Bowery Blues
Cooper Union seen from Cooper Square The mesh-clad building on the right is the new Cooper Union building Views down the Bowery in the next few photos This post was inspired by the reading of Kerouac’s poem ‘Bowery Blues’ on the ‘Poetry For The Beat Generation’ album he recorded with Steve Allen in 1958/’59. In … Continue reading
Views from Ozone Park
Rockaway Blvd. Subway station, the nearest subway stop to 133-01 Cross Bay Blvd. in Ozone Park, Jack Kerouac’s home from 1943-1948 133rd Ave The rose-coloured house in the background is the one Kerouac lived in Nativity-Blessed Virgin Mary Church, Rockaway Blvd. A few shots to show the area in which Kerouac lived in the mid- … Continue reading
133-01 Cross Bay Blvd
The house the Kerouac family lived in from 1943 – 1948. Jack Kerouac’s Dad Leo died in this flat and Kerouac’s first published novel ‘The Town And The City’ in which he dealt with it, was also mainly written here. Queens, New York
Minetta Tavern, Greenwich Village
A popular hangout of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Lucien Carr and William S. Burroughs as early as the beginning of the 1940’s. 113 MacDougal Street, Greenwich Village, New York
Bklyn Bridge
‘… an all the wild adventures together on Bklyn Bridge, Columbia, Frisco, Mexico, etc. and elsewhere later, but all that bombed-out literature we started (bombed-out-of-mind)…’ Jack Kerouac in a letter to Allen Ginsberg June 19, 1963 (Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1957-1969, ed. by Ann Charters)
Samuel S Cox Statue /Tompkins Square
The statue of Samuel S Cox can be seen in the background of the photo Allen Ginsberg took of Jack Kerouac that graces the cover of Allen Ginsberg’s highly recommended photography book ‘Beat Memories – The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg’ (DelMonico Books/Prestel). Tompkins Square is featured in Kerouac’s ‘The Subterraneans’ (disguised as a park in … Continue reading
206 E 7th Street, New York
206 E 7th Street, East Village, New York Allen Ginsberg lived in this house in 1952/’53. I included it in my project as my favourite Kerouac photo of him standing on the fire escape with his Southern Pacific handbook sticking out of the pocket of his jacket was taken here.
307 W 11th Street
Kerouac’s girlfriend in 1956/1957 Helen Weaver, author of ‘The Awakener’ lived here when he returned from Mexico with Allen Ginsberg and the Orlovsky brothers Peter and Lafcadio and all of them yelled at the 3rd floor window where she lived with a friend (see ‘Desolation Angels’). (Facts by Bill Morgan’s book ‘The Beat Generation in … Continue reading
White Horse Tavern
Perhaps most famous as the bar in which Dylan Thomas drank the night he died, Kerouac hung out in the White Horse Tavern a lot while he was living with Helen Weaver nearby. Apparently it was here that Kerouac found a scribbled ‘Kerouac Go Home!’ on a toilet cubicle wall (see ‘Desolation Angels’ and ‘Jack … Continue reading
Washington Square, New York
“It gets more and more joyous all the time…” – spoken in the reddening sun of Washington Square.’ Jack Kerouac in a letter to Allen Ginsberg, September 1948
Retracing Jack Kerouac 