SFGate

Interviewed recently in the New York Times Sunday magazine, he was asked why the NAACP, founded to support civil rights, hasn't taken a stand on same-sex marriage. He said his group has fought issues relevant to gays, "including school bullying, hate crimes and employment discrimination. But we're a barge, not a speedboat. We're not going to repeat the mistakes of so many other institutions that have literally torn themselves apart over this divisive issue."

Rocker Steve Miller was the godson of guitar master Les Paul, who died at 94 last week. Miller's father was best man at the wedding of Paul and Mary Ford, and Miller told a pal, music writer Joel Selvin, that when Miller was 5, it was Paul who "showed me how to hold a guitar."

At Paul's request, Miller is to sing "Nature Boy" at Paul's funeral. He will be in New York tonight to play Paul's weekly club gig at the Iridium.

P.S.: Meanwhile, Miller has canceled his annual October gig at the Fillmore because Live Nation cut the power at curfew, 10:30 p.m., during his recent show at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga. That was 90 seconds before the show would have ended, a spy says. Fans and performer were not happy.

-- Thinking she'd spotted Jerry Brown at a Starbucks in North Berkeley last week, Mary Flaherty asked a barista, "Is that Jerry Brown in the corner?" "Who's Jerry Brown?" he answered, turning to a co-worker to repeat the question. "Who's Jerry Brown?" said barista No. 2.

Flaherty suggests the candidate "use some of that campaign money he recently bragged about not wasting on youth outreach."

-- Oscar Villalon, The Chronicle's book editor until a year ago when he went to a Web design firm, will come September be the new publisher of the literary journal McSweeney's.

-- The start of the English Premiere League football (soccer) season was celebrated at Maggie McGarry's Irish Pub, where members of the fan group the Bay Area Gooners met at 7 a.m. Saturday to get ready for a 9:30 a.m. Arsenal match. They like to watch.

-- Having seen "Taking Woodstock," in which Liev Schreiber plays a drag queen, Jan Wahl says, "Donna Sachet could have taught him a bit about makeup and dresses that would work better with his figure."

At St. Patrick's on Mission Street, many mourners wore touches of yellow at the recent memorial Mass for former Philippine President Corazon Aquino. Susan Po-Rufino reports, however, that at the same time opening prayers began, "The spicy beat of timbales and claves came sweeping through the back rows of the church." The salsa came from an outdoor event sponsored by the neighboring Contemporary Jewish Museum, "as ecumenical a send-off for Cory Aquino as San Francisco could muster," said Po-Rufino.

-- Want to travel but can't afford to take a vacation? Jack Perkinson, bartender at Vesuvio, and Omar Rojer, bartender at Niagara Bar and Lounge in Manhattan, have traded jobs and residences for two weeks.

-- Travel report from John Konstin of John's Grill: At the Excelsior Hotel in Rome, the American breakfast (juice, coffee, Danish, two eggs) is $60.

-- An awestruck Angie Papastefan of Greenbrae congratulates the Postal Service and anyone else responsible for delivering to her a card mailed from Europe with her name and street address, followed by "Greenbrae, Bay Area, U.S.A."

-- At Mono Lake, Mary Ann Quittman heard a park ranger repeating the weirdest query he'd had from a visitor: "Where's Alcatraz?"

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This article appeared on page E - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle