Brown’s Stay: No Give, All Take

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, one of the 938 people granted a night’s stay in the White House’s Lincoln Bedroom, liked the furniture but not the mattress.

Of the bed, he said Tuesday: “You have to step up to get in, and it’s not terribly comfortable.” The mattress felt like it hadn’t been upgraded since Lincoln slept on it, he said. The towels were worn. And, yes, he took a few souvenirs.

Brown, the former head of California’s state Assembly and one of the nation’s most powerful black politicians, was asked why the president had invited him to stay overnight.

“Obviously, they were not trying to get anything from me--I had nothing to give them,” the mayor chuckled. “What they lost was everything that wasn’t tied down. . . . I took everything--everything that had ‘White House’ on it.”

Pressed on that point, the mayor owned up to taking some stationery. He said he left the towels because they were worn and didn’t have a White House logo.

At 3 a.m., Brown said, he realized he needed a better keepsake. Donning a White House robe, the mayor stood smiling in front of the bathroom mirror and used a disposable camera to take his own picture.