“I met Jamie Dimon in San Francisco the other day,” Alice the Anarchist told me. At least, he said he was Dimon.”
“You met the CEO of J.P. Chase Morgan here, in a coffee house?” I asked Alice. We were sitting in Caffeination on Valencia, with no bankers in sight.
“I was walking through Dogpatch, not far from the Chase Center,” Alice recalled, “and this extremely well-dressed fellow asked if I would join him for a drink at the Ramp. I couldn’t say no; it has a great view of the Bay. The man looked kind of depressed, and I was curious. He said he’d buy me anything I wanted, but I only wanted black coffee.”
“You sat down to drink with the chairman of the board of J.P. Morgan Chase?”
“I thought maybe I could get him to renounce capitalism. He said he’d consider it. I gave him a copy of The Right to Be Lazy by Karl Marx’s son-in-law. Jamie—he asked me to call him Jamie—was very unhappy.”
“Does that mean J.P. Morgan Chase is in trouble? Dimon’s accounts are overdrawn?”
“No, but he has other problems. As he sipped a Bay Dragon Slushy at the Ramp, Jamie told me he visits the Chase Center now and then. His bank paid for the name after all, but he’s not a Warriors fan. He loves the New York Knicks, and he wouldn’t trade teams for anything.”
“He wouldn’t trade Jalen Brunson for Steph Curry?” asked the barista.
“Never, I asked him that,” Alice replied, “but he would like to trade mayors. He wants Zohran Mamdani out of New York. And Daniel Lurie’s his kind of mayor, wealthy, a friend of billionaires, a former New York resident.”
“Of course Dimon would prefer Lurie to Mamdani,” I conceded, “Zoran’s plans to tax the rich wouldn’t appeal to America’s leading banker.”
“Jamie said he might be able to arrange the trade. His friends on Wall Street would welcome Lurie as their mayor. They’d flood him with campaign donations, but Jamie wants a trade, not an election.”
Alice downed her triple espresso. ordered another, took a breath and admitted: “I suspect that he could finance the trade, too. He has the billions, and friends in very high places. He might even offer to throw Brunsen into the swap, he wants Lurie that much.”
“Lurie for Brunsen and Mamdani! The Knicks fans won’t like it,” I protested. “In any case, mayors are elected, not bought and sold.”
“Tell that to Jamie Dimon. He’s used to getting what he wants. The thing is,” Alice admitted, “I wouldn’t mind having Zohran Mamdani as San Francisco’s mayor. He’d support wealth taxes as Lurie hasn’t. He would fight for more affordable housing, free buses and streetcars, universal health care. San Francisco would have a progressive mayor again. He might even be open to some anarchist theory, such as Kropotkin on mutual aid. How could I object to a trade like that?”
“So you encouraged Dimon to arrange it?” I asked Alice, “it’s so undemocratic, I don’t think Mamdani will agree to it, although Lurie might.”
“I think Lurie liked Dimon’s offer,” she reported, “he phoned while we sat at the Ramp. The mayor wasn’t on speakerphone, so I only heard Jamie’s side of the conversation, but he tells me Lurie likes the idea of having a larger police force, and New York has a huge one. I think he also looks forward to riding down Fifth Avenue in a Waymo.”
“Mamdani will never agree to the trade,” I said.
“Jamie didn’t phone him, I don’t think they’re on speaking terms. Lurie is supposed to make that call.”
“Mamdani will say there’s no need for a trade,” I predicted, “he knows San Francisco has its own democratic socialists.”
“I expect you’re right,” Alice concluded, “it’s not going to happen. The Knicks won’t give up Brunsen, that’s a deal breaker. You won’t read this story in the Chronicle, though. Lurie will deny he and Jamie Dimon ever discussed the trade. San Francisco will never know how close it came to having Zohran Mamdani as its mayor. I wasn’t able to persuade Jamie to give up capitalism, either. But he did me give me two tickets to the next Knicks game.”
Joel Schechter’s has written several books about satire. His most recent book is Rogues Gallery.
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