Being a fun-loving San Franciscan (redundant) I play a lot of games in this hallowed space—self cancelling phrases (working press). Namepheraks (Fran and Bill Flesher own a nudist resort near San Berdoo) commute firm names (the King Kong Window Washing Co, and thanks, Bunk Sicotte) and ever so many others that have dismayed readers for 51 years (everything keeps for a long time in S.F. Even columnists.) We’ve had the “You know it’s gonna be a long day when” game (example: when you get dressed in the morning and your shoes are still warm). There’s the “You’re in big trouble when” game (Dr. Herman Schwartz submits: “When your wife, after having surgery, asks the doc, “Will I be able to have sex? And he replies, “Yes, but only with your husband—I don’t want you to get too excited.” And Agnes Pritchard enters the lists with, “You know it’s gonna be a bad day when you see your name on a street sign.”
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This last one calls for some explanation. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, esteemed dean of beatnik poets, suggested recently that certain S.F. Streets be named for writers, artists, dancers and so on, including even the oversigned. The public works committee of the Bd. of Supes is going along with the idea but has decided that only dead people should qualify— Saroyan, Dashiell Hammett, Kerouac, Frank Norris, Isadora Duncan, Bufano and (I’m throwing this in on my own) sculptor Ralph Stackpole, hence the point of Agnew Pritchard’s sharp little line that the only good writer is a dead writer. I don’t think anybody can argue with that.
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In dashing off his plan, poet Ferlinghetti created a bit of doggerel with the suggestion that Mary St., a one-way alley that runs along-side Fortress Chronicle, be retitled Herb Caen Lane redolent of daffydills, Sweet Williams and forget-me nots. Since I have to die to achieve this immortality, I say thanks but no thanks. Besides, I was honored a bit more substantially a few years ago in Sacramento. At a ceremony that drew a goodly crowd of used-car salesmen, bartenders and lobbyists, my birthplace at 10th and O streets was affixed with a handsome plaque headlined, “Local Boy Makes Good.” Bands played, pigeons flew, rocks were hurled and relatives cheered. One week later, the house at 10th and O was torn down for a redevelopment project.
Footnote: Since there is already a Gold St. over there near Montgomery and Jackson, it appears that novelist Herb Gold has it made, dead or alive.
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Further aside: An enterprising reporter, doing a man-in-the-street number on Ferlinghetti’s plan, discovered that hardly anybody had heard of William Saroyan or Frank Norris. To paraphrase Santayana, those who cannot remember the past are not doomed to repeat it and that’s too bad. San Francisco is a city of yesterdays and Saroyan was a charmingly noisy part of it, laughing at the human comedy he created.
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Santayana puts one in mind of another famous esthete, Bernard Berenson. After I wrote the other day about the three great cities of Europe — Paris, London, Venice — John E. Robinson III recalled these words of berenson about Venice. “The richest, and most exquisite, artifact in the history of civilization because she has been spared by that great and beneficent goddess, Poverty. For a century the Venetians have been too poor to build anything new.”
So the flight to L.A. Of all those go-go companies may eventually be all to the good-good. Market St. will never be another Champs Elysees, but given the S.F. penchant for deferred maintenance, it could easily become as flooded as the Grand Canal. Then, as that wonderful supervisor once recommended, we could buy two gondolas and let nature take its course.
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Getting back to fun & games, so-called, Judith Turgendreich says, “You know you’re in trouble when a letter arrives from conductor Herbert Blomstedt explaining the new modern work to be performed that week by the S. F. Symphony. Then, when the composer walks onstage to explain it further, you know you’re really in for it. Of course, the reason for this is so the audience will know that the pre-concert warm-up has ended and the next work is beginning.” Bang-on, as the Brits say.
Our chief music critic, Robert Commanday, has done a commendable job of trying to keep the town musickers from rehearsing onstage in full view of a digusted audience, but to no avail. What a treat it is when an orchestra like the Vienna Philharmonic is in town. The guys walk onstage at the appointed hour, sit down and start playing. And WHAT playing!
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One sentence newsflash in the London Telegraph, culled by Tom Rooney: “Chili powder is to be spread over farmland in the Queen’s Windsor Castle estate in an attempt to deter pigeons.” You might think this might work in Hallidie plaza and Union Square? Or maybe giving the feathered rats a hotfoot is not cricket. Just keep them out of Herb Caen lane, by golly.
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