Chatterbox

Matthew Rothschild's supporters -- that is, the Democratic machine -- whined all over town when SF Weekly's George Cothran rated him as unqualified to serve as Municipal Court judge (see "Judging Matthew Rothschild," Feb. 28). Now that the Bar Association of San Francisco (BASF) has seconded Cothran's assessment, rating Rothschild as "not qualified" for the bench, the candidate's people are mewling even louder. In the pages of the Chronicle, Rothschild campaign chairman Robert Barnes accused the BASF of lending "its name to what has become a private club of downtown legal insiders." The sweet irony of Barnes' frothing is that Rothschild was the closed-door pick of the private club of political insiders who are the Democratic machine. (Apparently, Cothran's feature article made a big impression on the BASF committee that interviewed Rothschild: His supporters told the Recorder [March 14] that the panel relied heavily on the "hostile" Cothran profile to conduct its "hostile" interview of Rothschild.) ... Club Townsend waitress Veronica Klaus takes extreme exception to Sam Whiting's vitriolic write-up of her and Club Townsend in a March 3 Chronicle Datebook piece on the dance club scene. "Drag queen waitress Veronica Klaus recently held a fund-raiser for her chest job, but only raised enough to have one done, which she displays proudly," Whiting writes. "It is nicely offset by a bare arm the size of a lineman's hoisting a tray of Jaegermeister." Klaus insists that she is not a drag queen, rather a soul singer and recipient of a 1994 WAMMIE, and that she has yet to be "surgically enhanced." As for the Jaegermeister jape, Klaus says the relative prominence of her bare arm is a judgment call. Whiting says the disputed info came directly from Klaus' publicist. As for the Jaegermeister crack, he says, "Isaw what Isaw." ... The March issue of the Red Herring compares the Internet gold rush to the 49er stampede, noting that 99 percent of the hundreds of thousands who swarmed into California struggled to break even, never mind striking gold. The folks who most reliably made money were those who "mined the miners," selling them the things they needed. Citing a recent study, the Herring comments that most of the companies on the Web that are making money are services for other companies on the Web.