Bixby Canyon
Path leading from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s cabin in Bixby Canyon (Raton Canyon in Kerouac’s novel Big Sur) to the Pacific Ocean. I am unaware of the exact location of the cabin in the canyon – but there is only one path leading out to the sea.
Home I’ll Never Be
Two quite different versions of Kerouac’s Home I’ll Never Be which is also known as On The Road (but I guess that’s more out of commercial interest). A reading of it was apparently released on Kerouac’s On The Road 3-CD set, but I haven’t got that. Tom Waits’ version can be found on his splendid … Continue reading
Happy Birthday City Lights
Despite Jack Kerouac perhaps not playing that big of a role in the history of the City Lights Bookstore and City Lights Publishing (as far as I know they only published one or two poetry collections by Kerouac) I found it fitting to upload this post. Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a longtime friend of Kerouac, most … Continue reading
Kerouac, Steinbeck and a new direction for Retracing Jack Kerouac
True to the title of the blog, I originally planned to limit myself to only posting photos of the places of importance to Kerouac that I visited. However, as I already put up most of the photos taken on the two trips in October of 2010 and March 2012 that provided the majority of the … Continue reading
The California Zephyr at Emeryville
Detail shot of the California Zephyr train at Emeryville (Oakland) station. I was about to start the greatest train journey of my life and one of the very best experiences of my life so far – the journey from San Francisco/Emeryville to Denver is absolutely breathtaking. And it’s forever linked in my mind with Kerouac’s … Continue reading
Tosca
After finishing watching Antonelli’s film Kerouac: The Movie (1985) I decided to post a photo of the Tosca, although I don’t know if Kerouac had a connection with it at all, or if it already existed at the time he hung out in San Francisco. In any case it’s located directly opposite the Cafe Vesuvio … 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
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
Retracing Jack Kerouac 