Richard Hongisto

After 25 years, Bill Sorro still shakes with anger over the night they drove old Manilatown down, beginning with the 3 a.m. eviction of 55 elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants of the International Hotel. Sorro recalls how police in riot gear clubbed their way through a tangle of 5,000 protesters outside the residence hotel that served as the emotional center of the city's Filipino community of World War II veterans who worked in the fields and fish canneries throughout Northern California.

About 100,000 runners traversed the city Sunday morning in a yearly frolic--part footrace, part street circus--known here as the Bay to Breakers. Live TV and radio covered the goings on, which followed two days of parties and a contest for the most witty and wild costumes. For some people, the mix of athleticism and zaniness is a quintessential San Francisco celebration, a daytime cousin of the Black and White Ball earlier this month.

At first glance, the situation seems like political dynamite: San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein is handed a $152.6-million budget surplus in 1982 and six years later leaves office with a $174.2-million deficit. Is this the kind of manager Californians want for governor? Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp, running against Feinstein for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, thinks not--and made the point forcefully in Sunday's televised debate. "There is a word Mrs. Feinstein just can't use. . . .

Mayor Art Agnos, who won in a landslide and survived an earthquake, is now in deep trouble. San Francisco is a city in decline, many voters believe, and they are blaming the liberal former social worker who promised four years ago to cure the city's ills. Homeless people and panhandlers populate the sidewalks. Litter and graffiti are commonplace. Businesses flee to the suburbs to escape high taxes. Major freeway routes, destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, remain closed.

The blue and white lights flashed, the music blared and more than 100 lesbians filled the dance floor. Near the bar, scores of young women were drinking and talking when, suddenly, one of California's most powerful men strolled in. It was Friday night at Club Q, the city's popular lesbian hot spot, and here was Assembly Democratic leader Willie Brown, dressed in a gray Brioni double-breasted suit, smiling, shaking hands, exchanging high-fives and receiving hugs.