Bruce Bellingham Homored by San Francisco Board of Supervisors

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, at the suggestion of Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, honored Bruce Bellingham, our longtime reporter and columnist last month for his service to the community, "and enriching the neighborhood."
On Oct. 23, Sup. Alioto-Pier took time out from the regular Tuesday session of the board to present Bellingham with a proclamation at City Hall.
"Bruce's columns have graced the pages of the Marina Times for over nineteen years," the Supervisor explained, as she presented Bruce with his accolade. "He has an original take on local stories and events."
Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Aaron Peskin added their good wishes and words of appreciation.
In the audience to show support were Marina Times & Northside publisher Susan Reynolds, Father William Myers, of St. Raymond's Catholic Church in Menlo Park, artist Sharon Anderson, and the celebrated photographer, Jane Richey.
"May I go back to making fun of the board now?" Bellingham quipped as he left the Supervisor's Cambers, clutching his proclamation in an official blue folio.
He recently won a "Pubby," an award for his column-writing, by the San Francisco Publicity Club.
Bellingham wrote a widely-acclaimed daily column in the San Francisco Examiner. He was a frequent contributor to the Herb Caen column in the San Francisco Chronicle for over 17 years.
Bellingham was once described by the Chronicle's Gerald Nachman as "the Boswell of the Marina," a neighborhood Bellingham has written about for over 18 years, in the Marina Times. His work has also appeared in the Irish Times, the Nob Hill Gazette, the Marin Independent Journal, FRISKO and SOMA magazines. Nachman also called him, "the columnist's friend," but that sounds too much like a plumbing utensil. He is the author of "Bellingham by the Bay" (Council Oak Books) which includes anecdotes about the famous, the infamous of San Francisco and beyond. He says his career "is as checkered as a cab" -- working as a chef, musician, broadcaster and writer. He was an editor, writer and reporter for KCBS and KQED-FM all through the 1980s. Bellingham is also a trained operatic tenor -- house-trained anyway -- and graduated from Music and Arts Institute of San Francisco. Bellingham sang at the world-famous music competition, the Festival of the Rose of Tralee in County Kerry, Ireland. He's had two featured movie roles in films directed by Oscar-winning Steven Okazaki; also appears in "Father's Day" with Billy Crystal. He narrates the documentary, "The USA vs. Tokyo Rose," which was aired on PBS. Bellingham is the voice of Herb Caen columns past of KRON-TV's 1996 film about the famed Pulitzer Prize winning columnist. Bellingham's new book-in-progress is a spindrift memoir called "The Angina Dialogues." A resident of San Francisco for over three decades -- long before any man first set foot on Britney Spears -- Bellingham grew up in New Jersey where, he's happy to say, "ravioli is still considered a vegetable."

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