Examiner RIP

San Francisco Examiner: RIP.

The last issue of the Hearst-owned flagship newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner went to press on November 21st, 2000. Seeing its writers and staff absorbed into the other daily paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, marked a sad end for a daily that had once published the likes of Ambrose Bierce and a century later Hunter S. Thompson. For me, there was considerable pride that they were the first to put my words before the masses and even paid me for the honor.

My editor was Lynn Ludlow, a grizzled journalist of the old school. We shared a love of San Francisco history. He had a voice that sounded like too many cigarettes, though I never saw him smoke, and under doctor's orders could not partake of burrito meals, which he looked back on with fondness.

Even though he disagreed with me from the get-go - beginning with my interest in graffiti, which he saw as pure vandalism, the unseemly antics of my fellow Santas, and other quixotic coteries that interest me - still, Lynn published the majority of Op/Ed submissions I sent in from 1993-1997.

Some have been posted to the Examiner's web archives, hosted by SFgate.com. (The current SF Examiner - now owned by the Fang Family - is a tabloid bearing little resemblance to the newspaper for which I wrote.)

The pre-web columns (through early 1996) will some day be marked up and posted to this web-site for archiving. Watch this space!

My original titles are indicated in parentheses.

1993-07-08 Someone Out There Is Ruining the Graffiti (There's Art on Them Thar Walls!)

1993-09-13 The Remembrance of Futures Past

1993-12-26 The Revenge of Bart Noir (Black BART Rides Again)

1994-02-21 Censorship: a Canadian Complex

1994-03-22 Off To South Africa (The News From Somewhere)

1994-04-18 Edgewalking in Jo'burg

1994-05-17 The Skeletons in Mandela's Closet (Skeletons in the ANC Closet)

1995-06-05 Slouching Toward U.S. Citizenship (Slouching Towards Citizenship)

1995-07-12 The Making of an American

1995-12-11 A Dubious Thrill For a First-Time Voter (A Voter's Rite of Passage)

1996-03-14 Another Cafe Boho for Buchanan

1996-06-05 Running Mate for Dole: RoboVeep (Rumors of Life in the Dole Candidacy)

1996-07-18 Movie Makers, Go Home [which prompted friends of Don Johnson/Nash Bridges to reply online]

1996-09-16 Humor of the Deceased (Deceased Humor: a spit from the grave)

1996-10-25 Write Your Own Ticket

1996-12-20 It’s a SAD Day When Santas Go On the Attack (Rx For: Unbearable Darkness)

1997-02-13 The Origins of Ritualized Romance

1997-04-17 A Fault line in the Mission (The Line Drawn at Liberty Street)

1997-05-06 Summer of Love: the sequel (Summer of Luv-in: the sequel)

1997-07-24 Bicyclists Can’t Wait For Friday (Critical Mass: We Are Traffic)

1998-08-06 At Crunch Time, Cyclists Lose: After trying to share lane with van, rider finds himself in the gutter, and in pain (Cyclical Catastrophe)

1997-08-29 In the Burning Desert, A Burning Man (At Playa in the Fields of Fire)

1997-11-12 Fauxvertising: The Realest Thing*

1999-01-24 [Letter to the Editor] (Urban Warmongers; 3rd letter from the top)

In 1998, Lynn suffered a second heart attack, which resulted in his relinquishing the editing of the Op/Ed page to others who proved less receptive to my curious perspectives and fondness for word play.

Columns for the Op/Ed page are but one avenue to print in the newspaper dailies. Another way is to take the advice of Scoop Nisker, and go out and make some news of one's own. This I have done on various occasions, like the time I crashed a Santa graduation ceremony.

Who said Santanalia is a slippery slope? For this Santa, it all began in 1995, although my Examiner essay on the subject appeared one year later.

Some of my other newspaper writing is referenced here.

*Mea culpa on this one. See the corrected version of this essay in preference to the Examiner edition. An expanded treatise on the subject of Fauxvertising appears here..