While walking up Kearny after getting off at the Montgomery stop, I was inundated by the cityscape-- high rise buildings, suits and skirts sipping their coffee while walking to work, the Jamba Juices and Starbucks that stand in every city. I started wondering if I was in the right place during this walk. Then I passed the Italian flag on a pole and suddenly I was in North Beach, where the coffee shops are mom and pops and most buildings are scaled down to three stories instead of 30.
The first place I went to was City Lights, the famous bookstore of the beat generation. A sales clerk behind the desk told me about Allen Ginsberg's former place of residence across the street and how he stands there sometimes to see what Ginsberg saw when the poet walked out of his apartment in the morning. The sales clerk recommended I check out the poetry room of the bookstore, a respite filled with books from every poet imaginable. The room, with chairs and desks placed throughout, could have been an English professor's private library if not for the meticulous alphabetization of the authors and stands of postcards. I learned that City Lights, which is already a publishing house as well, is having its first meeting of a new monthly bookclub on October 7th. The featured book will be Voices of the Chicago Eight and I'm excited to report on what the book club will be like.
Poetry in North Beach is not just contained within books and the minds of people who want to emulate poet-heroes of past generations. In fact, poetry is so alive in the neighborhood that it lines the sidewalks. Written with Sharpie on masking tape, phrases like "The Freedom of Speech at its Zenith" can be found (and followed) up and down the streets of North Beach. I'm curious to find out more about these poems--who writes them (anyone, everyone, one group of people, the ghost of Allen Ginsberg?), when they post them, and how and why they started posting their thoughts on the streets.
After the poetry binge, I decided to research binges of another nature. Locals and people working in shops told me to go to the Saloon, a bar on Grant Avenue. The bar isn't merely a bar, as bartender Agatha was quick to tell me. It's the oldest tavern in San Francisco (a fact assured by her, but disputed by some Internet research saying it was the third oldest). Agatha, now between 50 and 60 years old, says she has been working at the Saloon since she was in her 20's; her first day is still far away from the day it opened. The tavern actually opened in 1861 as part of the Hotel Fresno. Back then, a sailor might describe its location as being on the Barbary Coast instead of on the corner of Grant street. For a bar with that much history, legends abound. According to Blues.net, "The building survived the '06 earthquake, it's said, because of its unusually stout timbers. It survived the subsequent fires, it's said, because the fire brigades made sure to protect the hookers who worked upstairs." The bar is now known for its blues, something that Agatha was even more excited about describing to me than its age. For a video of a blues performance at the Saloon--and the women dancing to the music-- here.
