Herb Caen

Template:Short description Template:About Template:Infobox person Herbert Eugene Caen (Template:IPAc-en; April 3, 1916 Template:Ndash February 1, 1997) was a San Francisco humorist and journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, and offbeat puns and anecdotes—"A continuous love letter to San Francisco"<ref name=pulitzer_biography>"The 1996 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Special Awards and Citations. Biography.". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 1, 2013.</ref>—appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle for almost sixty years (excepting a relatively brief defection to The San Francisco Examiner) and made him a household name throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

"The secret of Caen's success", wrote the editor of a rival publication, was:

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A special Pulitzer Prize called him the "voice and conscience" of San Francisco.<ref name=pulitzer_citation>"The 1996 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Special Awards and Citations. Citation.". The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 1, 2013.</ref>

Early life and career

File:Herb Caen column header with Transamerica Pyramid.gif

This San Francisco skyline (featuring a "flaccid" Transamerica Pyramid) headed Caen's columns from 1976 until his death.<ref>"Herb Caen. Sunday May 2, 1976" (reprint). Steve Mad, Mad Studios (stevemad.com).</ref>

Herbert Eugene Caen was born April 3, 1916, in Sacramento, California, to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, <ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> but he liked to point out that his parentsTemplate:Mdashbpool hall operator Lucien Caen and Augusta (Gross) Caen<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Mdashbhad spent the summer nine months previous at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.<ref name="nyt_obit">Template:Cite news</ref> After high school (where he wrote a column titled "Corridor Gossip") Caen covered sports for The Sacramento Union;<ref name="milestones">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> in later years he occasionally referred to himself as "the Sacamenna Kid."<ref>Market St. Railroad, April 3, 2016</ref>

In 1936, Caen began writing a radio programming column for the San Francisco Chronicle.<ref>View a 1997 film about Herb Caen's life made by KRON-TV, which reviews his personal history and career: https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/227861</ref> When that column was discontinued in 1938, Caen proposed a daily column on the city itself; "It's News to Me" first appeared July 5. Excepting Caen's four years in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II and a 1950Template:Ndash1958 stint at The San Francisco Examiner, his column appeared every day except Saturday until 1990, when it dropped to five times per week<ref name="folding_sunday"/><ref name="cool_gray"/>Template:Mdashb"more than 16,000 columns of 1,000 words each ... an astounding and unduplicated feat, by far the longest-running newspaper column in the country."Template:Px1Template:R

File:HERB CAEN2.jpg

Caen playing the drums at the 1993 celebration of The Paris ReviewTemplate:'s 40th anniversary

A colleague wrote in 1996:

What makes him unique is that on good days his column offers everything you expect from an entire newspaperTemplate:Mdashbin just 25 or so items, 1,000 or so wordsTemplate:Nbsp... Readers who turned to Herb on Feb. 14, 1966, learned that Willie Mays' home was on the market for $110,000. The Bank of America now owned the block where it wanted to build its headquarters. Dr. Zhivago director David Lean was in town. Meanwhile, "Mike Connolly is ready to concede that the situation in Vietnam is complex: 'Even my cab driver can't come up with a solution.Template:'"<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Caen had considerable influence on popular culture, particularly its language. He coined the term beatnik in 1958<ref>SFGate.com. Archive. Herb Caen, April 2, 1958. Pocketful of Notes. Retrieved June 4, 2009.</ref> and popularized hippie during San Francisco's 1967 Summer of Love.<ref>SFGate.com. Archive. Herb Caen, June 25, 1967. Small thoughts at large. Retrieved June 4, 2009;</ref> He popularized obscureTemplate:Mdashboften playfulTemplate:Mdashbterms such as Frisbeetarianism,<ref>Frisbeetarianism Brainy Quote: George Carlin</ref> and ribbed nearby Berkeley as Berserkeley for its often-radical politics.<ref name="nyt_obit"/> His many recurring if irregular features included "Namephreaks"Template:Mdashbpeople with names (aptronyms) peculiarly appropriate or inappropriate to their vocations or avocations, such as substitute teacher Mr. Fillin, hospital spokesman Pam Talkington, periodontist Dr. Rott, piano teacher Patience Scales, orthopedic specialist Dr. Kneebone, and the Vatican's spokesman on the evils of rock 'n roll, Cardinal Rapsong.Template:R

Among the colorful personalities making periodic appearances in Caen's columns was Edsel Ford Fung, whose local reputation as "the world's rudest waiter" was due in no small part to Caen, who lamented his death in 1984:

SOME WOE around Sam Wo, the skinny three-story restaurant on Washington near Grant. Waiter (and one-time part owner) Edsel Ford Fung, who became famous for berating and insulting the customers, all with tongue in cheek, died Tuesday at age 55, and the skinny old eating place is in mourning. The wondrously named and actually quite charming Edsel was the son of Fung Lok, a former owner of Sam Wo, who named his sons Edsel, Edmund and EdwinTemplate:Mdashbafter the first names of the Caucasian doctors who delivered them. Edsel, always a fellow with a flair, added the Ford and hinted broadly that he was related to the auto family; an amused Henry Ford II made a special trip to Sam Wo to check out the rumorTemplate:Nbsp... By the way, there is no Sam Wo at Sam Wo. The name means something analogous to "Three Happiness," but there is only sadness there this week.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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Although Caen relied on "an army of reliable tipsters," all items were fact-checked.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

File:Herb Caen, SF.jpg

"Mr. San Francisco" in his Chronicle office in the early 1990s

Now and then an item (usually a joke or pun) was credited to a mysterious "Strange de Jim," whose first contribution ("Since I didn't believe in reincarnation in any of my other lives, why should I have to believe in it in this one?") appeared in 1972.<ref name="strangest">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Sometimes suspected to be a Caen alter ego, de Jim (whose letters bore no return address, and who met Caen only onceTemplate:Mdashbby chance) was revealed after Caen's death to be a Castro District writer who, despite several coy interviews with the press, remains publicly anonymous.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Caen took special pleasure in "seeing what he could sneak by his editorsTemplate:Mdashbhis 'naughties,Template:'" such as this item about a shopper looking for a Barbie doll: Template:"'Does Barbie come with Ken?' he asked the perky saleswoman. 'Actually no,' she answered slyly. 'Barbie comes with G.I. JoeTemplate:Mdashbshe fakes it with Ken.Template:'"Template:Px1Template:R

On Sundays,<ref name="folding_sunday">Template:Cite news</ref> current items were set aside in favor of "Mr. San Francisco's"Template:Thinsp<ref name="nyt_obit"/> reflections on his unconditional love for his adopted city, musing on (for example):

The crowded garages and the empty old buildings above them, the half-filled nightclubs and the overfilled apartment houses, the saloons and the skies and the families huddled in the basements, the Third Street panhandlers begging for handouts in front of pawn shops filled with treasured trinkets, the great bridges and the rattle-trap street cars, the traffic that keeps moving although it has no place to go, thousands of newcomers glorying in the sights and sounds of a city they suddenly decided to love instead of leave."Template:Thinsp<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}. "Excerpts from the eulogy delivered by entertainer Robin Williams."</ref>{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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An occasional column was given over to serious matters, such as a May 1, 1960, piece on the upcoming execution of Caryl Chessman, which included Caen's recollection of witnessing a hanging as a young reporter:

Suddenly the door behind the scaffold swung open and the nightmare scene was enacted in a flash. The murderer, his arms bound, was hustled roughly onto the trapdoor, the noose was slammed around his neck, a black mask dropped over his unbelieving face, the trapdoor clanged open, the body shot through and stopped with a sickening crack. For an eternity, the victim twitched in spasm after spasm, and one by one the witnesses began fainting around me. "Doesn't hurt a bit," the warden had said.

And from that day on, having been made properly aware of the State's awful vengeance, no holdup man ever again killed a shopkeeper? You bet.Template:R {{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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On December 12, 1960, Caen wrote:

While you're making out your Christmas cards, you might remember to send one to Francis Gary Powers, c/o American Embassy, Moscow, USSR. Let him know that U-2 haven't forgotten.

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Powers received almost a hundred cards, most from the San Francisco Bay Area.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In many articles, Caen would write about local San Francisco Bay Area topics such as local mansions and restaurants.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

A collection of essays, Baghdad-by-the-Bay (a term he'd coined to reflect San Francisco's exotic multiculturalism) was published in 1949, and Don't Call It FriscoTemplate:Mdashbafter a local judge's 1918 rebuke to an out-of-town petitioner ("No one refers to San Francisco by that title except people from Los Angeles")Template:Mdashbappeared in 1953.Template:Efn The Cable Car and the Dragon, a children's picture book, was published in 1972.

In 1993, he told an interviewer that he declined to retire because "my name wouldn't be in the paper and I wouldn't know if I was dead or alive," adding that his obituary would be his last column: "It will trail off at the end, where I fall face down on the old Royal with my nose on the 'I' key."Template:Refn

Honors and death

In April 1996 Caen received a special Pulitzer Prize (which he called his Pullet Surprise) for "extraordinary and continuing contribution as a voice and conscience of his city."<ref name=pulitzer_citation/><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> (Fellow Chronicle columnist Art Hoppe, who had sworn an oath with Caen twenty-five years earlier not to accept a Pulitzer, released him from the oath without being asked.)<ref>Caen column, SF Chronicle/SFGate, 10 April 1996</ref> The following month doctors treating him for pneumonia discovered he had inoperable lung cancer.<ref name="how_pulitzer">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He told his readers: "In a lightning flash I passed from the world of the well to the world of the unwell, where I hope to dwell for what I hope is a long time. The point is not to be maudlin or Pollyanna cheerful. This is serious stuff."Template:Px1Template:R

June 14, 1996, was officially celebrated in San Francisco as Herb Caen Day. After a motorcade and parade ending at the Ferry Building, Caen was honored by "a pantheon of the city's movers, shakers, celebrities and historical figures" including television news legend Walter Cronkite. Noting that several San Francisco mayors (sitting or retired) were at liberty to attend, Caen quipped, "Obviously, the Grand Jury hasn't been doing its job."Template:Thinsp<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

File:HerbCaenWay StreetSign SanFrancisco.jpg

Among other honors a promenade along the city's historic bayfront Embarcadero was christened Template:SicTemplate:Thinsp<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>—a reference to what Caen called his "three-dot journalism" for the ellipses separating his column's short items.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> This was particularly appropriate given the recent demolition of an eyesore against which Caen had long campaigned: the elevated Embarcadero Freeway, built astride the Embarcadero forty years earlier and derided by Caen as "The Dambarcadero."Template:Thinsp<ref>[1] Template:Webarchive</ref> A tribute was inserted in the Congressional Record.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Caen continued to write, though less frequently.<ref name="cool_gray">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He died February 1, 1997.<ref name="nyt_obit"/> His funeralTemplate:Mdashbheld at Grace Cathedral despite his Jewish heritageTemplate:Refn ("the damndest saddest, most wonderful funeral anyone ever had, but the only man who could properly describe it isn't here," said close friend and local nightclub owner Enrico Banducci)Template:RTemplate:Mdashb was followed by a candlelight procession<ref name="nyt_raises">Template:Cite news</ref> to Aquatic Park, where his will had provided for a fireworks display—climaxed by a pyrotechnic image of the manual typewriter he had long called his "Loyal Royal".

"No other newspaper columnist ever has been so long synonymous with a specific placeTemplate:Nbsp... Part of his appeal seemed to lie in the endless bonhomie he projected," said his New York Times obituary, comparing him to Walter Winchell "but with the malice shorn off."Template:Thinsp<ref name="nyt_obit"/>

The Chronicle projected a one-fifth decline in subscriptions—surveys had shown that Caen was better-read than the front page.<ref name="nyt_obit"/> Reprints of his columns remain a periodic feature of the Chronicle.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Bibliography

File:Loyal royal.jpg

One of Caen's four "Loyal Royals" on display at the Chronicle offices

• The San Francisco Book, Photographs by Max Yavno, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston/The Riverside Press, Cambridge, 1948.
• Baghdad by the Bay, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1949.
• Baghdad: 1951, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y., 1950.
• Don't Call It Frisco, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1953.
• Herb Caen's Guide to San Francisco, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1957.
• Only in San Francisco, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, N.Y., 1960.
• San Francisco: City on Golden Hills, illustrated by Dong Kingman, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1967.
• The Cable Car and the Dragon, illustrated by Barbara Ninde Byfield. Doubleday (1972), reprinted by Chronicle Books (1986) (children's picture book)
• ’’One Man’s San Francisco’’, Doubleday & Company Inc., Garden City, New York, 1976.
• Above San Francisco, with Robert Cameron. Aerial photographs of historic and contemporary San Francisco, with text by Caen. (1986)

Further reading

• Rob Morse, "No Comparison," The San Francisco Examiner, June 25, 1986, p.35.
• John Lumea,"Herb Caen, Emperor Norton & 'Frisco'", The Emperor Norton Trust, June 30, 2015.

External links

• Chronology
• Herb Caen's first column
• Collection of Caen's columns
• Template:LCAuth
• Nuts, crooks and judges enliven SF Jewish who's who
• "The 1996 Pulitzer Prize Winners: Special Awards and Citations. Works.". The Pulitzer Prizes. Reprints of four tributes to Caen published April 10, 1996