Michael In San Francisco, there's often movie sets, as you might expect. It is, after all, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and besides, there are these insanely steep streets here. Recently, I found out that two of them have a record-breaking incline of 31.5%: Filbert Street, which runs parallel to the famous winding Lombard Street, and 22nd Street, which steeply descends right around the corner from us. With the beautiful old Victorian houses and the quaint neighborhoods, it's no wonder that many movie makers choose San Francisco as the location. The following productions immediately come to mind: Mrs. Doubtfire and Dirty Harry. In the latter (shot sometime in the '70s), to my surprise, Dirty Harry chased a villain up a side street called "Osgood Place" in the North Beach district. Osgood Place--where the branch of the company "Blaxxun Interactive" was, with which I came to San Francisco back then! Man, those were the days! Anyway--what I actually wanted to point out is that films are constantly being shot here in San Francisco, and if this happens on a block, the streets are always being closed off so that film crews can shoot their kissing scenes, shootouts, and car chases. The movie stars reside in trailers. As Figure 1 shows, there are even companies that specialize in outfitting such trailers. If I'm ever famous enough to travel from TV show to TV show, I'll buy one of those as well.

Accordingly, quite a few movie stars are being seen walking around on city streets. In our neighborhood on 24th Street, Julia Roberts was recently spotted at the coffee shop "Martha" with her new beau Benjamin Bratt, as the man from the video store excitedly told me the other day. If I had been at Martha's at the time, I would have naturally ignored them, as I can't stand them! Maybe they would have recognized me first: "Aren't you ... the author of ... 'Perl Power'? Tina, come over here quickly ...", oh, it's such a burden to be famous. I still like to go shopping in jeans and a sweater without everyone immediately asking me for an autograph.

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• More topics you might be interested in:

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  	Once every four years: Germany