Truckee, California
‘Home in old Medora, home in old Truckee…’ ‘… up the mountain and home in Truckee, just like Lowell, gingerbread houses and five foot snow…’ (Visions Of Cody, p144)
The Former Six Gallery, San Francisco
These photos show the former Six Gallery at 3119 Fillmore, San Francisco, which hosted the infamous reading of poems by Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Philip Lamantia and Allen Ginsberg, which lead to Lawrence Ferlinghetti offering Allen Ginsberg to publish his ‘Howl’, and the rest is history, as they say. Kerouac himself … Continue reading
City Lights Bookstore
City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA Referred to (in Kerouac’s ‘Big Sur’) simply as ‘the bookstore’. As you can probably imagine I spent quite a few hours in there and had a happy time.
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
What Happened To Kerouac?
What Happened To Kerouac? is a 1986 film by Richard Lerner and Lewis MacAdams. I watched it for the first time last night, but as I am familiar with his story rather well, there wasn’t a whole lot of information in the film I didn’t yet know. Nevertheless it was interesting to hear and see … Continue reading
Retracing Jack Kerouac 