A milestone for KGO’s Don Sanchez

At New York festivities for “Citizen Hearst” last Tuesday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, in a tone that would accompany the presentation of a gift, that from time to time when he comes to San Francisco, he reads The Chronicle.

Thank you, sir. And had he looked for inspiration from the Bay Area for his endeavor to rev up high tech in New York and to create a kind of Silicon Valley there? Call me a chauvinist; the question probably implied a we-wuz-there-firstness.

“There’s room for everybody,” he said. Don Sanchez, cultural icon of KGOTV and first-nighter around town, Tuesday marks his 40th anniversary with the station. “I’ve seen a lot of changes, survived a helicopter crash, a wrestler knocking me out and getting hugged by Dolly Parton,” he said. His accomplishments and savvy are well known to watchers, but behind the cultural scenes, he’s a helluva nice guy, too. 1With the Lumiere closing, suggests Brian Bringardner, perhaps the San Francisco Film Society, which is ending its relationship with the theater in Japantown, could take over the California Street space.

Paul Pelosi, who arrived at Wednesday’s Symphony opening after flying back from New York that afternoon, said that in New York the night before, he and Rep.

Nancy Pelosi had attended a memorial gathering at Juilliard for Marvin Hamlisch. The event included performances by Liza Minnelli, Lang Lang, Joshua Bell, Aretha Franklin and Barbra Streisand, who first met Hamlisch at the start of her career. “When she was doing ‘Funny Girl,’ ” said Pelosi, “one of his jobs was to bring her coffee. But she didn’t drink coffee, so she asked him to bring her a chocolate doughnut.” Eventually, he would bring her two chocolate doughnuts. Streisand, who, with Terre Hamlisch, had planned the invitation-only event, sang “The Way We Were.”

Tony Serra, who reads from his “Walking the Circle, Prison Chronicles” at City Lights on Tuesday night, writes of friend-making at Lompoc Federal Prison Camp, where he was incarcerated for refusing to pay taxes. Outside prison, he says, his pals share his values: “pro-working class, anti-materialistic, egalitarian-oriented and anti-government.” But inside, he hung with the people who were educated, who could talk of world events, “all committed capitalists,” many in prison for fraud. “Money drives them all. … They know my opposing social philosophy, essentially Marxism, but such doesn’t seem to deter our friendship. I strongly believe that on the outside, we will revert to having ‘nothing in common,’ and never see each other again.”

College Track, an after-school program that began in East Palo Alto in 1995, opened a 13,000-square-foot facility in Bayview-Hunters Point last Tuesday. The program prepares young people for college, providing tutoring, counseling and encouragement.

Laurene Powell Jobs (who was glimpsed on TV sitting next to Chelsea Clinton at the Democratic National Convention), is co-founder and chair of the program, which has been so successful — all its seniors finish high school, 90 percent are accepted at college, and 85 percent will be first in their family to earn college degrees — that politicians have climbed on board too. Mayor Ed Lee was at the opening, as was Gavin Newsom and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. Lee told the students the Bayview was being transformed “into a place where college is an expectation, not an exception,” and that he’s hoping they become “my workforce in San Francisco.”

The same day, supporters of battered City College of San Francisco gathered for the annual City College Basic Skills Luncheon. Debra Dooley was honored as president and founder of the college’s Foundation Auxiliary, which has given more than 3,000 scholarships to students needing basic skills. As to the city’s setting aside Debra Dooley Day in San Francisco, Willie Brown “assured us that the proclamation was indeed written by Mayor Ed Lee,” said a spy, “as it was written in Chinese.”

Interim Chancellor Pamela Fischer said current accreditation problems are being addressed, and expressly thanked philanthropist Maurice Kanbar for major support.