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Posts published by “Herb Caen”

All Through The Day [1965]

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…

Baghdad By The Bay [1950]

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…

The Cars That Were

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…

You Should Live So Long

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…

Mister Nice Guy

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,…

‘Love It Or Leave It’

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,…

Your Humble Servant

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…

San Franciscana

Oh, it's a city, all right. Idle statistic: San Francisco has some 800 buildings over seven stories tall, more than the rest of California combined. Places like San Jose, Sacramento and possibly Cucamonga have a…

Distant Heroes

I remember when the spitball was legal and when Three Finger Mordecai Brown had five fingers and when the 1929 Seals had a club that could have beaten most of the majors and when the…

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