Herb Caen

At 80 years old, Herb Caen has this physical status:

Herb Caen (1916–1997), a San Francisco journalist with a daily column of local news and insider gossip, socioeconomic and political events, traumatic pundits, and offbeat anecdotes, had been published in the San Francisco Chronicle for almost 60 years (excepting a brief stint to The San Francisco Examiner) and made him a household name throughout the San Francisco Bay area. "The key to Caen's success, according to the editor of a rival publication, was his ability to remove a veil of fog, a happy child on a cable car, a family in mourning, and give every circumstance the magic touch that gives a reader an insight into the day's happenings. He was named the "voice and conscience" of San Francisco by a special Pulitzer Prize.

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Career

Caen was born to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. Herbert Eugene Caen was born in Sacramento, California, on April 3, 1916, but he wanted to emphasize that his parents, pool hall operator Lucien Caen and Augusta (Gross) Caen, had spent the summer nine months before at the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. He covered athletics for the Sacramento Union after high school (where he wrote a column titled "Corridor Gossip"), and in later years he referred to himself as "the Sacamenna Kid" in the Sacramento Union;

Caen began writing a radio programming column for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1936. Caen suggested a daily column on the city itself when the column was suspended in 1938; "It's News to Me" first appeared on July 5. Excepting Caen's four years in the United States Army Air Forces during WWII and a 1950-to-1958 stint at The San Francisco Examiner, his column appeared every day except Saturday and September, when it fell to five times per week — "more than 16,000 columns of 1,000 words per week" — "an amazing and unduplicated feat."

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A colleague wrote in 1996:

Caen had a major influence on popular culture, particularly in its language. During San Francisco's 1967 Summer of Love, he coined the word beatnik in 1958 and popularized hippie. He popularized obscure — often amusing — terms such as Frisbeetarianism — and ribbed Berkeley as Berserkeley for its often-conservative politics. Many of his regular, if odd features included "Namephreaks" — people with names (aptronyms) that are specifically appropriate or inappropriate to their occupations or professions, such as substitute teacher Mr. Fillin, hospital consultant Patience Scales, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Kneebone, and Cardinal Rapsong's spokesman on rock 'n roll's evils included Dr. Rott, the Vatican's spokesman on rock 'n

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Edsel Ford Fung, whose local celebrity as "the world's rudest waiter" was a result of his death in 1984, who wrote about him in Caen's columns on a regular basis.

Although Caen was relying on "an army of trustworthy tippers," all items were fact-checked.

Now and then a thing (usually a joke or pun) was credited to a "Strange de Jim" for his first contribution ("Why should I have to believe in it in this one?" In 1972, the first appearance of the mask appeared. Sometimes convicted of alter ego, de Jim (whose letters bore no return address and who met Caen only once) was revealed after Caen's death to become a Castro District journalist, but after several coy interviews with the press, remains anonymous.

Caen took delight in "seeing what he could sneak by his editors — his 'naughties,'" as this article about a shopper looking for a Barbie doll says: "Does Barbie come with Ken?" He asked the perky saleswoman. 'Actually no,' she answered slyly. Barbie is a member of the G.I. "She fakes it with Ken."

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Current items were discarded in favour of "Mr. San Francisco's" reflections on his unconditional love for his adopted city, musing on (for example):

An occasional column was devoted to more serious topics, including Caen's recollection of being a young reporter who was hanging as a young reporter on May 1, 1960.

On December 12, 1960, Caen wrote:

About a hundred cards were sent, the majority from San Francisco Bay, California.

In 1949, a series of essays, Baghdad-by-the-Bay (a term he'd coined to depict San Francisco's eclectic multiculturalism), appeared in San Francisco, and Don't Call It Frisco, a children's photo book, was released in Los Angeles.

"My name won't be in the paper, and I wouldn't know if I was dead or alive," he told an interviewer in 1993, and his obituary would be his last column: "I will lead off at the end, where I face the old Queen with my nose on the 'I' key."

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