“Those are two sharp pencils,” says an admirer who then, wittingly or not, shakes a hornet's nest by adding, “Sloan seems like she could be the next Dede. She could be the next first lady of San Francisco.”
This past fall, on the night before Trevor and Alexis's wedding ball, the Barnetts scored marks when they gave a preball dinner for the newlyweds—an elegant gesture that would, by society's inflexible rules, have to be repaid in time. After the main course, Billy Getty rose to his feet to toast Trevor, “who I've known a lifetime,” and Alexis (“half a lifetime”) and to declare the match between them, like the main dish of fried chicken and waffles, an unexpected but “appropriate” pairing. (This was in the weeks before the recent tiff between Vanessa and Trevor.)
By chance, the dinner happened on a Sunday night, which meant that at the same moment the young crowd toasted its newest golden couple, the town elders were just down the street in the Getty kitchen for another installment of the Super Supper Sunday. The two generations would mingle at the de Young the following night, but for now each seemed content with its own playing field—with one important exception.
Midway through the Barnetts' meal, an unexpected guest strode into the dining room, wearing a baseball cap and bomber jacket. It was Mayor Newsom, the Gold Coast's self-styled Kennedy on the Bay, who had already dined with the Gettys, but then decided, with a politician's keen instinct for where power lies, to stop in and pay homage to the bride and groom—and the future foretold by them and their crowd.
CLICK HERE to return to the W Classics archive.
