The early word on the Elizabeth Holmes doc
If your colleague mysteriously left work early on Thursday or Friday, it’s probably because they were sneaking out to a screening of “You Can See Everything,” the three-hour documentary about Elizabeth Holmes from Nathan Fielder. Social media and group chats have divided into two camps: the humblebraggers who saw it early and are begging everyone else to see it so they can speak freely, and the rest of us.
The Waggle sent our most trusted AMC A-lister, Deputy Managing Editor Alex Vikmanis, to an opening-night showing. His task? Tell us everything about “Everything” without spoiling anything.
“My jaw was on the floor for half of this movie,” Vikmanis said. “And everyone around me is, like, ‘Oh my, what?’ ‘What?’” The crowd at the 8 p.m. showing at the AMC Kabuki 8 in Japantown was mostly techies (“I could tell by their vests”), with a smattering of wide-leg-wearing A24 hipsters and one exceptionally beautiful, stylish woman who seemed to have skipped a gala to catch the movie instead.
People arrived HYPED, hooting and clapping even for Nicole Kidman during her “We make movies better” pre-roll ad. (According to Vikmanis, the Kidman reaction is normal for “super gay or campy” movies, but not usually for tech documentaries. “That’s when I knew it was gonna be a good crowd.”)
In every way, Fielder’s film lived up to the hype, Vikmanis said. It was funny, deeply sad, and, given how much of it is just long shots of Holmes’ unblinking stare, weirdly riveting. Shockingly, he’d see it again.
The Waggle asked Vikmanis for the best time to use the bathroom to avoid missing anything crucial. “OK, here’s the thing. I need to pee in every movie halfway through,” he said. But this time, “I did not pee at all. I didn’t even need to. My bodily functions shut down.”
If you must duck out, he suggests doing so around the 90-minute mark, when Holmes reports for jail. But his true advice: “Even if you need to pee, don’t pee.”
Exclusive: The Valkyries’ drum-banger at Game 1 of the WNBA Finals will be…
Fernanda Gordon Fisher and mom Rita Moreno will be attending their first Valkyries game on Saturday. | Source: WireImage
… 94-year-old Oscar winner and East Bay resident Rita Moreno, The Waggle has learned.
The “West Side Story” actress, singer, and dancer will attend the game with her daughter, jewelry maker Fernanda Gordon Fisher. Both are “so excited because this will be their first Valkyries game,” said PR maven Mark Rhoades, who made the opportunity happen.
The Valks’ VP of marketing, Andrea Fernandez, reached out to him to see if gay icons Margaret Cho or Billie Jean King might be interested. (Rhoades is apparently friendly with both women.) Given that neither Cho nor King lives in the Bay, Rhoades suggested that a local legend like Moreno would be better. Fernandez was in, and so was Moreno.
Here’s hoping some of her EGOT-winning (opens in new tab) fairy dust rubs off on our warrior women in Balhalla!
On Kimberly Guilfoyle’s fall from Greece
Source: AFP via Getty Images
Who among us hasn’t sent a text we regret? Maybe you had one drink too many and fired off something spicy, only to get left on “read.” Or worse: You were exposed for alleged attempts at bribery, then fired by your ex-boyfriend’s dad.
Whatever the scale, there’s an operatic quality to the downfall of San Francisco native, Gavin Newsom ex, and former ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle. Thanks to The Wall Street Journal (opens in new tab), we can see exactly how the former first lady of San Francisco may have fumbled the bag.
It always starts with an ask. In Guilfoyle’s case, it was a 2025 request to Eric Deters, a Trump donor and former Kentucky congressional candidate, for $100,000 to pay off her credit card bill, just days before her Senate confirmation hearing. “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she allegedly wrote.
Pitifully, Deters turned her down. Paying, he said, would jeopardize his marriage. Guilfoyle, meanwhile, allegedly told him to stop putting talk of money in writing, a message she sent in … writing.
Guilfoyle later told White House officials that, just like all the texts we’ve sent our exes, the ones reported by the Journal were AI-generated. Her alleged graft might seem like a drop in the bucket for this administration, but it still got her sacked.
Guilfoyle is no stranger to steep falls from grace. She left Fox News in 2018 amid allegations of workplace misconduct, including showing colleagues photos of male genitalia, which she denied.
But even after so many missteps, San Franciscans still hold a special place for Guilfoyle’s undisputed GOAT moment: this photo shoot.
We can’t wait for the Muni bus speakeasy
If you were jealous of the blunt-smoking shirtless dude seen driving a Muni bus through Oakland recently, you’re in luck. You too can soon party like you’re Keith Richards on a Muni bus. Three friends recently purchased a discontinued one and are turning it into a party wagon, called Umni Bus, (opens in new tab) which they say will begin its rolling party through the city in November.
No, you can’t pay with your Clipper Card. “We ripped out the Clipper reader and put in a cocktail menu, sorry,” the creators explained on Instagram.
But hey, the experience of drinking cocktails on the bus, and not out of a brown paper bag? Priceless.
Incidentally, one comment on the post announcing the party bus came from Alex Baker Whitcomb, who leads social media at OpenAI (two-word response: “Let’s goooooo”). With all the hacking (opens in new tab), spying, and defections (opens in new tab) going on over there, we can understand why Alex would be looking forward to unwinding.
Ick of the week: The Tenderloin shooter game
After all they’ve been through (opens in new tab), you’d think SF tech bros would stop making donkeys of themselves by trying to gamify San Francisco’s worst ills. But you’d be wrong!
“San Francisco couldn’t fix the Tenderloin. So I monetized it,” tweeted Pierre-Louis Biojout, a French-born, black-turtlenecked, Y Combinator-connected AI founder, on Tuesday. Biojout attached a still from his homemade video game — a first-person shooter that encourages firing at people in the “Fentanyl fold” — with the intersection of Eddy and Jones streets and the words “San Francisco after hours. A normal night in the neighborhood.”
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The response was, predictably, harsh. Tenderloin Supervisor Bilal Mahmood called the game “dehumanizing,” “disturbing,” and “unacceptable.” Even on X, the post got ratioed: “Bring back shame. This is atrocious PR,” replied Mihn Do, another AI founder.
By Friday, Biojout had taken down the game and apologized.
Earlier in the week, the Waggle reached out to Biojout to see if he could defend himself.
“I was a bit surprised by the reaction tbh,” he wrote to us. “I can understand why the setting brings that association to mind for some people. But no, my intention was not to make a game about shooting real people, including people struggling with addiction.”
His reason for making the game, which he claimed to have vibe-coded in a weekend: “To create a game you personally want to play, set in your own neighborhood, and share it with your friends.” He then touted how the hype was driving revenue toward his startup, NanoCorp. “The game has already generated several hundred dollars in advertising revenue within a few days.”
Clearly, that amount wasn’t worth the cost to his rep.
A memorial for the dogs
When her dog Suso passed away at the ripe old age of 18, San Francisco author, pilot, ex-firefighter, and identical “Baywatch” twin (opens in new tab) Caroline Paul decided to commemorate her in the most SF way possible.
Paul went on Etsy, ordered a Christmas ornament printed with a photo of the beagle-chihuahua rescue, and hung it from a tree in a minipark near her Potrero Hill house. “I did it for me,” Paul said, “so I could see her whenever I walk through the park, which is every day.”
That was in 2024, and for a time, Suso had the scraggly pink melaleuca tree all to herself. But then Paul started adding ornaments memorializing her neighbors’ fallen pets. Now Suso’s tree, which you can find inside the Carolina Green Space (opens in new tab) at Carolina and 22nd streets, has become a Potrero landmark, its branches adorned with ornaments of at least seven dogs and one cat. A pup named Cupcake is remembered as “the most giant little schnauzer on the block.”
Paul posted a reel (opens in new tab)about Suso’s tree last week and is inviting anyone in the city to add their dogs and cats to the mix. (The Waggle has confirmed that tortoises, guinea pigs, and other animal friends are welcome too.) Paul regularly visits with her new dog, Betty Boop, a chiweenie (chihuahua-dachshund mix) rescued at Muttville. “She’s about 13 and had cancer, so she’ll be hanging from this tree pretty soon,” Paul said. “But for right now she’s just peeing under it.”
Betty Boop was rescued “from a dog-hoarding situation,” so her owner imagines she’ll like being remembered among so many other pooches. “As in life, back in a pack,” Paul said.
Bad AI ads, Burning Man edition
The Polk Gulch ad that pissed off the Burning Man organization. | Source: Courtesy
San Francisco’s avalanche of AI ads are unreadable, dystopian, rage-baity … and now infringing on intellectual property?
A Polk Gulch bus station ad for the AI startup Artie caught The Waggle’s attention this week for blatantly depicting Burning Man to try to sell its product. The ad shows three dusty techies plonked in the middle of Black Rock City, gazing at a computer monitor with The Man in the background. Above them floats the vague phrase “Let go of your work.”
The implication, seemingly, is to use AI to do your work so that you can go to the annual desert bacchanal and … keep thinking about work?
While the ad itself was likely AI-generated, the Burner backlash is real. “Looks like a canvas for some spray paint to me!” wrote one Reddit commenter.
Burning Man is famously not OK (opens in new tab) with having its likeness used to sell stuff (one of its core tenets is “decommodification,” after all), and spokesperson Leslie Moyer confirmed that the ad was very much not condoned.
“We do not license imagery of The Man for commercial advertising,” she said. “We have addressed this ad with the company, which has assured us it will resolve the issue as soon as possible.”
Artie didn’t respond to The Waggle’s request for comment, though we’re not really surprised. It’s a spin-off of Artisan, the startup helmed by Sam Stallings and Jaspar Carmichael-Jack that previously trolled SF with its cringey “Stop hiring humans” ads.
If this campaign was another attempt to get attention by being terrible, then mission unfortunately accomplished.
Overheard in the newsroom
Editor 1: Whoa, this OpenAI spy story (opens in new tab) is nuts. They’re warning employees that spies might try to pick them up in bars …
Editor 2: I mean, how would you even know if you were dating a honeypot?
Editor 1: She says she loves all your work stories.
Editor 2: She says she’s attracted to your personality.
Editor 1: She wants to know your daily meeting schedule.
Editor 2: Also, it could be a he!
Editor 1: He offers to transcribe all your work notes …
Editor 1: His dirty talk is just questions about your coworkers.
Editor 2: He mumbles “I’m trying, Elon” in his sleep.
Editor 1: His love language is installing cookies on all your devices.