In San Francisco, It's All a Question of Character

In San Francisco, It's All a Question of Character
by Bruce Bellingham

There is a fine line between being a vagrant, and being what they used to call "a real character."
San Francisco is the place where the line has been historically blurred. It's one place where you can arrive with a fortune, and die in fairly short order with nothing to your name except your name -- and a name that drips with a spurious meaning, to boot.
Take the now-revered figure that was Emperor Norton, the self-proclaimed potentate of Mexico, and all of North America. He donned a ludicrously ornate, threadbare military uniform, and strutted the streets of old San Francisco, invariably trailed by two stray, mongrel dogs named Bummer and Lazarus. Well, they weren't really stray. They went with Emperor Norton everywhere -- even to the theatre. The emperor was what we might call today homeless. He came to San Francisco a rich man but ended up broke. That's still easy to do. But he was colorful, and harmless, funny, and contributed to a nascent, ramshackle seaport that was bulging with people -- almost all men -- who were seeking gold.
He was also as mad as a March hare. He fit in just fine.
One advantage of writing about a character is the facts don't always have to be accurate. I mean, who's going to know? The most far-fetched exploit will be readily accepted. When Lazarus died, thousands of San Franciscans followed the body of the beast to the cemetery. But another version asserts that Lazarus, run over by a fire engine, was stuffed by a taxidermist.
Now, the difference between being a "character" and being what was once called a "bum" is the measure of your contribution to myth and lore. This requires a certain sense of humor, and a benign sort of presence. Being a curmudgeon was all right. That's part of the ragtag, hardscrabble pioneer image. You had to have a sense of humanity. And you had to have some schtick. Props, for example. Norton had his uniform, and his hounds. The columnist/author Warren Hinckle, truly a rare, contemporary character, has his eye patch and his ubiquitous basset hound. We have other characters. Lawrence Ferlinghetti is not only a character, he's a man of letters. Herb Gold, with whom Lawrence sometimes disagrees over the legacy of The Beats, is certainly a character. Now also in his 80s, Herb keeps up an important part of the tradition: he walks everywhere, and has traversed the great hills of San Francisco for decades. Neither writer shows any sign of slowing down. I am grateful for that. There's no question that Michael McCourt, of the famous Irish literary family, is a character. Michael pours drinks at the Washington Square Bar & Grill. He's one of the best storytellers on the planet, and has a heart as big as all Connemara. The Washington Square, dubbed "the Washbag" by Herb Caen, has always been a draw for S.F. characters. They include the great newspapermen Charles McCabe, Stan Delaplane, Harry Jupiter, Sandy Zane, Ron Fimrite, Carole Vernier, and Glenn Dorenbush, who was the best friend a newspaperman could ever have.
Every great city has its great characters, and perhaps proof that S.F. is no longer as great as it once was is found in its paucity of real characters these days.
I heard that Brendan O'Smarty -- remember him? -- got a TV gig down in Australia. Brendan was the dummy who was the partner of SFPD's Bob Geary, who would take the dummy to work with him in the patrol car. It's not hard to believe that Geary lost a battle to the IRS over whether expenses that the dummy incurred might be deductible. What is hard to believe is that the voters of S.F. narrowly approved a ballot measure that allowed Geary and Brendan to "work" together on the beat after the department said he couldn't. To this day, the SFPD does not want to talk about Brendan O'Smarty or Bob Geary since they retired.
How much embarrassment you can cause others with impunity is another quality of a real character.

Bruce Bellingham is the author of Bellingham by the Bay, which is a memoir that includes many San Francisco characters. Bellingham's e-mail is bruce@brucebellingham.com