Fong-Torres writing Summer of Love musical

Chronicle radio columnist Ben Fong-Torres, who has a lot of other major credits to his name — as Rolling Stone writer-editor, author of 11 books, freelance journalist, broadcaster and (quite fine) Elvis impersonator — is embarking on a new venture. He’s writing the book for a planned musical, “Summer of Love.”

The musical is being produced and developed by Robyn and Donald Rosenfeld and Andreas Roald. They approached Fong-Torres, said Donald Rosenfeld, because he has been “a witness as well as active participant in the counterculture of America in the 1960s.” Down the line, they’ll hire a composer and lyricist.

Meanwhile, such projects develop at a slow pace. “The hope is I’m still alive when this gets done,” said Fong-Torres. “I’ve learned from friends who actually have done this that it takes years for a project like this to get done, so I’m at the very first stage.” Having finished writing a treatment in August, he’s been waiting for producers and lawyers to finalize the agreement.

“It has begun,” said Fong-Torres. He’ll write a first-draft script, and he has already written “sample lyrics for several of the songs.” New songs will be mixed with a “couple of familiar songs from that time period, to make it more authentic. They’ll be a mix, so that once in a while you’ll hear an anthem that evokes that summer.”

When he was asked about the project, what scene first came to mind? “The Human Be-In,” said Fong-Torres. The producers had thought of depicting Woodstock or a similar largescale festival, but putting 400,000 extras on stage to evoke Woodstock seemed impossible. “But I could see using video projections and other visual trickery to evoke an event in Golden Gate Park . ... I have to plot it so that various characters wind up in a band and the band winds up headlining a big concert. I have it more or less worked out in my treatment, but I am so used to this that I am open to feedback from the producers and being very flexible about it.”

⏩ Forbes magazine is disrupting the language. Brian Bringardner sends a quote: “United is trialing the changes at Chicago O’Hare and Houston George Bush Airports ... ” Is Forbes trialing that usage?

⏩ Poet Chun Yu, a San Franciscan whose book is “Little Green: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution,” was recently invited to give a poetry reading by the University of Hawaii’s Big Island campus, specifically at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. She was hosted by philosophy professor Tim Freeman, who told her about his neighborhood’s volcanic action, “You’re so lucky. We’ve never seen it this big and colorful.” Soon after, he had to leave his home.

⏩ Jamey Brzezinski was driving north on Highway 101 around Cesar Chavez when he spotted the sign hanging on the overpass: “God Bless the FBI.”

A few days before the temporary ban on undocked scooters was in force, Ken Maley was aboard the 47-Van Ness, wherein a passenger carrying two scooters blocked the rear door. When Maley told him the scooters didn’t belong on the bus, a woman displaying an MTA ID told Maley to shut up, then directed the operator to throw him (Maley) off. The driver refused, saying he had a schedule to keep. “Passengers clap and off we go. The guy with the scooters takes up two seats,” reports Maley.

In other traffic news, in a recent column, a reader pondered whether cyclists in bike lanes are bound by regulations that apply to cars on oneway San Francisco streets. In response to queries about this, Paul Rose of the Municipal Transportation Agency began by noting that on lower Polk Street, cars go south only to Market Street, but there are bike lanes on both sides of that traffic, going in both directions, each marked on the pavement. Also, there are “two-way bike lanes running side by side on some of the off-street paths, such as the Panhandle,” he said.

But “a bike traveling the wrong way on a one-way street is a violation of the California Vehicle Code,” said Rose, “unless there is a marked contra-flow lane, which is a bike lane going in the opposite direction of traffic.”

“On a scale of one to 10, I like getting drunk about a 14.” Man to woman, overheard at the Union Street Fair by Erik Wilson