Herb Caen: The Funeral That Won’t Die

The day-long memorial of San Francisco's newspaper columnist

Take it away, Wikipedia:

Herbert Eugene Caen (/keɪn/; April 3, 1916 – February 1, 1997) was a San Francisco humorist and journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, and offbeat puns and anecdotes—“A continuous love letter to San Francisco”—appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle for almost sixty years (excepting a relatively brief defection to The San Francisco Examiner) and made him a household name throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

For six decades, it seemed every restaurant and bar in the city had a framed Herb Caen column mention hanging on the wall. People of a certain age still save copies of every Caen item that mentions their name. It’s amazing to think that one newspaper columnist could mean so much to so many.

To younger generations, Herb Caen was that old-fashioned guy who was still churning out the daily words in the Chronicle. But in his prime he was plenty hip, hanging with John Lennon and Alfred Hitchcock and Sinatra and a million others. He walked the city, made the scene, played drums. He was the person who came up with the word “beatnik.” They gave him a special Pulitzer in 1996 “for his extraordinary and continuing contribution as a voice and conscience of his city.”

Before social media made us all shrill and argumentative and convinced of our own cleverness, people mailed in items to Herb Caen, and he would fold those bits into his column, every single day. It now sounds insane. Who would do such a thing? On a manual typewriter?

He wasn’t a must-read for the rest of the country. He was very specifically the Bay Area. A friend in Hawaii once told me that Caen’s column was syndicated to the Honolulu Sunday paper, and it was always baffling to locals. Why are we reading this?

I only met him once. He was appearing with a local version of the Rock Bottom Remainders all-author rock band at Slim’s, in SF. I watched him play drums for a few tunes, in a suit and tie, casually chewing gum and not missing a beat. He’d written me a few encouraging notes in the past, so after he got offstage I introduced myself. Wearing the scrappy 1990s uniform of boots and black leather jacket, unshaven and unruly and already a few beers into the evening. He seemed hard of hearing, but he was friendly, and gave off a cool jazz-dad vibe. He said, “You should write for the Chronicle!” In my headspace at the time, I probably thought, why would I do that? I’m making 75 bucks a week for a column where I get to swear!

His death was the end of an era, not just of three-dot journalism, but of the entire Bay Area as an entity most people could agree on. Things were not going to be the same. He was no longer there to thread that needle, keep the city united.

He died February 1, 1997, and the city held a memorial like no other. I knew it was going to be weird, so my buddy Tom and I spent the day wandering through all of that. This piece was published in SF Weekly, and soon after it appeared, I came home to my funky little studio apartment and opened the mailbox. Inside was a nicely engraved thank-you card from the Caen family.

It's approximately 2 p.m. on Herb Caen Day, the afternoon of his much-publicized memorial service at Grace Cathedral. Standing in front of the overflowing Moose’s, North Beach hangout for politicos, second-tier players, and drunk boyfriends of Angela Alioto, are two elderly women sipping Caen’s popular Vitamin V, today’s unofficial drink of the city. They are white-haired, barrel-shaped matrons, with bright-red lipstick caked on their wrinkled lips, both wearing necklaces of unspeakably ugly baubles, busily chatting about taking a quick photo of Willie Brown, but he hasn’t arrived yet, and so one contemplates taking a picture of the other, just to make use of the camera. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, City Lights publisher and King of the Beatniks, strolls past unnoticed.

A creepy little man barely five feet tall wanders through the sidewalk crowd of drunks, valets, people in wheelchairs, and men hobbling with walkers. He wears a black, rumpled fedora, ersatz Burberry scarf, and measly white mustache, with a walking cane dangling from one arm and raincoat over the shoulders. He shuffles up and down the sidewalk without purpose, sipping a cocktail and chain-smoking thin cigarettes. Eccentric heir to the McCormick/Schilling spice fortune? The next Truman Capote? Or just another unctuous social climber, with cheap caviar on the breath and secondhand silk shorts? He attempts a conversation with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. She politely ignores him. He quickly lights another cigarette, and heads through the front door of Moose’s for a refill. The two amateur photographers spot him and lean into his face.

“WHO ARE YOU?” blurts one of the baubled women. Capote Jr. arrogantly pulls the cigarette from his mouth, dashes it to the pavement at their feet, and steps inside without so much as a glance in their direction. A parking valet materializes, quickly stepping on the burning butt, shaking his head. The women both break into laughter.

Not that some people didn’t treat the day with reverence. Nob Hill was packed with Caen fans, primarily middle-aged wine-and-cheese townies who could afford to blow off the day. Up in the cathedral’s balcony was the city’s press corps, vultures with cameras and notepads, eagerly composing yet more Caen pornography which all of us would later devour word by word. Prominent at one end was Examiner columnist Rob Morse, enjoying a choice box seat to the closing night of his primary competition. Caen item contributor Strange de Jim grandiosely removed his trademark pillow case disguise to reveal his identity to the world, and the cathedral gasped at his face—an image that had already been broadcast all over local TV for the past week. Willie Brown spoke eloquently and too long, and Robin Williams provided comic relief (“Look up ‘irony’ in Webster’s, and it says ‘See Ivy League.’”) The assembled throng laughed, others sat on the steps listening to the service inside, a few wiping their eyes, and it was strange and moving and bombastic and necessary.

One man did a brisk business on California Street, manning a table of Caen commemorative buttons. When asked if he was selling a lot of them, he answered breezily, “Oh yeah, we’re gonna miss Herb Caen for sure,” and turned to take another dollar.

One local TV station pompously claims they are “the best place for news, in the best place on Earth.” They could well have been describing the final procession out of the church. In a ceremony worthy of an assassinated pope, the mayor and immediate family were escorted by security down the steps, flanked by rows of police and state troopers, and into a long black limousine, with the mayor stepping into his own separate limo for the arduous one-block commute to a reception at the Fairmont. An unbelievably regal affair for a newspaper columnist who reportedly never liked funerals or memorials, and an incredible outpouring of love and friendship for a man whose very occupation most likely made him one of the loneliest people in the city.

Perhaps that’s why local columnists have each clocked in with their tip of the hat to Caen, from Scott Ostler to Art Hoppe, Leah Garchik, Warren Hinckle, Morse, Pat Steger, Cynthia Robins, and a few remarks from the Bay Guardian; even Stephanie Salter’s description of Caen’s kissing technique paid homage in a bizarre way. We’ve all thought ourselves crazy to type our columns in solitude, of which most of these efforts will be tossed in the street, left in a cafe, or shredded like the wheat in Caen’s morning cereal. In trolling the city, I sometimes think of Herb Caen facing the deadline all those years, and wonder, as I’m panicking over finding items for a weekly column, how he could continue to produce that many words every day, and not end up in the church tower with a high-powered rifle, a case of Stoli, and a handful of lemons, screaming, “I got your three dots right here!” before emptying a clip into a packed streetcar.

To readers under 40, Caen epitomized the upper crust, a curious, blue-blazered Old World of operas, ballets, five-star restaurants, and vacations to Morocco. His books are hard to find, and if you do get ahold of one it’s his style that is worth digesting, rather than the dated gossip. He may have been Mr. San Francisco, but the closest many of us will ever get to this version of the city is having a drink at Bix, before we get kicked out for inappropriate footwear. For instance, later that evening elsewhere in the city, at a reception at ArtRock Gallery, when asked about Herb Caen, the crowd of hot-rod art aficionados simply shrugged and sipped their beer. He’s not on the radar.

But many citizens eagerly revisited the past last weekend, when North Beach effectively shut down for tee martoonis. A boozy haze washed over the neighborhood all afternoon, a ruddy-faced menagerie of bums and bankers elbowing in for the drink specials, guzzling vodka like it was an episode of Bewitched and everybody was Darrin Stephens, celebrating the newest ad account with Larry Tate.

And out in front of the Washington Square Bar & Grill, after someone announced that he’s always considered me the “Herb Caen of the nose-ring set,” the conversation turned to the nearby Bruce Bellingham, another of Caen’s frequent item contributors and confidant-of-sorts. Has he considered filling the gap?

“I can't even think of that right now,” replied Bellingham, fresh from a reception with the immediate family, and clearly shaken by the emotions of the day.

Talk moved to other topics, one fellow wondering aloud, “After Carol Burnett's show got canceled, I wonder whatever happened to Bob Mackie?”

A perfect piece of surreal San Francisco that Caen would have enjoyed—on the day of his memorial, rather than rose-tinted sentiment, someone is discussing the career status of ’70s gown designers.