A celebration of the life of Jeremy Kimball (Kim) Gale, a colorful Guardian graphic artist who died Nov. 28, in Marin General Hospital of diabetes and renal disease, will be held at 5 p.m., Thursday, Dec. 11 at the Paper Mill Creek Saloon in Forest Knolls in Marin County. He was 67.

It is most fitting that Kim's memorial service will be held in a saloon. He loved the Paper Mill, he loved saloons, and he loved to attend and put on parties.

Kim was born in Portsmouth, N.H., and graduated from the New England School of Arts in Boston, then headed west and ended up in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. He soon made his way to the Guardian newspaper and our cramped little office at 1070 Bryant. There he found a home, fast friends, a cast of characters, his kind of leftist politics, a rollicking good time, and a perfect place for his free-spirited lifestyle.

He was also a talented graphic artist who could do everything from whipping out illustrations on deadline to designing front pages, to laying out and pasting up pages quickly, to keeping things flowing with professional casualness. Best of all, he could make sense out of and fit nicely into our often chaotic production department.

Through all the pressures of production and bartending, Kim was always the essence of affability and good humor. I never saw him get angry or raise his voice. He was, as we often remarked at the Guardian, "the world's nicest guy."

Read a full obituary here.