Herbert Eugene "Herb" Caen (April 3, 1916 – February 1, 1997) was a San Francisco journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, painful puns and offbeat anecdotes—"a continuous love letter to San Francisco"—appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle for almost sixty years (excepting a relatively brief defection to the San Francisco Examiner) and made him a household name throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.