By his own reckoning, Brian Boitano hasn't been to the Castro in more than a decade.
For a media-savvy gay man who lives in San Francisco and travels widely, I find this surprising. He'd ventured to Rebel, but that's about it — because, as he explained, there's nowhere to eat.
"If I go out, I go to restaurants," he said. "All I know is The Patio, back 15 years ago. I don't understand it: The Castro of all places should have the most fabulous restaurants. Also, we entertain a lot."
If the name Brian Boitano registers with you, but you can't recall his crowning achievement, it was winning the gold medal at the 1988 Olympics. In any case, the answer to the question "What would Brian Boitano drink?" is Chablis. We're at La Folie, the French restaurant in Russian Hill that he favors. When not drinking wine, Boitano's a scotch partisan (such that he can spell "Bruichladdich" with no trouble). For dining out, he likes Town Hall, Bix, Mourad, Jardiniere, the House of Prime Rib — pretty much anywhere that isn't chasing the small plates trend.
"I'm not a big tapas fan; I like food. I'm not a little-bitty eater, where you have four people and you get a plate of something and have one spoonful. People say 'Let's all share!' and I'm like, 'Ugh.'"
Boitano can move about San Francisco freely as he eats, too. We debate whether that's because people here are a sophisticated lot or because a city where everyone's constantly staring at their phones means Chewbacca could shoplift with impunity, when at that moment a fellow bar patron pings his radar.
"The gentleman at the end of the bar gave me, 'Hey, you're Brian Boitano' — it's when they have time to sit and study a face."
Boitano has had a thriving second career in entertainment. He's got a cookbook, and made a TV show about purchasing and restoring his great-great-great-grandfather's home in Italy. But even as snowboarding, mixed martial arts, and soccer increasingly command Americans' attention, it's his annual skating specials that keep him in the public eye. This month, Boitano will fly to Greensboro, N.C., to perform in the Pandora Jewelry Holiday Celebrations on Ice, co-hosted by Kristi Yamaguchi and Michael Weiss. (You can catch it on ABC on Sunday, Nov. 29 at 2 p.m. PST.)
"I want to put together a comprehensive list of the live music," he said. "I look in the paper and I'm like, 'Skated with them, skated with them, skated, skated, skated': Chicago, AC/DC, the Goo Goo Dolls, Michael Bolton, Smokey Robinson, Frankie Valli, Michael Bublé, Aretha, [Andrea] Bocelli. It's crazy."
It sounds like the ideal soundtrack for Dancing With the Stars — or possibly VH1 circa 1998 — but unlike Yamaguchi, Boitano adamantly refuses to go on the show. One might think that dance and figure skating have transferable skills, but Boitano disagrees.
"I have good posture," he says, "but I don't have that funkiness that would be required to do well. And I think people would expect that."
Now a boyish 52, Boitano skates most days, usually at Yerba Buena, where a woman he skated with while growing up on the Peninsula manages the rink. In his opinion, the sport has changed a great deal from the days when the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan feud could bump a sensational crime involving another local athlete out of the news.
"The day after that happened," he says, "it was like 'Goodbye, O.J.'"
I press him for details about that incident, now 21 years past, and although Boitano remains good friends with Kerrigan ("a sweet woman, a great mother"), he expresses some empathy for the way Harding's career ended with her and Todd Bridges watching footage of bumbling robbers on World's Stupidest Criminals.
"She had a really hard upbringing," he says. "Nobody actually speaks to Tonya. She was pretty much blacklisted from any competitions or professional shows ... It took a weird turn with Connie Chung hanging out on the rails."
Bizarre as that media circus was, it's not the most random collision a skater has had with popular culture. Boitano's long career has produced moments that look particularly strange in hindsight — Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush singing to him and Liza Minelli at an event lauding Italian-Americans, for instance — but nothing can compete with South Park endowing Brian Boitano with godlike powers. (Allegedly, he traveled to the year 3010.)
"I had friends at studios saying, 'There's this animated thing going around about you,'" he says. "And I'm like, 'Whatever, I don't care' until someone said, 'They're coming out with a movie.'"
If there was ever any initial shock, it's water under the bridge. Boitano wrote the foreword to the South Park Guide to Life, and considers show co-creator Matt Stone a "really sweet guy." Plus, his Twitter avatar is his cartoon alter ego on ice.
About his animated fame, Brian Boitano harbors only one regret.
"I wish I knew the lyrics," he says. "When I go on any TV show, I'm asked to sing along."
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