San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
S.F. wordplay artist a spinner of quips
Strange de Jim was a full-time spinner of quips, a career that did not pay beyond the reward of seeing his pseudonym in Herb Caen’s column. This was also the reward for Chronicle readers, who associated the name Strange de Jim with a clever take on the human comedy.
Strange, as he was known even to family members, did it better than anybody over the course of 25 years. When Caen died in 1997, Strange was selected as a speaker at the memorial for a man he’d met only once. Staying in character, he solemnly strode to the pulpit at Grace Cathedral wearing a paper bag over his head, one last joke to protect the identity of his alter ego — Jim Riffe, a systems analyst originally from West Virginia.
He also supplied items to Leah Garchik’s “Personals” column and self-published five books, and he liked to say that writing was a sidelight to his main job, which was drinking coffee at Cafe Flore in the Castro District. That job didn’t pay either, but Strange was still drinking coffee and writing jokes until he died May 1 at his home in the Castro, said his brother, John Riffe. Strange had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for years, but even joked about that, Riffe said. He was 81.
“Strange was a brilliant, funny and extremely kind person who invented an alter ego that enabled him to put his observations on the events of everyday San Francisco into print,” said Riffe, a retired businessman and psychotherapist who lives in rural West Virginia. “He loved making observations and turning them into something that made people laugh. Nothing was sacred.”
A self-invented phenomenon, Strange was right up there with the outrageous women’s advice columnist Count Marco and the ask-the-readers-anything Question Man in terms of mysterious contributors to the Chronicle. He added to it by hosting lunches at Enrico’s in North Beach, in which every guest at the table would have a pillowcase over their head so that no one knew who was who.
He was so good at what he did that by 1978, he had made his way into Herb Caen’s column enough times to print them up as a 34-page pamphlet titled, “Hah! I Made Herb Caen & I Can Break Him.” Ten years later, on the occasion of Caen’s 50th anniversary as a columnist, Strange was profiled as one of his regular item suppliers.
“No columnist who has to do 20 items a day can resist a Strange de Jim,” wrote Caen at the time. “He and I are made for each other.”
James Edward Riffe (rhymes with Strife) was born July 9, 1942, in Charleston, W.Va. His dad, Robert, was a comptroller for Atlantic Greyhound, the bus service in the Eastern United States. His mother, Katie, died of Hodgkin’s disease when Jim was 10 and his brother John was 5.
As a child, he carried around science-fiction books and “lived in his own world,” said his sister-in-law of 55 years, Jane Riffe. “He just liked that better than what most people call reality.”
He always wanted to be a writer and had a pen and notebook on him for as long as his younger brother can remember. He attended public school in Charleston and graduated from Stonewall Jackson High School, where
he was class valedictorian and a National Merit Scholar in the class of 1960.
“He avoided summer jobs as best he could,” Riffe said. “They cut into his reading.”
When he finally agreed to one, it was selling encyclopedias door to door. After graduating from West Virginia University with a B.S. in accounting in 1964, he earned an MBA at Columbia University in New York and took a job at Arthur Andersen in New York City.
He found an apartment in a building where Sidney Poitier lived. “He was always attracted to movie stars and celebrities,” said his brother. He developed his quip style by taping latenight TV on a reel-to-reel recorder, then replaying it to write down the jokes that dealt with current issues.
In his spare time, he wrote short stories for mystery publications. He also dated women though he knew his attraction was to men and had been since high school, said his brother. In 1971, Strange moved to San Francisco in a VW Beetle with a wicker penguin in the passenger seat and his comedy tapes and journals in the back seat. “He was drawn there like Mecca,” said Jane.
His first job in the city was as a senior systems analyst at Bank of America. He bought a condo near Japantown and traded the VW stick shift for an automatic Ford Pinto, which was easier on the hills. He mailed his first submission to Caen in 1972 and it appeared under the heading “Strange de Jim reports: ‘Since I didn’t believe in reincarnation in any of my other lives, why should I have to believe in it in this one? ’ ”
That was the start of it, and also the start of people suggesting that Caen himself was Strange de Jim. But those items arrived mysteriously by U.S. mail, neatly handwritten on a pad bearing the imprint “From the desk of Strange de Jim.”
The wordplay was precise and could be so subtle that you’d have to read it twice to see what gave the joke its heat. A typical line regarded the old Poodle Dog, a French restaurant. “I won’t eat snails,” Strange quipped. “I prefer fast food.” Or: “Monogamous is what one partner in every relationship wants to be.”
By the time Strange and Caen first spoke on the phone, in 1978, he’d had his name in the column more than 100 times. The call was patched through so Strange could ask Caen to contribute an introduction to his book of Strangeisms, which Caen obliged.
“I hope we never meet. Ours is
nd the perfect relationship,” Caen wrote. “Strange favors me with his wit, and I favor him with my print. Come to think of it, he could even be a girl, for all I know. The whole thing is strange, isn’t it.”
Strange left his job at BofA in 1976 and after that he was “self-unemployed,” getting by on sales of his novelty books and a small inheritance. He also did well on the sale of his condo and moved into a two-bedroom rental above a laundromat in the Castro. The rent was $180 split two ways, according to Jeff Byers, the first in a line of roommates.
“The work pressure was off and he was really focused on his writing,” said Byers. Strange self-published each of his books except the final one, a guidebook called “San Francisco’s Castro” for the Images of America series. He did all his own typing.
During roommate discussions, Strange told Byers that he got the nom de plume by introducing himself at a party as “the strange one.” It got a laugh and that was the genesis of Strange de Jim.” His brother asked the same question once and was told “I introduce myself as I am, Strange.”
In 1996, Caen revealed that he had terminal cancer just as he was turning 80, then finally won a Pulitzer Prize (or “pullet surprise” as Caen called it). A citywide Herb Caen Day was held and Strange rode in an antique convertible in the parade down Market Street. He had a seat on the podium next to Willie Mays and in front of Don Johnson. There was no pillowcase on that day.
In Caen’s last column, dated Jan. 10, 1997, he referred to Strange as “San Francisco’s guru di tutti guruskies,” which to Strange’s ears was as good a turn of phrase as when Caen called the Golden Gate Bridge a “carstrangled spanner.”
After Caen’s death, Strange redirected his mail to Leah Garchik’s column, where he appeared more than 60 times. There could have been more.
“Wit tastes different to different people, so I had to turn him down many times,” Garchik said, “and he was always a total gentleman about it.” He even invited her to his birthday party at Cafe Flore.
Over the years, the Strange de Jim persona overtook the person that was Jim Riffe. In 2011, he consented to a Q&A with the Chronicle and never gave a straight answer.
It started with the claim that the full name on his birth certificate was “Strange and Wonderful de Jim” and that it had been delivered to his mom by an angel.
His schoolmates called him “Strangey” for short. It went like that through the final question. Q: What haven’t I asked you? A: For my hand in marriage.