TRAVELS IN SAN FRANCISCO by Herb...

TRAVELS IN SAN FRANCISCO by Herb Gold ($8.95, illustrated). Novelist Herb Gold, who has lived in San Francisco for more than 30 years, shares anecdotes and images of the city he loves in this engaging, upbeat book. He ignores the natural beauties of the Bay Area, preferring to study the institutions that its inhabitants have created around themselves: coffee shops, cafes, bookstores, neighborhoods. With bemused affection, Gold describes the people who frequent these locales, from the radical feminist waitresses in a cafe on Valencia Street (who purposely ignore male customers) to a wigged-out North Beach philosopher who combs the city for “investors” for his computerized system for betting on the horses. Although they lack the farcical zaniness of Herb Caen’s popular columns, Gold’s brief essays are more subtle, more sophisticated and more literary, with a pronounced ‘50s flavor. An ideal book to read on a north-bound plane or train.