Crown of Excess Rests by the Bay, Not Tinseltown

SAN FRANCISCO — Everybody loves a party, and nobody parties like L.A. Right? Wrong.

The most talked-about bash of the year didn’t take place on Melrose. It wasn’t on the beach in Venice or over in Bel-Air or Malibu. It was in downtown San Francisco, where, one night earlier this month, a local political consultant threw a veritable carnival of carnality to celebrate his 50th birthday.

Jack Davis is no stranger to controversy in the City by the Bay, where he has gotten the last two mayors elected and shown up in the owners’ box at a Giants game accompanied by a 6-foot-tall transvestite in a miniskirt. He’s known for frequenting the city’s leather bars and S&M; clubs, and for sleeping in his office for weeks at a time in order to bring in a campaign victory. In San Francisco, his behavior has barely raised an eyebrow.

But his birthday bacchanalia did something that many people thought was impossible. Davis shocked San Francisco, and the city is still buzzing about the live sex acts, the dominatrix, the satanic priest and other XXX-rated details.

Let’s just say that Charlie Sheen and Robert Downey Jr. couldn’t have thrown a party like that if they spent all winter planning it. A Viper Room full of Johnny Depps couldn’t match that kind of depravity if you spotted them a platoon of porn stars.

So give it up, Los Angeles. In the ranks of celebrity debauchery, Southland scandals just can’t compare. Bob Dornan’s former aide comes out of the closet and Orange County goes bananas. Ellen DeGeneres admits she’s gay and turns the entertainment industry upside down for weeks on end. Believe me, if Ellen and her new girlfriend had walked into Davis’ party just around midnight, they would have felt like Ward and June Cleaver on the set of “Showgirls.”

San Francisco has long been a city where personal excess is politically chic. Last year, an ex-hooker named Margo St. James barely lost her race for the Board of Supervisors after she was targeted in a last-minute smear campaign. Her opponents alleged that Margo had never actually been a prostitute, and her support base crumbled.

Dist. Atty. Terence Hallinan is known for settling his political scores in barroom brawls. When Gil Garcetti knocks Johnnie Cochran off his barstool at closing time at the Ivy, then come talk to me about L. A. outrageousness. Former Mayor Frank Jordan lost reelection after posing nude in his shower with two disc jockeys. You say that Dick Riordan has a girlfriend? Big deal. Current Mayor Willie Brown has a wife and a girlfriend, and the buzz here is, he cheats on both of them.

But the Davis party stunned the sensibilities of a city that didn’t even know it had them. Davis is currently running a bond campaign to build a new stadium for the San Francisco 49ers. The election is less than a month away, and the furor over his party is threatening the bond measure’s chances. The Niners are embarrassed by the controversy, but they’re even more worried about losing the stadium vote. So they’re sticking with Davis and hoping he doesn’t invite Dennis Rodman to come visit after the NBA playoffs.

Other locals are similarly confused about how to respond to the furor. The city’s politicians have been explaining to anyone who will listen that they left the party before the floor show started. The Niners say that three of the campaign’s precinct captains resigned over the controversy, but a dozen others signed up. And down the road in Silicon Valley, IBM’s engineers are building on their chessboard success by finishing work on a computer that they believe can engage in more depravity than any human being. Too bad they’ve already used the name Deep Blue.

In a city known for its relentless commitment to multiculturalism, the Davis controversy has one saving grace. For all its excesses and perversions, the party didn’t violate the standards of political correctness. So the Niners are lucky their consultant wasn’t a traditional, old-fashioned heterosexual misogynist. Because then they’d really have some explaining to do.