Union Square pigeons Caen’s main nemeses
after a parking garage remodel, acting as if the war against the birds was one he could win.
“I like pigeons as much as the next cat, but they belong in a sanctuary, safe from columnists and press agents,” Caen wrote in 1958.
At one point in 1962, Caen partnered with an airline to put four racks filled with parasols at the corner of Union Square, calling them “Herb Caen Fallout Shelters.” The columnist was photographed walking through Union Square under shelter of a flimsy umbrella, big smile on his face.
He admitted defeat within days, when all but one of the parasols was missing, and the pigeons remained.
Hitchcock arrived in Union Square on April 1, 1963, two days before “The Birds” was scheduled to open in San Francisco. Caen could hardly hide his displeasure with the pigeon-themed photo shoot. The resulting column’s tone ventured beyond passive aggression — it actually felt a little like revenge against the director and his marketing crew.
“On Monday afternoon the portly figure of Mr. Alfred Hitchcock was to be seen emerging, with a definite ‘thwuck,’ from a large black limousine on Powell,” Caen wrote. “He waddled over to a bench in Union Square and spread himself out like rolypoly pudding. Some nut with a paper bag sprinkled grain at his feet, attracting pigeons by the hundreds.”
Hitchcock delivered one joke after another, riffing with Caen and the pigeons themselves.
“Get thee to Ernie’s,” Hitchcock said, kicking at the birds gently. “I’ll see you under glass at 7.”
It’s notable that Caen buried the exchange, placing it in the second half of his April 3, 1963, column, below a local item about tenant parking restrictions at the Union Square Garage.
“With another ‘thwuck,’ he squeezed back into the limousine, on the rear of which was a sticker reading, ‘The Birds is Coming,’ ” Caen wrote. “‘So long,’ he waved. ‘I are going.’ ”
But the photographs are fantastic, with Hitchcock never breaking his solemn gaze, even as Caen appears to be under siege. The poor columnist doesn’t have the same expression in any two photos. He’s laughing in one, flinching in another, looking like he’s ready to flee in a third. Pigeons dig claws into his balding head in several photos. In almost all of them, a pigeon is perched on his shoulder, staring dismissively at The Chronicle legend.
The best photo: The two men on the bench, Caen looking overwhelmed but smiling. The image never appeared in the paper in 1963, at least not surrounding the coverage of “The Birds.” A tight shot of a pigeon fluttering its wings while on Caen’s head appeared on the front page instead.
But that great shot has since become a classic, published when Caen won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1996, after his death in 1997, and many times since them. The photo has been used recently in The Chronicle both online and in print, notably highlighted in “The Chronicle of a Great City” book a few years ago.
As for the pigeons, they continued their dominance over the writer for another 3½ decades after “The Birds.” He wrote about them often, and was always the butt of his own jokes.
The last Caen mention of pigeons in Union Square appeared in 1994.
“Word must be getting around among the pigeons that I am not exactly their best friend,” Caen wrote. “Walking through Union Square, my brown fedora was shat upon, and I could swear I heard the culprit cackling as it flew off.”