Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, sparring with legislators over the state's impending fiscal meltdown, has postponed his annual state-of-the-state address until Jan. 15, perhaps hoping that by then he can describe California's condition as anything but undeniably bleak.

But down the road in San Francisco there is no such shortage of official assessments. There, Mayor Gavin Newsom has produced a marathon, or maybe we should call it a webathon, state-of-the-city address.

Newsom recorded 11 detailed installments on the state of his city and posted them online on the city's Internet site and on YouTube, then invited viewers to comment. The mayor's segments total more than seven hours. I know. I watched them all.

That sounds nutty, but I have an excuse. Sort of. Just as Newsom rolled out his project, I was diagnosed with a detached retina. After the doctors finished sticking needles through my eye, injecting me with gas bubbles and burning my retina with lasers, I was ordered to two weeks of bed rest. I was forced to lie on one side so the bubble they put in my eye would float up and press my retina back into position.

Although the confinement was frustrating, I was allowed, even encouraged, to watch television and video, because doing so would keep my eye steady, in that semi-catatonic state for which television is so often criticized. Enter Gavin Newsom.

I could have watched anything, I suppose, but for some reason I decided to fire up my laptop and view, sideways, the first segment of the mayor's address. I've followed his career fairly closely, and I know he aspires to be governor, so I figured I should check in. Once I started watching, I was hooked. It was a policy-wonk miniseries, and I had to see how it would turn out.

I won't spoil the ending for you, but it probably won't surprise you to hear that Newsom takes credit for a lot of great stuff (in his opinion) happening in San Francisco. But he also spreads the credit around, to his colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, to city activists, even his critics and antagonists. The mayor also admits, occasionally, where the city has failed, and in those areas he pledges to do better.

Newsom recorded the presentation in one sitting, or standing, in the city's newly renovated Academy of Sciences. Dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and blue tie, he stands in a well, below the camera, so that the viewer peers down at him. He speaks with no notes but refers constantly to a PowerPoint presentation that appears on a screen behind him.

The most striking thing about Newsom's presentation is the sweeping nature of his vision for the city, and presumably for California if he were elected governor. As he moves from health care and social services to the economy, education, the environment and more, the government programs Newsom champions are literally cradle to grave (or actually womb to tomb), from prenatal care through nursing homes for the aged.

San Francisco, Newsom notes, was the first city or among the first to ban plastic grocery bags and plastic foam containers and to require private employers to provide paid sick leave and health care. The city has prohibited the use of bottled water for its employees, imposed landscaping standards on businesses and installed cameras to record street crime and catch double-parkers blocking traffic. San Francisco has the second-highest minimum wage in the country and is exploring a charge, in addition to the tolls that already exist, for entering the city by automobile.

"We are going to be the envy of the nation," Newsom says at one point, referring to the city's newly refurbished nursing home, paid for with a bond measure the voters approved years ago. But he clearly thinks the same is true in nearly every aspect of the city's business.

Newsom envisions San Francisco as a humane, compassionate trendsetter at the center of the newly emerging wireless green economy and a hotbed for biotech research and computer-based creative arts. He wants to phase out carbon-based power and replace it with wind, solar and wave-generated energy.

Despite these grand hopes, visitors to San Francisco, after admiring the skyline, still first notice two things: the litter and the homeless. San Francisco may be the nation's dirtiest big city, and one gets the feeling that its indulgent reputation has also made it a magnet for panhandlers from all over.

Newsom has made the homeless issue a crusade of his since before he became mayor, pushing policies to replace cash handouts from the government, residents and visitors with shelter, health care and substance abuse counseling. But he acknowledges in his presentation that the city still suffers from a plague of aggressive panhandlers and says he favors stricter enforcement of a ban on such practices.

And he adds: "The streets of San Francisco are still too dirty." He says that problem is being tackled with an ambitious new cleanup program, admitting, though, "It may not feel like it." San Francisco remains a great American experiment, like a European city planted on the North American coast. Soon we might see if Californians want to expand Newsom's laboratory statewide.

To watch all or parts of Newsom's presentation, go to www.sf.gov/ mayor.