The last couple of days must have been strange for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. On Monday night, the Giants won their first world series since the team moved here from New York in the 1950s. Baseball fans partied in the streets until after 3am. Tonight Newsom was at the Tres Agaves Tequila Bar and Mexican Restaurant waiting to see if he was going to be the state's next lieutenant governor.

By 10pm, the Associated Press had already called the governor's race for Jerry Brown and the senate race for Barbara Boxer, but no such projections were available for the statewide races lower down the ticket. Newsom has maintained a slim lead over Abel Maldonado, his republican opponent, but it was still close for Newsom to do anything but give some words of encouragement to his supporters and campaign workers in a backroom that looked like something out of "Boardwalk Empire," with its décor of barrels lined against brick walls and boxes of liquor bottles kept in a chain-link cage.

As Mayor Newsom posed for an endless stream of cellphone pics with his campaign's enthusiastic corps of volunteers, I asked him how California could lead us out of these dark times.

"First of all, we've got to get our house in order," he said, "If we do that, as we have historically, we've always led the way."

"The one area where we can have a profound influence, not just across this country but around the world, is in green technology," Mayor Newsom continued, "Defeating Proposition 23 and committing ourselves to the goals of AB 32, our climate protection legislation, is a most exciting opportunity for Californians and I believe all of us as Americans to dramatically change the way we produce and consume energy. That's our ticket to broad based economic prosperity. It's a way of bringing our innovation and our imagination to bear and bringing manufacturing jobs back in the state--installation and the like. That's an area where I'm fully committed. That's an area that I think Jerry Brown as governor is committed. I think that, more than any other thing once we reconcile our education system, will be California's godsend moving forward."

After the man who may be California's next lieutenant governor was done extolling the virtues of green technology, he was once again mobbed by supporters seeking pics that are probably all over Facebook right now.

San Francisco is throwing a ticker tape parade for the victorious Giants tomorrow morning. As mayor, Newsom will definitely be a part of it, but whether he will have a win of his own to celebrate, might not be known by the time the motorcade hits the streets.

Bob Calhoun is the author of the punk-wrestling memoir "Beer, Blood and Cornmeal: Seven Years of Incredibly Strange Wrestling" (ECW Press, 2008). He is currently working on a book about conventions, tradeshows and other gatherings. You can follow his convention adventures on Twitter at twitter.com/bob_calhoun