Pic and Slim Arriving In Oakland
The inspiration for this post is the end of Kerouac’s short novel ‘Pic’, in which Pic and his brother Slim arrive to an uncertain future, without money or a job in Oakland after Slim is seeing no future for himself, Pic and Slim’s wife Sheila in New York. I don’t know the story of … 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
Easy And Dreamlike
This photo post was inspired by chapter 1 of ‘Big Sur’ in which Kerouac describes the journey he took from Long Island to San Francisco. This photo was taken somewhere in the Sierra Nevada (‘the final mountains of California’ he meant I guess)
San Francsico Skid Row Hotel
The Chronicle Hote, on Howard Street (I believe, am not 100% sure), Civic Center/South of Market – San Francisco’s Skid Row. Kerouac wrote about the ‘Mars Hotel on 4th and Howard’ in Big Sur – which I couldn’t find, but this Hotel was one of a few I saw that looked how I … Continue reading
Jack Kerouac, The Mill Worker
Bootts Mills, Lowell, MA ‘Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I’ll gladly become a mill worker and shut my big mouth’ Big Sur, Chapter 37 I always liked this sentence, as it shows that Kerouac often managed not to take himself too seriously, and display … Continue reading
One Fast Move Or I’m Gone (Pt.2)
The Vesuvio Cafe, North Beach, San Francisco (next to the City Lights Bookstore). As the schedule on my trip didn’t permit me to go down to Bixby Canyon I chose to use this photo to accompany the post. For an overview of the project see pt.1 of my post here: http://wp.me/p1GcOs-35 The first few minutes … 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
Retracing Jack Kerouac 