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Tinseltown vs. Techietown
Hollywood and Silicon Valley have been locked in an enemies-to-lovers romcom for years. The tension? Which has more cultural power. Tech has been winning, but Hollywood is clearly seeking vengeance, with nerd villains Sam Altman (“Artificial”), Mark Zuckerberg (“The Social Reckoning”), Sam Bankman-Fried (“The Altruists”), and Elon Musk (“Musk”) all getting biopics and docudramas in the coming days and weeks.
And yet, here, inside the rotten heart of tech itself, there seems to be little appetite for these flicks. As The Waggle’s correspondents spread out this week, we heard people talking about setting up their Dots, Muse, and Instinct agents, but little about Aaron Sorkin’s latest Zuck-sposé. Unlike with “The Odyssey” or “Barbenheimer,” theaters across the city had plenty of seats this weekend for “The Social Reckoning.”
Chief Waggle correspondent Emily Dreyfuss appeared as a talking head in a new CNN documentary (opens in new tab) about Zuckerberg, timed to the release of the film. She asked the locals behind the cameras if they were going to see the movie or not. “Or not,” one coolly replied. “I already know it by heart.”
The Waggle reached out to Mike Solana, marketing chief at Founders Fund, to see if his venture firm was planning watch parties for the films, as it did for “The Odyssey.” A flat no.
The exception to this meh feeling is the excitement over Nathan Fielder’s documentary on Elizabeth Holmes, “You Can See Everything.” Founders Fund is hosting a screening of that one at Alamo Drafthouse when it opens in a few weeks. So, apparently, is Extend (opens in new tab), which we’ve learned is a “complete document ingestion platform for agents.” (Agents gotta eat!)
Holmes’ fiancé has been tweeting from her account to gin up excitement — not that it could get any higher. “I really don’t think you are ready for this doc,” he tweeted (opens in new tab).
Friend of The Waggle Sara’o Bery, head of specialty marketing at studio A24, which produced “You Can See It All,” advises that you “learn as little as possible” about the movie before seeing it. You’ve been warned!
Is SF courting the James Beard Awards?
The Waggle has learned that City Hall is making a bid to host the Oscars of the culinary world. In July, the James Beard Foundation issued a request for proposals (opens in new tab) from cities that might want to host the multiday Beard Awards from 2029 to 2033, promising that the event will “showcase the local culinary community while generating national media attention and meaningful economic impact.”
An eagle-eyed Waggle correspondent noticed mention of this RFP on the public calendar of Ned Segal, Mayor Daniel Lurie’s chief of housing and economic development. “James Beard Awards Host Destination Partnership RFP Q&A” reads a meeting title on Segal’s Sept. 23 docket.
Neither Segal nor Lurie’s press secretary Charles Lutvak nor Lurvak’s deputy Shelby Weiss responded to questions, and two Beard affiliates were sworn to NDA silence. But Segal has become the go-to guy for planning high-end events in the city, having a hand in bringing in Anna Wintour’s Vogue World. So it could be!
However, insiders tell us that Chicago is bidding to keep the Beard Awards there, and Los Angeles and Las Vegas might throw their hats in the ring too. You know who The Waggle is voting for.
Isn’t it always Tech Week here?
Perhaps the lack of excitement about Hollywood’s tech flicks is because we already lived through all that — and now we’re just trying to survive the new tech era.
But some people are not so jaded. For those folks, there’s San Francisco Tech Week, which ends Sunday. Attendees of the annual startup-apolooza have been more likely to run into other LinkedIn strivers than CEOs from leading AI labs. The headliner, according to this music festival-inspired poster (opens in new tab), is Box CEO Aaron Levie, who somehow managed to hit more events than the entire Waggle team.
But the events we did get to left us … confused. Take the cockroach race (not a metaphor!) we attended Tuesday at 9 a.m. at an art gallery near Union Square. Employees of the biotech startup Yeast Bay Bio, which is developing some kind of pesticide, plopped three cockroaches into tubes. Attendees watched as the bugs scrambled past one another toward the exit. If you correctly guessed the winner, you received one of several treats: bacon and cheddar crickets, salt and vinegar crickets, or maggot lollipops. Yum.
Later that day came another inscrutable competition at an event space in SoMa, down the hall from a pole-dancing studio: a hot-wing eating contest organized by Blazel, which uses AI to write LinkedIn posts that it promises somehow don’t count as slop. “My goal is to piss off my CEO and light venture dollars on fire,” said the evening’s host, chief marketing officer Caitlin Bigelow. “There will be no ROI on this event.”
Two contestants in Blazel’s hot sauce contest chug milk. | Source: Courtesy Hiro Sogi
Blazel CEO Zain Jaffer, who sold a previous company (opens in new tab) to Blackstone for more than $750 million, competed against seven other human tributes. Under a cascade of fake pink sorority-rush flowers, participants tasted wings drenched in hot sauces ratcheting up to 2 million Scoville Heat Units. By the end, Jaffer was drenched in tears, milk, and water that he had poured on himself.
What else did we see? Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Arielle Zuckerberg DJed (opens in new tab) an event early in the week, revealing (opens in new tab) that while no one had been paying attention, she has been playing at clubs, small festivals, and Burning Man since 2018. Speaking of festivals, Anthropic’s pop-up, which served as a coworking and event space, drew a line (opens in new tab) reminiscent of Outside Lands.
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On Thursday, a group of founders from Toronto took the opportunity to tease a bigger rival — a sales and marketing data platform called Clay — that was hosting an event at Pier 48. Founders of startup Floqer staged a protest outside the pier, with two dozen people holding signs making jokes about Clay and promoting Floqer.
Three event-goers told The Waggle they had never heard of Floqer and didn’t plan to leave Clay. The kicker? Floqer had hired the protesters — who mostly stood staring at their phones — from RentAHuman, a site where AI agents can deploy humans for short stints of in-person work. “We’re supporting the local economy,” Floqer CEO Shivam Mahajan said.
The rented humans each made $80 for two hours of protesting. Not bad for a dystopia.
Peeping a Pac Heights film shoot
Filming on Thursday night in the fog. | Source: Vince Sbragia
People say Pacific Heights is old-fashioned, but the bowler hats and vintage Chryslers parading around Steiner Street last week were downright archaic.
All week — and continuing through Monday — the Marin County musician, director, and Hyatt hotel heir Daniel Pritzker has been filming his movie “Fog City” on two blocks between Jackson and Clay.
Scout Winn-Borges, the on-site production contact, declined to comment on the film, but The Waggle spent a few hours spying the set from atop Alta Plaza Park. Unfortunately for Pritzker, the “Fog City” crew arrived during the sunniest season in San Francisco — try Fogust next time, people! Amid the cranes and vintage cars were enormous screens that attempted to block out the sun. Between shots, the crew was spraying down the sidewalk, a tactic often used on sets to drown out light. (The fog did roll in for the nighttime shots, as seen in the video at top.)
Set during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s, according to IMDB, “Fog City” features the colliding narratives of an underground abortionist, a police inspector, a Dust Bowl transplant, and a blackmailing socialite and her son. The cast is stacked with Miranda Otto, who played Eowyn in “The Lord of the Rings”; Cooper Koch and Angus Imrie, who both appear in the Altman biopic “Artificial”; and Anna Samson, playing Marlene Dietrich.
Now that’s one SF movie we want to see.
Apartment crush of the week
It must be nice to be Zac Posen. Gap’s creative director has been living his best life since relocating to our fair city, enjoying a firehose of positive press amid the brand’s financial rebound (opens in new tab) and cultural comeback (opens in new tab); rubbing elbows with local denim heirs (opens in new tab); and falling head over heels with a particular pair of woven Timberland boots (opens in new tab).
But this week, Posen and fiance Harrison Ball, a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, made it even clearer that they are true Friscophiles. They let Architectural Digest (opens in new tab) into their small Telegraph Hill cottage — a rental (!) they found on Zillow — to show off how their friend, uber-designer Ken Fulk, had transformed the busted-up cabin into a fairytale straight out of Provincetown.
While the design is surprisingly pared down for Fulk, it still has moments of his signature flair: sconces with floral patterns, explosions of color, perfectly kempt antique furniture, and an almost-life-size version of the Winged Victory of Samothrace in the garden beside a cornucopia of nightshade and nasturtiums.
Zac and Harrison, if you spot The Waggle outside gawking, give us a wave from that fabulous upstairs window!
The king of NYC’s SF favorites
Danny Meyer — the NYC restaurateur behind Union Square Cafe and 700-plus Shake Shacks around the world — sat down with The Standard’s editor-in-chief, Kevin Delaney, for a Tech Week event Wednesday. At a time when we’re constantly looking for things that could go wrong, Meyer’s new book, “What Could Possibly Go Right? (opens in new tab)” presents an antidote.
Meyer said he usually eats at six restaurants over two days when he visits San Francisco, stopping by his three favorites and trying out three new spots. The recurring go-tos are Cotogna, Zuni Café, and Swan Oyster Depot. As for the new ones — he seemed open to suggestions. Send yours to [email protected], and we’ll pass them along. One thing we can all agree on with Meyer: SF “is the most beautiful place to eat good food in the whole country.”
Overheard at a restaurant in the Mission
Woman 1: The Blue Angels were hounding me all day today.
Woman 2: I bet you wish they were pounding you all night instead.
Woman 1: Jesus Christ.
Woman 2: But am I right?
Woman 1: You are right.