San Francisco Chronicle Bay Area - Spoken Edition

If children obsessed with buses and trains and all manner of public transportation could envision their dream office, it would be San Francisco’s cable car barn. Many of the people who work there grew up in the city, loved riding the cable cars as kids, and can’t quite believe they make their living tending to a fleet that doubles as a national historic landmark.

Nancy Pelosi did the impossible — she out-Trumped Trump on live TV. When it comes to media ambushes, our reality TV star president is the master. Just ask “Little Marco,” “Lying Ted,” “Low Energy Jeb” and the other Republicans he dispatched in 2016. So when President Trump decided to take on Pelosi and her fellow Democratic congressional leader Sen.

The steel gangway from the pier in Oakland up to the main deck of the container ship Bai Chay Bridge was long, steep and a bit slippery, and Jamieson Prevoznak was having a tough time. He was hauling a heavy black plastic sack over his shoulder. The sack was full of Christmas presents. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think Santa Claus has it easy.

Aparna Bhardwaj’s 15-year-old son, Nikash, and his best friend wanted to camp out all night in front of the new Shake Shack in Palo Alto before its opening. They wanted to be first in line. But it’s finals week, so the devoted mother made a deal with the boys. She would leave their house just 5 minutes away in Menlo Park at 6 a.m., she said, and save them a place at the front of the line — as long as they promised to study for their math final on Monday. Done, the boys said.

A warning to all Santas. Don’t get plastered. And yet, Santa will get plastered. Hundreds of Santas. That’s what happens at SantaCon, the annual ad hoc gathering in downtown San Francisco of wobbly men and women in Santa and Mrs. Claus suits. It’s unofficial, it’s an institution, it’s either charming or obnoxious. Ready or not, it’s on for Saturday. In San Francisco, SantaCon is acknowledged if not sanctioned.

Longshoreman Howard Keylor knew when to unload a ship and he knew when to refuse. A longshoreman for decades on San Francisco Bay, Keylor could unload the contents of a ship’s hold as fast as anyone on the waterfront. But he could also stand fast, lock arms, hold a megaphone and do nothing. That’s what he and his fellow longshoremen did for 11 days in 1984, when the South African cargo ship Nedlloyd Kemba came to the port of San Francisco, its hold full of fruit, wool and sugar.

They have become as much a part of the city streetscape as the homeless — drug dealers who sell hundreds of $10 bindles of cocaine, Fentanyl and heroin on Tenderloin and South of Market street corners while rolling in and out of jail. On the night of Nov. 29, for example, a suspect known as “Cena” was arrested at the corner of Turk and Larkin streets with 237 bindles of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and fentanyl.

It doesn’t matter whom President Trump names as his new attorney general, or his ambassador to the United Nations, or as his chief of staff for that matter, because he is not likely to listen to any of them. Everything is about Trump. Period. And he doesn’t want anybody veering away from his one-man party line. And Trump is not alone. Politicians love to surround themselves with intelligent, talented people. But the real talent they are looking for is the ability to follow the leader.

The holiday season has come to life in Union Square in the heart of downtown San Francisco. There’s a big menorah to celebrate Hanukkah, a lighted Christmas tree, an ice rink — and the gentle ringing of small white bells next to red Salvation Army kettles. The bell ringers are there with their kettles in front of Macy’s on Union Square in all weather — driving rain, the pale December sunshine, the chill of late fall — raising money the old-fashioned way.

Selling weed on the black market is easy, Alphonso Blunt told me as he reclined in an office chair. Blunt (yes, that’s his last name), 38, started selling dime bags when he was 16, but he “retired” from street sales about four years ago because he wanted to sell cannabis legally. He’s learned that selling marijuana legally with a permit is hard. Permits don’t write business plans, acquire real estate or finance operations.

On the air, Dave Roberts was a smooth if straight-ahead Bay Area radio disc jockey hosting the afternoon drive for KYA and K101. Off the air he was “Dr. Dave,” armed with a doctorate in communications research and a knack for launching and driving radio formats. Roberts died Saturday at his home in Rochester, Mich., from the complications of prostate cancer, said his wife, Marsha Kelliher. He was 70.

After singing her way through Drake High School in San Anselmo and making it through several elimination rounds on “American Idol,” Kelli Peterson moved to Hawaii to record and perform her own style of soul-reggae under the stage name Kelli Love. She built a $15,000 studio behind her rented home in the town of Puna, on the Big Island of Hawaii, and was working on her third album when the volcano on the island erupted on May 3.

What Robert Mueller must be thinking: I signed up for this? Special Counsel Robert Mueller has to be asking himself, “Why did I ever take this job?” He had a stellar career as a federal attorney and FBI director and a promising future in the private sector, only to be dragged into the biggest mess of an investigation we have seen in years. His job was to determine whether Donald Trump or people in his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

This is the season for old favorites: the holidays, friends, good cheer, the classics. So we went to John’s Grill on Ellis Street just off Powell toward the end of last week to help celebrate the restaurant’s 110th birthday. The place was crowded. A lot of political bigwigs were on hand: the mayor, the police chief, the fire chief, the public defender, a city supervisor or two, Willie Brown shaking hands. State Sen. Scott Wiener brought a framed proclamation.

Engine No. 9, the last remaining piece from the fabled “Crookedest Railroad in the World” that once climbed Mount Tamalpais, is back in the Bay Area and on its way to a new home in Marin County. The 98-year-old steam locomotive had been on display in the Humboldt County logging town of Scotia since 1953. A group of Marin residents purchased No. 9 at auction and earlier this week loaded it on a flatbed truck and moved it to a ranch in Sonoma County.