FIRST STOP, SAN FRANCISCO. All is changed. Where one of my favorite cigar stores once stood, a construction crew is at work on a new NikeTown. Then to Los Angeles, and a stroll down Beverly Hills’s posh Wilshire Boulevard. A mob scene, with four policemen organizing the eager customers into lines that stretch around the block. The occasion: the grand opening of yet another NikeTown. And the beat goes on: A $ 100 million NikeTown is scheduled to open on Manhattan’s East 57th Street within the next few months.

In a studio ten blocks uptown, Kathie Lee Gifford holds forth on live television every morning. Remember her embarrassment at discovering that a line of clothing bearing her name was being sewn by underpaid workers here and in Honduras? And her subsequent, tearfully contrite appearance before a congressional committee while husband Frank Gifford distributed cash to the exploited workers in New York City?