NONFICTION - Jan. 24, 1993

HERB CAEN’S SAN FRANCISCO: 1976-1991 by Herb Caen (Chronicle Books: $19.95; 262 pp.). It’s hard to believe, but Herb Caen, the “Walter Winchell of the West,” item journalist and self-described practitioner of “three-dotulism,” has been writing his ellipsis-heavy column in the San Francisco Chronicle for half a century now. He is just about the last of his kind: a powerful local newsman who doesn’t take himself very seriously; an amiable, offhand reporter who bangs out copy five days a week--six days until 1990--on a manual typewriter. Caen is among the best at writing for the moment, and that is both the strength and weakness of this column selection. Among the strengths: Caen wrestling with the events of November, 1978, when former San Francisco cult leader Jim Jones led the mass suicide of People’s Temple members in Guyana, and Supervisor Dan White killed Mayor George Moscone and gay Supervisor Harvey Milk. Among the weaknesses: the inclusion of far too many hyper-nostalgic Sunday columns, item-free to the point that they are not only timeless but meaningless. This is a book to dip into to get a sense of San Francisco on both its best and worst days--when drivers could find Poe’s “Annabelle Lee” painted on pillars under the freeway (October, 1976), when Candlestick Park had barely stopped rocking from the World Series earthquake before a customer at the refreshment booth complained to a terrified vendor, “Hey what about our beers?” (October, 1989). Caen may not be a columnist for the ages, but he is a master of ephemera.