MARIJUANA? IN SAN FRANCISCO? JUST SAY GROW

Ah, San Francisco. The city can't provide potties, but it can provide pot.

Frustrated by federal resistance to medical marijuana, Supervisor Mark Leno
wants San Francisco to go into the business of growing its own marijuana in
empty city lots.

This raises several questions:

How much will the city have to spend on chain-link fence and armed guards to
protect its crop? Why not use eminent domain to take over all the existing
pot patches? If the city grows its own pot, will it be better or worse than
the stuff already available?

Who's going to give up Acapulco Gold for San Francisco Brown?

Planting marijuana in empty lots beats the mayor's idea of planting
high-rises -- a better kind of high. And if San Francisco can become a
drug-exporting nation, the city won't have to raise taxes. Medical marijuana
is just the thing to treat Nasdaq panic attacks, Dow Syndrome and
portfoliophobia.

Just say grow.

Union Square reopens Thursday, and this space that had gone to pot (in the
nonmedicinal sense) is looking very sharp. The large expanse of green and
tan granite makes it look like a postmodern St. Mark's Square.

The polished curved granite at each corner of the square makes the space
inviting to the public, but it'll probably be inviting the shopping-cart
brigades and kids with skateboards, too. As in Yerba Buena Gardens, all
wheeled vehicles except wheelchairs eventually may be banned.

Linda Mjellem of the Union Square Association says skateboarders will be
repelled from the many granite steps by handrails -- so many it looks like
the city is raising handrails as a cash crop.

"I don't think there are many challenges for skateboarders here -- other
than the challenge of being asked not to skateboard," said Mjellem. But
isn't that the main challenge?

Heard on a documentary on the X-Games: Some skateboarder says, "The only
degree I have is a master's in anger management."

That's what I'd like to get because of all the crooks with masters in
business management.

What's underneath a chocolate model of Union Square? What else? A delicious
parking garage for candy. Otto Eckstein, executive pastry chef at the Pan
Pacific Hotel, has put his 50 years experience in sweets into providing
guests with these models, complete with the Dewey monument, Alma Spreckels
and little palm trees. No pigeons.

In other food news: The great Fleur de Lys restaurant will be reopening the
first week of August, 11 months after it was shut down because of a fire.
Welcome back, Hubert Keller, Chantal Keller and Maurice Rouas.

It's odd how mean people can be on the Internet. Soon after the fire,
someone posted a message on the Web saying he had been dining at Fleur de
Lys when the fire broke out and management charged him for his dinner
anyway. Never mind that the fire started at 5 a.m. The Kellers managed to
get the posting taken down. Congratulations on getting the restaurant back
up.

Other cash crops: Jeff Mauk says he called DPW last week to report a pile of
more than 100 liquor bottles on the corner of Buchanan and Grove streets.
DPW informed him that the empties couldn't be removed because they were a
"memorial shrine."

"This intersection must have a couple of these 'shrines' a month," says
Mauk. "The following day when there was broken glass all over the street, I
started to wonder exactly when does a shrine mysteriously convert to trash
status?"

The whole city is a shrine, Jeff.

A missing cow can't be put on milk cartons, so the organizers of the Sonoma
"COWS!" public arts program are looking for help from the media. If you see
a cow painted with brown hillsides and clumps of oaks with blue skies, it's
Yayoi West's "Above Sonoma," one of 30 painted cows intended to be auctioned
on Aug. 4.

"In actual fact, there is a detective handling this rather large case," says
Norman Gilroy of the COWS! program.

The cow was taken from Tallgrass Ranch on Highway 121, probably as a prank.
Anyone with information should call Detective Dave Iverson at (707)
565-2185.

Got cow?