Historical note: 5:13 a.m. April 18, 1906. Lest we forget those who perished and the City along with them. Today’s column looks at a true San Francisco treasure who was always the one to remind us of the many pleasures and perils of living along the northern end of the San Andreas Fault…
Three Dot Journalism
An appreciation by Roger Colton
This image is displayed on the Herb Caen web pages of the San Francisco Chronicle,
recreating as it appeared atop his columns for many years.
For me, as well as many other folks here in Northern California, there is the City. And it has been called that since the Gold Rush days of 1949. It’s a place you either love or hate. Usually there is no room for middle ground on the subject.
If one person could have been called the voice of San Francisco, it was and always will be Herb Caen. From humble beginnings with a first printed column on July 5, 1936, a kid from Sacramento made good.
Along the way, he bemused and amused readers six days every week for too many years. When most of his contemporaries had retired or gone to their rewards, his loyal Royal typewriter still produced columns that kept his readers coming back for more and more.
The Chronicle still maintains a page in his honor on their web site. It’s a good look back at the career as seen through his own words as well as some of his colleagues and contemporaries.
I discovered his column in June of 1976. A high school program got me on as an intern at radio station KSFO (worth telling this story as well in a future effort!) in San Francisco. Along with that came a Monday through Friday commute by train from the East Bay into the City. Somewhere during one of those rides, I picked up a discarded page from the San Francisco Chronicle and chuckled my way through the column just to the left of the full-page Macys advertisement.
Another column of note appeared on the pages of the Chronicle that same summer. It correctly lampooned all that was the City, including Herb Caen. Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City” brought it larger than life for the folks who actually lived it as well as those who wished they had.
Now if you’ve ever watched one of the mini-series adaptations, you get a good idea of what life was like back in Seventies San Francisco. A mention in one of Herb’s columns was worth its weight in gold. A watering hole getting a quick nod of approval or a restaurant getting the cold shoulder could make or break a business. But this man knew of whence he wrote!
He was known by a number of nicknames, but perhaps “Mister San Francisco” put it best. Touring the City either in his white Jaguar (a.k.a. the White Rat) or on foot, you never knew where he might show up next. A smart cocktail at Trader Vic’s, a quick snack at Original Joe’s, catching the latest and greatest in up and coming comedians at the Holy City Zoo, enjoying jazz in any one of the small clubs, or just passing Fifth and Mission (home of the Chronicle). But you could be sure that anything or anyone he might view on one of those sojourns would be fodder for his next magnum opus.
The link above offers a whole bunch of his columns as well as an archive of his pieces from 1995 through 1997. All too few, in my humble opinion.
Newspaper columnists come and go with somewhat amazing regularity. But he was there through it all. As he put it, “Hookers are “turned out” and newspaper people are “broken in” but otherwise there isn’t much difference, hence the term presstitute.” Yet, he managed to capture the pulse, pleasures, follies and foibles of what he loved to call “Baghdad-By-The-Bay” in a way that no one has done since.
Thankfully, his daily except Saturday efforts (well, one does need at least a day a week to rest, right?) have been printed in book form for us to enjoy once again. Some twenty books at least have his name linked to them. Even a children’s book, entitled “The Cable Car and The Dragon” told a tale of San Francisco in the Caen way.
Long before Disney coined the term “little souvenir” for it’s Cruise Line ad campaign, Herb Caen considered him self the same after a visit by his parents to the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. Born and raised in Sacramento, he got his first newspaper job there. In 1936 he started with the Chronicle writing a radio column, and that transmogrified into his daily oeuvre to the city he loved. A look back at his columns is as much a walk through the past as it is a look at a City that still knows how. He suffered gladly from “terminal nostalgia” and was definitely a carrier, infecting his readers at least once a week, usually in his Sunday pieces.
Among many accomplishments, he’s credited with coining the term “Beatnik”, in his column on April 2, 1958. Here’s an excerpt with the reference:
“. . . Look magazine, preparing a picture spread on S.F.’s Beat Generation (oh, no, not AGAIN!), hosted a party in a No. Beach house for 50 Beatniks, and by the time word got around the sour grapevine, over 250 bearded cats and kits were on hand, slopping up Mike Cowles’ free booze. They’re only Beat, y’know, when it comes to work . . . “
In April of 1996, he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize, only the fifth time such had been done for newspaper and magazine writers. As the Chronicle proudly reported, “In conferring the rare honor, the Pulitzer board said the prize recognizes Caen’s extraordinary and continuing contribution as a voice and a conscience of his city.”
Some of my favorites from the era of his later efforts included the saga of the March 1983 visit of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Phillip, Ron and Nancy Reagan (and their entourage of lackeys, lookers-on and security minions) to Trader Vics on Cosmo Alley in San Francisco. He correctly reported on what Their Royal Majesties enjoyed in the way of a cocktail — Tanqueray gin martinis over ice. (His competition at the Examiner or “Brand X” as frequently referred to, erroneously had reported they consumed something as pedestrian as margaritas. Really!) On more somber occasions he recalled the lives and legends of favorite sons and daughters of the City. Everyone from “Trader” Vic Bergeron to pal Benny Goodman (from his radio column days) to madame Sally Stanford to social column pariah Lucius Beebe to radio bad boy Don Sherwood all got the Caen treatment upon his or her demise. But it was his Sunday efforts that more than often ventured into the City of the past, present and future or an element of all three. Everything from cable cars to sewers to the Port to the fashionable and not so all could be and were fodder for that little space, slightly to the left of Macy’s.
One particular column I have saved is all about a weekend at the Lake. It was and always will mean Tahoe, not any other one. It has been the place, winter or summer, to truly get away from the City. Favored by generations for different reasons, it was the place for my family to enjoy a more laid back and less complicated time. While our accommodations may have been somewhat plebian as compare to those enjoyed by the money crowd, we knew how to have a good time none the less. That one column hit the nail right on the head for me. The trek up I-80 or back in the day, US 40, was and is always something to be looked forward to on a Friday night, and then dreaded for the ride home on a Sunday afternoon. A dip in the 60 degree sky-blue water or a ride at speed on your boat of choice (ah, Garwood’s… another column — wooden motorized boats!) from one scenic bay to another, finishing the day at a long savored night spot for a fine meal and appropriate beverages.
His columns just caught the flavor of the topic that folks enjoyed. The people who came after him try, but don’t seem to be able to capture the knack of his style and polish. He wrote columns right up to the end of a battle with cancer. His last column was on January 10, 1997, and he passed away a short time later on Saturday, February 1, 1997.
Since then, things have changed. The Chronicle’s long time owners sold it to the competition (the Hearst family who owned the “Brand X” — whose papers I once delivered — and who sold that paper to another family, only to watch it deteriorate into oblivion. No longer does the City have separate morning and afternoon papers!) and then divested their local NBC television affiliate (only to have NBC pull their affiliation and change it to a network owned station in San Jose!). I don’t doubt that the circulation of the Chronicle dropped as well, after his passing. If I pick up the paper, it’s a rare day indeed, and I was once a daily subscriber.
Now, I’m sentimental about the City for my own reasons. Family history and all that not withstanding, my appreciation for the place simply wouldn’t be what it is had it not been for those columns. It’s a love of cable cars, streetcars (another Caen term — “The Roar of the Four” referred to the four streetcar tracks on Market Street), ferryboats, good food and smart cocktails, local sports teams, entertainers and entertainment’s, amusements and bemusements, neighborhoods and districts, downtown and the avenues…
I don’t get into the City as much as I did in years gone by when my mothers parents lived just outside of Seacliff (where the radio adventures of “One Man’s Family” took place or where Robin Williams now calls home). But without too much difficulty, I’m easily taken back to summer afternoons with the blanket of fog rolling into to the soundtrack of distant foghorns from the Bay.
You’ve probably noted my use of these three little guys…
Hi, my name is Roger, and along with many other things, I am addicted to three-dot journalism.
It’s all his fault!
So that’s this weeks tale. Hope you enjoyed another glimpse into the City and the man who was it’s voice for almost 60 years. The next time we get on Jim for his tardiness on a piece, just remember the Herculean efforts of Herb Caen, and realize just how hard it is to get a column out every day, let alone once in a while!
Next week? Ah, now that would be telling? Something from those promised topics, no doubt…
So? Like what you’ve been reading here in Roger’s columns? Well, here is one way to show your support! You can use his Amazon PayBox to keep him plugging along on more tales.