February 2009: The 'Beat Poetry" Museum

Just a 14 blocks (and two neighborhoods) from my home due East on Broadway is the 'Beat Poetry' Museum.

How did we end up there?

Elizabeth and I were going to spend part of Valentines weekend running a few errands:


1. Stop by my friend Anup's place, drop off some gear he left at my ski house.
2. check out the Cable Car museum
3. then go to the Gym together.

We ended up drinking wine at Anups and being too late for the Cable Car Museum and too polluted with wine to go to the Gym. (working out is not advisable even with just one or two glasses of wine)

So we went to another free museum in San Francisco that I've been meaning to hit since I moved here AND stys open 'til 10 PM: The Beat Poetry Museum.

It was a bookstore, a clothing store, a Beat Poetry version of the Boston store Newbury Comics, selling posters, books, music, plus a beret-toting clerk who eagerly asked us what we knew about Jack Kerouac. The actual museum is in the back. There was a $5 admission, but we didn't want to be oppressed by 'the man' so we snuck by the ticket-taker-less turnstile.

One interesting thing I saw in there was the 'Six Gallery' reading of The Howl. What made this interesting was that it took place in the Cow Hollow/Marina neighborhood, just a few blocks from my place.

I actually need to go back: I want to find out if there is any place in SF anymore that has 'beat pooetry' readling nights, or 'poetry slams' like some friends of mine were into in Boston.

I bet the guy in the Beret knows.


There was also a theatre, 8 seats in all that had a loop of a documentary playing on a large TV.

It was not a bad museum, it's unique and far more interesting that some of the stuffy art museums around the city.

I gave Elizabeth the obligatory tour of the nearby 'Citylights' bookstore. Yes, I have been to Citylights and I have picked up some excellent fiction novels there. My favorite: Already Dead: A California Gothic I wish the book was searchable on the Citylights website so you could got a copy from them, but it doesn't come up.