For a world-famous city, San Francisco has a surprisingly small coterie of so-called “celebrities” (a celebrity being, I would say, someone who is widely known outside his own community and his own field of endeavor).…
Posts published by “Herb Caen”
Let’s see how a day looks in San Francisco. To those who bend over a desk or a hot stove for eight hours, I guess a day in San Francisco is pretty much like a…
San Francisco, to me, is like a house of cards: postcards in glowing colors stacked against the hills that march from the Bay on one side to the Pacific Ocean on the other. The real…
Cadillac, “American Standard for the World,” may be making a mistake in its slick and glossy magazine ads. In the foreground we see the latest 1975 model looking for all the world, give or take…
People, places and things we can do without: Bars that don't have a back mirror. When you're having a drink alone (hi there) it's nice to have a familiar face to stare at, even your…
If there is one thing you can say about me without risking a libel suit, it’s that I have terrific manners. As Bill Saroyan wrote one time in the California Pelican, “He drives you crazy,…
It still seems to be a popular bumper strip — “America, love it or leave it!” — and it sticks in the craw as well as to the chromium. Along with its gag writer's glibness,…
What I consider the most cynical utterance in the entire literature of Americana — H.L. Mencken's "No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public" -- presents a point of view I…