More From the Free City

Here's some more news from the free city, where Tony Bennett left his heart and Bill Clinton probably left a pair of pants.

According to an article on the front page of this morning's SF Chronicle, George W. Bush will be the first president in 75 years not to visit San Francisco while in office. He's never been there and has expressed no interest in going.

The last president to forego the pleasures of this fair and remarkable city was Calvin Coolidge, who was also the last president to raise chickens on the White House grounds. He obviously had his priorities.

Eighty percent of adult San Franciscans voted in the 2004 election, and of those who voted, 80 percent voted against Bush. And he's had a lot of bad ink lately as it is, without getting egged or pied.

San Franciscans generally talk about and look at Bush as if he was the dictator of some backward foreign country.

Presidential visits to this beautiful town began in 1880, when Rutherford B. Hayes had lunch at the Cliff House.

Warren G. Harding died in the Palace Hotel on Market Street, after a long train ride from Alaska. The standard story is he ate some bad crab on the train, but his wife might have poisoned him, since the word was out that he had recently knocked up an 18-year-old girl. Crabs, indeed.

Gerald Ford was shot at just outside the St. Francis Hotel. San Francisco's been a tough town for Republicans since old Eisenhower's triumphant motorcade down Powell Street back in the fifties.

Reagan visited only one time, as did Carter. Bush Senior visited four times, and as usual, Clinton, the Billinator, holds the record with 23 presidential visits.