Did anyone else notice that San Francisco’s two favorite birds both got hawked yesterday?
SF-based Twitter flew the coop with its soaring IPO while the Maltese Falcon, the titular bird in Dashiell Hammett’s novel and John Huston’s big screen adaptation, went on the auction block.
“The infamous black bird prop from the 1941 Humphrey Bogart noir classic is up for bidding from Guernsey’s auction house in a highly anticipated sale,” read a story in the NY Daily News. Meanwhile, Twitter’s initial public offering was minting many a millionaire.
Perhaps they should have coordinated. Then one of them could cash out a bit of scratch and purchase the dingus and return it to its spiritual home of San Francisco. I won’t bother with the “two birds and one Biz Stone” gag nor brag about knowing why the caged bird sings (spoiler alert: he sings of freedom). Instead, I’ll just imagine the inevitable mashup of Nick Bilton’s excellent history Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
Jack Dorsey laughed. His laughter was brief and somewhat bitter. “That is good,” he said, “coming from you. What have you given me besides money? Have you given me any of your confidence? any of the truth? any help in helping you? Haven’t you tried to buy my loyalty with money and nothing else? Well, if I’m peddling it, why shouldn’t I let it go to the highest bidder?”
The rest, of course, is the stuff that dreams are made of.
