Nick had just tucked into a Cha Cha Bowl and vastly overpriced glass of Anchor Steam and was doing his best to keep his beard out of the mix. He wore pair of old school Ray Bans perched on his nose and a Giants cap parked on his head, his long hair trailing behind in a ponytail.
I may have been the only guy at AT&T Park who knew Santa was in the house.
We’ve been pals for a while. He was taking a few days off before gearing up for the final Christmas rush. The Giants were at home against the Cards in the playoffs and Nick knew somebody in the Giants front office. “What good would being Santa be if you can’t get some decent seats?” he asked, taking a pull on his beer.
Just then, Matt Holliday took Marco Scutaro into left field and Nick lost it—suddenly Santa sounded like a longshoreman. But then he pulled out his iPhone and made a note. “How can a guy named Holliday behave like that?” he said, shaking his head. “Lots of coal for him, and not the clean kind Romney keeps blathering about either.”
This gave me an idea.
“Nick, you keep a list on everybody, right?”
He nodded, taking another bite.
“So you could tell me which local businesses are getting presents and which are getting coal?”
“Sure, but you can’t tell anybody,” he said. “The holidays are about surprises, and brown paper packages tied up with string, and silver white winters that melt into spring.”
“I get it, ‘My Favorite Things,’ I saw ‘The Sound of Music’ with everybody else. So I won’t write about it too soon. Answer a few questions for me. In Marin, who’s on the good list?”
He pulled his phone back out and tapped the keyboard a few times. “To begin with, BioMarin has been very good this year.”
Nick, of course, had a point. The biotechnology company continues to grow like a weed even in an economy that could use a faster pace. It’s seen testing programs in at least two products progress this year to the point where critical new phases will begin early in 2013. The company stock continues to show positive traction.
And then there’s the fact that, when management was faced with making decisions about lease expirations, it elected to keep its employees in Marin rather than searching for cheaper space, possibly in Petaluma. The company relocated hundreds of staffers to the San Rafael Corporate Center.
“Who else in on the good list?”
“George Lucas.”
I reached over and took his Anchor Steam away. “How many of these have you had?”
“Put my beer down or you’ll find out which list you’re really on,” he said.
Who wants to piss off Santa?
I asked how Lucas could be getting presents; after all, he’d elected to walk away from his Grady Ranch project, packing up the 340 jobs and $270 million in business revenues as well as the 840 jobs that would’ve been created in the county as a result of the new Lucas facility—and while no one was looking (not even Nick) sold the whole company to Disney. This was a guy who needed to get a stocking full of soot.
“How’s that?” I asked.
Nick was high fiving the guy next to him as the Giants scored a pair, but he didn’t miss a beat. “Lucas taking the jobs out of Marin showed everyone what a mess the county planning process is. It also showed you how a few neighbors who are out of control can give everyone the shaft. Besides, he’s putting al the mouse’s money toward education.”
“So are you bringing the Lucas Valley Estates Homeowners Association coal?”
“No, it was just a few neighbors anyway, and they’ll get their presents when the affordable housing project begins to make its way through the county planning process,” he said with a tight smile.
Nick insisted we go for more beers, “and maybe some of those garlic fries,” so we were on the move. “Who else in Marin will unwrap presents?” I asked.
We were in line and I was paying while Nick considered the question carefully. “The guys who brought the Pacifics to San Rafael to play at Albert Field. They made a lot of kids happy—and a lot of parents, too.”
Centerfield Partners triumphed over a group of neighbors who felt a baseball team wanting to play baseball on a baseball diamond during baseball season required an environmental study. The San Rafael Pacifics proved to be a popular summer attraction and even the neighbors were happily surprised that the neighborhood hadn’t fallen into horrible disrepair as a result of the new team. Not to mention the Pacifics delivered a league championship in their first year.
We were back in our seats, the Giants were comfortably ahead 6-1 and the beer was still cold. All was right with the world, but I still didn’t have all my answers. “Nick, who’s on the bad list?”
Tapping his phone once more, he yawned and looked a little bored. “How about Sutter Health? That whole fight with Marin General was a mess.”
In a long-simmering lawsuit, Marin General accused Sutter of illegally taking $120 million in profits before the facility was turned back to the corporation in June 2010.
A court-appointed arbitrator ruled in June of this year that the split was official, and that Marin General was the “prevailing party,” giving the Greenbrae hospital reimbursement for legal fees, plus $21.5 million to not only cover the $11 million Sutter pulled out of Marin General into a Sutter pension plan—but also covering expenses because Sutter cheaped out on recruiting doctors and charged MGH for the use of capital.
Romo recorded the last out and Nick and I headed for a nightcap at Tres Agaves. Along the way, Nick decided we had to go to the Giants Dugout store first, “I need a few ideas for the workshop, and a Panda bobblehead isn’t out of the question.”
