The blinding white lights were trained on the Academy Award-winning actress for two hours, all in anticipation of a TV crew that never showed. Dressed completely in white, striking a somewhat stiff pose on account of extensive neck surgery, Shirley MacLaine seemed the queen of her own talk show, chatting to guests invited to sit beside her for a tête-à-tête.

The setting was not some television studio, however, but the living room of Academy of Art College president Elisa Stephens's Nob Hill house, which made for a slightly surreal atmosphere. The actress confessed that these days, she prefers staying in her Santa Fe home.

"It's just so exhausting," said MacLaine, referring to her travel schedule. "Jane Fonda told me once that when she was married to Ted [Turner], they had 21 houses, and she would never spend more than three weeks anywhere. I don't know how she did it."

The actress, a friend of Stephens's parents, had come to San Francisco for a series of workshops at the Academy to help students "access their inner selves" and enhance creativity. Guests included interior designer Patti Skouras, who dropped by with her husband, Dimitri, as well as Harry and Margot de Wildt. Local producer Bobby Sullivan, prompted by the experience of having had someone predict the serial number of a $100 bill in his wallet, asked MacLaine her opinion of clairvoyants.

"I'm not sure how they do it, but it's, like, the oldest trick in the book," MacLaine told Sullivan. Before long, the conversation meandered into political gossip: "Governor Bill Richardson told me he would run for president [in 2008], and I think it would be good for California," said MacLaine.

Ah, those gems of wisdom from MacLaine, who, like other visiting celebs, tends to rattle off non sequiturs to anyone who will listen. In sharp contrast to MacLaine's sedate cocktail hour was a visit the following week from Milan-based Canadian fashion designers Dean and Dan Caten, of Dsquared2. The bubbly, campy twin brothers, who have a cult following among gay fashion victims and J. Lo (who was featured wearing their designs in Us Weekly), received a rock star's welcome at Saks' Men's Store. Throngs of young men showed up dressed in everything from leather jeans and wildly printed sheer tops to tricked-out argyle sleeveless sweaters. Whoever says San Franciscans don't care about fashion obviously hasn't met Dsquared2's customers.

After signing people's jackets and one girl's T-shirt (while it was on her back) at the store, the brothers Caten were feted at Mecca. It was a Queer Eye for the Queer Guy night out for Dsquared2's best clients (usually these fashion din-dins are a girl thing). At the dinner, Dean talked about his next stop—Scottsdale, Arizona, for his high school reunion.

"Yeah, I'll be, like, seeing all these guys who used to pick on us," said Dean, who mentioned that his elaborate costumes and staging of fashion shows didn't exactly go over well with Arizona jocks. "But I later heard that three out of four of them turned out to be gay."

High school was also a topic of conversation for hometown-gone-
L.A. girl and Friends star Aisha Tyler. The actress and comic, in town to promote her new book, Swerve, was the featured guest at a Vogue/Cointreau-sponsored party, where she started reminiscing about high school with a gentleman whose relative was her teacher back at McAteer.

As she began reading from her manuscript, she surveyed the crowd
—sufficiently plied with free Cointreau—and joked, "This is my first reading—I didn't expect it to be in a bar full of people with cocktails."

No cocktails were needed to get NBC anchor Tom Brokaw talking at the Commonwealth Club's Centennial Gala, where he was honored with an award. Honorary gala chair Athena Troxiel Blackburn, after dispensing with the usual pleasantries ("Wasn't Lebanon a paradise before the war?"), got down to political talk and asked him what he thought of our new governor. "You played matchmaker for him, didn't you?" (Brokaw introduced Arnold to Maria Shriver.)

"Yes, but I think he's very smart and he'd do very well," Brokaw said. "He's a very good businessman."

Enough with the visitors. Our hometown billionaire businessman Larry Ellison made the rounds earlier in September for the Moët Cup races, which pitted Team Oracle BMW Racing against Swiss Team Alinghi. The competition, spread out over a week, was accompanied by an extravaganza of parties, organized by Kimberly Bakker. From Dom Perignon came the lavish dinner for 20 that took place at the Ritz-Carlton in a presidential suite. Ann Getty, recovering from knee surgery, did a drive-by, dropping in just for the cocktail hour. But her companion, Kimberly Newsom, stayed for the dinner, as did Restoration Hardware CEO Gary Friedman and his wife, Kendal, Orrick CEO Ralph Baxter and his wife, Cheryl, Maria Manetti Farrow, and caterer Paula LeDuc, who worked with the Ritz chefs to prepare a feast paired with three vintages of Dom: a '90, a '93 rosé, and a '73.

The day after the Dom dinner, guests were ferried on two Moët Cup boats to watch the final races. In the evening came a blowout party—complete with a DJ flown in from Nikki Beach Club in St.-Tropez, France—at a warehouse on Pier 48. Ellison, fresh from his victories (he won the trophy for the owner-driver series, and his team won one too), came with fiancée Melanie Craft, staying a few hours to mingle with guests such as Fritz and Lucy Jewett, whose syndicate, like Larry, used to own an America's Cup boat.