Now that Perry's on Union Street is 38 years old, it is becoming one of the venerable institutions in San Francisco, still a great place for grown-ups. It still has the blue & white checkered tablecloths and the breadsticks in glasses on the table. It still offers traditional American things on the menu like Cobb's Salad, cheeseburgers, and Apple Brown Betty. A few of the local denizens still visit daily. Mr. Michael English, Kevin Young still pour drinks, and produce genuine conversation, a lost craft throughout the spindrift saloons of San Francisco.
"Nothing last for 38 years," says Dr. Harvey Caplan, a Perry's loyalist, "not in San Francisco." As a doctor, Harvey knows how long things usually last.
"You should've been here 35 years ago," a regular customer told me. "The Pill had just been invented, and the bad diseases hadn't shown up yet." Actually I was here 35 years ago, but I wasn't old enough to drink. Yeah, right. Perry's was always in the middle of the action. It harkens back to the days when flight attendants were called "stews." They would congregate at Perry's between flights of fancy.
The usually taciturn Perry Butler, for whom his restaurant is named, reminisced a little the other day.
"Has Herb Caen really been gone for ten years?" he mused. "This town hasn't been the same, no one has such influence these days."
Nope. We're on our own.
"Why don't you write something about the great characters of San Francisco?" Barnaby Conrad III asked me at a sidewalk table. It's really Maurice Kanbar's table. Maurice, the famous inventor of Skyy Vodka, and many other things, often lunches at this ringside seat for a passing parade of pretty people.
"I didn't invent vodka, Bruce," said Maurice, "I just made it better."
What is a character anyway? It's a guy or gal who looks at the world from a different angle, unfettered by convention, unperturbed by public opinion, unafraid to speak one's mind.
Maurice is a true character, a new kind of character. He's witty, opinionated, brash, brilliant, a cyclone of energy, and he never rests. Maurice isn't the kind of chap to wax eloquent in taverns, and amuse the locals. He's too busy. He does things, not just talks about doing things. Maurice is one of a kind, sui generis -- and generous.
John Gollin was at the table. A veteran newspaperman, John also gets things done, but he doesn't require a byline. He's behind the success of many people in this town, and rarely gets thanked for it. LIke Barnaby, and Maurice, he loves this city, the city that often behaves like a small town just when you were hoping that no one noticed what you were doing. In the old days, it didn't seem to matter as much if you made a fool of yourself. I know I did fairly well as a candidate in the race for village idiot at Perry's on a few occasions.
By the way, who ever came up with that "It Takes A Village" stuff? They ought to be punished.
Perry's is the sort of place you'd find in New York, except there's room to breathe here. It's the Elaine's of the Marina. It's been an attraction for media people, writers, musicians, athletes, lawyers, and doctors. It's never been a dress-up place, it's a look-presentable place. All sorts of affairs were started here. I suppose a few ended, too. Some still endure. Although there is a downtown Perry's, the Union Street Perry's is a fixed point. it won't change until the cows come home to Cow Hollow.
"I finally got to meet (the famous columnist) Charles McCabe at Perry's," recalled Carole Vernier, who was Herb Caen's longtime assistant. "I'll never forget that night. There was a driving rain storm. McCabe shambled out of Perry's just as I was going in. He stepped on my foot, and broke it. Because it was raining, no one could tell I was in tears because it hurt so much." Those newspaper people will step on anybody's toes.
For all of the old once-familiar faces, there's a new generation who regard the aging cats with curiosity and all due indifference. That's fine. All the characters who have come and gone for the past 38 years, have left a little bit of character behind, and that's why Perry's, the saloon, has assumed a character on Union Street unto itself.
Bruce Bellingham is the author of Bellingham by the Bay, and isn't going to let any of us forget it. He also writes shamelessly for the SF Northside. His e-mail is bruce@ northsidesf.com
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