Chatterbox

This just in from the San Francisco Republican Party Central Committee: "Willie Brown did not receive a mandate on Election Day" because 43 percent of the voting electorate cast ballots against him. Does the local GOP think Ronald Reagan's landslide victory in 1980, in which 49.25 percent of the voting electorate gave him thumbs down, constituted a mandate? ... Fred Dodsworth is the publisher who will never say die. When San Francisco was shot out from under him, he transmogrified it into City magazine. After recently publishing the first issue of Juice, a magazine about boozin', he was slapped with a cease-and-desist order from a North Carolina bartender who insists that the name belongs to her 2,000-circulation lifestyle publication -- Juice, Surf, Skateboard, and Music magazine. (Actually, the bartender will have to get in line behind Orenthal James Simpson. A trademark search prompted by the cease-and-desist order informed Dodsworth that O.J. had already trademarked Juice.) For issue No. 2, the never-say-never publisher renamed his publication Au Juice. "It's first alphabetically," Dodsworth says. ... A similar cease-and-desist action is playing havoc with Web magazine Buzznet, which was threatened with legal action by Los Angeles city magazine Buzz. The L.A. mag insists that Buzznet infringed on its name. Buzznet's Marc Brown says his forces will comply, adding that Buzznet has gone on hiatus because he and the crew have just severed ties with Digital Threads, where they all worked while they produced Buzznet. Brown says the URL of www.buzznet.com is still active, and promises a new, improved, and renamed Buzznet by January.