Richard’s Coat… went into the cardboard box with all the other things for the thrift store: an orange radio with a broken antenna, a vintage purse that was only in fashion in San Francisco’s Haight Street where I had spent my younger days - some old clothes, a pink pair of cowboy boots that I was brave enough to buy but not to wear, and a sewing basket with a broken … [Read more...]
Dearly Beloved, Part II: Growing up in Bohemian 1950s San Francisco
You can read Part I of Nanette's memoir of growing up in 1950s San Francisco here. I begin to make a habit of snuggling down behind the Shoji screen with a "Minka." I hold my breath when my mother comes looking for me to help with the dishes. She is annoyed even before I protest. The move to the church house is a way for my parents to make a fresh start. It … [Read more...]
Subterranean Boy
There was a time that I fell in love once: with life, slowly with myself, and with a beautiful boy who completely turned my world upside down. A beauteous man child who taught me about life and love and artistic vision as salvation, a stunning combination of Jim Morrison, Harrison Ford, and River Phoenix combined, whose good looks and quiet demeanour had me transfixed at every … [Read more...]
Neal and Carolyn Cassady’s house at 29 Russell St., San Francisco
It’s been about ten years now since I saw Beat legends Neal and Carolyn Cassady’s house. It was such a thrill for me; I can remember it perfectly. My old friends Kirstin and Colin, from Alaska had just moved down to San Francisco the year before in 1998, and had told me about it. “Yeah,” Kirstin told me, “it’s just up the street from our apartment.” Jack Kerouac lived with them … [Read more...]
Dearly Beloved, Part I: Growing up in 1950s San Francisco
In San Francisco, a handsome old Lutheran Church is for sale. My "Beat Generation", progressive, bohemian, intellectual, Jewish, left-leaning, scholarly, non-conformist, art professor parents, Leonard and Helen Breger, are deeply devout prolific artists. They buy the church. It promises walls galore for hanging their growing bodies of artwork. The basement Sunday School … [Read more...]
San Francisco in the 21st Century: 75 color photographs and poem by Tisa Walden
San Francisco in the 21st Century, Tisa Walden's volume of photographs documents and explores the nuances of the present-day City by the Bay. Designed by John Gossage and published by Washington DC's Loosestrife Editions, it was printed in Verona, Italy in a handsome clothbound hardcover edition. From the introduction by Jack Hirschman: What the eyes are going to open up … [Read more...]
Sleevelessness
My mom’s job is to sit on a stool in our basement. Thatʼs where her art studio is. She has a drawing table there that has a square leaned-up top and ink stains all around the edges. When she’s not making her own art, my mom draws fashion illustration ads for the San Francisco Chronicle Newspaper, and for the Joseph Magnin Department Store. She makes pictures of all the … [Read more...]
On Painting On
“Why are the paintings going away?” Mommy explains: ”Your dad is having a very important one-man show at a big fancy gallery across from The San Francisco Opera House. We're going to get all dressed up and attend the opening.” I get to go and not wear my pajamas with feet. The grown-ups that belong to my friends will be there, the City Lights poets, the artists we … [Read more...]
Erin Messer on Latif Harris’ Barter Within the Bark of Trees
In 1981, the poet Latif Harris was working at — and living above — Browser Books in its former location a block up from the current store on Fillmore Street. Harris was behind the front counter when, he says, “the most beautiful woman in the world” walked into the store. They did what you do in a bookstore: talked about books, with Harris recommending something he was … [Read more...]
Some Kind of Dharma: Photographs
“to just start at the beginning and let the truth seep out” Grant Street, San Francisco, 2009 You can quite intentionally make a Beat pilgrimage in San Francisco, soaking in the aura, the coffee, the Bohemian spirit in North Beach nooks, bars and alleys. I did not do that. I chanced upon this sidewalk marker on Grant Street, Chinatown’s main drag, and it held me for a … [Read more...]
Poems by Sarah Stockton
North Beach You are so lonely you chat up the dodgy guy parking cars at the Italian restaurant, the place you could never afford, not even a plate of lusted-after spaghetti but you are so hungry for conversation the garlic scented smile he tosses in the air becomes a white tablecloth of love. Even though you’ve never clearly seen his face in the diesel-scented … [Read more...]
6 poems by Bradford Middleton
BORED AND ALONE This life of mine has become trapped In the lacklustre slow lane of a side road Labelled no turning back from here With no sign of hope or salvation out On the horizon of life that has now Simply been reduced to getting through The shift at work and having enough To cover the rent at the start of every month Since my queen left me I’ve been bored … [Read more...]
Michael McClure’s GHOST TANTRAS published by City Lights in new edition
Originally self-published in 1964 and long out of print, Ghost Tantras is one of McClure's signature works, a book mostly written in "beast language." A mix of lyrical, guttural and laryngeal sound, lion roars, and a touch of detonated dada, this is one of his best-known but least available books, a deep well from which decades of poetry have drawn. McClure's inspiration has … [Read more...]
Review – The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt
The Beats: A Very Short Introduction by David Sterritt / Oxford University Press / 978-0-19-979677-9 / 126 pages David Sterritt's work might be familiar to Beat or film aficionados through his previous books, which include Mad to be Saved: The Beats, the '50s, and Film, and Screening the Beats: Media Culture and the Beat Sensibility among others. In The Beats: A Very … [Read more...]
I Am San Francisco
I have witnessed the waterfront decay the ships disappear the piers given over to tourists and sunbathing sea lions Gone the Haight Theater in the old Haight Ashbury where as a kid I paid a dime to see two movies a serial and a newsreel Gone the old Embassy Theater on Market Street where they spun the Wheel of Fortune playing Ten-O-Win with a busty … [Read more...]
Charged Vision: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg
The photographs of Allen Ginsberg recently were on display at the Jewish Contemporary Museum in San Francisco. Walking through the museum is like going on a jaunt through Beat History. A spritely Jack Kerouac followed by the drunk. A youthful William Burroughs, and the junky with withered skin. Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Robert La Vigne, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and of course, … [Read more...]
Michael McClure & Ray Manzarek – The Piano Poems: Live From San Francisco
McClure & Manzarek's third CD Listen to tracks / buy at Amazon: Piano Poems: Live in San Francisco A collaboration between Ray Manzarek and Michael McClure, this live performance, recorded at an old San Francisco church, features both new and older poems, with McClure's words and Manzarek's jazz piano, accompanied by Larry Kassin on flute. On a cold, foggy … [Read more...]
David Gitin: 5 From San Francisco in the Sixties
Outstretched Arms pumice the bone smooth berry juice illusion of blood to cover loss belly of the moon we penetrate what Venus do we carve?herbs and drugs do not restoreterritories of resurrection Earth poised in soma television chronicles missile finger fascination sea-scorpions and horseshoe crabs will survive us To Pharoah cork chips … [Read more...]
A. D. Winans: 11 Photographs
A. D. Winans Looks Back at the Beat Generation
Generally speaking, counter-culture describes the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group or subculture in conflict with those of the cultural mainstream of the day, a visible phenomenon that reaches critical mass and persists for some time. The Beat Generation was composed of a group of American poets and writers who first congregated in New York and later joined … [Read more...]
Remembering Poet Kirby Doyle
Kirby Doyle & the Snows of Yesteryear by Michael McClure In 1958 Kirby Doyle's menage on Sacramento Street, in a basement apartment of the no-man's land between the wealthy on the Hill and the Black Fillmore District, had a Francois Villonesque air. Kirby lived there with gloriously beautiful, blond DiDi. Their space had the air of a gypsy hide-out: incense and candle … [Read more...]
