Talk of the town
Last Christmas I got an electric pencil sharpener and the joy of it has lasted all year. It’s made in Japan. As it sharpens the pencils it sharpens your wits.
The pencils I use are Eagle “Chemi-sealed” Draughting 314. They have soft, black lead.
They are exactly right for marking up copy. For crossing out mistakes. Inserting words.
Such editing today is done with electronic lights on video screens.
(But reporters still take notes on the backs of match covers. These pencils are a handover.)
I keep the pencils in a pewter mug marked “London Hilton Opening.” Few really need sharpening but I couldn’t start the day without it. You put the pencil in the hole — whirr! The sharpener cuts out automatically when the pencil is pointed.
What points! You could give an injection with them!
I said: “Is there any more coffee?” The day begins on the Hill.
A journalist from L.A. came to town the other day and he asked me, “Where do you take visitors who come to San Francisco?”
I said, “The Top of the Mark and Trader Vic’s. Everybody’s heard of them. Personally, I haven’t been to the Mark since they nailed me $5 for a Bloody Mary. And I get to Vic’s about five times each year.”
He said, “When we get a visiting fireman, they want to see Hollywood. Now there’s no such thing as Hollywood — it isn’t even a post office address. It’s a Los Angeles zip code — 90028.
“The movie studios have gone. Stars don’t live there. Pictures don’t open with searchlights and fainting fans. And the LAPD keeps prowl cars at night sweeping Hollywood Boulevard for prosties and pushers.”
He said, “I can’t get anybody to believe it, though.”
We are HABIT creatures. All of us morning pencil sharpeners.
The L.A. man said, “Everybody wants to go to Disneyland. If I have to do that underground ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ again, I’m going to hang the visitor to the yardarm.”
He would like to take people to the barrio. The colorful Mexican section of L.A. has a market that could have been lifted from Mexico. Food stands. Mariachis.
He said: “I tried it on a woman from Chicago but she’d been in Mexico. She said, ‘Can you drink the water here?’ She said, ‘Before I go I want to see where Dolores del Rio lived in Hollywood.’ ”
He often advises people to take Hollywood tours. “See the homes of the stars.” It’s successful and they tell him later: “We got to see where Rudolph Valentino lived. Imagine!”
I haven’t discovered many San Francisco tours to put people on. I’ve got a Chinatown tour where I send people and they’re so enthusiastic I may take it myself. (Some day, not today.)
Alex Karras, the exfootball great, asked: “I want a good seafood restaurant. I don’t care if it’s a dump. Just great fish.” I sent him to Tadich’s. Right on!
If people drive here, I send them down the curlicue Lombard hill. Rave reviews! See famous people? I tell them, “Go to Doro’s for lunch. Ask Don to point out Mel Belli.” (I think we should give Belli landmark status.)
Sid Grauman, the Hollywood movie theater man, was a Chinatown guide. He said, “We always had a fake opium den in Chinatown. Low lights — we used strong incense for the opium smoke. It was so popular we had two shifts of smokers in the tourist season.”
I take people to my house overlooking the Bay. If they like that, I let them sharpen a pencil. They go home and tell everybody about that.
This column originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle on Nov. 30, 1982.