Become a Member
“We’re card carrying members of The Beat Museum!”
When the authorities came to us and asked, “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of The Beat Museum?” we said, “Hell yes we are! And we’ll do it again!”
We’ve been going through our archives, adding new stories, video interviews with Beat Generation personalities, authors, and scholars, and much more, and making this unique material available for our members to enjoy. We add new content every week!
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Becoming a Member unlocks everything here:
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Read more...Sorry, Bay Area. Herb Caen did NOT coin the term “Beatnik”
For the last sixty years, a commonly held belief by many “in the know” San Franciscans is the term "beatnik" was coined by the legendary San Francisco columnist, Herb Caen. It was Caen, of course, who first used the term in his daily column in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 2nd, 1958.
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Read more...The Murder that Almost Wasn’t
The libertine circle that was to assume the mantle of the “Beat Generation” and become literary outlaws through the 1950s had its first brush with notoriety in August of 1944, when Lucien Carr murdered David Kammerer in Riverside Park, New York. The story is no doubt familiar to even the casual reader, and it’s been […]
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Read more...David Amram & Jerry Cimino Live
At Beatnik Shindig 2015, musician, composer, author, and raconteur David Amram performed with Jerry Cimino, reading from Ferlinghetti, Kerouac, and Ginsberg, sharing stories, perspectives, insights, and some sage wisdom for the ages.
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Read more...Human Be-In Mini Documentary
Directed by Jesse Block On January 14, 1967, a massive “Gathering of the Tribes” was convened in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for a Human Be-In (named in the same mode as the sit-ins and teach-ins of the civil rights and anti-war movements preceding it). The event served multiple purposes, one being to bring together […]
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Read more...David Meltzer at Beatnik Shindig 2015
At our Beatnik Shindig in 2015, David Meltzer gave a performance encapsulating 67 years as a poet.
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Read more...An Interview with Dr. Philip Hicks
Psychiatrist to Allen Ginsberg In 1955, Allen Ginsberg began attending weekly therapy sessions at the Langley Porter Clinic in San Francisco. His therapist was a young psychiatrist named Dr. Philip Hicks. It was in these sessions that Allen related to Hicks his dissatisfaction with his job in advertising, and his desire to write poetry instead; […]
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Read more...BIG MIX: Michael McClure / Ray Manzarek / Rob Wasserman / George Brooks / Jay Lane
Live at Yoshi’s June 6, 2008Directed by Jesse Block
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Read more...An Interview with Henri Cru
Henri Cru (known as "Remi Boncoeur in On the Road) was one of Jack Kerouac's oldest and most enduring friends.
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Read more...Interview with ruth weiss
[yt_video autoplay=”0″ fs=”1″ showinfo=”1″ controls=”1″ loop=”0″ rel=”0″ width=”undefined” height=”undefined”]LXDm7wOc0uE[/yt_video] Poet ruth weiss has spent much of her 91 years being witness to history. Born in Germany, as a girl she and her family narrowly escaped the rise of Nazism, fleeing to America in 1939. After the war, she and her family returned to Europe, and […]
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Read more...Interview with Ron Turner
We sat down with Turner to talk about his publishing career at Last Gasp, standard-bearer of the San Francisco counterculture, the Beat Generation, and their numerous intersections.