Great San Franciscan Characters #8: Rev. Cecil Williams

One of the most controversial and radical religious and social leaders of his time, the Rev. Cecil Williams has been an influential figure in San Francisco public life for the past half century.  Combining spirituality, left-wing politics and unstinting social activism he has been a inspirational spokesperson for the poor and margininalized in the city and across the country.  

He was born on 22nd September 1929 in San Angelo, Texas, one of six children.  After graduating from Huston-Tillotson University in 1952, he was one of the first five African American graduates of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University three years later.

He bacame the pastor of the GLIDE Memorial United Methodist Church at Ellis and Taylor in San Francisco in 1963.  Its mission has been to “create a radically inclusive, just and loving community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization”. 

Diversity and compassion have been at the heart of Williams’s work.  People of all races, ethnic backgrounds, social classes, cultures, ages, faiths and sexual orientations are welcome to join in the Celebrations held every Sunday at 9am and 11am to “experience the energy of spiritual liberation coupled with the fusion of jazz, blues and gospel performed by the renowned GLIDE Ensemble choir and the Change Band”.  An example of this is contained in the following video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wg7jmgnwAds

It is the practical demonstration of his belief in diversity that has earned him both veneration and notoriety.  In 1965 he became the first minister to perform  same sex marriages long before the battles of the past decade and he was also instrumental in forming the Council on Religion and Homosexuality in 1964.  The church provided healing and comfort for the LGBTQ community in 1978 in the aftermath of Harvey Milk’s assassination, and it was the first  in the US to offer HIV testing after Sunday services during the AIDS epidemic of the eighties.

In 1967 Williams courted further controversy by ordering the cross removed from the church’s sanctuary, stating that it was a symbol of death and that his congregation should celebrate life and living instead.

His contribution to the struggle for civil and human rights is unquestioned and prompted him to host political rallies in which Angela Davis and the Black Panthers spoke in the seventies.  He has also arranged lectures by Bill Cosby and Billy Graham.  Other prominent public figures that have frequented and supported the church’s work include Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Robin Williams, Maya Angelou and Warren Buffett.

Under his leadership, GLIDE Memorial became one of the most prominent liberal churches in the US, and now boasts a diverse congregation of over 11,000 members.  It is the largest provider of social services in the city, serving over 3,000 meals a day, providing AIDS / HIV screenings, innovative adult education programs, creative arts and mentoring for youth,  computer and job skills training, drug and alcohol recovery programs and giving assistance to women dealing with domestic violence, homelessness, substance abuse and mental health issues.  GLIDE Health Services was hailed by House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a model for national healthcare in March 2008.

Williams retired as pastor in 2000 in accordance with United Methodist Church rules.  However, the local congregation and affiliated non-profit foundation hired him in the newly created role of Minister of Liberation, thus enabling him to continue officially serving the community and church.

He was married to school teacher Evelyn Robinson from 1956 until their divorce in 1976.  They had two children, Albert and Kim.

He has been married to Janice Mirikitani, who co-founded the GLIDE Memorial Church with him and who has worked with him on many social programs, since 1982. 

 

The church is credited with helping Will Smith and his son get back on their feet in the 2006 film, the Pursuit of Happyness.  His autobiography I’m Alive was published in 1980.

In recent years he has received numerous honors and awards, including Southern Methodist University’s Most Distinguished Alumni, the National Caring Award and an appointment as Chairman for the Northern California Dr Martin Luther King Jnr Birthday Observance Commitee at the personal request of Dr King’s widow.

The challenges for Williams and his church are no less demanding than they were when he became pastor neary fifty years ago, and are best expressed, along with a restatement of his original vision, by the GLIDE website:

“a suffering economy, poverty, drug abuse, violence, and despair continue to persist in San Francisco as they do across the country. By working to combat these problems, GLIDE serves as an oasis in a desert of hopelessness, marching to the edge where victories for social justice are won. GLIDE is a place where old, destructive ways of being are thrown out and new ones created. Where names are named and love is celebrated and a simple call goes out to all races, classes, genders, ages, and sexual orientations: It’s recovery time. It’s time to love unconditionally”.

I trust we can all say “Amen” to that.

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Snow at sea level in San Francisco? It could happen this weekend

Snow at sea level? It could happen this weekend.

For all the picture postcard scenes that San Francisco has to offer, rarely, very rarely, are they draped in the white stuff.  But this weekend, according to the above article in the San Francisco Chronicle, there is a distinct possibility that, for the first time in 35 years and only the twelfth time since 1856, snow will fall in Chinatown and Union Square.

In one sense I am glad that this may come – and go - more than a fortnight before I visit the city, but I am equally disappointed that I will not be able to witness this extraordinary meteorological sight at first hand.  I’ve no doubt, however, that cameras will be a-clicking in all parts and I will have to content myself with seeing the photographs.

I hope this phenomenon, along with the seven feet that have fallen in Tahoe over the past ten days, heralds a mild, sun-drenched March and April!

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Another bookstore bites the dust

Jerry Seinfeld once said that a “bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence that people are still thinking”.  If that is true, and I rather incline to the view that it is, then ignorance has claimed another modern victim. I learnt this morning by e mail that the giant Border’s bookstore in Union Square, San Francisco is about to close.  I’m not sure what date it will finally shut its doors, but I do hope the sale that began yesterday will still be in full swing when I visit towards the end of next month.

An oasis of culture in my least favourite part of the city, I have always looked forward to spending an hour, and a few dollars, there when on vacation.  It was one of the first bookstores in my experience that appeared to actively encourage customers to stay awhile and browse through the books and magazines before purchase.  Equally, it possessed a (Seattle’s Best) cafe that was always packed, even in the minutes leading up to its midnight closure. Thankfully, that has become a model for the diminishing number of bookstores in the UK in recent years.

In one sense I am hardly surprised – the Border’s bookstore in Oxford Street in London closed a couple of years ago, replaced by yet another tacky youth ”fashion” emporium.  And another San Francisco branch – in South Beach – went out of business in October. Both were victims of the economic downturn in general and the rise of internet based competition.

Now, I can’t abdicate responsibility for my own part in the demise of the bookstore.  I can never pass one without going in – after all they are increasingly rare sights -but it is as often these days to check the price of books I want before rushing home, going online and buying them at massively discounted cost at Amazon.  I have resisted the allure of a Kindle or similar e-reader up till now, although the convenience might prove too much of a temptation before long.  What I will never lose the love for, however, is the feel and look of books and the generally civilised atmosphere of bookstores. 

At least I can still comfort myself with visits to the City Lights Bookstore in North Beach, Barnes and Noble in Fisherman’s Wharf and the Booksmith in Haight-Ashbury on my forthcoming trip.  I just hope I’m not lamenting their demise too before the next time I take that eleven hour flight west.

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Great San Franciscan Characters #7: Tessie Wall

In an era when cheap prostitution was rife in San Francisco, Tessie Wall’s brothel in the then fashionable Tenderloin district was a beacon of elegance and good taste, making her the best known and most successful parlor-house madam in town.

Teresa Susan Donohue was born south of Market Street of Irish Catholic parents in May 1869.  A “flamboyant, well-upholstered blond” with blue eyes, she weighed 250 pounds, neither uncommon nor unpopular for a lady in her profession at the time.  She was a ribald, hard drinker with a big heart and is alleged to have outdrunk boxer John L. Sullivan.

Her first husband, a fireman, died in the early nineties, leaving her to support herself and a young son.  To make ends meet she entered the household of wealthy banker Judah Boas as a domestic servant, graduating to a dance hall girl.

In 1898 she opened her first brothel at 211 O’Farrell Street but this was  destroyed by one of the many fires triggered by the earthquake of 1906.  Undaunted she reopened it in a three storey brick building with terracotta facing at 337 O’Farrell Street.  It was a grand affair with the first floor comprising a saloon whilst upstairs was a large, mirrored ballroom, dining room, kitchen, twelve bedrooms and several parlors.

She usually had between ten and fifteen girls, most under twenty years of age, on call at any one time, charging around $20 a “trick”.  The brothel’s proceeds were doubled by the sale of liqour and champagne.

Clients were met at the back door by a black maid who ushered them into the parlor to meet Tessie.  As he entered the main receiving room he would be confronted by a needlepoint motto that read ”If every man was as true to his country as he is to his wife – God help the USA”.

Tessie would invariably call out “Company, girls!”, heralding the sedate entrance of several prostitutes.  Whilst the client made up his mind he was expected to buy drinks for the company and put coins into an automatic music box.  Tessie had strict rules on manners and bad language.

She astutely befriended many in the police department.  Indeed, her fame and popularity were never better displayed than at the annual Policeman’s Ball held in the Civic Auditorium.  Bejeweled and elegantly attired, she would hang on the arm of Mayor “Sunny” Jim Rolph before she made her grand entrance by planting herself at a table reserved for other ladies in her profession, slapping a $1,000 bill on the bar and exclaiming “Drink that up boys!”.

Although earning $5,000 a month, her penchant for horse racing, and antiques to furnish her establishment, prevented her from ever becoming rich. 

The city’s brothels were closed in January 1917 on the orders of the Navy Department in an attempt to prevent sailors fighting in the war from enjoying themselves on leave. 

She had married her second husband, gambler, pool hall owner and Republican boss of the Tenderloin‘s vice activity, Frank Daroux, in 1906, but after he had been unfaithful to her and sought a divorce, she shot him twice in 1917 because, she claimed, “I Loved Him, Damn Him”.  However, she was released when he refused to press charges.  

She retired to a small apartment in the Mission, which, unsurprisingly, became a speakeasy at Prohibition.  She died in 1932, leaving many of her most prized antiques.  The massive gold-plated Napoleon bed that Daroux had bought her in 1900 for $1,000 was sold at auction for just $105.

She once claimed that she would rather be a lamppost on Powell Street than own all of San Mateo County.  Well, San Francisco does get you like that doesn’t it?

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In with the new in San Francisco

In my recent post California Dreamin’……and of Nevada too, I promised, or rather threatened, to burden you with my plans for the San Francisco leg of our upcoming trip.

We have rented an apartment in NOPA (North of the Panhandle) for a fortnight this time, hiring a car for the first week and buying a City Pass, which includes a seven day MUNI passport, for the second.  This will be our eighth trip, the first few of which were only for a few days, so the temptation to revisit the same haunts was strong back then.

But now we are more experienced visitors, and whilst I suppose we cannot shake off the tourist tag, we aim to “live like locals” as much as we can.  We will, of course, still frequent favourite spots such as Golden Gate Park,  Haight-Ashbury, AT & T Park, Golden Gate Bridge, Beach Blanket Babylon and the Cliff House, but the emphasis is increasingly on new places and experiences as well as return trips to attractions we have not been to for some years.

With the car we intend to take the opportunity to venture beyond the city to Berkeley, Tiburon / Angel Island and Santa Cruz / Half Moon Bay, none of which we have done more than drive through in the past. 

Time permitting, we would also like to explore part of the northern coast, for example Point Reyes and Bodega Bay (Mendocino may be a little too far).   Given that we will be experiencing our first NHL game between the Sharks and the LA Kings, we will give downtown San Jose a look in too. Monterey / Carmel, the Napa Valley and Alcatraz (by day and night) have seen enough of us in the past, so we will spare them this time.

Back in the city the focus will be more on revisiting sites we have missed on recent trips such as Twin Peaks, Coit Tower and the Palace of Fine Arts / Exploratorium.  In addition, there are places that we have, shamefully, bypassed before that we must visit this time, including the Grace Cathedral, City Hall and the redwood grove at the Transamerica Pyramid amongst others.

New cultural experiences will include seeing our first show at the Castro Theater (Singalong Wizard of Oz?), visiting SF MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and the de Young Museum, none of which we have done before.

I am sure I will be adding to the list over the next four weeks but these are the “must-dos” at present.  Whether we succeed in meeting the challenge will be revealed in the daily blog I hope to maintain during the trip.

In the meantime, if anyone has read this and thought “yes, that’s fine but you have just got to go to………….” please let me know.

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Drastic times require drastic measures

Well, I was about to post on here that I wouldn’t be posting on here for a few days as my wife and I were visiting her parents in Lancaster for a long weekend to celebrate her father’s eightieth birthday.   Why should that present a problem I hear you ask? Are you expressly forbidden from venturing into cyberspace whilst you are there?  Well, no.  Or do they not have internet access, or, heaven forfend, computers, in the northern regions? No, that wasn’t the issue either.

It was the fact that because we were travelling by rail for a change, leaving the car to put its feet up for a few days (though it is forbidden to have any parties), we had to keep to a minimum the amount of luggage we were taking.  And I had made the painful and heroic sacrifice of deciding to leave my laptop at home.  The fact that it is currently unwell and not fit to travel is entirely irrelevant.

I was not contemplating the prospect – the absence of a computer rather than the weekend itself I should quickly add – with much relish.  But the more discerning or awake of you will have observed that the previous paragraphs were written wholly in the past tense.  Yes, I have swerved that calamity, a trifle drastically you might think, by purchasing a netbook this morning!  Having  installed it with a surprising minimum of fuss I can take it with me tomorrow. So, I may still not post as much over the next few days, but there is a chance.  You’ll just have to keep hittin’ on me to find out.

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Remember the Alamo (Square)

In my very first post on this blog I said that, despite its user friendliness, it would take me some time to get to grips with the technical demands of the site.  This has been no more apparent than in my feeble attempts to replace the pretty but irrelevant image that I inherited into one that reflects my subject matter.

Having spent weeks thinking that I needed to change the background rather than the header and getting some bizarre results, I have finally succeeded.  I will replace it from time to time with other photographs that I have taken of “everyone’s favourite city” but, for now, those Painted Ladies look mighty fine to me.  Hope you agree!

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California Dreamin’…….and of Nevada too

Five weeks tomorrow (Wednesday) my wife and I will be flying out to our second home, San Francisco, California, USA.  I use the word “home”, not in the sense that it is where we are permanently domiciled, but rather as the place where we feel most “at home”.  This will be our eighth trip to the City by the Bay and we could not be looking more forward to it.

Since the millenium we have, in the Spring of every even year (’00 to ’10 inclusive), spent 3-4 weeks “out west”.  Each vacation has followed a similar pattern - a week or so skiing in Heavenly, Lake Tahoe at the beginning and  week or two in San Francisco at the end, with three or four day visits to other locations sandwiched in between for a few days – these have included Vegas, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Death Valley and Yosemite.

Following last year’s vacation we decided that life was too short to have to wait two years for our next skiing and SF fixes, so, at least for now, it has become an annual event.  Our long term aim, finances permitting, has always been that once my wife has joined me in Retirement Row, which may still be a few years yet, we will spend longer in San Francisco / Heavenly, upwards of three months at a time, twice a year. 

But for now it’s three and a half weeks, starting with the customary first night stay in San Francisco followed by the drive to South Lake Tahoe on the following day. Ever since the night in 2002 when we thought we could make the trip from SF to Tahoe immediately following an eleven hour flight, and then, after negotiating a heavy rain-splashed evening commute out of town, spent seven hours crawling through a four foot snow storm (of which more another time), we have seen sense and stayed in the City before venturing out refreshed the next morning. 

Besides, we have developed a routine, now I suppose it warrants being dignified with the word tradition, for that overnight stay that sets the scene for the entire vacation – dinner at Calzone’s on Columbus Avenue in North Beach followed by a scan of the shelves in the City Lights Bookstore and a few drinks in Vesuvio’s in the evening, and breakfast at the Eagle Cafe on Pier 39 the next morning, along with half an hour in the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Fisherman’s Wharf stocking up on any vacation reading before we head off to Tahoe.

We are only skiing for four days this year, though it’s four more days that we would have anticipated when we left there last March.  So we are hoping for perfect spring conditions – they snow is already there, all we need now is the sun.  And the best meal of our entire trip last year was at the Riva Grill on Ski Run Marina, so we plan to eat there again.

After five nights we fly from Reno to Vegas where we are meeting my wife’s parents, both of whom are now 80 and still hitting “Sin City”! Just three nights there but, as ever, action packed – Cirque de Soleil Viva Elvis show in the Aria, possibly another show yet to be booked and a trip to the Hoover Dam with a deluxe cruise on Lake Mead. And then there’s at least two of those nights spent tackling  feisty “Whiskey Girl” cocktails at Toby Keith’s I Love this Bar and Grill.

With such tasty appetisers cleared away we move onto the main course – San Francisco.  Last year we eschewed a hotel for the first time and stayed in an apartment in Hayes Valley for two weeks.  This will now be the template for the future.   We wanted to “live like locals” as much as possible, and staying in someone’s home is a good starting point - no maids knocking at your door in the morning anxious to clean your room, you can eat in as often or as little as you want and, if you have a washer and dryer, you are never short of clean clothing!  The last facility is particularly important this year since Virgin Atlantic has halved the cabin luggage allowance since our trip last year.

We are staying in a much larger apartment this year on Fulton Street, half way between Alamo Square and Golden Gate Park.  Not only is it more spacious but it comes with a huge TV, computer and, rarest and most precious of all in San Francisco, a designated parking space.

I will post separately about our plans for San Francisco but our emphasis this year will be on new places and new experiences, though I’m sure that we won’t be able to resist returning to many of our favourite haunts such as Beach Blanket Babylon (already booked for our fifth visit), the Cliff House,  Haight-Ashbury and AT & T Park.

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My 50 favourite San Francisco quotes

Here are fifty of my favourite quotations about San Francisco.  They are all complimentary - as they should be – but I will post an alternative collection of unfavourable comments when I can.  They do exist!

For now, I hope you enjoy those below.  My personal favourites are numbers  1, 3, 11, 16, 17, 20, 24, 31 and 39.  If you have any different quotes I’d love to see them.

1. One day if I go to heaven…I’ll look around and say “It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco”. (Herb Caen)

2. San Francisco has only one drawback - ’tis hard to leave. (Rudyard Kipling)

3. You know what it is? (It) is a golden handcuff with the key thrown away. (John Steinbeck)

4. San Franciscans are very proud of their city, and they should be.  It’s the most beautiful place in the world.  (Robert Redford)

5. If you’re alive, you can’t be bored in San Francisco.  If you’re not alive, San Francisco will bring you to life.  (William Saroyan)

6. Of all cities in the United States I have seen, San Francisco is the most beautiful.  (Nikita Kruschev)

7. I prefer a wet San Francisco to a dry Manhattan. (Larry Geraldi)

8. The cool, grey city of love. (George Sterling)

9. I never dreamed I’d like any city as well as London.  San Francisco is exciting, moody, exhilarating.  I even love the muted fogs.  (Julie Christie)

10. I don’t know of any other city where you can walk through so many culturally diverse neighbourhoods, and you’re never out of sight of the wild hills.  Nature is very close here.  (Gary Snyder)

11. San Francisco is 49 square miles surrounded by reality.  (Paul Kantner)

12. The ultimate (travel destination) for me would be one perfect day in San Francisco.  It’s a perfect 72 degrees, clear, the sky bright blue.  I’d start down at Fisherman’s Wharf with someone I really like and end with a romantic dinner and a ride over the Golden Gate Bridge.  There’s no city like it anywhere.  And, if I could be there with the girl of my dreams, that would be the ultimate.  (Larry King)

13. Leaving San Francisco is like saying goodbye to an old sweetheart.  You want to linger as long as possible.  (Walter Kronkite)

14. There’s no question this is where I want to live.  Never has been.  (Robin Williams)

15. San Francisco is one of my favourite cities in the world…I would probably rank it at the top or near the top.  It’s small but photogenic and has layers…You never have problems finding great angles that people have never done.  (Ang Lee)

16. When you get tired of walking around in San Francisco, you can always lean against it.  (unknown)

17. You wouldn’t think such a place as San Francisco could exist.  The wonderful sunlight here, the hills, the great bridges, the Pacific at your shoes.  Beautiful Chinatown.  Every race in the world.  The sardine fleets sailing out.  The little cable-cars whizzing down The City hills….And all the people are open and friendly.  (Dylan Thomas)

18. In all my travels I have never seen the hospitality of San Francisco equalled anywhere in the world.  (Conrad Hilton)

19. Your city is remarkable not only for its beauty.  It is also, of all the cities in the United States, the one whose name, the world over, conjures up the most visions and more than any other city incites one to dream.  (Georges Pompidou)

20. It is a good thing the early settlers landed on the East Coast; if they’d landed in San Francisco first, the rest of the country would still be uninhabited.  (Herbert Mye)

21. What fetched me instantly (and thousands of other newcomers with me) was the subtle but unmistakeable sense of escape from the United States.  (H.L. Mencken)

22. The City of San Francisco (the metropolis of the State) considering its age, is by long odds the most wonderful city on the face of the earth.  (G.W. Sullivan)

23. You have in San Francisco this magnificent Civic Center crowned by a City Hall which I have never seen anywhere equalled.  (Joseph Strauss)

24. Every man should be allowed to love two cities, his own and San Francisco.  (Gene Fowler)

25. Of all American cities of whatever size the most friendly on preliminary inspection, and on further acquaintance the most likable. The happiest-hearted, the gayest, the most care-free city on this continent.  (Irwin S. Cobb)

26. No city invites the heart to come to life as San Francisco does.  Arrival in San Francisco is an experience in living.  (William Saroyan)

27. God took the beauty of the Bay of Naples, the Valley of the Nile, the Swiss Alps, the Hudson River Valley, rolled them into one and made San Francisco Bay.  (Fiorello La Guardia)

28. I always see about six scuffles a night when I come to San Francisco.  That’s one of the town’s charms.  (Erroll Flynn)

29. San Francisco! – one of my two favorite cities.  There is more grace per square foot in San Francisco than any place on earth!  (Bishop Fulton J. Sheen)

30. I don’t think San Francisco needs defending.  I never meet anyone who doesn’t love the place, Americans or others.  (Doris Lessing)

31. San Francisco is Beautiful People wearing a bracelet of bridges.  (Hal Lipset)

32. San Francisco is the greatest…the hills…fabulous food…most beautiful and civilised people.  (Duke and Duchess of Bedford)

33. I love San Francisco.  It would be a perfect place for a honeymoon.  (Kim Novak)

34. Now there’s a grown-up swinging town.  (Frank Sinatra)

35. I don’t like San Francisco.  I love it!  (Dorothy Lamour)

36. Two days in this city is worth two months in New York.  (Robert Menzies)

37. I’m just mad for San Francisco.  It is like London and Paris stacked on top of each other.  (Twiggy)

38. San Francisco is poetry.  Even the hills rhyme.  (Pat Montandon)

39. I love this city.  If I am elected, I’ll move the White House to San Francisco. Everybody’s so friendly.  (Robert Kennedy)

40. I like the fog that creeps over the whole city every night about five, and the warm protective feeling it gives…and lights of San Francisco at night, the fog horn, the bay at dusk and the little flower stands where spring flowers appear before anywhere else in the country…But, most of all, I like the view of the ocean from the Cliff House.  (Irene Dunne)

41.  We’re crazy about this city.  First time we came here, we walked the streets all day – all over town – and nobody hassled us.  People smiled, friendly-like, and we knew we could live here……Los Angeles? That’s just a big parking lot where you buy a hamburger for a trip to San Francisco……And the beautiful old houses and the strange light.  We’ve never been in a city with light like this.  We sit in our hotel room for hours, watching the fog come in, the light change.  (John Lennon and Yoko Ono)

42.  San Francisco is a city with the assets of a metropolis without the disadvantages of size and industry.  (Jack Kenny)

43. San Francisco is one of the great cultural plateaus in the world….one of the really urbane communities in the United States…one of the truly cosmopolitan places – and for many, many years, it has always had a warm welcome for human beings from all over the world.  (Duke Ellington)

44. No visit to the United States would be complete without San Francisco – this beautiful city, center of the West, very well known for its beauty and the place where the United Nations was born.  (Queen Sirikit of Thailand)

45. To a traveler paying his first visit, it has the interest of a new planet.  It ignores the meteorological laws which govern the rest of the world.  (Fitz Hugh Ludlow)

46. Cities are like gentlemen, they are born, not made.  You are either a city, or you are not, size has nothing to do with it.  I bet San Francisco was a city from the very first time it had a dozen settlers.  New York is “Yokel”, but San Francisco is “City at Heart”.  (Will Rogers)

47. This is the first place in the United States where I sang, and I like San Francisco better than any other city in the world.  I love no city more than this one.  Where else could I sing outdoors on Christmas Eve?  (Luisa Tetrazzini)

48. San Francisco is  a city where people are never more abroad than when they are at home.  (Benjamin F. Taylor)

49. It’s the grandest city I saw in America.  If everyone acted as the San Franciscans did, there would be hope for settlement of the world’s difficulties.  (Frol Zozlov)

50. To this day the city of San Francisco remains to the Chinese the Great City of the Golden Mountains.  (Kai Fu Shah)

Many of the above quotations were discovered in Gladys Hansen’s wonderful 1995 book: San Francisco Almanac – Everything You Want to Know about Everyone’s Favorite City”. It is not easy to get hold of but worth the effort. 

 

 

 

 

 

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Great San Franciscan Characters #6: Herb Caen…

Few cities can have been as fortunate as San Francisco in having a chronicler (no pun intended) as prolific, urbane and popular as Herb Caen who wrote, in its daily newspapers, about life in the city for almost sixty years.  With more than 16,000 columns of over 1,000 words each lifelong friend, author and restaurateur, Barnaby Conrad, estimated that if “laid end to end, his columns would stretch 5.6 miles, from the Ferry Building to the Golden Gate Bridge“. 

Herbert Eugene Caen was born on 3rd April 1916 in Sacramento, though he claimed to have been conceived on the Marina in San Francisco during the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition as his parents spent the summer there “complaining about the cold”. 

He joined the Sacramento Union as a sports reporter in 1932 on graduating from high school.  Four years later he was hired to write a radio column for the San Francisco Chronicle, beginning an association that was to last for 50 of the next 61 years.  

On the scrapping of the radio column he persuaded the editor, Paul Smith, that he could write a daily column on the city, and  It’s News to Me duly debuted on 5th July 1938, appearing thereafter for six days a week.

When the U.S. entered the Second World War in 1942 he joined the Air Force, assigned to communications, and reached the rank of captain.  Returning to his Chronicle column, he continued to record and comment upon the foibles of local government and personailities.

Caen often referred to San Francisco as Baghdad-by-the-Bay,  a term he coined to reflect the city’s exotic multiculturism.  A collection of his essays bearing the same title was published in 1949, going through seven printings.  In 1953 he published the book Don’t Call it Frisco after an Examiner news item of the same name on 3rd April 1918 when Judge Mogan, presiding in a divorce case, stated that “No one refers to San Francisco by that title except people from Los Angeles”.  Emperor Norton (see #3 in this series) had previously raged against the use of the term and issued one of his imperial proclamations to that effect.  

However, a year later he left the Chronicle for higher paid work at the San Francisco Examiner, for which he worked until 1958 when he was persuaded to return to his former employer on promise of a better salary.  His “homecoming” column was published on 15th January.    

In 1976 he published One Man’s San Francisco, a fine collection of some of the best writing from his columns.  In 1988, the fitieth anniversary of the column was marked by a special edition of the Chronicle’s “Sunday Punch”.  At the age of 75 he decided to slow down by reducing his output from six to five days a week!

Caen was hugely popular and a highly influential figure in San Francisco society.  He was described by the Chronicle as a “major wit and unwavering liberal who could be charming, outspoken and, at times, disagreeable.” 

He called his work “three-dot journalism”, in reference to the ellipses by which he separated his column’s short items, all composed on his “Loyal Royal” typewriter.

His writing was imbued with a gentle, dry wit and an intimate knowledge of the politics, society and culture his adopted city and the wider Bay Area. Hardly a show, party or any other significant event in San Francisco was complete without Caen’s gregarious presence, and his clever, sometimes acerbic, comments on it the next morning in his column.  Conrad said that “he seemed to know everyone in the world; he somehow made them honorary San Franciscans and let us, his readers, have the privilege of knowing them, too”.

His witticisms and plays on words would fill another ten features, but here are a few:

• “the trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around”;
• “I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there”;
• “cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything”; and
• “the only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever”.

The Bay Bridge was ”the car-strangled spanner”, City Hall “Silly Hall” and Berkeley was “Berserkeley”.

Whilst many of his invented words have passed into history others have become not only synonymous with San Francisco but have entered the everyday language.  On 2nd April 1958, in a Pocketful of Notes, he reported on a party hosted by 50 Beatniks which spread to “over 250 bearded cats and kits”.  This is the first known use of the word.  And during the Summer of Love in 1967 he contributed more than anybody to popularising the term “hippie”. 

In 1996 he was the recipient of a special award from the Pulitzer Prize Board which acclaimed his “extraordinary and continuing contribution as a voice and conscience of the city”.  On 14th June of the same year 75,000 people, including Walter Cronkite, Robin Williams, Willie Mays, Don  Johnson and Mayor Willie Brown who presided over the event, celebrated Herb Caen Day.

He espoused many liberal causes over his career, including a life long opposition to the death penalty.  He was also one of the first mainstream newspaper men to question the Vietnam War.  But it is to his beloved San Francisco that we return for one of his most passionate campaigns, namely to have the hideous and excessively busy Embarcadero Freeway, or “Dambarcadero” as he called it, demolished.  Success came, but from an unexpected source.  The Loma Priete earthquake in 1989 damaged it so severely that the decision was taken to pull it all down.  A three mile sweep  of the Embarcadero is now named “Herb Caen Way…” in his honour.  The wide promenade is the most eastern street in San Francisco, curving round its northeast corner, proceeding along the waterfront, and ending near AT & T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, the team Caen loved.   

Despite a terminal lung-cancer diagnosis, Caen continued to write almost until his death on 1st February 1997, though his output understanadably shrunk over time. His funeral six days later was held in the Grace Cathedral, attended by 250 people with hundreds more outside listening to the hymns and eulogies over loudspeaker.

Caen had willed to the city a fireworks display which was given in Aquatic Park in front of Ghiradelli Square, concluding with a pyrotechnic image of a typewriter on the bay.  This tribute was attended by many of his friends and fans, who gathered on Herb Caen Way… on the Embarcadero, lit candles protected from the wind by dixie cups, and walked north along the waterfront to Aquatic Park.   

And all this for a local journalist!

John Steinbeck wrote that he “made a many-faceted character of the city of San Francisco….It is very probable that Herb’s city will be the one that is remembered”.

But the last fitting words should be left to Caen himself:

“One day if I go to heaven…I’ll look around and say ‘It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco’”.

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