Jack Kerouac’s Jacket

at The Beat Museum, Broadway, San Francisco The label reads: ‘This wool and cotton jacket belonged to and was worn by Jack Kerouac. The label is CPO, a brand popular in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The earth tones and broad checks reflected Kerouac’s working class aesthetic and it is the type of jacket Kerouac would … Continue reading

Broadway Tunnel and Alfred’s Restaurant, San Francisco

This photo shows the Broadway Tunnel in North Beach/Russian Hill, San Francisco. Kerouac wrote about it in ‘The Subterraneans’, which was set in SF and not in New York, where the events told actually took place as well as other book(s). The yellow building in the center of the photograph shows the house in which … Continue reading

One Fast Move Or I’m Gone (Pt.1)

One Fast Move Or I’m Gone (Kerouac’s Big Sur) Jay Farrar & Benjamin Gibbard … is a CD/DVD combo released in 2009 and was in fact the catalyst for me to (finally) start the project ‘Retracing Jack Kerouac’ (see the ‘About’ page). The center piece of the release is actually the 96 min film documenting … Continue reading

Bull Durham

Wandering down Columbus Ave. in San Francisco I saw this and had to think about the following scene in On The Road: “I picked up the turd, which was in a brownpaper cigarette, and went back to Bea and off we went to the hotel room to get high. Nothing happened. It was Bull Durham … Continue reading

Jack’s Hope

“All I hope, Neal, is someday we’ll be able to live on the same street with our families and get to be a couple of oldtimers together” (Quote from On The Road (The Original Scroll version)) I read this earlier today and found it very sad, as neither of both men did get to live … Continue reading

Jack Kerouac & Steve Allen – Poetry For The Beat Generation

Recorded sometime in 1958/’59, the album was originally released in 1959 and re-released on CD in 1999. The recordings came about when Kerouac was engaged at the Village Vanguard to read his poems and Steve Allen came to see him read one night. Allen was asked by G. Millstein, who wrote one of the first … Continue reading

On The Road – The Original Scroll – Bea

I have just been reading the part in On The Road where Jack Kerouac meets Bea in Bakersfield and has a few intense weeks with her and her extended family. It’s not an easy time, he feels head over heels in love with her, and as she is Mexican, and therefore one of the people … Continue reading

On The Road – The Original Scroll

After reading the paperback version a number of times I have yesterday started to read ‘On The Road – The Original Scroll for the first time’. I am at present not really able to pinpoint each difference between this and the other version, but I was immediately reminded in the first 70 pages or so … Continue reading