15 Things You Didn’t Know About Jon Carroll, the San Francisco Chronicle Columnist

• He doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree
• During his two years at UC Berkeley from 1961-63 he was part of the crowd that surrounded the police car holding Free Speech activist Jack Weinberg. But he didn’t go to the follow up sit-in in Sproul Hall because he had a date with a hot chick.
• He has worked for Oui, the soft-porn magazine and for Rolling Stone. He served as west coast editor for the Village Voice and edited New West magazine.
• Part of his deal with New West made the magazine pay for his children to fly down from San Francisco to Los Angeles twice a month so they could visit their father.
• His first job at the Chronicle was as vacation relief; at the end of his time then-editor Bill German asked Carroll if he wanted to write a column. He has been writing it now for 29 years.
• His first column explored the idea of the universe as a guest on the Johnny Carson show.
• One of his most recent columns explored “Jewdar.”
• He is the last remaining five-day a week urban columnist in the United States.
• He writes from his home in Oakland and has to meet a daily 4 pm deadline.
• He loves cats. (But you knew that)
• He doesn’t like dogs, not even the dog owned by his beloved granddaughter, Alice.
• He is a recovering alcoholic (and says once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, even when sober.
• He suffers from diabetes, but he doesn’t have to inject himself with insulin. He takes pills instead.
• He lost 50 pounds in the last year by going on a gruel-based diet.
• His favorite books are Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy about WWI; Nicholson Baker’s books “The Mezzanine” and “You and I,” and anything by Richard Powers.
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All of this information came out March 23 when UC Berkeley Journalism Professor Cynthia Gorney interviewed Carroll in a benefit for Park Day School in Oakland. It was a terrific evening; Gorney was relaxed and funny and obviously has a lot of fun interviewing her old friend.