Next Stop on the N-Judah – Party with Gonzalez And the Gang

Q: When is an open house at a law office not an open house, but instead one heck of a great party?
A: When it’s an open house hosted by Gonzalez and Leigh, LLP!
No kidding. A friend of mine invited me to the open house for ex-Supervisor Matt Gonzalez’s law firm, which was celebrating their new offices on Shaw St. downtown, (located conveniently near the Montgomery Street Station) as well as welcome attorney Rita Hao (known to many as one of the editors of Sfist.com, among other things) as a partner in the firm.
I dropped by to meet Ms. Hao and some of the SFist folks in person – who by the way are some of the coolest people you could meet at a party – and to see who might be there. I figured it to be a tony, low key affair with some wine and crackers. Boy was I wrong. It was one hell of a party!
Not only did they have top shelf drinks and food, the crowd was big and counted many of San Francisco’s political and legal elite, mixed in with veterans of Matt Gonzalez’s past campaigns and assorted interested folks. Local political analyst, blogger and gadfly H. Brown was there early and often, as was former columnist, mayoral candidate, and all around character Warren Hinkle. (How often do you get to see him around town these days?)
A random sampling of the crowd included Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, City Attorney Dennis Herrera and his spokesman, Matt Dorsey, a whole host of downtown attorneys and other folks, whose names I didn’t take down after I decided to go “off the clock” and enjoy both the event, its partygoers and several Stella Artois beers.
The oddest encounter I had was with Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin. When introduced to him by a mutual friend he immediately recognized my name as that of the infamous scotch whisky. As is the custom, I usually follow up such a recognition with the fact that the inventor of Twinkies was none other than a James Dewar.
Usually this gets a laugh or something, but Peskin immediately looked at me, said “So you’re responsible for killing my mayor?” and spun around and took off. I think he was kidding but our mutual friend and I were looking at each other a bit puzzled. I say cut the guy some slack – he is a fellow UCSC alum, after all!
Overall a fun evening, all a few stops away on the N-Judah. Who knew the lefties and their ilk could be such great hosts? Now if they could just replicate this more often, who knows what might happen>