Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from California who looks like a guy born in a blue suit, had an experience familiar to many San Francisco residents.
Someone broke into his car in a parking garage and stole his suitcases, which included U.S. Senator-type suits. If Schiff had six identical blue suits in there, I wouldn’t be surprised.
Schiff, of course, had to go to a fundraising dinner that night and gamely wore a very un-Adam Schiff hiking vest and a regular person shirt in a room full of suits and ties.
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Lee Houskeeper, who apparently is the most ubiquitous San Franciscan since Herb Caen and is working as a publicist for super hitter San Francisco attorney Joe Cotchett, noted that “I guess it’s ‘Welcome to San Francisco.’ ”
Schiff told Houskeeper he had been in a hurry and didn’t want to be late.
I think a lot of us can relate. In 2017, a car burglar broke into my battered Ford F-150 while my wife and daughter were attending a heartwarming show by Garrison Keillor, whose weekly Minnesota Public Radio program “A Prairie Home Companion” (1974-2016), of course, brought up all my Minnesota boyhood feelings about the goodness of, well, everything.
That was shattered, along with my truck window.
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My wife ambled over to a couple of San Francisco police officers and told them what happened.
One officer said, “And?”
As in, “What did you expect by not hiding the suitcases?” The car thief got away with cash and prizes totaling $17,000, my novelist daughter’s handwritten draft of her second novel and lots of other stuff.
When I called the San Francisco Police Department to report the break-in, the officer on the phone asked me what was in the suitcases. I dutifully but sheepishly listed everything, including some personal items that are precluded from being committed to print. I expressed concern.
“Sir,” she gently reminded me, “This is San Francisco.”
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Oddly, the burglar decided to commit the crime in front of live security cameras at a school, so my wife, a “Law & Order” aficionado, asked for the video to be released to the police, which it was. There was the perp’s face and, um, his license plate — more “Reno 911” than “Law & Order.” So they got the guy. My dandy insurance company stepped up with a check for $2,800 toward the $17,000, so we were out five figures.
Some of you have had this experience, right?
No word on whether Schiff’s burglar was on a security camera but, wow, I would not want to be on the business end of an Adam Schiff-led investigation. Even by the fictional DA Adam Schiff on “Law & Order.”
I used to be a suit guy until I moved to California. When I was hired at the Sacramento Bee, the publisher, a lovely woman who was also always dressed like a U.S. senator, liked my blue suit, but advised me not to wear it in the newsroom.
“Why?”
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“It’s California.”
Enough said, I stopped wearing the suits. Now I can hardly be bothered to dress in anything above a loincloth, Oofos sandals and a knife in a scabbard. Trust me, you’d like the blue suit way more than the birthday suit.
In Schiff’s case, he’s a triathlete and would look just fine in a loincloth. To be sure, this look would fit right in in certain precincts in The City, but it’s more commonplace to see people walking around in $5,000 worth of clothes.
Houskeeper, who is also a confidant of former Assembly Speaker and Mayor Willie Brown, suggested that Schiff go to Da Mayor’s tailor.
“Maybe he can go out with Willie Brown to choose a new suit from many of the fine clothing establishments in San Francisco,” Houskeeper helpfully suggested.
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I told a Major Political Journalist I was going to meet Brown a few months ago and fretted over what to wear.
“I got a new Hugo Boss suit,” I noted after a suitless pandemic where all my suits hadn’t been stored and were filled with moth holes.
The Major Journalist said, “Well, don’t worry. Willie will be wearing socks more expensive than your suit.”
He was right, although I didn’t ask to check out Brown’s socks. Social cues, you know.
While Schiff is a noted liberal, they say a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. This event wasn’t enough to push him over the edge … yet.
Oddly, and this won’t have much resonance with Schiff now, car burglaries are down 35% in San Francisco in the first quarter of 2024 compared to last year. If I were Schiff, I wouldn’t sweat the missing suits too much. Steve Garvey, Schiff’s GOP opponent, is an empty suit. Maybe he can lend Schiff his suit. He’s not using it.
Jack Ohman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and columnist.
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