front of a building almost 3,000 miles away.
The building was the Kennedy Center, and the men were there to take Donald Trump's name off the front of it, by court order, before a midnight deadline. Which of course did not happen. But C-SPAN and maybe a dozen others decided to livestream the whole thing, so what did happen was a lot of foot-dragging, and name calling, and of course the live chat kept everything super mature. When a tarp started going up to shield the view of Trump's name coming off, everyone lost it.
"It's a big handkerchief for the MAGA tears."
"How gracious of them to cover his shame."
"TARP GATE"
And my personal favorite:
"Another JFK cover up."
Not that I have to justify myself, but you might remember the whole San Francisco of it all when we at The Bold Italic broke news that the SF Ballet would no longer perform at the Kennedy Center. In our many social media levers, the Boomer audience on Facebook takes liberal wins the worst. A single post racked up more than half a million impressions, 30,000 likes, and cost us 400 followers. 😂
Why all this happened
The tl;dr if you've been living under a rock.
In December, Trump's hand-picked board renamed the place "The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts," a title so long it barely fit on the building, with his name shoved ahead of the dead president the place actually honors. A board member sued, and then in May, Judge Christopher Cooper ruled the obvious: Congress named it, so only Congress can rename it. Friday, with the midnight deadline closing in, the Justice Department begged an appeals court for a stay and got told no. (Pending appeal, so: season finale, not series finale.)
I tuned in thanks to our longtime writer T. Von D., who rolled up to the livestream like-
"Girl this is the weirdest hostage situation I've ever seen," she texted, adding that the amount of scaffolding was looking a lot like a Cell Block Tango.
In my own watch, I heard people shouting that Trump must be embarrassed to watch his name come down, that this was his humiliation playing out live. And it genuinely looked like they were dragging their feet on purpose. The official explanation was thunderstorms, but if you ask me they should have dropped that tarp on purpose. Like if they were told to take their time, "Oooopsie that'll take another hour to pick up!"
It was a really boring video but also hard to stop watching. C-SPAN is the network that brings us committee markups and floor votes, and instead ran many hours of hard-hatted men negotiating with a pole. Of course I'm happy the name is gone but always expecting whatever fresh nonsense this administration has for us tomorrow.
Saul Sugarman is editor in chief and owner of The Bold Italic.
The Bold Italic is a not-for-profit media organization, and we publish first-person perspectives about San Francisco and the Bay Area. We operate under a fiscal sponsorship of a 501(c)(3).
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The SF Symphony x The Bold Italic is This Thursday, June 18th
So our first official, sponsored collaboration with SF Symphony comes up in a little less than a week. Seats appear to be selling fast! I'm only seeing the data I can, but from what I can glean, the nosebleeds for under $80 are a good choice.
We're watching Beethoven's 9th and celebrating Michael Tilson Thomas. And then we're doing an after party at The Academy SF. I've put up a decent budget for free drinks, while supplies last. Symphony ticket holders get in free to this. And you can get a $10 ticket just to come, and a $27 one for at least one drink included.
For the symphony ticket: https://tbi.fyi/sfsymphony
For the after party only: https://tbi.fyi/thebolditalic_afterparty
And if you want some ideas where to sit with TBI or friends, this story talks about the two locations we'll likely be that night, at Davies.
I'm also writing about
Park Tavern in North Beach is closing.
I made a cocktail map of San Francisco. This story is about cocktails and where to find them, not promotion about bars.
Yeah so I've also been watching Curious Connie and a recent video she did on Sunset Dunes. It really reminded me of this builder who aggressively built out our Sunset District and Daly City. Here's a dive on that.
And now here's something from our friend, and The Bold Italic alum, Stuart Schuffman. We're thankful to him for promoting our SF Symphony event.
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