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A city is a crazy concrete jungle whose people at the end of each day somehow make a small step ahead against terrible odds.

Herb Caen

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Herb Caen
Age: 80 †
Born: 1916
Born: April 3
Died: 1997
Died: February 1
Journalist
Sacramento
California
Herbert Eugene Caen
Steps
Odds
Cities
Concrete
Crazy
Ahead
Small
Somehow
Ends
Step
Make
City
People
Whose
Terrible
Jungle

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Baffling late-life discovery: Golfers wear those awful clothes on purpose.
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A city is a state - of mind, of taste, of opportunity. A city is a marketplace - where ideas are traded, opinions clash and eternal conflict may produce eternal truths.
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A city is where you can sign a petition, boo the chief justice, fish off a pier, gaze at a hippopotamus, buy a flower at the corner, or get a good hamburger or a bad girl at 4 A.M. A city is where sirens make white streaks of sound in the sky and foghorns speak in dark grays. San Francisco is such a city.
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The waterfront without the Ferry Tower would be like a birthday cake without a candle.
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Isn't it nice that people who prefer Los Angeles to San Francisco live there?
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I have a memory like an elephant. I remember every elephant I've ever met.
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Martinis are like breasts, one isn't enough, and three is too many.
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The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever.
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We are reorganizing in order to eliminate duplication and redundancy.
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When a place advertises itself as 'World Famous,' you may be sure it isn't.
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The world of Manhattan is small and tightly knit, and the man on top retains a certain humility. He knows how far and fast he can fall by looking at the guy across the street. The view from the $250,000 apartment covers a lot of ground, most of it condemned.
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All American cars are basically Chevrolets.
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Old San Francisco - the one so many nostalgics yearn for - had buildings that related well to each other.
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New Yorkers are stuck in a gloomy mucilage of mutual commiseration.
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You cover Q-tips with sandpaper and ram them up your nostrils as far as they will go. Then you sniff talcum powder while shredding hundred dollar bills.
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It is better to have loved and lost, but only if you have a good attorney.
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A good column is one that sells paper. It doesn't matter how beautifully it is written and how much you admire the author... if it doesn't sell any papers, it's not a good column. It's a terrible yardstick to use, but in the newspaper business, that's the whole thing.
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I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.
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San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
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