Bruce Bratton, who died last week at 91, was a household name in Santa Cruz newspapers in the 1970s and ’80s, and since then online if more on the margins. In his highest-profile years in the local press he had a weekly column in Good Times, then in the Express, and after that briefly in the Sentinel until its management decided he was too loose a cannon for the paper’s fact-based pages.

He was a colleague of mine at the Express, and in recent years our paths would cross at a concert or other cultural event and we would exchange friendly greetings, though we were never close personally. His departure is a milestone in local media history.

At a time when free weekly papers were avidly picked up and read by nearly everyone both for entertainment coverage (Good Times) and alternative news and commentary (Express), Bruce’s columns were popular with anyone who wanted to know what was going on beyond or beneath the headlines and under the radar.

Modeled on Herb Caen’s three-dot journalism in the Chronicle, they somehow strung together 1,000 words or so on one thing and another, ranging from little digs at the powers that be to social sightings at public events to one-sentence movie reviews. As a writer he never really developed an argument, but he had no shortage of opinions, observations, pieces of information and speculation, so each week he offered a scattered assortment of morsels for the reader to snack on.

To kibitz, as Leo Rosten explains in “The Joys of Yiddish,” means “1. to comment while watching a game …; 2. to joke, fool around, wisecrack; to socialize aimlessly …; 3. to tease, needle, gibe, second guess …; 4. to carry on a running commentary while another is working ...” By these definitions Bruce was our leading kibitzer.

Since my return to Santa Cruz in 2006 after 17 years away, and on resuming my writing in the weekly Metro, SC Weekly and then in the Sentinel, from time to time what I wrote would irritate Bruce and he would make some snarky remark on his platform for progressive commentators, brattononline, that would sometimes include amusing speculation on the biographical or psychological reasons I had deviated from leftist orthodoxy.

Whether denouncing Borders for its opportunistic invasion of the downtown bookselling market, complaining about the monstrously ugly River Street sign at the corner of Highway 1, or attributing this writer’s critique of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign to my being an heir to the Maidenform bra fortune (my father did well in the ladies’ garment business, but not that one), Bratton’s tirades, gripes, hobbyhorses and digressions were refreshingly unfiltered, at times a bit demagogic, but often entertaining. He was a clearinghouse for provocative if not always reliable information.

In the 1980s he also had a radio show, “The Sunny Side of the Bay,” on one of Monterey Bay’s FM stations, where he interviewed persons of interest in local culture and politics with a tone of genuine curiosity and intellectual innocence that I think he meant to mirror the non-expertise of most of his listeners. The talk show format was his natural medium for the kind of freewheeling discourse he enjoyed; as in his writing, digression was a feature, not a bug.

Bruce Bratton’s interest in all things local, his range of engagement and the earnestness of his convictions, even when tinged with an edge of grumpiness, made him both a lightning rod and a binding force in the community. And his commitment to community, while unabashedly partisan, was authentic — exemplary in the courage he displayed by jumping into the fray.

As an irascible gadfly he was a model of citizenship, and the kind of out-there media personality that scarcely exists around here anymore lest anyone be offended.

So long, Bruce. Thanks for having the nerve to tell your truth.

Stephen Kessler’s column appears on Saturdays.