The storied journalistic career of Warren Hinckle has included encounters with Richard Nixon, jackbooted Canadian Mounties, San Francisco Jesuits, Hunter S. Thompson, a barfly Bassett hound, rogue CIA agents, William Randolph Hearst's grandson, and a drug-crazed self-pleasuring monkey named Henry Luce. He recounted highlights of his career and his views on the current state of the City in a wide-ranging interview over a half dozen vodka tonics at the new O'Reilly bar on Polk Street. The gift for storytelling, the irreverence, the raucous sense of humor, and the pride of ownership of the City are all features of Hinckle's Irish San Francisco persona. His style of journalism is currently in disuse, but it is not anachronism. He sees hometown San Francisco as "a series of eccentric and colorful characters and neighborhoods with their own local-fixture bars and people." Hinckle's stories knit together an encompassing narrative of thi