A city is where you can sign a petition, boo the chief justice, fish off a pier, gaze at a hippopotamus, buy a flower at the corner, or get a good hamburger or a bad girl at 4 A.M. A city is where sirens make white streaks of sound in the sky and foghorns speak in dark grays. San Francisco is such a city. Herb Caen Read Quote
A good column is one that sells paper. It doesn’t matter how beautifully it is written and how much you admire the author… if it doesn’t sell any papers, it’s not a good column. It’s a terrible yardstick to use, but in the newspaper business, that’s the whole thing. Herb Caen Read Quote
Satire of satire tends to be self-canceling, and deliberate shock tactics soon lose their ability to shock, especially when they’re too deliberate. Herb Caen Read Quote
A city is a crazy concrete jungle whose people at the end of each day somehow make a small step ahead against terrible odds. Herb Caen Read Quote
Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything. Herb Caen Read Quote
I hope I go to Heaven, and when I do, I’m going to do what every San Franciscan does when he gets there. He looks around and says, ‘It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco.’ Herb Caen Read Quote
