{"id":209063,"date":"2026-03-07T14:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T14:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/209063\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T14:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T14:27:09","slug":"elon-musk-in-court-julia-roberts-at-the-garden-store-and-coppolas-on-columbus-ave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/209063\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk in court, Julia Roberts at the garden store, and Coppolas on Columbus Ave."},"content":{"rendered":"

Tongues are always wagging in San Francisco \u2014 and The Waggle is your straightest shot to gossip. Got a tip or some tea to spill in our weekly gossip column? Email us at [email\u00a0protected]<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Elon Musk breezed into the Phillip Burton Federal Building in Civic Center with a coterie of security guards on Thursday and Friday to defend himself in a case that accuses him of manipulating Twitter\u2019s market value before he purchased the social media site and turned it into the tech bro fever dream that is X. The case is before Judge Charles Breyer, brother to the former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and father of City Arts and Lectures co-Director Kate Goldstein-Breyer. During jury selection, we are told Judge Breyer made a comment about how many potential jurors needed to be dismissed because they simply hate Musk so damn much.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the reporters on the scene, the Gazetteer\u2019s (opens in new tab)<\/a>Joel Rosenblatt (opens in new tab)<\/a>, told us that Musk\u2019s team sought all sorts of special treatment from the court, and only got some of it. He was denied a special parking spot and had to walk through the front door like everyone else. But in other ways, he was treated differently.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a sense of royalty around him, which I find repugnant. He gets special treatment,\u201d Rosenblatt said, pointing especially to the fact that Musk was allowed to leave the courtroom before the jury, which is not normal protocol. \u201cWe\u2019re all standing as you\u2019re supposed to, as you are required to, when the jury is coming and going, but Musk gets to leave first. So we\u2019re all kind of standing and waiting so that he can leave first on breaks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Waggle witnessed one funny moment from the gallery when former Twitter head of Mergers and Acquisitions Stacey Conti was being questioned by federal prosecutors. She referenced a Slack channel, to which the prosecutor asked, \u201cWhat is a Slack channel?\u201d At least one juror chuckled.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SF gets its closeup: Academy Award-winning director and fancy watch offloader (opens in new tab)<\/a> Francis Ford Coppola was hanging out with his son Roman, novelist and 826 Valencia founder Dave Eggers, and \u201cMrs. Doubtfire\u201d director Chris Columbus on Tuesday outside Coppola\u2019s Cafe Zoetrope. The men were being filmed by \u201cThe Last Black Man in San Francisco\u201d director Joe Talbot as part of a project code-named \u201cCity of Wild,\u201d which has been shooting all over town this week at Dolores Park, Bernal Heights, and Empire Records<\/a>\u2019 SoMa studios, as well as Point Bonita in the Marin Headlands. We can confirm that a coyote has a prominent role.<\/p>\n

\"FiveFrancis Ford Coppola, left, Dave Eggars, and Joe Talbot pose for a photo taken by Chris Columbus outside Cafe Zoetrope. | Source: Shrey Purohit<\/p>\n

When Standard subscriber, local painter, and social butterfly Shrey Purohit spotted a casting call for extras on Partiful (guess that\u2019s how Hollywood\u2019s doing it these days?), he scooted over to North Beach and was able to hand the elder Coppola a postcard (opens in new tab)<\/a> of one of his paintings, and make an appearance in the movie. Coppola gave Purohit a signature and a compliment. Always be hustling, San Francisco!<\/p>\n

The Standard\u2019s own intrepid reporter Astrid Kane dashed over to Dolores Park on Friday to see the shoot in action. They observed a sequence featuring Skatin\u2019 Place and Church of 8 Wheels<\/a> founder David Miles and Kathy Fang of Chinatown restaurant House of Nanking. Local rapper Larry June and historian Gary Kamiya are also involved.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Exact details about the project are being kept tightly under wraps. While some reports claimed (opens in new tab)<\/a>it\u2019s part of a city-boosting effort<\/a> bankrolled by wealthy tech boosters such as Laurene Powell Jobs and Jony Ive, people with knowledge of the project disputed that. Whatever it is, it\u2019s coming this spring and seems like a marketing campaign for how cool San Francisco is. Which, come on, we already knew.<\/p>\n

A-lister at the beach: Secret San Francisco resident and the best crier to ever hit the silver screen, Julia Roberts, and her husband, cinematographer Danny Moder, were spotted at The Waggle\u2019s favorite Outer Sunset plant supply shop, Sloat Garden Center a few weeks ago. The pair were buying pots \u2014 no plants, just pots \u2014 according to an eagle-eyed Standard subscriber. Our tipster reports that Moder gave his name at the register to receive his $5 off the next purchase. But if he\u2019s anything like us, he\u2019ll forget to bring the receipt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Year of the Horse gets social: \u201cHangover\u201d and \u201cCrazy Rich Asians\u201d star Ken Jeong was spotted at the annual SF Symphony Lunar New Year (opens in new tab)<\/a> concert and banquet. Tickets to the banquet start at a cool $1,500 and go up to $10,000 per person. Other notables on scene were socialite Gorretti Lo Lui<\/a>, <\/a>Zenni optical CEO <\/a>Julia Zhen<\/a>, and philanthropist Romana Bracco, with President of the Board of Supervisors Rafael Mandelman repping the political wing of the City Family.<\/p>\n

Prestige TV at the Battery: \u201cOh. my God, it\u2019s like 2000 in here,\u201d said Brooke Hammerling, the veteran PR maven, who hosted a private screening of the upcoming Palo Alto-set AMC series \u201cThe Audacity\u201d on Thursday night at The Battery. Two of the show\u2019s stars \u2014 Billy Magnussen (\u201cRoad House,\u201d \u201cGame Night\u201d) and Simon Helberg (\u201cThe Big Bang Theory\u201d) \u2014 tossed back cocktails with a gaggle of tech journalists, including Erin Griffith from the New York Times, Bloomberg\u2019s Shirin Ghaffary and Tim Giles, and Axios\u2019 Ina Fried, and Silicon Valley personae like venture capitalist Alexia Bonatsos, Torch founder Adrian Aoun, Mighty Networks CEO Gina Bianchini, and Battery co-owner Michael Birch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo acted as the post-screening moderator, throwing cold water on Hammerling\u2019s pronouncement that the scene felt just like the good, old dot-com days. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t have a more cynical take\u201d on the current reality of the tech industry, he said to \u201cThe Audacity\u201d executive producer Gina Mingacci. Judging by the first episode, he was right: The show features Magnussen as a spiraling CEO who, in Mingacci\u2019s words, \u201ckeeps falling on his dick.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a black comedy in the vein of HBO\u2019s \u201cWhite Lotus\u201d and \u201cSuccession\u201d (showrunner Jonathan Glatzer was a writer on the latter), with plenty of inside jokes for the Bay Area tech crowd. Costolo certainly saw the truth in the show. \u201cThe people you\u2019re portraying,\u201d he said to the stars, \u201care more miserable than most Americans think they are.\u201d<\/p>\n

But on the bright side, Waggle readers, it\u2019s going to be ridiculously warm and gorgeous in our city this weekend, so get out there and have fun. Spread some gossip, gather some tips, and send them this way at [email\u00a0protected]<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Just remember, if you see a celebrity, take notes, but BE COOL. Don\u2019t embarrass us by behaving like some Alyssa Liu (opens in new tab)<\/a> fans did recently (opens in new tab)<\/a>, getting all up in her personal space. Let our Bay Area hero live, y\u2019all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tongues are always wagging in San Francisco \u2014 and The Waggle is your straightest shot to gossip. Got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[2523,36210,1611,7337,2031,101,103,102,104,106,105,88217,2831],"class_list":["post-209063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-celebrities","tag-cool-factory","tag-elon-musk","tag-federal-court","tag-parties","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-the-waggle","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}