To North Beach, the historic Beat neighborhood of San Francisco. I get going to hang out around a small alley that links Chinatown with the Italian quarter and that was renamed "Jack Kerouac (Adler) Alley". You can find it between the Vesuvio Bar and the City Lights Bookstore. These two places are mythic for the Beat Generation, one as host to Kerouac's celebrations and his setbacks, and the other obviously as the famous bookstore founded by the Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Then, as if roped into a game of hare-and-hounds, I come upon a cup from Caffe Trieste, left behind on the ashes by Vesuvio's entrance. This cafe is also one of the high haunts of SF, loaded with Beat history...
Here is an excerpt from an American news article, dated January 2006:
ReplyDeleteCity Lights owner Ferlinghetti, who wrote the poetry classic "A Coney Island of the Mind," said the Beats have become popular again because of dissatisfaction with war and conservatism and a hunger for spirituality and deeper experience.
He hopes the literature continues to change perceptions.
"The world today needs the Beat message because everything the Beats stood for was the opposite of the dominant culture today," he said.