The holiday calendar is social Darwinism at its best: with such a packed month of lunches, dinners, and soirees, only the fittest parties survive. Throw in the ruthlessly calculated invite lists and a pecking order comes into view. Were you invited? Did we see you there? Or did you decline?

There were the grand standby affairs, the must-gos. These included Gordon Getty's annual holiday and birthday bash, which was eclipsed by last year's Hollywood costume extravaganza for Gordon's 70th-birthday party. Most anyone who is anyone in social San Francisco attends if they're in town. This year, the list tallied a whopping 585 RSVPs, and the sheer numbers made for a frenetic ambience. As is usual for the Getty bash, all groups were represented, from politicos (Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Senator Dianne Feinstein and her financier husband, Dick Blum) to the art crowd (Norman and Norah Stone); the music men (composers Jake Heggie and John Adams came with Maria Manetti Farrow); the real estate mogul (Walter Shorenstein); and the fine young things (23-year-old Cameron Phleger was a stunner in a cream-colored dress). The inimitably stylish arts patron and former San Francisco social fixture Dodie Rosekrans was in town from Paris, accompanied by the dapper young Frenchman Ghislain d'Humières, the new assistant director at the Fine Arts Museums who's been making the rounds as of late.

The FAM had its annual holiday party at the Legion, too, which always brings out a stealth roster of VIPs. (The mostly old-guard board isn't quite as socially aggressive as others.) Marion and Newton Cope, Charlie and Lucinda Crocker, and Richard and Michele Goss made appearances at the event.

But the truth is, most could, and did, skip some of the holiday parties around town, if only because they knew they'd see the usual suspects at another, days later. The blur of annual events ranged from Ken Rainin's holiday lunch at Michael Mina to Tatiana Sorokko's lunch for the girls, attended by couture queens Susan Casden (of Beverly Hills) and Christine Suppes (of Palo Alto, who runs a fashion website), to Kip and Elizabeth Thieriot's cocktails for Rita Moreno, who was recently honored by President Bush with a Medal of Freedom. And the third annual Jingle & Mingle, where designers donate creatively crafted wreaths for Children of Shelters, was taking off. Joining the party cohosted by Summer Tompkins Walker were 400 of the city's younger set. One almost wished for a few surprise guests, maybe some visitors from out of town.

Seeking out a different vibe, the Socialist tagged along with a friend heading for a holiday party at a penthouse atop a five-star hotel. The host was Peter Thiel, cofounder of PayPal, and the contrast couldn't have been more marked, starting with the number of khakis and youthful faces present. "Maybe a quarter of the crowd are tech types," Thiel, dressed in a white fitted top and jeans, offered as he surveyed his packed living room. Feasting from the oyster bar and listening to a DJ spin were

a number of people Thiel had employed or whose ventures he had funded along the way, including Andrew McCormack, who started the hip restaurant-cum
-boîte Frisson with Thiel.

The tech mogul sightings continued the next night. At a dinner for Queen Noor of Jordan, at the restaurant Fifth Floor at the Hotel Palomar, the "it" boys of Wall Street, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the Bay's newest multibillionaires, turned up in trademark casual garb—Brin wore a black turtleneck, and Page, perhaps in a nod to nerd pride, a backpack, both straps on, to greet the queen. Many of you, no doubt, are familiar with the formidable woman, an Arab American by birth who attended Princeton and went on to marry the king of Jordan. She spoke about building bridges and understanding and educating women to achieve peace in the Middle East to an enraptured audience, which formed a line after dinner to get a copy of her memoir signed. Recently departed Chronicle publisher Steve Falk dropped in for cocktails and discreetly slipped out, and the queen's sister-in-law, who lives in the Bay Area, also stopped by.

Only the week before, the Fifth Floor had seen another glittery dinner—that one for New York socialite Bettina Zilkha, daughter of Cecile. In town to promote her new book, Ultimate Style, featuring the best of the best-dressed list founded in the 1940s by fashion PR legend Eleanor Lambert, Zilkha was the guest of honor at a dinner thrown by Denise Hale, cohosted by Perrier-Jouët, and attended by Deborah Minor (Cnet founder Halsey's ex-wife), Vanessa Getty, Peter Koehler (GM of the Palomar), Paul Price, and d'Humières, the museum assistant director. The effervescent, gregarious Zilkha told the Socialist about the genesis of the book project. Her mother had made the best-dressed list in the past (along with Hale, who made the hall of fame), which, despite its political nature over the years, used to be an incredible honor women on the international circuit vied for—Marella Agnelli, Marisa Berenson, Gloria Guinness all made it. Zilkha approached Lambert, who had toyed with the idea of doing the book for years. "She told me that I had grown up around the people who were the best-dressed list, so I understood and was the right person to do the book." The pair collaborated on it until Lambert's death last year. The list has been subsumed by Vanity Fair, which now runs it.

Her fellow New York (along with Newport and Palm Beach) social fixture, Marjorie Gubelmann Raein, was burning her candles at both ends—literally. In town for a quick visit to promote her home fragrances line, aptly called Vie Luxe, she drew a roster of 30 local stylistas for a lunch at Saks.