Stick City? Pick City? Something like that.

Before it became a series of hugely popular books and a TV show on PBS, Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" started life as a serial in the Chronicle in the 70's and early 80's.  Apparently hoping to recapture some of that excitement, the Chronicle on Sunday launched a new serial called "Click City."

It's OK, I guess.  It's a fairly transparent attempt to capture the tech zeitgeist of the city (not, so far, the Zeitgeist of the city, though), but it comes across as being written by someone who's read about tech and the kind of people that work in tech without actually knowing or talking to any.  Everybody and everything seems like a broadly drawn caricature.  Oh look, here's the "severe-looking barista" and the adorably quirky programmers.  Here's the cafe on Valencia, except "no one was eating or talking to anyone else."  It's all just too much of a piece, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, haven't we covered the tech-is-the-new-gold-rush ground more than enough?  Isn't there a new article every week? At this point, I'm sick of it.

I'd be down for a new serial, though!  Just not principally about Computers and The People Who Work On Them.  How about these:

Mick City: The story of San Francisco's Irish gang underground, told by one of the newest members.

Flick City: The lives and loves of an extended group of friends who work at one of the last neighborhood theaters.

Trick City: You'd be surprised how competitive - even cutthroat - the world of amateur magicians working the party circuit can be.  [No good?  How about the story of a hapless pimp who struggles to control his band of wisecracking hookers? Same title.]

Hick City: We follow 23-year-old Junior Huddleston, a recent arrival from rural Arkansas, as he tries to navigate life in San Francisco.

Rick City: It's about a guy named Rick.

Chick City: About a group of four female friends and their lives and adventures in the city, written by a guy but I've totally hung around with enough women to know what they're like so don't sweat it.

Tick City: Told from the POV of a Rocky Mountain Wood Tick who arrives in the city on the back of a dog returning from a vacation.