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Running into Carl Nolte at the Antiquarian Book Fair

Running into Carl Nolte at the Antiquarian Book Fair
San Francisco Chronicle Columnist Carl Nolte put The Beat Museum on the Map in 2006!

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. The day I met Carl Nolte was one of those days. 

After coming off a very successful two year nationwide tour in The Beat Museum on Wheels in 2004 and 2005, we decided to move The Beat Museum from Monterey, CA to North Beach in San Francisco. The challenge was I knew very few people in North Beach at the time.

In December of 2005 I sought out the North Beach Chamber of Commerce for ideas. The woman who ran it, Marsha Garland, suggested I speak to the owner of a local art gallery on Grant Avenue. I signed a deal on a napkin with Kevin Brown who owned Live Worms Gallery to sublease his space for a few months to test the concept. Unbeknownst to me, Marsha also contacted her friend Carl Nolte to come visit me on Grant Avenue.

The day Carl knocked on our door to conduct the interview we had just brought up our collection from Monterey and everything was spread all over the floor of Live Worms. Most things were still packed in boxes and all the walls and the few display cases we’d brought with us were still empty.

“What’s all this Beatnik crap?” were the first words Carl spoke to me. His voice was gruff, so much so I barely noticed the twinkle in his eye as he scanned the empty room.

“Well,” I said, my heart in my throat, “The Beat Generation were the predecessors of the Beatniks. They were a group of writers and other artists who changed the course of not only America, but the world.” Carl seemed slightly less than interested as he took a few notes while I continued my spiel.

As we continued to talk, I noticed something curious about Carl’s line of questioning. Gradually, and with no new relevant information from me, I realized Carl was steering the conversation in a direction that was more and more sophisticated. Finally, I took a chance. “Carl, something tells me you know a little bit more about the Beats than you’re letting on.” Suddenly in a big boisterous laugh he’d obviously been suppressing Carl blurted out, “Hell, I used to drink with Kerouac at the WashBAG in ’56.” I later learned the WashBAG was the Washington Square Bar and Grill and it was still open just three blocks away.

After Carl left I discovered he’d been with the SF Chronicle since 1961 and, being born in San Francisco, penned a regular column called Native Son, similar to another famous Chronicle writer whose desk was close by, Herb Caen, the man who popularized the term “Beatnik.”

When Carl’s column came out the very day we opened The Beat Museum in North Beach, I was surprised to find my photograph bigger than life in the newspaper. Carl had tied another local Beat related story to our grand opening, the fact that Jack Kerouac’s Scroll version of On the Road was going on display at the SF Public Library the very next day.

When I attended the Press event later that day at the SFPL along with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and other Beat luminaries, I was approached by a man who said, “You were the guy in the Chronicle this morning. I’m with the Associated Press. Can I interview you later today?” Ten minutes later another guy approached me and said, “I’m with United Press International and I’d like to interview you about the opening of the Beat Museum in San Francisco.”

That weekend, our first in San Francisco, we found ourselves in over 300 newspapers around the world. A cursory count yielded thirty five different countries in nine different languages. The weekend we opened! Indeed, Carl Nolte had literally put The Beat Museum on the map.

The Obscenity Trial Over Ron Boise’s Kama Sutra Sculptures

The Obscenity Trial Over Ron Boise’s Kama Sutra Sculptures
Ron Boise – Kama Sutra

Despite its longstanding reputation for being a city where anything goes, and whose libertine attitudes draw folks from around the world, eager to let their freak flag fly, San Francisco’s history is nevertheless dotted with more than a few episodes of rather astoundingly prudish nonsense. Most people know, for instance, about Lenny Bruce being unable to get through a performance in San Francisco without getting arrested, and certainly about Ferlinghetti’s prosecution on obscenity charges when a US Customs officer declared Howl and Other Poems “not fit for children.” 

Somehow lesser known is the case of Ron Boise, whose sculptures evidently caused such dismay among certain uptight individuals that the police raided the Vorpal Gallery (located in what is now Kerouac Alley) where they were being shown, confiscated the pieces, and placed the gallery’s owner, artist Muldoon Elder, under arrest on charges of offering “lewd objects for sale.”

Notes from Underground – John Bryan (ed.)
Notes from Underground – John Bryan (ed.)

Growing up in Colorado and Montana, Boise’s father had taught him welding. The art of sculpture he taught himself. Boise found an abundant and inexpensive source of materials in scrap metal, old tools, parts, and particularly junked cars. From this tarnished fodder Boise crafted figures with a simplicity and exquisiteness that according to Elder, even SFPD Captain Charles Barca, who stopped by to photograph the pieces the day before the raid, remarked: “Isn’t he marvelous! Look at the intricate way the sculptor created those tiny hands. It’s a miracle that anyone can weld like that!”

"Pushing the Line Back" by Alan Watts in Notes from Underground
“Pushing the Line Back” by Alan Watts in Notes from Underground

The offending artwork was a series of eleven small figures made from sheet metal, posed in various acts of erotic frolickery as depicted in the Kama Sutra. Sensing that the seemingly cordial visit from the police was prelude to harassment (in part because Barca had been forthcoming to Elder that his pictures were for the District Attorney’s office to determine whether the sculptures were indeed obscene), Elder’s girlfriend, Joy, contacted Channel 7 News, who sent out a cameraman the following morning. As he was being placed under arrest, Elder said to the news crew: “You see murder and horrible crime on television, smut on the news stands, the portrayal of violence accepted everywhere and yet they call it a crime to depict a simple act of tender love…”

Ron Boise, "Vidushaka and Nayika," photo by Lars Speyer
Ron Boise, “Vidushaka and Nayika,” photo by Lars Speyer

Ironically, another of Boise’s pieces also displayed at Vorpal—a parody of WWII “Uncle Sam Wants You!” posters, but a full-sized representation of President Harry Truman, depicted naked and androgynous—didn’t warrant the same attention, nor even so much as a snapshot from Barca. The piece was apparently made as revenge for Truman’s decree having kept Boise on Guam for two more years past his tour of duty with the Navy, where he’d worked as a welder.

Ron Boise, "Vriskshadhirudhaka," photo by Lars Speyer
Ron Boise, “Vriskshadhirudhaka,” photo by Lars Speyer

Still, the case did go to trial, where Muldoon Elder was represented by an attorneys Ephriam Margolin and Marshall Krause, provided by the American Civil Liberties Union. Art historians Walter Horn and Catherine Caldwell were called to testify in defense of Boise, and also Alan Watts, whose statement to the court appeared in the June 1965 edition of The Evergreen Review:

Ron Boise, "Caress of the Jaghana," photo by Lars Speyer
Ron Boise, “Caress of the Jaghana,” photo by Lars Speyer

“Ron Boise is a sculptor who is doing something which I call ‘pushing the line back’ – in the same way as great modern writers, such as Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce have been pushing the line back in literature. We haven’t seen much of it in sculpture – or in painting…

“Here we see an extraordinary example of getting away with murder but in a fantastically good way. But it’s not actually getting away with murder; it’s something much worse than that; it’s getting away with love…Very rarely, unless we are familiar with Hindu sculpture or Tibetan painting can we see anything like this done with superb mastery.”

Ron Boise, "Bound of the Tiger," photo by Lars Speyer
Ron Boise, “Bound of the Tiger,” photo by Lars Speyer

Watts expanded upon this statement, writing an introduction to the case titled “Pushing the Line Back,” accompanied by photographs of the seized sculptures by Stephen Northup, which appeared in Notes from Underground, edited by John Bryan (publisher of Open City), along with contributions from Kirby Doyle, Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac, John Rechy, Ron Boise, Kenneth Patchen, Lenore Kandel, Charles Bukowski, David Meltzer, Bob Kaufman, Grover Lewis, and Anselm Hollo.

Elder was found not guilty. Yet much like other, similar obscenity cases of its era, it became a cause célèbre for the counterculture, and daily accounts of the trial were covered by the San Francisco Chronicle, Examiner, and Call Bullietin. Photographs featuring the Kama Sutra sculptures were sold as postcards and calendars. One of the sculptures themselves was acquired by the Hip Pocket bookstore in Santa Cruz, and displayed over the front door. Another graced the roof of the Anchor Steam brewery until Fritz Maytag bought the company in 1965. But as Jim Wolpman notes: “Unfortunately, the erotic sensationalism and general furor stirred up by the Kama Sutra episode has resulted, over the years, in neglect of Boise’s other—to my mind—more significant work.”

Ron Boise, "Kshiraniraka," photo by Lars Speyer
Ron Boise, “Kshiraniraka,” photo by Lars Speyer

Ron Boise’s many other works included the “Thunder Machine,” a large percussion instrument designed to be played from the inside, and painted in swirling psychedelic designs by Joseph Lysowski. The Thunder Machine made appearances at the San Francisco Trips Festival, the Altamont Free Concert, and the Acid Tests put on by the Merry Pranksters, of whom Boise was a member.

Tragically, Boise died in 1966 from heart failure, possibly as a result of an infection made worse by a recurrence of rheumatic fever from childhood. He was 34. 


The Beat Museum, and That Time I Tried to Save Our Corner Candy Store

The Beat Museum, and That Time I Tried to Save Our Corner Candy Store

by Jerry Cimino

“I’ve been begging for money my entire life.
Is that Beat, or what?”

Last week I found a photograph I haven’t seen in my entire adult life. I was going through a large box of family photographs I shipped from my mom and dad’s house seven years ago, after they both passed away. It took me quite a few moments to process this particular image. At first I recognized a single face, my brother’s, but soon began to recollect other faces I knew, even though I no longer remember many of the names. After about thirty seconds the memories came flooding back.

My brother Jack is the tall, skinny kid in the white t-shirt. His best friend Nino is standing in front of the “For Rent” sign, wearing a straw hat. The neighborhood kids I used to play with are seated on the sidewalk. I’m the one manning the Donation Station on the far right. (Photo by Jack R. Cimino, Sr., circa 1960)

On the street I grew up on in Baltimore, the corner candy store was the center of our universe. Prior to starting kindergarten, everything in my world was centered within a one block radius between my family’s house and that little store sitting on the corner, run by a little old man who treated all the neighborhood children with kindness. I’m sure they sold other things, but for my friends and I it was all about the penny candies. We could buy those anytime we found a spare penny in a pocket. 

In addition to fueling our purchasing power, the store functioned as the hub of all social activity. We played stickball on the street where the car is parked. On the sidewalk in front of the store, the neighborhood girls would sit and play jacks. The boys would march around like we were tough, and many times a fight would break out right in front of that storefront, with the old storekeeper coming out to pull apart the two ruffians who were chasing away his foot traffic. 

One day we all woke up to find the corner candy store had disappeared overnight. There had to be a reason for it, and I’m sure the adults knew why, but for the kids in the neighborhood it was a shocking life occurrence. For such an important focal point in all our lives to be suddenly and devastatingly ripped away… something like that had never happened to any of us before.

We started marshaling our forces. We were determined to do something about this (as only kids might believe they can), even though we didn’t know what exactly we could do. So we enlisted the aid of our older brothers and sisters, and in very short order, under the guidance of the older children, we came together and formed a campaign to bring back the candy store. We made a plan to raise money to give to the owner so he could reopen our one and only public haunt. We arranged a raffle, we donated our toys, we set up a donation station, all in an effort to raise money to help reopen the store.

The store never reopened, of course. But we all learned a harsh lesson about the reality of life:

Sometimes the people, places, and things we cherish disappear with no warning, and there is nothing we can do about it. We also learned that sometimes we fail to appreciate the value of these things until they’re gone, because we simply assume they’ll always be there. That little candy store was one of those places.

Today the center of my universe is the corner Broadway and Columbus in San Francisco, where Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights blazed a trail before I was even born. But that dream later caught fire in my mind and became a beacon, bringing me and The Beat Museum to this very intersection where it all began.

Lately it seems so many of our beloved institutions keep closing, some as abruptly and heartbreakingly as that corner candy store from my youth. These historic establishments each played a role in giving San Francisco its distinctive character, part of what’s drawn so many people here chasing their dreams. At the Beat Museum, we believe in San Francisco. A crucial part of our mission is not only to tell the story of the Beat Generation, but to help keep its beacon aflame for the next generation.


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Up Close and Personal with the Collection of Richard Prince

Up Close and Personal with the Collection of Richard Prince

by Jerry Cimino

Sometimes life leads you to exactly the place you want to be, seeing things you’ve always wanted to see. A few months ago I experienced just such a moment when I made a trip to New York to peruse the greatest collection of Beat Generation and counterculture memorabilia in the world.

Hoods – Richard Prince

I was sitting in artist Richard Prince’s studio awaiting his assistant when the cover of one of Prince’s books caught my eye. It was titled Hoods, and on the cover was a 1970 Dodge Challenger, the original metal hood replaced by a piece of plywood. The hood itself had been removed and turned into a piece of art that hung on a wall along with the hoods of dozens of other muscle cars from the 1970s. That single image released a flood of memories and emotion in my mind that simply took me over.

1970 Dodge Challenger

When Richard’s assistant walked through the door, I couldn’t tell if he noticed the many gears I had turning in my head, but I felt compelled to comment. “You know, while I was waiting, I was perusing Richard’s book with the car hoods. The one on the cover caught my eye, and I’ve got to tell you a story that relates to that car. When I was 15 years old, my older brother Jack, who is a few years older than I am, bought a 1970 Dodge Challenger that looks similar to the one on the cover of Richard’s book; only Jack’s car was fire engine red with a black alligator roof, a 383 R/T with hood scoops and a pistol grip four on the floor. Boy was that a hot car! My mother used to say, ‘Jack, you better be careful with that car and watch out for the police. That car looks like it’s moving fast even when it’s parked!’

Stylized promo for the film Vanishing Point

“Little did Mom know! Not too long after Jack brought the Challenger home, we went to see a movie that had just been released called Vanishing Point. It later became a huge cult classic in the vein of Easy Rider, and of course reminiscent of Kerouac’s On the Road. It’s the story of a Vietnam vet named Kowalski (Barry Newman), a larger-than-life hero who is paid to drive from Denver to San Francisco, and takes a bet he can do it in one day. Kowalksi’s brand-new Challenger was white, as opposed to Jack’s which was red. Of course, in the movie the cops are chasing Kowalski all over the west as he drives like a maniac toward San Francisco. There is even a blind radio disc jockey named Super Soul (played by Clevon Little) who’s giving Kowalski clues over the radio as to how to avoid the cops. People all across America are hearing about this “Hero of the West” thanks to Super Soul, as Kowalski, a modern-day Dean Moriarty, goes up against the authorities, riding for the underdogs while people cheer him on from overpasses and roadsides.

“After the movie comes to its astonishing ending, Jack and I exited the strip mall movie theatre, and as we made our way out to the parking lot we saw a crowd of about 30 people standing around admiring Jack’s red Challenger. ‘That’s the same car as in the movie!’ one guy is telling his friend. A second guy says, ‘That’s not a vinyl roof, that looks like black alligator skin.’ And then a third guy chimed in, ‘Look at that Hurst shifter. It’s like a gun grip!’

“Jack stood there tall and proud for a few minutes, taking it all in as total strangers admired his brand new car. As his little brother I got to bask in the reflected glory of this magnificent moment. Even today, I treasure the memory.” And then I turned to Richard Prince’s assistant and said, “You’re too young to have seen it in the theaters, and it’s almost impossible to even find today, but have you ever heard of the movie Vanishing Point? It had a huge impact.”

My companion had a bemused expression the entire time I was telling my story, and smiled at the question, replying “Richard owns the original screenplay to Vanishing Point by Guillermo Cain. It’s sitting in a custom-made case in the next room right now.”

Thus began my hands-on examination into the world of Richard Prince, where I quickly realized his influences aren’t limited to just the Beat Generation and the muscle cars of the 1970s, but much of the same stuff that influenced so many of us who grew up in the ’60s and the ’70s. Curator and collector Robert M. Rubin published with Richard a book titled Cowboy, examining the myth of the American West, the West of John Wayne, where young men who grew up in mid-century America learned how to be a man. Through Westerns we learned the values our culture wanted to teach us, like turning the other cheek when you can, but realizing you can’t always run from a fight, especially when there’s someone more vulnerable than you in danger.

Over the years, Richard Prince has found a way to incorporate all these influences into his daily work, making art that is meaningful to him and reflects the culture he grew up in. Prince’s art mimics the progression of 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s America, where a generation of boys progressed from cowboys to femmes fatales to muscle cars.

The Greatest Beat Generation Collection In Private Hands In The World

Seven years ago I was doing some research on Kerouac’s novel Big Sur when a random internet search yielded what appeared to be a photograph of an original scroll not unlike the first draft of On the Road, except the title Big Sur was sketched across the top of the scroll, drawn in Jack’s own hand in blue and red pencil. The color scheme and rough imagery is reminiscent of the cover of the first edition of Excerpts from Visions of Cody, published in 1959.

Left: Kerouac’s original scroll manuscript of Big Sur with its custom case.
Right: First edition of Visions of Cody with titling hand-lettered by Kerouac.

I started digging deeper, and soon found myself astounded by the photographs I was looking at on Prince’s website. There are hundreds of images of counterculture-related items, along with dozens of Beat Generation images. Some I had never encountered before included original manuscripts of seminal Beat documents; signed association copies of important books (e.g. numerous copies of Howl inscribed by Allen Ginsberg to his very closest friends, Lucien Carr and Jack Kerouac, among others); various ephemera including original letters and source material; even a breast pocket notebook that turned out to be the original source document for Big Sur, which Jack carried with him on his last trip to California in August 1960.

Kerouac Highlight Includes Rejected Big Sur Manuscripts

Prince’s collection contains a lot of unpublished material. There is Jack’s original Big Sur notebook, some of the pages coming loose with age. Jack had used a razor blade to cut a tiny window the size of a postage stamp in the center of the notebook’s front cover, and on the first page, showing through the window, is a colored pencil drawing representing Big Sur. 

Then there is the Big Sur scroll itself. I saw prospectus documents created by book dealers, most importantly John McWhinnie, that refer to the scroll and scraps of paper as “Rejected Manuscripts” (the implication being they were rejected by Jack himself prior to submission as opposed to rejected by the publisher). 

There is a note written by Kerouac, attached to dozens of individual handwritten pages, and stored in the same handcrafted black leather-bound box as the Big Sur scroll. The note states: “The actual beginning of Big Sur was written by hand, originals attached here —>.” Jack also wrote, “There had to be connectives to attach it to the ‘fresh start’ scroll which begins below.”

There’s a telling personal note by Jack attached to the papers, “I still don’t understand what happened to me at Big Sur.”

Most hauntingly, written in pencil on the scroll itself in Jack’s own hand: “The night Nirvana ended.”

Well, a lot of people have asked me
why did I write that book or any book…

Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 1959

Another highlight during my visit that day in New York was to hold in my hands the actual copy of On the Road that Jack read on the Steve Allen Show in 1959, in which Jack had taped a hand-typed portion of Visions of Cody to the inside front cover (“Anyway I wrote the book because we’re all gonna die…”).

Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 1959
Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 1959

Debate had raged for decades within Kerouac circles as to what might have happened to that copy of On the Road. It was the greatest recorded reading Jack ever gave in his entire life, and it wasn’t just audio, it was on television. Most every Kerouac fan is familiar with it because it features in so many documentaries. Steve’s spontaneous piano, Jack’s mannerisms, his rhythm and cadence shine forth, capturing the essence of the entire Beat Generation in a single five-minute video clip.

On the Road – "Kerouac's Own Copy Prepared for The Steve Allen Show"
On the Road “Kerouac’s Own Copy Prepared for The Steve Allen Show”

Conspiracy theorists on the internet insisted that John Sampas had secretly sold this particular copy of On the Road to some unknown collector for a small fortune and never told anyone. Others opined that it belongs in a museum, next to a video screen with Jack reading from it, as opposed to residing on someone’s bookshelf at home.

It turns out Jack himself had given that book to Steve Allen after the show in Los Angeles on November 16, 1959. Jack even inscribed it to Steve in red pen in a very firm hand, with his classic Jack Kerouac signature fans all over the world know and love: “To Steve, from his good buddy, Jack Kerouac.” 

Original Dot Records pressing of Poetry for the Beat Generation at the Beat Museum

Also in Richard Prince’s collection are some letters from Steve Allen to Kerouac. One is related to the LP they collaborated on, Poetry for the Beat Generation. Recorded in 1958 and originally slated for release on Dot Records, that arrangement fell apart when Dot president Randy Wood objected to some of the content, calling it “in bad taste” and “off-color.” Vowing that “his diskery would never distribute a product that’s not clean family entertainment,” Wood withheld the album from receiving a full pressing, beyond the handful of copies already sent to reviewers and DJs. It is estimated there are fewer than a dozen copies of the Dot version of Poetry for the Beat Generation left in the entire world. The Beat Museum has had a copy in our collection since 2011. Richard Prince owns a copy as well.

Rather than letting the situation stand, Steve Allen and engineer Bob Thiele left Dot and took the original tape with them, forming their own record label, Hanover, and Poetry for the Beat Generation was one of their earliest releases. One letter from Steve to Jack is stored in the same slipcase as the book, and dated February 27, 1959. It reads, “Album should be out ‘soon’ at least that’s what Dot Records is telling me,” adding that “Millstein did write the notes and they’re fine. I don’t know what the hell is holding things up.” This letter was mailed to Jack’s address at 34 Gilbert Street in Northport, Long Island.

“Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!”

Walt Whitman

Then there are the Allen Ginsberg items included in Prince’s collection. When I was doing my research years ago, I was flabbergasted to find references to copies of Howl that I didn’t know existed. As many Beat fans are aware, Ginsberg had quite an acumen for marketing. If you’re familiar with the history of the publication of Howl by City Lights, you might be aware Allen sent off about fifty inscribed, pre-release copies of the book in 1956. Allen’s notes indicate these went to Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe, among other celebrities.

Other copies of Howl were inscribed by Allen to his closest friends. If you look at the copy of Howl on your bookshelf, you’ll see it is dedicated to three of Allen’s closest friends: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Neal Cassady. If you’re fortunate enough to own a copy of the very first printing (only 1,000 copies were printed) you’ll see the dedication originally included a fourth person: Lucien Carr.  

After the publication of Howl became such a big hit, Lucien contacted Allen and requested his name be removed from the dedication page. Because of his legal troubles related to the murder of David Kammerer, Lucien was forbidden from associating with known troublemakers—and Allen and Ferlinghetti were certainly stirring up some trouble!

Richard Prince owns a copy of Howl and Other Poems inscribed to Lucien Carr, a City Lights first edition, and so fittingly Lucien’s name appears on the dedication page. The inscription reads, “For Lucien, to whom this poem was written, after decades. Love, Allen Ginsberg.” William S. Burroughs also signed this very book. “William Seward Burroughs Is everybody mad? Christmas 1978,” no doubt a reference to Ginsberg’s description of Naked Lunch in the dedication as “…an endless novel which will drive everybody mad.”

There’s another interesting signed copy of Howl. This one is not a first printing, but an 8th printing from 1959. It is inscribed to Jack Kerouac as follows:

For Jack, Howl, 1959’s end’s near

my heart thumps in

my underwear

on Sunday morn again.

                              Allen

In addition to the two books described above, Prince owns two early copies of “Howl,” 8.5″ x 11″ loose-leaf early versions Ditto-printed on a spirit duplicator, prior to its publication by City Lights:

One, stored in its original envelope marked “Printed Material,” is a true first printing, one of the original 25 copies printed by Marthe Rexroth on May 16, 1956. Kenneth Rexroth mailed it from 250 Scott Street, San Francisco, to Richard Eberhart at 190 Prospect Ave, Princeton, New Jersey. Eberhart made an extremely important contribution to the growing interest in the Beat Generation when he wrote a favorable article about Howl, Ginsberg, and the Beats in general for the New York Times that ran on September 2, 1956.

The second copy is actually an unauthorized third printing; one of several impressions made from the original Ditto masters at Gotham Book Mart, and inscribed variously by Allen Ginsberg, Marthe Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Philip Lamantia, Gary Snydeer, and Philip Whalen. About six copies were acquired and sold by Peter Howard, who founded Serendipity Books in Berkeley, California in 1963, and continued to run it until he died in 2011. There is a statement by Marthe Rexroth indicating this is a Ditto using the original master. Allen Ginsberg himself hand wrote on the document, “The original master ditto sheets were typed by the poet Robert Creeley & printed off by Marthe Rexroth at SF State College as she says below. Allen Ginsberg.”

Prince owns an amazing number of other highly significant Beat Generation artifacts. There are numerous custom made leather cases containing personal items of many of Jack and Allen’s friends. Some of these cases contain countless letters, notes and photographs, all original source material. One such case includes numerous photographs and notes used in the publication of The Beat Scene by Fred McDarrah in 1960. McDarrah worked for the Village Voice and knew everyone in the New York scene. 

Another case contains original release letters signed by the people upon whom Kerouac based major characters in On the Road. The letters are pure legalese and are stamped 1955 and 1956. Kerouac, at the behest of his publisher, had asked Allen Ginsberg, Henri Cru, and Neal Cassady to sign the letters, which Kerouac then forwarded to Malcolm Cowley at Penguin. Another release letter for The Dharma Bums a year later is signed by Gary Snyder. These are standard legal releases, signed by the real-life personalities acknowledging their character names. There is also a copy of On the Road signed to “Ti Nin and brother Paul” and a prerelease copy of The Dharma Bums which features a mocked-up cover with no words printed on it.

Of course Richard Prince’s collection isn’t only limited to literature. It’s movies, it’s television, it’s rock & roll, as well as punk. It includes original documents by Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and many others. It’s the Marlboro Man and Larry McMurtry. When it comes to collecting counterculture memorabilia, Richard Prince doesn’t do anything by half measure. His collection has elements that include a little bit of everything that has made American culture what it is today.

Myth and Myth Making

The Legend and Lore of the Beat Generation and Richard Prince

I only met John McWhinnie once. It was around 2008 or 2009, shortly after we moved the Beat Museum from Monterey to San Francisco. He was visiting San Francisco with an associate, Glenn Horowitz, and they stopped into the Beat Museum on the recommendation of a mutual friend who was also a rare bookseller. I knew them by reputation only, Horowitz being the older of the two and the more established. The three of us had a very pleasant conversation, they took their time viewing the displays and exhibits and as they were preparing to leave I noticed John drop a $100 bill into our donation box. I was impressed, and grateful too, because at that time we were struggling financially and at that point $100 would have been the single largest donation we had ever received.

John McWhinnie

Numerous items in Richard Prince’s collection were procured through John McWhinnie. It appears from supporting documents that Prince and McWhinnie had a close and productive association until McWhinnie’s untimely death at age 43 in 2012. McWhinnie not only sold Prince’s own art and procured one-of-a-kind counterculture items (including books) but he also collaborated closely with Prince, most significantly to my mind, with an exhibition and a book titled American Prayer, also in collaboration with Bob Rubin as curator/editor. It was this book (with a portion of the text written by McWhinnie) that helped me understand how and why Richard Prince has made it his mission to collect and preserve the works of some of the most important and culturally significant literary personalities of the 20th century.

When Jack Kerouac was writing his Duluoz Legend he knew he was building a mythology around his own life. Part of that mythology, to which many of those new to Kerouac subscribe, is that On the Road was written in a spontaneous and frenzied three-week burst of benzedrine energy (it was actually coffee) and that his books were published exactly as he wrote them because Jack never revised. “First Thought, Best Thought,” after all. Forget about it. Jack was constantly editing and rewriting his work. If he hadn’t, he would never have been published. It took seven years to get On the Road accepted for publication. In point of fact, Jack had already written millions of words before that, but in the minds of much of the public, he became an “overnight success.”

Richard Prince knows, arguably better than most Beat fans, the backstory behind Jack Kerouac’s self-created myth. Richard has spared no expense seeking out the original documentation, and he owns the very scraps of paper that were instrumental in shaping some of the greatest works of modern times. He knows Kerouac was constantly honing and refining his writing because he’s got Jack’s own rejects in his leather-bound cases.

This is the West, Sir. When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend

Anyone who has ever seen The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, John Ford’s movie starring John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt it is one of the greatest Westerns ever made. I once needed to school one of my friends, who had the temerity to try to make the case that Tombstone was better. After I “spit forth intelligence and bloodied his nose with fact,” he came to realize: you don’t mess with John Ford. 

One of the reasons John Ford was such a magnificent movie director in mid-century America is because he came out of the silent era of film-making, where the imagery alone needed to carry the drama. John Ford could tell a story with no dialogue and no music if he so needed, because his soaring imagery alone was enough. Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath, The Quiet Man, The Searchers. Movies don’t get any better than this. 

John Ford painted with light on a movie screen. Jack Kerouac painted with words on a page. Richard Prince blazed his own trail in his own unique way and his success in the art world has enriched him to the point where he’s been able to build something that, in my mind, is absolutely magnificent: he’s been able to assemble the most important collection of counterculture memorabilia on the planet, and preserve it for posterity.

 

Banned Books Week: The Bonfire of Wilhelm Reich

Banned Books Week: The Bonfire of Wilhelm Reich
Left to right: History of the Discovery of the Life Energy (1953); The Oranur Experiment (1947-1951); Orgone Energy Bulletin (Vol. 1 No. 1, Jan. 1949; Vol. 1 No. 3, July 1949; Vol. 2 No. 4, Oct. 1950); Supreme Court of the United States, Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, October 1955.

In celebration of Banned Books Week, we’re excited to announce that the Beat Museum has recently acquired some 1950s publications from Wilhelm Reich’s Orgone Institute Press, related to one of the most egregious cases of censorship in US history.

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, whose theories concerning orgone energy became controversial, and drew the attention of the federal government. Reich claimed to have discovered a putative energy field (similar to qi, prana, and other names for a universal life force or esoteric energy in various cultures). Among other functions, according to Reich, this energy was integral in achieving orgasm, which prompted him to name it “orgone.”

“According to Reich, orgones are vibratory atmospheric atoms of the life-principle. People get cancer because they run out of orgones.”

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Reich theorized, after Freud’s belief that repression of the libido was the cause of various neuroses, that constrictions or deficits of orgone were the cause of a great many maladies, particularly cancer. Reich promoted the use of insulated human-sized Faraday cages—“orgone accumulators” as he called them—to concentrate orgone in the body. He had tested his theory on mice with cancerous tumors, and claimed to observe shrinkage or disappearance of the malignant growths. Among the followers of Reich’s orgone research was William Burroughs, who built his first accumulator in 1949, on his farm near Pharr, Texas. His thoughts on the device are included in the essay collection The Adding Machine.

Today Reich’s theories exist purely in the realm of pseudoscience, and even in his own time were derided as nonsense by much of the scientific community. In May of 1941 he lost his teaching position at the New School over claims he could cure cancer. But skepticism of his work proved to be the least of his problems. On December 12, the day after Germany declared war on the United States, Reich was arrested by the FBI at his home in New York City and imprisoned at Ellis Island, along with other Germans the government suspected of having ties to its new enemy, or of having associations with communism. He was released in January, but his name remained on the Enemy Alien Control Unit’s list of key figures, and he was kept under surveillance. Separate investigations in 1940 and 1947 concluded that his activities were neither subversive, nor a threat to national security.

In 1942 he purchased a farm on Dodge Pond in Maine, naming it Orgonon. He and several colleagues lived there full time, using it as a research center for the study of orgone, and founding the Orgone Press Institute.

Reich’s downfall began in 1947, when Mildred Edie Brady’s article “The new cult of sex and anarchy” appeared in Harper’s magazine, and “The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich,” was published in The New Republic, with the subheading “The man who blames both neuroses and cancer on unsatisfactory sexual activities has been repudiated by only one scientific journal.” According to Christopher Turner, author of Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex (2011), Brady wasn’t after Reich in particular—her true crusade was against psychoanalysis itself, which she saw as akin to astrology—though if Reich was collateral damage, so be it.

In “The new cult of sex and anarchy,” Brady describes the post-WWII bohemian subculture taking shape along the California coast, near Monterey and Big Sur. While acknowledging that such bohemian movements predictably follow wartime, and that the bohemians of 1947 aren’t so very different from the ones who flocked to Greenwich Village in the 1920s, Brady countered that what sets them apart is an obsession with sexual gratification, to an extent that sex is conflated with religion, the act a religious rite, and Reich’s book Function of the Orgasm their Bible. As Brady wrote:

“Reich’s thesis, briefly, is that all physical and spiritual ills, from cancer to fascism, stem from “orgastic (stet) impotence”; and he is the creator of that phrase, which means inability to realize sufficient pleasure in the sexual orgasm. The pleasure-paralyzing inhibitions which are responsible for this general sub-standard sexual gratification have their source, it seems, in “the patriarchal family” and its “compulsive morality.” And the social and political institutions of the modern world are nothing more than a projection of this mass sex starvation.”

If Brady’s purpose was to incite a moral panic, to characterize the new bohemians as sex cults, and with Reich as their leader, intent on unravelling the fabric of Traditional Moral Values, she certainly had all the right ingredients, and knew which buttons to push.

What the Brady articles did accomplish was to attract the authorities. Specifically Dr. J. J. Durrett, director of the Medical Advisory Division of the Federal Trade Commission. Dr. Durrett wrote to the Food and Drug Administration in July of 1947, asking them to investigate the claims Reich was making about the health benefits of orgone, the orgone accumulators he had assembled, and the claim from the Brady article that he was renting them to patients. The agency opened an investigation, convinced they were dealing with a “fraud of the first magnitude,” and suspecting perversion or some kind of sex ring, questioned women, Reich’s students, patients, or otherwise associated with orgonomy, about supposed misconduct. In a decade’s time the government spent millions investigating and survelling Reich, ultimately finding the accumulators medically worthless.

In 1954, Wilhelm Reich was served a summons. The US Attorney for the district of Maine had filed a lengthy complaint citing Sections 301 and 302 of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, and seeking a permanent injunction, prohibiting the interstate shipment of orgone accumulators themselves, along with any literature used in advertising them. When Reich refused to appear, arguing that to do so “…would imply admission of the authority of this special branch of the government to pass judgment on primordial, pre-atomic cosmic orgone energy,” the injunction was granted in his absence, with the judge ordering that all accumulators, parts and components be destroyed, and any literature containing statements and representations pertaining to the existence of orgone energy be withheld.

When one of Reich’s associates shipped an accumulator to New York, to an FDA inspector posing as a customer, Reich, along with another associate, Dr. Michael Silvert, were charged with contempt of court. Again he refused to appear, and was arrested. When he finally he did appear in court, Reich represented himself, admitting to violating the injunction but pleading not guilty. He was sentenced to two years in prison, Dr. Silvert to a year and a day, and the Wilhelm Reich Foundation was fined $10,000.

The court also ordered the accumulators and all associated literature to be destroyed. This time, the FDA was to supervise their destruction, though they were not allowed to participate. On June 5, 1956, Reich’s friends, along with his son, Peter, used axes to chop the remaining accumulators at Orgonon to pieces while two FDA officials looked on. The agents returned weeks later to supervise as promotional materials, including 251 copies of Reich’s books, were burned. That August, six tons of Reich’s books, journals, and papers were destroyed at the Gansenvoort incinerator in New York. As Reich’s associate, psychiatrist Victor Sobey observed:

All the expenses and labor had to be provided by the [Orgone Institute] Press. A huge truck with three to help was hired. I felt like people who, when they are to be executed, are made to dig their own graves first and are then shot and thrown in. We carried box after box of the literature.

He appealed the court’s decision in 1956, but it was upheld by the Court of Appeals. He also wrote to J. Edgar Hoover to request a meeting, appealed to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear his case, and applied for a presidential pardon, which was denied. On his admission to prison, he was examined by Richard C. Hubbard, a psychiatrist who admired Reich. Hubbard wrote in his notes: “The patient feels that he has made outstanding discoveries. Gradually over a period of many years he has explained the failure of his ideas in becoming universally accepted by the elaboration of psychotic thinking. “The Rockerfellows [sic] are against me.” (Delusion of grandiosity.) “The airplanes flying over prison are sent by the Air Force to encourage me.” (Ideas of reference and grandiosity.)

Wilhelm Reich died on November 3rd, 1957 in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. His body was found in his bed after missing morning roll call. He was 80. He is buried at Orgonon, which presently houses the Wilhelm Reich Museum.

Horst Spandler’s On the Road Collection Has Arrived

Horst Spandler’s On the Road Collection Has Arrived
Just a few of the books in the Horst Spandler Collection

We’ve long known our friend Horst Spandler had amassed one of the greatest collections of international On the Road editions in the entire world. (And who would know better than us?) We showcased his magnificent collection back in 2011, when Horst offered to loan us his books for an exhibition called “On the Road Around the World” It was such a rousing success, we extended it from an original run of 6 months to 18 months, and we were grateful to Horst for allowing us to put his collection on public display for the first time.

Three containers, still with their outer cardboard. Inner metal container on top.

Earlier this year, Horst contacted us once again to let us know he wanted to donate his original collection from a decade ago, along with another 30 additional copies he had acquired since then. All we needed to do was raise the $1,000 to cover the cost of shipping from Germany to San Francisco. With the generous support of the people on this mailing list, we were able to raise the funds, and on April 26, 2023, four separate boxes left Germany bound for San Francisco.

The books were packed inside their original protective metal containers Horst had used to ship them a decade earlier. They were then placed inside cardboard boxes, along with protective shipping material. There were four boxes in 2023, versus the three sent in 2010, and once again they needed to go through US Customs inspectors before they arrived on our doorstep. We expected there would be a little more scrutiny this time, because they were being donated as opposed to being loaned.

At first, it looked like everything was going to go swimmingly. The first three boxes arrived separately, on May 8, May 15, and May 18. We were awaiting the arrival of the fourth box, eager to report to all of you the success of our mission.

But by the end of May we still had not received the fourth box. We started making inquiries with the carrier, DHL, but they insisted an investigation needed to be initiated from the German side, not the San Francisco recipient. That’s when we asked Horst and his family to get involved, but even then they were delays. 

June came and went, and I will admit we were starting to get concerned. Being the proud new custodian of one of the greatest collections of On the Road books in the world would be marred by tragedy if somehow one quarter of it was lost in transit.

In July, with the help of more people in Germany, DHL‘s investigation went to another level, and thank goodness—they were able to locate a box that had been damaged prior to leaving Germany, and apparently got misplaced in a corner awaiting repair for over two months!

Much to our relief, the fourth box arrived at The Beat Museum on July 24, 2023, and although the cardboard exterior seemed to indicate the journey wasn’t exactly a gentle one, the internal metal case containing the books was intact. 

All’s well that ends well, and we’re extremely pleased to be able to update you about this happy resolution. Look for the Horst Spandler Collection on exhibit at The Beat Museum this fall of 2023.

UPDATE: Success! Please Help The Beat Museum Preserve This Extremely Rare Jack Kerouac LP

UPDATE: Success! Please Help The Beat Museum Preserve This Extremely Rare Jack Kerouac LP
Poetry for the Beat Generation was recorded in 1958 and almost released on Dot Records (Dot #3154). Dot owner Randy Wood stopped production of the record citing “objectionable” language and subject matter. This is one of only a dozen likely to still exist.

Who would ever have imagined that one of the rarest and most valuable record albums ever produced wasn’t recorded by a world-class musician or group—but by a novelist and poet? 

We’re not talking about a one-off, like the 2022 Ionic Original version of Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” that sold at Christie’s for $1,769,508 last year, because only a single copy was made. Nor are we referring to the copy of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Double Fantasy that Lennon signed in 1981 for the crazed fan who murdered him a few hours later. No, we’re referring to LPs that were produced with the expectation they would be distributed en masse by the thousands.

If you’re a Jack Kerouac fan, you’re probably more familiar with this album than you might think. In fact, you’ve probably been listening to it for years. For many of us, this record was the audio link that finally helped us understand the rhythm of Jack’s writing style, thanks to hearing his voice and intonation accompanied by Steve Allen’s piano.

Back in 2011, we received an email from a man named Bob who told us he’d be coming to San Francisco soon and would be bringing us his most prized possession—a copy of the Dot Records version of Poetry for the Beat Generation.

We knew about the history of this record. We knew that Steve Allen had seen Jack perform at the Village Vanguard in NYC in 1957, and that he offered to accompany Jack for the second show. We knew their collaboration went so well that Steve suggested a recording session at Dot Records with legendary engineer Bob Thiele. We knew that 130 promotional copies had been pressed and distributed to reviewers in 1958—and then, at the last minute, Dot Records president Randy Wood finally listened to the album, and objecting to Jack’s language and the subject matter of the poetry, refused to allow it to go into production. 

Bob Thiele kept the master tapes, and after leaving Dot, he and Steve Allen created their own label to be sure Jack’s record got out to the public. The record we all know and love was released on Hanover-Signature Records a year later, in 1959. Steve Allen is seen holding a copy of this LP during Kerouac’s 1959 appearance on the Steve Allen Show. The LP was released again as part of the Jack Kerouac Collection box set by Rhino Records in 1990, this time on cassette and CD.

When we finally met Bob a few weeks later in 2011 we had a very engaging conversation. “My father was a newspaperman and used to review records in the 1950s and 1960s. As a result he had a collection of thousands of records. He always told me, ‘If there’s ever a fire in the house, you don’t go for that copy of the Beatles or the Stones. The LP you want to save is the one by Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen. There are only a handful of those in the entire world.'”

Bob was well aware this Dot Records copy of Poetry for the Beat Generation is worth thousands of dollars. Still, he wanted to share his prized possession with Beat enthusiasts from around the world, and he agreed to place the LP on permanent loan with The Beat Museum. For years we’ve been displaying this beautiful piece of Beat history for all to see.

Last week we got a call from Bob. It was the first time we’d heard from him in over ten years. He told us he’d fallen on hard times these last few years and he needed cash fast. He asked if we could find a buyer for Poetry for the Beat Generation. We knew a copy of this very same record had just sold at auction for $3,000 back in May of this year.

Before we tested the waters to find a buyer for the LP, we discussed with Bob the possibility of allowing us a few weeks to raise the money so we could purchase it ourselves and keep it at The Beat Museum. Bob loved the idea that his beloved album, passed down from his father, might remain on public display in perpetuity at The Beat Museum for Beat Generation fans to continue to enjoy.

We hope to be able to raise the funds to buy Bob’s copy of Poetry for the Beat Generation for $3,000. 

It would be a Win/Win/Win—for Bob, for The Beat Museum, and for Beat fans who would otherwise likely never have an opportunity to see this fantastic piece of Beat history and marvel at the story of the Kerouac album that stands head and shoulders above all other LPs.

Although the claim is 130 of these LPs were sent to reviewers, most experts agree there are likely only a dozen or so copies of this record left on the entire planet. A person shouldn’t have to be rich in order to ever catch a glimpse of the first pressing of Jack’s finest recording.

UPDATE: Success! With your support, we were able to purchase this extremely rare, original Dot Records pressing of Poetry for the Beat Generation for the Beat Museum’s permanent collection! Thank you to everyone who donated!

The Rumors of Our Demise are Greatly Exaggerated

The Rumors of Our Demise are Greatly Exaggerated
A beautiful summer day for readings in Kerouac Alley as City Lights celebrates 70 years. In 2023 Vesuvio celebrated 75 years, and The Beat Museum 20 years.

by Jerry Cimino

It’s a funny thing to be living in the city of San Francisco these last few years. People who have never even visited our city seem to feel entitled to weigh in on the conditions those of us who actually live here experience every day. They presume to know exactly what’s going on because certain agenda-driven news outlets have been hawking a downright dismal outlook on our city almost daily. If you’re an East Coast transplant like me, old friends from another lifetime ago might start an email with the words, “How’s the poop in San Francisco?”

The reality in SF is very different from what observers from afar might imagine. And some of those weighing in are just being disingenuous. You’ve seen the headlines: “Downtown office buildings 30% vacant.” “Tech companies leaving San Francisco.” “Downtown retailers closing at an accelerated rate.”

Granted, there’s some accuracy to those headlines. But what they lack is any balance. They don’t reflect any of the myriad ways our city is moving along very well. Indeed, a few months ago, tourists started to return in droves. In the circles I travel in, for those who depend on tourism, that is everything! The crowds of tourists we’ve seen here in North Beach these last few weeks are rivaling the numbers we saw back in 2019. And they’re coming from all over! South America, Europe, Asia and the good ole USA—yes, even from red states!

So, are there fewer tenants in office buildings in San Francisco? Sure, just as there are in most other American cities post-pandemic. Office workers have discovered they like working from home, they don’t enjoy long commutes, and in an economy that currently boasts a 3% unemployment rate, these people have choices. 

But that’s only part of the story. When my wife and I drove The Beat Museum on Wheels across the entire USA last fall, we noticed every city in America had similar issues. We saw homeless encampments in every state, and not just in the big cities. Drug abuse was rampant across the country, even in the small towns. And retailers from shopping malls to big-box stores are closing all over America, primarily due to the huge rise in online shopping.

What you don’t hear is how much San Francisco has going in its favor. Despite the focus on downtown, many of our other neighborhoods are on the rebound, and North Beach is one of them. So is Cole Valley, Haight-Ashbury, the Marina, and other parts of town. The neighborhoods that years ago enacted moratoriums on “formula retail” (corporate chains) in favor of local, independent businesses seem downright prescient. I’m not saying it’s easy on anyone, but like us, many old standbys are still here.

Beat Generation Values Became San Francisco Values 

Where did all the negativity toward San Francisco come from?

It goes back to San Francisco’s reputation as a bastion of liberalism, established some 60 or so years ago. Let’s not kid ourselves, we’re in the middle of yet another so-called “culture war”—reminiscent of similar clashes over American identity and values throughout the 1950s and the 1960s. 

In my mind, this current culture war began with Rush Limbaugh during the Clinton Administration, and was passed to Tucker Carlson during the Obama administration. Along the way there were dozens of other Rush and Tucker wannabes, many of whom didn’t actually believe a damn thing they were spouting on the airwaves about “The Libs” here in SF. But rant they did anyway because it was all about making a fast buck. They loved to rage against “San Francisco Values.” The truth be damned. Integrity be damned. Country be damned. They were in it for the money.

The truth is, San Francisco values came from the Beat Generation. Most of us who love the Beats also believe in tolerance, compassion, and sympathy for our fellow human beings. The Beats passed these beliefs on to the hippies, and they’ve become no-brainers for the younger generations of today. At The Beat Museum, every school group we see, whether 17-year-olds in high school or 20-somethings in college, the vast majority believe in diversity, equality and inclusion. They don’t have to be taught these ideas—they live them every single day of their lives. For most young people in America in 2023, “San Francisco Values” are the norm.

And here’s the rub—the one thing all the naysayers on the wrong side of history and the culture wars can never take away from San Francisco are the many draws our fair city enjoys:

Where else in the lower 48 can a traveler take in the scenic views like they can in the Bay Area? 

Where else can perfect strangers show up out of the blue, present themselves as they truly are, and be accepted by the local populace for who they want to be?

And, especially this summer, where else can people go to spend time in a moderate climate? With much of the US baking in 100+ heat, San Francisco with our cool coastal climate is undoubtedly one of the best places to visit. And I don’t see that changing for a very long time.

In fact, our city is one of the coolest places on the planet—and in more ways than one!

San Francisco—we think we’re gonna be here a long, long time! 

Ferlinghetti’s Handwritten Notes on Bad Reviews of Starting from San Francisco 

Ferlinghetti’s Handwritten Notes on Bad Reviews of Starting from San Francisco 

Imagine our delight when we opened this first edition of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 1961 collection Starting from San Francisco (the hardcover edition that also includes a 7-inch record) for the first time, and found two newspaper clippings, yellowed severely with age, inside the front cover. Both were from 1962, and were contemporaneous reviews of the book, one by the poetry editor of The Paris Review and the other published in The Village Voice. They had been laying untouched between the pages for so long, the type from the newsprint clippings had become imprinted upon the endpapers of the book.

But, wait, it gets even better!

Also included in this 60+ year old treasure is a handwritten note from Ferlinghetti himself! In the note he thanks the friend who sent him the two reviews, describing them as—how shall we say it—”lackluster.” Then he adds, in his understated way, “These cats are really upset!”

When you’re in the business we are, it’s not unusual to find ancient newspaper clippings inside highly collectible books. But what you don’t see very often is the original writer’s response to those reviews, and especially in such a colorful language from a guy who wasn’t known for being vulgar, and was in fact rather reticent, and likely wouldn’t say certain words aloud, even if he had a mouthful of them. So it’s a bit refreshing to see Ferlinghetti say how he really felt!

Note: We’re working on exactly how we might frame this rare beauty in a shadowbox like arrangement so we can allow it to tell it’s own story tucked safely behind glass at The Beat Museum. If you have any thoughts as to how we might best do that, we’re open to them.

Painting of Bob Kaufman by George Pennewell Arrives at the Beat Museum

Painting of Bob Kaufman by George Pennewell Arrives at the Beat Museum

It was a busy Saturday when Brandon took the call. The man on the other end, Bob Gilman, informed us he had a unique artwork and he wanted it to “go to the right place.”

Gilman told us he had commissioned artist George Pennewell to create a “North Beach painting” of Bob Kaufman in 1987. Kaufman had passed away just a year prior, and Gilman was one of the people who participated in a memorial for Bob at City Hall. Gilman told us he had been a longtime North Beach resident, and asked his friend George to do a rendering of Kaufman based on a photograph taken by Jean Dierkes-Carlisle on Grant Avenue in 1979. In it, Bob is wearing a deep red coat, white turtleneck, and black hat.

We were familiar with the photo. Jean gave us a copy of it within days of our arrival in North Beach in 2006, and we immediately hung it up in our first location at Live Worms on Grant Avenue. We were familiar with Pennewell too, though he’s perhaps best known for his work as a poster artist of the 1960s counterculture.

Bob told us he was most interested in ensuring the painting be placed somewhere, preferably in North Beach, where it could be viewed by the public and cared for by people who value it. Fortunately the Beat Museum checked all those boxes.

Recap: Andy Romanoff & Wavy Gravy

Recap: Andy Romanoff & Wavy Gravy
Photo By Barry Schwartz. © Barry Schwartz. All Rights Reserved.

It was a packed house on May 1st, as the Beat Museum hosted a very special evening with Andy Romanoff, reading from his collection, Stories I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You. Joining Andy in conversation, and reading from his own stories, was his good friend Wavy Gravy, who was in town to celebrate his 87th birthday on May 7th at Herbst Theatre.

In case you missed it, photographer/videographer Barry Schwartz (@barryschwartz1) was front and center shooting stills and video of the event:

https://player.vimeo.com/video/826562379?h=d75bfdb24e

Andy Romanoff reading from “Stories I’ve Been Meaning To Tell You”, with Wavy Gravy, May 1, 2023. from Barry Schwartz on Vimeo.

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