San Francisco can use all the smiles it can get these days, and perhaps the biggest one of all is plastered daily across the face of Byron Cobb.

If the city had an ambassador, he’d be it. He’s a cable car gripman by trade, meaning he controls the car, gripping or releasing the constantly moving cable beneath the street. But he’s a tour guide, greeter, entertainer and musician, too.

And, for the eighth time, he’s the city’s cable car bell-ringing champ, having claimed the trophy at the annual contest in October. For the event, a cable car is stationed at Union Square, and contestants take turns ringing the bell, with judges — including me this year — rating their rhythm, style and originality.

Like a circus performer spinning plates, Cobb manages to maintain all his roles five days a week on the California Street cable car line. From Market Street to Van Ness Avenue, back and forth, back and forth — much to his riders’ delight.

“A lot of people save for four or five years just to go to San Francisco to ride the cable cars. You don’t want to give them a bad experience,” he said. “Like my grandmother always said, ‘It don’t cost nothing to be nice.’”

I tagged along for a round-trip ride with Cobb, 60, the other day and didn’t want to disembark to head back to the office. His office is too much fun.

He saw a couple standing in the street, eyeing the cable car, but not moving to get on it.

“Are you riding or are you contemplating?” he called to them with his trademark grin.

“We’re past contemplation — now we’re going to ride!” answered Greg Bergstrom, who quickly began chatting with Cobb about visiting from Vancouver with his wife, Danielle Bergstrom, to spend time with their son, who lives in Mission Bay. They’d been to San Francisco several times, but had never ridden a cable car.

“I’m a Canucks fan!” Cobb said of Vancouver’s hockey team. “You’re from Vancouver? That’s my favorite city. I’ve got a song for you.”

Yes, he managed to ring out “O Canada” on the cable car bell. Or he said that’s what it was, anyway. The familiar clanging is charming, but it’s hard to decipher melodies.

The couple from Canada got off the car atop Nob Hill.

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“Don’t make no fuss. Don’t be in a rush. Thank you for riding with us!” Cobb hollered after the pair, who seemed tickled by all the attention.

He gives practically everybody he sees that kind of attention. He calls out to hotel doormen. To deliverymen. To construction workers. To old men walking with canes. He knows many of them by name, but makes perfect strangers feel like old friends, too.

Celebrate the cable cars with the Chronicle Want to get in the holiday spirit? Meet Byron Cobb, cable car bell-ringing champ, when Chronicle columnist Heather Knight and pop culture critic Peter Hartlaub host their next #TotalSF movie night. Cobb will perform before a screening of “Sister Act,” a musical comedy set in a Noe Valley church. The movie is Dec. 5 at 7 p.m. at the Balboa Theater, 3630 Balboa St. $15. Tickets available at cinemasf.com/balboa. Also, the Chronicle is sponsoring a cable car for the second year this holiday season. Proceeds go to the nonprofit Market Street Railway, which helps provide upkeep on cable cars and streetcars, and receives no city funds. The money goes to pay for a senior luncheon that’s now in its 37th year. Just before Christmas, a bunch of gripmen borrow Muni buses to pick up elderly people from convalescent hospitals and retirement homes and drive them to a holiday lunch with live entertainment. Look for car No. 1 — festooned in Chronicle signs, famous front pages and ornaments — on the rails throughout December. If you spot it, take a picture and tag Knight and Hartlaub on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtags #ChronicleCableCar and #TotalSF. You could win a framed photo from the Chronicle archives.

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“They say, ‘Ring the bell!’ It’s fun. I love it,” he said. “I just like to have fun and treat people right.”

He said the first and last runs of the day are his favorite. That’s when he sees his regulars — the commuters who have become friends. They know to text him if they’re missing work so he doesn’t worry. Cobb and a few dozen of them get together every couple of months for drinks.

“They’re not just passengers,” he said. “You become friends.”

One of those regular passengers became his wife. He chatted her up one day, and three weeks later, they were on their first date.

It would be understandable if Cobb wasn’t so chipper all the time. The father of three adult children lives in El Sobrante and sets his alarm for the godforsaken time of 2:50 a.m. each morning. He arrives at the cable car barn by 5 a.m. to prepare for the first run.

He gets off work at 4:15 p.m., heads home for dinner and a little television with his wife, and is in bed by 7:30 p.m. Cable car operators are on the same salary schedule as Muni bus drivers, starting at about $54,000 and reaching $78,000 in the fourth year.

“I’m acclimated — I’ve been doing it for years,” he said with a shrug. “They’re paying me to ride and see the city. What’s there to be tired about?”

Cobb grew up outside Orlando and was one of six kids raised by a single mom who supported them by working as a teacher and nurse. He said she put his five siblings through college, but he wasn’t “college material.”

His grandfather took all the kids to baseball’s spring training in Vero Beach, Fla. — and that’s where Cobb grew to love the Los Angeles Dodgers. Much to his loyal riders’ chagrin, he wears Dodgers caps on the job and refuses to drive cable cars decked out in Giants paraphernalia.

When he was 20, he visited his uncle, who lived in San Francisco and worked for Muni. He fell in love with the city and moved here three months later, getting a job as a bus driver before moving to the cable cars after several years.

He loves being the gripman, calling the conductor job “too wimpy.”

“I like to be in the front and have control of the car,” he said.

The cable car’s bell is intended to be its horn, alerting distracted pedestrians and drivers of its presence. But gripmen and conductors soon realized its musical potential, and the bell-ringing contest began more than a half-century ago.

The secret to Cobb’s eight wins?

“It’s all in the wrist,” he explained.

He borrows beats from his favorite songs — Coldplay, the Chainsmokers and Twenty One Pilots are among his favorite bands — and transfers them from his head to his hands, he explained.

Plus there are stylistic moves. Pulling the bell’s cord by alternating your right and left hands is called “milking the cow.” Moving it quickly side to side is called “the slingshot.” He has 21 trophies — he’s taken second and third place several times in addition to his eight first-place wins — and seven bells at home.

He doesn’t play at home, saying his neighbors would “wring my neck.” Instead, he practices on the job — and he loves it when two cable cars going opposite directions stop and have a ring-off in the middle of the street.

“When you throw the cord, it’s like, ‘Show me what you got!’” he said.

On the morning I rode along, he performed several tunes for Megan Pickett, a wedding planner from St. Louis. She’d never been to San Francisco before and said she felt like a princess riding a cable car.

“This is so cool!” she exclaimed. “My mom is freaking out that I’m doing this. I’m going to blow up her phone with pictures.”

She told Cobb he was making her “a happy girl.”

“I have that effect on women,” he teased her.

He could retire now if he wanted to, but he said he’s not ready to quit just yet.

“This is more than a job. It’s kind of hard to explain how I feel about it,” he said. “There’s nothing else I’d rather do.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf Instagram: @heatherknightsf