GOING PLACES.(Profile of Gavin Newsom, Mayor of San Francisco)(Interview)(Biography)

Gavin Newsom, the mayor of San Francisco, began fighting City Hall almost as soon as he moved into it. He disliked ceremonial ribbon-cuttings and the way that Room 200, his imposing oak-panelled office, seemed to turn visitors into sycophants. So on Friday mornings and Sundays he started visiting troubled parts of the city on his own, without his usual two-man security detail. He talked to shopkeepers who had witnessed a murder in broad daylight in the Western Addition neighborhood, and shook hands with gang members at a housing project in blighted Bayview, introducing himself like a man still running for office: "Hi, guys, my name is Gavin Newsom and I work for you. Give me direction--what do you need?"

Newsom, who is six feet two and has the look and slicked-back hair of a silent-screen actor, is, at thirty-six, the city's youngest mayor in more than a century. He has a knack for drawing attention to himself, and may already have generated more headlines than his predecessor, Willie Brown, a smooth-talking veteran of four decades in California politics. Since Newsom took office, in January, "60 Minutes" has done a segment on him; he has twice appeared on Charlie Rose's program; and Newsweek has touted him, along with Barack Obama, as one of five stars of the Democratic Party.

One sunny morning in April, Newsom convened his department heads for a field trip, or "workday." They went to the Sunnydale projects, a hillside dotted with barracks-style apartments that sometimes provide cover in shooting wars between the Up the Hill gang and the Down the Hill gang. As the Mayor walked among the units, voicing his dismay, twenty-one officials and community activists trotted behind him, taking notes. "Do we like garbage on the lawn?" Newsom said. "No, we do not." And: "See all this broken glass? Kids can't play here--it's totally unacceptable." And: "No swings in the swing set, guys. Must. Get. Swings." His voice was gravelly, still raw from last fall's campaign. As the Mayor pointed out junked cars to be towed and a basketball court that badly needed grading, Sunnydale's residents fell in behind what had become a parade.

"We never had a mayor come down this far--they don't want to go where the bullets fly and kids die," Regina Fontero, a security guard who has lived in Sunnydale for more than fifteen years, said in a loud voice. "But he's down in the trenches with his sleeves rolled up!"

Standing on the sloping court, Newsom grinned at this unsolicited sound bite and mimed making a layup. At age seventeen, Newsom was drafted by the Texas Rangers, and though he opted for a partial baseball scholarship to college (where he blew out his left, or throwing, elbow), if he gets near a court he invariably tries to spark up a game. When he visited a reform school a few days later, a half-dozen sixteen-year-olds who'd been listlessly watching basketball on television filed outside after they saw the Mayor shooting baskets in the midday heat. He tossed them a ball. "I don't want to break an old man's ankle," one said. "Y'all in church shoes." "Church shoes!" Newsom repeated, considering his black oxfords with amusement. He sank a long jumper and looked over: "Church shoes!"

After touring Sunnydale, Newsom returned to a store, the Little Village Market, whose bleak appearance had occasioned his complaints an hour earlier. He looked almost surprised to see that it was still standing. But for all the camera-ready showmanship of these appearances (Newsom usually has his white shirtsleeves rolled up and his favorite silver-and-blue rep tie loosened, just so), they are not simply for show. By the end of July, the Sunnydale basketball court had been repaved and given new nets, and swings were in place on the playground; within a month of Newsom's visit to Bayview, nearly a million dollars' worth of improvements had gone into its projects. Arelious Walker, who is seventy-three and a pastor at Bayview's True Hope Church of God in Christ, told me, "Our people are excited, because this mayor is acting for them, and they believe he's serious. Willie Brown was a nice mayor, but he never done like this mayor."

Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, came into office after a runoff election in which he narrowly beat--and vastly outspent--the Green Party candidate. He was not expected to spend much time in the inner city. Newsom and his wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom, a former assistant district attorney who is now an anchor on Court TV, have star quality, of the sort that recently inspired Harper's Bazaar to devote an eight-page photo spread to the couple and to call them "the new Kennedys." Newsom himself is a millionaire who owns cafes, a winery, clothing shops, and a resort hotel, all built with financial help from Gordon Getty, a close friend of Newsom's father, William A. Newsom. Getty, a billionaire heir to the J. Paul Getty oil fortune, used to include Gavin and his sister, Hilary, on Getty family vacations to watch whales in Canada and elephants in Kenya. "I think of Gavin as a son," Gordon Getty told me.