...TELLING MISTY my poor cat is absolutely starving, I push my cart towards a check-out, troubled by thoughts of the Niners losing home-field advantage in the playoffs and of what America would be like if the classics had a wide circulation.

NORTH BEACH. It can make your head spin. Stand on the corner of Columbus and Broadway on a Friday night with sex shows in one direction and pasta and pretty people in the other, and you can feel your equilibrium go....