Newsom scrambles to land America's Cup

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is working around the clock in a last-ditch effort to keep the city's bid for the America's Cup alive - even as Larry Ellison openly courts Newport, R.I.

"We are in the red zone," Newsom said Tuesday evening.

San Francisco's bid for the 2012 race took a sudden dive last week when Team Ellison began talking very publicly with Newport about holding the race there.

"I would like to believe that our deal was not used as a negotiating strategy to leverage a deal in Rhode Island," said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, a key backer of San Francisco's bid.

That's exactly what is happening, however. Although everyone is trying to keep on the high road, the folks at City Hall are anything but smiles as they try to deal with Ellison's group.

According to Newsom, the negotiations are not over what piers to use or how much public money to spend, but rather about tax increment financing and other financial details.

"This is a billion-dollar economics package, with thousand of jobs and a big investment by their organization. I can understand their need for certainty," Newsom said.

"I've been on the phone steadily for the past five days," the mayor said. "The one thing we can't afford to do is get petulant and throw up our hands or start pointing fingers."

Besides, there will be plenty of time for that if Ellison raises the anchor and heads east.

Sit on it: San Francisco's sit/lie law went into effect last week, but it's going to take the cops until February before they start enforcing it.

Starting this week, officers in every station will be given an hour of training and see a video on how to enforce the law, which bars people from sitting on the sidewalk from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. in commercial districts.

Police will also hold a series of community meetings and a news conference down the line to explain how the law will work.

Why all the fuss over an infraction that carries a smaller fine ($50) than most parking tickets?

Public relations.

"One of the key areas that needs to be clear to everyone is that officers will not be going out there and just arresting people - the law requires a warning before any enforcement is taken," said Lt. Troy Dangerfield.

All of which leads San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi to wonder whether anyone will actually be cited.

"I would imagine most people would just get up and move," Adachi said.

Rebound: Janet Reilly, a recent candidate for San Francisco supervisor, has just been elected president of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District.

Fortunately, she declared after being picked, the district doesn't use ranked-choice voting - a jab at San Francisco's process that knocked her out of the supervisor's contest after she led the first round of voting in District Two.

In addition to grappling with the district's $89 million budget crunch, Reilly gets the challenge of putting together the bridge's 75th birthday bash in May 2012.

Stocking stuffers: Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has released another of those "golden toilet seat" reports on wasteful government spending.

Here are a few of the goodies in his "Wastebook 2010":

-- $615,000 for the Deadhead archive at UC Santa Cruz to digitize Grateful Dead photographs, tickets, backstage passes, flyers, shirts and other memorabilia.

-- $239,100 for a Stanford University professor to study Internet dating, including a survey of more than 4,000 people on how they met their partners online and how long those relationships lasted.

-- $216,884 to UC Berkeley and Stanford University to study why political candidates make vague statements.

-- And $2.3 million to Stanford University and the University of Michigan to do what hundreds of pollsters do all the time - ask, "Why did America vote as it did on election day?"

EXTRA! Catch our blog at www.sfgate.com/matierandross.

Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX-TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815 or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page C - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle