Jack Kerouac would have been 80 on Monday. I tried several times to write something on Monday that didn’t sound pretentious and gave up. I’ve always admired him and I enjoyed the two Kerouac books I’ve read, but Kerouac is one of those iconic figures that inspire some people to compose odes, and I’m in no position to do that. But I will take a beatnik over a hippie any day of the week.
I searched out City Lights Books when I was in San Francisco quite a few years ago and bought Dennise a book of Kerouac’s letters as well as “Fever Pitch” by Nick Hornby, which I started to read at a bar next door called Vesuvios. I was drinking some sort of liquored up coffee with lemon peel and the third one had lipstick on the glass. Depending on whether you are a glass half-full or half-empty type of person, it was either one or the other, and I told myself I wasn’t going to let it ruin the experience. Regardless, it’s something I can obviously recall with quite a bit of clarity. At a beat poetry reading in Japhy Ryder’s place drinking tea with a bunch of loose girls, you wouldn’t notice lipstick on a glass. When you’re a tourist drinking coffee in a tourist place at tourist prices it makes it that much harder to not be self conscious about the whole thing. Worrying about how clean the glasses are is about as far away from Zen as you can get. It’s the litmus test for beatniks. There are always plenty of corporate hellholes that you can count on to provide sterile glassware, if that’s what you’re into.
Kerouac came up with his own type of Strat-O-Matic baseball when he was a kid. It’s been inaccurately reported as being a “fantasy baseball league,” but it was more like Strat-O-Matic, for those old enough to remember. The New York Public Library has it as part of its collection. When we lived in New York, I think they were displaying it at some point, but we were too late to catch it. Time Out New York actually had a picture of the cards. Each team was named after a make of car and was done in different color ink. I always got a kick out of this because it kills the stereotype of the Beat Generation being too far out for organized sports, or too cool for obsessive juvenile hobbies. Strat-O-Matic baseball gave Kerouac more depth.
I searched out City Lights Books when I was in San Francisco quite a few years ago and bought Dennise a book of Kerouac’s letters as well as “Fever Pitch” by Nick Hornby, which I started to read at a bar next door called Vesuvios. I was drinking some sort of liquored up coffee with lemon peel and the third one had lipstick on the glass. Depending on whether you are a glass half-full or half-empty type of person, it was either one or the other, and I told myself I wasn’t going to let it ruin the experience. Regardless, it’s something I can obviously recall with quite a bit of clarity. At a beat poetry reading in Japhy Ryder’s place drinking tea with a bunch of loose girls, you wouldn’t notice lipstick on a glass. When you’re a tourist drinking coffee in a tourist place at tourist prices it makes it that much harder to not be self conscious about the whole thing. Worrying about how clean the glasses are is about as far away from Zen as you can get. It’s the litmus test for beatniks. There are always plenty of corporate hellholes that you can count on to provide sterile glassware, if that’s what you’re into.
Kerouac came up with his own type of Strat-O-Matic baseball when he was a kid. It’s been inaccurately reported as being a “fantasy baseball league,” but it was more like Strat-O-Matic, for those old enough to remember. The New York Public Library has it as part of its collection. When we lived in New York, I think they were displaying it at some point, but we were too late to catch it. Time Out New York actually had a picture of the cards. Each team was named after a make of car and was done in different color ink. I always got a kick out of this because it kills the stereotype of the Beat Generation being too far out for organized sports, or too cool for obsessive juvenile hobbies. Strat-O-Matic baseball gave Kerouac more depth.
The new Uncut came in the mail yesterday with The Who on the cover, featuring primarily Keith Moon. With my subscription I’ve come to think that Uncut takes more trips down memory lane than Joe Franklin, but I digress. The Moon feature includes many recollections of the late Patent British Exploding Drummer from friends and acquaintances, including Roger Daltrey. Although I haven’t read the entire thing yet, the bombshell to me is that Daltrey recalls the story of Moon driving the Rolls into the pool of the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan on Moon’s 21st birthday as being one hundred percent true. Moon biographer Tony Fletcher went to great lengths to disprove that this really happened. The fact that Roger was there and so strenuously insists that it happened is pretty dramatic stuff, especially if it’s not true. I haven’t been to Fletcher’s Jamming! website since the magazine came out or had time to dig out my copy of “Dear Boy” to conduct an investigation yet, but either way I am even more impressed with Keith Moon. Four decades after the legendary event, people are still talking about it. The fortieth anniversary of Keith Moon’s 21st birthday party is August 23. Everyone is invited over to my place to break something.
1 comment:
Hey Mikey,
I visited both City Lights & Vesuvios last October. But I was too distracted by the aging hipster drinking at the bar and talking through one of those throat microphones that one uses having had their voice box removed due to cancer to see if my glass had lipstick on it. Cool place though.
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