Thursday's Place: Caffe Trieste

It's not a very prepossessing place, although the places featured on Thursdays rarely are.  That lack of pretension is probably what made or makes them popular, as they attract a crowd that doesn't want the surroundings to distract from their own affectations.  Also, they tended to be cheap, like those whom they attracted.  Since I primarily write of places that were popular with the creative class, that's no surprise.

In the 1950's, the North Beach neighborhood in San Francisco was an enclave of Italian immigrants filled with culturally specific restaurants and groceries familiar to anyone who has ever grown up in an ethnic neighborhood.  As with a dynamic that we have noted before with the Coventry Road section of Cleveland, North Beach began to attract a more bohemian crowd who found the relaxed atmosphere and low rents to be desirable.

This was aided somewhat when the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti opened a small bookstore in the neighborhood where one could find inventory not to be found in other stores.  As the genre of literature he promoted became dominant, and as he also opened a small publishing press for those who could not find support in the mainstream industry, the City Lights Bookstore became the magnet for those who would transform the Italian neighborhood to that of the counter-culture.

Looking every bit the Frisco poet

In the midst of it all, opened in 1956, was the Caffe Trieste.  Its owner, Giovanni Giotta, missed the real espresso and cappuccino of his hometown in Italy and opened the only place outside of New York's Little Italy where one could find the real thing.

[A note for those younger than I: In the days before ubiquitous, boutique coffee shops, espresso was basically mud in a cup and cappuccino was mud topped by a blast from a can of Reddi-Wip.  No, I'm not kidding.]

As both City Lights and Caffe Trieste opened around the same time, a trip to North Beach could include both on the itinerary and the coffeehouse offered the perfect place to read some volume purchased from Ferlinghetti.  Shortly afterwards, it would become a perfect place to write something to be published by Ferlinghetti.

Hence, one could order a proper espresso in the Caffe and be surrounded by habitues such as Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Richard Brautigan, Bob Kaufman, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure, and Kenneth Rexroth.  Lawrence Ferlinghetti, now 100, still frequents that large, copper cappuccino steamer.  Paul Kantner, one of the founders of Jefferson Airplane and creator of the "San Francisco sound" in rock music, made it his home away from home; and Francis Ford Coppola wrote the draft of the screenplay for The Godfather in a quiet corner.  Well, not so quiet when he was there, as he wrote with a portable, manual typewriter.

Giotti, commonly addressed as "Papa Gianni", would preside over his small, corner business for sixty years, surrendering his mortality at the age of 96 in 2016.  In addition to brewing the first, and still authentic, cup of cappuccino on the West Coast, Giotti was also an amateur musician who would share that talent with anyone who would come through his door.

From his obituary:

By the early 1970s, more than a dozen coffee shops dotted North Beach, but none was as musical as Caffe Trieste. Gianni and his son Gianfranco began performing for the cafe on Thursday mornings in 1970. The concerts grew so popular they were switched to Saturday afternoons.Mr. Giotta, who had studied opera in Trieste in his early 20s, would be joined onstage by Gianfranco, a semiprofessional singer, and Mr. Giotta’s wife, Ida; his other son, Fabio, would sing and accompany on accordion. The family would perform solos, duets and full choruses, primarily from Italian and French operas. Favorites were “Chella Lla,” “Figaro,” “Katerine” and “Funiculi, Funicula.” Professional singers visiting San Francisco began to stop in.

While Giotta would open other branches of Caffe Trieste in other areas of northern California as his success grew, the original was the only one that maintained that neighborhood cache and, as it turned out, the only one to survive his family's legal battles over his will.  After a few months of concern that this literary and artistic landmark would close, it was saved when cooler heads prevailed.

While North Beach is no longer the artistic cauldron it once was, and San Francisco currently is working through some traveler-unfriendly realities, one may still enjoy an honest cup, gaze upon the collected photographs of those who made the culture of the American Century, and marvel at what it is to be in the right place and the right time and reap the rewards of hospitable service to one's neighbors.

Thursday's Place: Chelsea Hotel

It was, in its prime in 1885, the tallest structure in New York City.  When I first moved to the neighborhood, just a block away from the Hotel that resides on West 23rd Street, I thought that I had never heard of it.  After a very short time, and with the aid of local amateur historians, I realized that the Chelsea Hotel was known to anyone familiar with 20th century words and music; or even notorious deaths.

Perhaps we should get the lurid stuff out of the way first.

In October of 1978, Sid Vicious, a resident of the Chelsea Hotel who was a member of the punk rock group, The Sex Pistols, and who is generally regarded as the worst bass player ever to have appeared on a stage, woke from a heroin-induced coma to find his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, stabbed to death in the bathroom.  It was a great mystery who had done this to her.  [No, it really wasn't. - ed.] Not long afterwards, after subsequent arrests and a couple of suicide attempts, Vicious killed himself.  Thus, the Chelsea Hotel was lodged in the cultural consciousness of my generation.

For the generation before mine, it was the suicide of Charles R. Jackson, the author of the harrowing novel The Lost Weekend, that marked the hotel's infamy.  Others have died there, as well, some infamous, some notorious.

However, as it was a residential hotel, it is especially known for those who have lived there and, importantly, have created there; whether in the arts, literature, music, fashion, or film.  If ever there were a location that served as the nexus for the overlapping counter-culture in the mid-century, it is within the ancient edifice, complete with wrought-iron, faux balconies.

Here's a brief list:

Mark Twain
O. Henry
Dylan Thomas [He died there, too; after drinking way too much at the White Horse Tavern]
Arthur C. Clarke [He wrote the novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey there]
Sam Shepard
Arthur Miller
Tennessee Williams
Jack Kerouac
Brendan Behan
Thomas Wolfe
Valerie Solanas [Apparently, she was some kind of writer; chiefly, she is known for attempting to assassinate Andy Warhol]
William S. Burroughs
Allen Ginsberg
Gregory Corso
Lilie Langtry
Eliot Gould,
Leonard Cohen,
Janis Joplin,
Tom Waits,
Patti Smith,
Jim Morrison,
Iggy Pop,
Jeff Beck,
Dee Dee Ramone,
Cher,
Édith Piaf,
Joni Mitchell,
Bob Dylan,
Robbie Robertson,
Alice Cooper,
Bette Midler,
and
Jimi Hendrix

So, imagine how much of our cultural treasure has been written, composed, painted, or filmed within that building.  There are, or were, bronze plaques by the entrance dedicated to the poets Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, both of whom were residents.  As it's been some years since I was last in that neighborhood, and as the hotel is on the National Register of Historic Places, I'm sure others have also been mounted.

There is much to be read online about the Chelsea and its habitues; since Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial photographer, lived there, as well, there are ample, artistic photos also to be found that illustrate the creative life in that splendid, sometimes luxurious, sometimes seedy, building.

Some stray pictures:

Nice, vintage entrance that I hope survives its recent renovation

In my day, the early 1980's, it was at the height of its seedy chic, as evidenced by this room

Although Dylan, wearing what must have been his great aunt's hat, found it a good place to play sock drawer basketball

A lobby like no other

See what I mean?

Leonard Cohen has a song, one of his best known, about a brief time he spent there with Janis Joplin, but it contains a lewd lyric and, hey, this is a family weblog.  It's called Chelsea Hotel No. 2, if you wish to hear it.

Here, instead, is a family friendly song by Joni Mitchell about awakening at the hotel:

The Return of Neo-Puritanism

Hartford Courant: Teacher Faces Termination After Sharing Allen Ginsberg Poem

Key quote: "Carter also wrote that several students reported being emotionally upset after hearing the poem."

Poor darlings, to be emotionally upset by a...poem.

Today is National Maritime Day

It's a grand day for those of us who have the honor of serving as chaplains to merchant seamen. An often forgotten form of national service gets its due by presidential decree on this date each year. I also get to wear my uniform. Well, if I can find it.

More may found here.

Also, have fun playing "Guess the mariner" with the photo below.  Hint: a great number of America's writers have been merchant mariners, including Herman Melville, Jack London, Allen Ginsberg and Mark Twain.  Joseph Conrad, while not American, was a merchant ship captain before becoming one of the great stylists of the English language.

Today Is National Maritime Day

It's a grand day for those of us who have the honor of serving as chaplains to merchant seamen. An often forgotten form of national service gets its due by presidential decree on this date each year. I also get to wear my uniform. Well, if I can find it.

More may found here.

Also, have fun playing "Guess the mariner" with the photo below.  Hint: a great number of America's writers have been merchant mariners, including Herman Melville, Jack London, Allen Ginsberg and Mark Twain.  Joseph Conrad, while not American, was a merchant ship captain before becoming one of the great stylists of the English language.

D.A. Levy and the Cleveland Beats

“If you want a revolution
grow a new mind
and do it quietly if you can”

I taught poetry in schools and colleges for nineteen years, here and there.  Sometimes as a full-time faculty member, sometimes as an adjunct, sometimes as a visiting lecturer.  I've come to realize that there are two things about poetry I've always appreciated.  The first, and the most obvious, is that it elevates all elements of a language to art.  Not only through simple rhyming verse, but through tone, the pattern of the syllables, and the manner in which the very pronunciation of the words can create a kind of music without instrumentation.  Poetry delicately enlivens the mind and creates a synaptic theme for appreciating reality anew. [Wow, that last sentence is pure academic gibberish, isn't it?  Or is it poetry?!]

The second reason is more complicated and visceral as it appeals to another portion of my character, I suppose; that which appreciates art that is less...tactile.  For example, in my days as an indifferent and failed New Wave musician, it was "the scene" rather than the music that drew me.  The energy, the raw, undiluted emotion of primal music, the massive expectations and the sheer, wild puissance of the crowd and the band and the immediacy of shared experience. 

The people drawn to music, both musicians and fans, tended towards the fringes of society, either due to their youth or liminal habits or peculiar view of the world.  To be involved in the next, and decidedly non-corporate, development of popular music was intoxicating, especially when it had not even been noticed by the professional sentinels of the media.

Similarly, poetry, too, highlights "the scene".  While I can recognize the stirring themes of Tennyson, absurd world-view of Eliot, the vividity of Shakespeare, or the lyrical wonder of Wordsworth, I can also appreciate what has been offered by poets of, in my opinion, lesser efforts.  While they may have come and gone, or only heard on amateur nights at the corner bar/coffeehouse or at a "slam poetry" experience at a college, they were willing to extend their artistic sense into a verbal medium.

This means there isn't that much of a difference between a musician and a poet.  There are those who prefer to offer the classics, or at least the classical themes, and those who are more experimental. Some become recognized artists whose work is collected and presented to subsequent generations, others offer a more transitional effort that also plays a role in the greater corpus of art.  Both poets and musicians experiment, shove at limits that are artificially imposed, weave new themes and styles into expression, and attract followers who are eager to share in the poet/musician's art.  The life of David Bowie and the life of Lord Byron are not as separated as one might think.  Both, whether consciously or not, make their lives into an art form.

One of those poets of lesser effort but important influence was D.A. Levy, who established a forum and style for a school of verse that became known as The Cleveland Beats [which was also the name of the one of the bands in which I played].  I'm not a big fan of Levy's poetry, but I appreciate what he did and how he pushed the raw experience of localized poetry into a new, much less cautious and deliberate, dimension.  A testimony to his power was that, when I was a first-year English teacher in a Cleveland high school, I was advised not to teach Levy's works in my classroom.  Being banned from formal educational curricula is generally, in my experience, an indication that the subject may actually be valuable.

Levy was born David Allen but, with a young man's enthusiasm and as an homage to e.e. cummings, eventually shortened his name and rendered it in lower case so that, by the mid-60's, he was listed on posters and poetry collections as d.a. levy.  His family were members of the sizable Jewish population that emigrated from Europe during the 1930's and found jobs in the enormous and powerful manufacturing sector of Cleveland.  He was born in 1942, lived throughout the Cleveland area, and unlike other Cleveland poets such as Hart Crane or Langston Hughes, never left.  His overriding desire was to write the great Cleveland poem, much as had been done for Chicago by Carl Sandburg.

He was slight, quiet, and unimposing with an unremarkable voice; often seen in the centers of counter-culture life with those originally labeled "beatniks" and later "hippies".  His first poem to be read by a respectable audience, "Cleveland Undergrounds", sought to capture the dualism of his city.  It is an immature work, and derivative of many of the beat poets of the period, but shows an energy that many found compelling.

Other poems would be printed from 1962 to 1968.  These would not result in any form of mainstream recognition, but Levy would gradually become a legend in the Cleveland sub-culture that found its epicenter in the University Circle/Coventry Road area of the city and in a popular performance space located at the Episcopal cathedral.

[It's interesting that when I think back to my youth, much of the counter-cultural arts scene was introduced through the basement of Trinity Cathedral.  In those days, the Episcopal Church really was on the cutting edge of society, rather than simply believing itself to be.]

He would suffer a different type of recognition, unfortunately.  Disturbed by the movement that was consuming youth culture and creating friction with the political class, Levy and the other "hippies" would come under the aggressive scrutiny of the police, especially as their drug use and promiscuity became known.  Since Levy wrote candidly of the counter-culture experience, used sparing profanity in his art, and was recognized as a spokesman for the artists of his generation, he was targeted by local authorities and twice arrested for obscenity.  As the charges were somewhat vague and clearly designed to harass, nothing much came of them, legally.  However, they did contribute to what many of Levy's friends recognized as a growing mental disturbance.  In 1968, shortly after completing what is considered his most elaborate work, “Suburban Monastery Death Poem,” Levy took his own life.  As he was only 26-years-old, one cannot help but wonder if he would have continued to grow as an artist.

Beyond his poetry, however, Levy made another, and lasting, gift to the Cleveland literary scene. Using an old mimeograph machine, purchased from some school or church, Levy and some of this friends created the primary underground publication of its era, The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle. Beginning in the summer of 1967, its crude, blue print pages presented a collection of local poets who could not find a publisher willing to print the lyrics of hippies.  These poets, The Cleveland Beats, found local notoriety and earned an appreciation that continues to this day.  Without Levy, they would have never been known.

It wasn't simply a forum for poetry, either.  As noted in a magazine profile of Levy from a few years ago:

Paging through issues of the Junkmail Oracle, which levy first published in June 1967, is like paging through levy’s radical, rambling mind. Articles on Buddhism by Allen Ginsberg and Zen author Alan Watts, levy’s own poems and some by Charles Bukowski ran along with his wild collages, which mixed images of Buddha and Hindu gods with cutouts from newspapers, movie ads and skin magazines...When police shut down the bars and cafes at Euclid and East 115th, and fires struck the buildings, levy accused the cops and the University Circle development corporation of destroying the area to create a wall between blacks and whites. (Two parking lots and a McDonald’s sit at the corner today.) Levy also wrote about books, movies and music, even interviewing the Velvet Underground, the legendary art-rockers....

In retrospect, Levy was exactly right about the motivation behind the University Circle development, as it did create a barrier between the cultures that lasts until this day.  The development also, very gradually, destroyed the counter-cultural community through re-zoning, absurd rents, and the harassment from law enforcement.  From the late 1960's through the late 1970's, the clubs where we would play our eccentric music, the coffee houses where we could hear poetry recited, the theater company that produced experimental plays, the small bookstores, even the delicatessen that provided cheap, wholesome food on ample platters, would all evaporate.

However, there is an historic marker acknowledging the existence of the sub-culture and its artists, as if from some exotic, extinct tribe that surrendered to inevitable progress.  So there's that, I suppose.

There is also, like a brooding ghost, an image of Levy that can be spotted to this day on university bulletin boards, dormitory doors, some remaining independent bookstores, and the music clubs that have gradually moved further east and west.  His visage serves as a reminder that, behind the perpetual attempts of the city to be something other than it is, it remains the Jerusalem of the under-appreciated. And that's okay.

A video of Levy reading one of his poems may be found at the Cleveland Memory Project, which is still the most complete depository of his works.  As he was sloppy about seeking copyright protection and tended to release his poems far and wide, all of them are in the public domain.  In fact, most may be found for free on the Internet.

D.A. Levy and the Cleveland Beats

 

“If you want a revolution
grow a new mind
and do it quietly if you can” 

__________________________________________________________________

One never thinks that poetry can lead to martyrdom.

I taught poetry in schools and colleges for nineteen years, here and there.  Sometimes as a full-time faculty member, sometimes as an adjunct, sometimes as a visiting lecturer.  I've come to realize that there are two things about poetry I've always appreciated.  The first, and the most obvious, is that it elevates all elements of a language to art.  Not only through simple rhyming verse, but through tone, the pattern of the syllables, and the manner in which the very pronunciation of the words can create a kind of music without instrumentation.  Poetry delicately enlivens the mind and creates a synaptic theme for appreciating reality anew. [Wow, that last sentence is pure academic gibberish, isn't it?  Or is it poetry?!]

The second reason is more complicated and visceral as it appeals to another portion of my character, I suppose; that which appreciates art that is less...tactile.  For example, in my days as an indifferent and failed New Wave musician, it was "the scene" rather than the music that drew me.  The energy, the raw, undiluted emotion of primal music, the massive expectations and the sheer, wild puissance of the crowd and the band and the immediacy of shared experience. 

The people drawn to music, both musicians and fans, tended towards the fringes of society, either due to their youth or liminal habits or peculiar view of the world.  To be involved in the next, and decidedly non-corporate, development of popular music was intoxicating, especially when it had not even been noticed by the professional sentinels of the media.

Similarly, poetry, too, highlights "the scene".  While I can recognize the stirring themes of Tennyson, absurd world-view of Eliot, the vividity of Shakespeare, or the lyrical wonder of Wordsworth, I can also appreciate what has been offered by poets of, in my opinion, lesser efforts.  While they may have come and gone, or only heard on amateur nights at the corner bar/coffeehouse or at a "slam poetry" experience at a college, they were willing to extend their artistic sense into a verbal medium.

This means there isn't that much of a difference between a musician and a poet.  There are those who prefer to offer the classics, or at least the classical themes, and those who are more experimental. Some become recognized artists whose work is collected and presented to subsequent generations, others offer a more transitional effort that also plays a role in the greater corpus of art.  Both poets and musicians experiment, shove at limits that are artificially imposed, weave new themes and styles into expression, and attract followers who are eager to share in the poet/musician's art.  The life of David Bowie and the life of Lord Byron are not as separated as one might think.  Both, whether consciously or not, make their lives into an art form.

One of those poets of lesser effort but important influence was D.A. Levy, who established a forum and style for a school of verse that became known as The Cleveland Beats [which was also the name of the one of the bands in which I played].  I'm not a big fan of Levy's poetry, but I appreciate what he did and how he pushed the raw experience of localized poetry into a new, much less cautious and deliberate, dimension.  A testimony to his power was that, when I was a first-year English teacher in a Cleveland high school, I was advised not to teach Levy's works in my classroom.  Being banned from formal educational curricula is generally, in my experience, an indication that the subject may actually be valuable.

Levy was born David Allen but, with a young man's enthusiasm and as an homage to e.e. cummings, eventually shortened his name and rendered it in lower case so that, by the mid-60's, he was listed on posters and poetry collections as d.a. levy.  His family were members of the sizable Jewish population that emigrated from Europe during the 1930's and found jobs in the enormous and powerful manufacturing sector of Cleveland.  He was born in 1942, lived throughout the Cleveland area, and unlike other Cleveland poets such as Hart Crane or Langston Hughes, never left.  His overriding desire was to write the great Cleveland poem, much as had been done for Chicago by Carl Sandburg.

He was slight, quiet, and unimposing with an unremarkable voice; often seen in the centers of counter-culture life with those originally labeled "beatniks" and later "hippies".  His first poem to be read by a respectable audience, "Cleveland Undergrounds", sought to capture the dualism of his city.  It is an immature work, and derivative of many of the beat poets of the period, but shows an energy that many found compelling.

Other poems would be printed from 1962 to 1968.  These would not result in any form of mainstream recognition, but Levy would gradually become a legend in the Cleveland sub-culture that found its epicenter in the University Circle/Coventry Road area of the city and in a popular performance space located at the Episcopal cathedral.  [It's interesting that when I think back to my youth, much of the counter-cultural arts scene was introduced through the basement of Trinity Cathedral.  In those days, the Episcopal Church really was on the cutting edge of society, rather than simply believing itself to be.]

He would suffer a different type of recognition, unfortunately.  Disturbed by the movement that was consuming youth culture and creating friction with the political class, Levy and the other "hippies" would come under the aggressive scrutiny of the police, especially as their drug use and promiscuity became known.  Since Levy wrote candidly of the counter-culture experience, used sparing profanity in his art, and was recognized as a spokesman for the artists of his generation, he was targeted by local authorities and twice arrested for obscenity.  As the charges were somewhat vague and clearly designed to harass, nothing much came of them, legally.  However, they did contribute to what many of Levy's friends recognized as a growing mental disturbance.  In 1968, shortly after completing what is considered his most elaborate work, “Suburban Monastery Death Poem,” Levy took his own life.  As he was only 26-years-old, one cannot help but wonder if he would have continued to grow as an artist.

Beyond his poetry, however, Levy made another, and lasting, gift to the Cleveland literary scene. Using an old mimeograph machine, purchased from some school or church, Levy and some of this friends created the primary underground publication of its era, The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle. Beginning in the summer of 1967, its crude, blue print pages presented a collection of local poets who could not find a publisher willing to print the lyrics of hippies.  These poets, The Cleveland Beats, found local notoriety and earned an appreciation that continues to this day.  Without Levy, they would have never been known.

It wasn't simply a forum for poetry, either.  As noted in a magazine profile of Levy from a few years ago:

Paging through issues of the Junkmail Oracle, which levy first published in June 1967, is like paging through levy’s radical, rambling mind. Articles on Buddhism by Allen Ginsberg and Zen author Alan Watts, levy’s own poems and some by Charles Bukowski ran along with his wild collages, which mixed images of Buddha and Hindu gods with cutouts from newspapers, movie ads and skin magazines...When police shut down the bars and cafes at Euclid and East 115th, and fires struck the buildings, levy accused the cops and the University Circle development corporation of destroying the area to create a wall between blacks and whites. (Two parking lots and a McDonald’s sit at the corner today.) Levy also wrote about books, movies and music, even interviewing the Velvet Underground, the legendary art-rockers....

In retrospect, Levy was exactly right about the motivation behind the University Circle development, as it did create a barrier between the cultures that lasts until this day.  The development also, very gradually, destroyed the counter-cultural community through re-zoning, absurd rents, and the harassment from law enforcement.  From the late 1960's through the late 1970's, the clubs where we would play our eccentric music, the coffee houses where we could hear poetry recited, the theater company that produced experimental plays, the small bookstores, even the delicatessen that provided cheap, wholesome food on ample platters, would all evaporate.

However, there is an historic marker acknowledging the existence of the sub-culture and its artists, as if from some exotic, extinct tribe that surrendered to inevitable progress.  So there's that, I suppose.

There is also, like a brooding ghost, an image of Levy that can be spotted to this day on university bulletin boards, dormitory doors, some remaining independent bookstores, and the music clubs that have gradually moved further east and west.  His visage serves as a reminder that, behind the perpetual attempts of the city to be something other than it is, it remains the Jerusalem of the under-appreciated. And that's okay.

A video of Levy reading one of his poems may be found at the Cleveland Memory Project, which is still the most complete depository of his works.  As he was sloppy about seeking copyright protection and tended to release his poems far and wide, all of them are in the public domain.  In fact, most may be found for free on the Internet.

Thursday's Place: The White Horse Tavern

There are places, some merely of the imagination, that have taken hold in history and fiction as they represent an era, a time, or a shared cultural experience that has since faded, but is certainly mourned. These places are pockets of nostalgia for what once was or could have been. Most of those to be featured, if they existed at all, are no longer with us, replaced by parking lots, or “big box” stores, or ugly houses. However, if you’re with the right people, or in the right place, to evoke them is to evoke an era that may be long gone, but permitted some creativity and joy.

The White Horse Tavern
New York City

This week's "place" is seminal in the promotion of poetry, both the kind found in high school textbooks and the kind found in court dockets, and of the folk music craze of the 1960's that produced much of the influential music of that generation and beyond.  Bonus: It's still open for business.

From something published earlier in The Coracle:

In the late 1950's, Richard Farina, a Cuban-Irish college drop-out born in Brooklyn in 1937, showed up in Greenwich Village with a dulcimer and a slight repertoire of folk songs such as people had never heard before. Turns out he was also adept at writing, having had short stories and poems published while still a student at Cornell. Being of an attractive and rakish nature, he hung out at many of the favored bars of the creative class, particularly the White Horse Tavern [where Dylan Thomas drank himself to death; Norman Mailer drank and punched people; Jim Morrison of The Doors drank too much, Jack Kerouac drank such a prodigious amount that he was banned from the property; and Delmore Schwartz, come to think of it, drank himself to death, too].

While I would encourage the reader to follow the link to the story of Richard Farina, as he is an interesting and virtually unknown personality in the development of 1960's counter-culture, I couldn't help but notice the importance of The White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village in trans-generational, self-destructive, British and American literature.  It is here that the more lubricious writers and artists have gone to appreciate their mortality, either in 1 and 1/2 ounce increments or in quantities more vast and eternal.

Like many of the places of which we will speak on Thursdays, the White Horse started as a neighborhood bar, in this case for the longshoremen working the docks in Chelsea.  Its venerable history, stretching back to 1880, has witnessed and/or participated in all of the societal and economic changes that have visited that portion of New York City.  As the neighborhood became less working and more middle-class, and distinctly more "artistic", by the 1950's the Horse [that's what the locals called it] had become a place to hear folk music, Irish folk music, poetry based on folk music, and folk musicians.  Oh, and the Welsh inebriate who hung out there all of the time because it reminded him of a pub back home.

[Really?  I've been to Wales and never saw any place that even resembled the Horse.  I think the Welshman preferred it because they let him run a prodigious tab.]

I lived nine blocks north of the place when I first moved to New York.  I never went there, as the Eagle Tavern on 14th had better Irish music, and The White Horse Tavern had become touristy enough that it was selling, God help us, t-shirts behind the bar.  In a city not lacking in places for dark slouching, or bars where poets and writers regularly got or get drunk, I really wasn't interested, until I was told they served a really good cheeseburger.  It was good, and if I could afforded them on a regular basis, I would have gone the way of Dylan Thomas, except with beef fat instead of whiskey.

So storied is The Horse in literature that it has its own page on the website of the Academy of American Poets:

The White Horse Tavern, built in 1880, has been a stomping ground for New York’s literary community since the 1950s when the bar’s most famous patron, the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, was introduced to this longshoreman’s haunt. The White Horse holds the dubious distinction of being the place where Thomas drank his last whiskey. In November of 1953, Thomas beat his own personal record by downing eighteen shots of whiskey. Soon after the last drink he stumbled outside and collapsed on the sidewalk. He was taken to the Chelsea Hotel and there fell into a coma; the next morning he was transferred to St. Vincent’s Hospital where he died. In addition to the many portraits of Dylan Thomas that adorn the walls, a plaque commemorating Thomas’s last visit to the White Horse Tavern hangs above the bar. The bar soon drew more literary figures as patrons, including James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, Anais Nin, and James Laughlin, the founder of the publishing house New Directions. In addition, the bar was a gathering place for both the Beat writers, like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, as well as the New York School poets, such as John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara.

Anyway, any place that has such a hold on literary imagination should be visited at least once, even if it isn't the most convivial in the city.

Although, there is a tradition that is maintained that I've always appreciated.  Jack Kerouac would get so drunk at The Horse that someone once wrote "Jack, Go Home!" on the men's room wall.  While there have been some well-done renovations and restorations to the bar performed in the last sixty years, and the wall painted many times, some individual or series of individuals always ensures that, somewhere on that wall, that command to Kerouac still appears.

That kind of wit needs to be admired, don't you think?

Patti Smith

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom.

I despair of contemporary popular music.  I find it grossly artificial.  If I were of a harsher nature I would also note that it is prosaic, witless, phony, over-produced, derivative, and ugly. Fortunately, I'm not of a harsher nature.

Because I make guitars and basses, I find myself often in the company of young musicians.  These men and women are of no interest to music producers or recording companies as they often aren't all that telegenic or vapid looking.  They just happen to be spectacular musicians and composers with stellar stage presence.  In other words, ehh. 

Which is why I love live music in small clubs; the places that used be so smoky [before the hideous busy-body blue noses in government decided we were too dim to make decisions for ourselves] that, in my playing days, green stripes would be left along my fingertips from the accumulated cigarette residue clinging to the metal strings of my bass.  Those were the places where real music was viscerally rendered and immediate with the musicians and the crowd reaching a gestalt of emotion, encouraging one another to heights of lyricism...yeah, that's how it works.  In those quiet moments between sets or after a gig, by way of encouragement, I like to tell the younger musicians what it was like in the 1970's in Cleveland and New York, when the unlikeliest rock star ever was the toast of the New Wave scene.

I imagine anyone who has ever lived in New York City has felt that their era in the city was one of unmatched creativity in the music and arts communities. In my day, New Wave music was claiming the stages in the nightclubs, including groups such as The Ramones, Blondie, The B-52's, and The Smiths [not to mention the groups for which I played: The Zen Maniacs, The 98 Decibel Freaks, and Head Full of Zombie], who would influence music in the decades to follow.

In the verbal arts, "performance poetry" came to the fore.  A clear descendant of the Beat Poetry of the 1950's that was performed in nightclubs while backed by a jazz combo, the 1970's and 80's version found its home on the same stages as the New Wave groups, often opening for the musical acts.  It was inevitable that New Wave music and performance poetry would collide into one, glorious presentation. When that happened, it was spectacularly rendered in the person of Patti Smith.

Smith was an unlikely artist to be on any recording company's A & R roster, even in those days.  She was not conventionally attractive, her demeanor was sullen, her style extremely "artsy", her stage costume a man's white t-shirt or dress shirt matched with over-sized tuxedo pants, and her lyrics angry and obtuse.  She was, in a word, great.

Patti Smith was born in Chicago in 1947 and moved to Philadelphia and then north New Jersey.  Upon graduation from high school, she worked for a time in a factory, birthed an out-of-wedlock child whom she surrendered for adoption, and eventually moved to New York City to work in a bookstore.  It was there that she met and began a relationship with the provocative photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. As one would expect of two intense artists living in squalor at the Chelsea Hotel, their relationship was tumultuous; just as naturally, it produced tremendous creativity from the two of them.

Smith was, without question, the most interdisciplinary of the artists produced by this age.  She wrote articles for the venerable music magazine, Creem, acted in and co-wrote plays with the playwright/actor Sam Shepherd, performed with a guitar on the streets and in the subways, and was a member of the St. Mark's Poetry Project.  It was with that latter organization that she crystallized her reputation as the "Godmother of Punk".

While not its originator, Smith became the most evocative character in the movement, mainly as she had a stage presence that captured the post-Vietnam period's spiritual ennui and confusion [what then-President Jimmy Carter would call "malaise"].  As I have heard said of certain stage and movie stars, one could not take eyes off of her.  Even with a personality and appearance that repelled many of the recording execs [I'm trying to imagine how she would be regarded in the current, Taylor Swift-ed music world], Clive Davis of Arista Records gave her a contract.  The resulting album, Horses, with its cover photo by Mapplethorpe, would take the indie rock world by storm.



With it's blending of original verse with rock standards or free-style jamming [something hip-hop composers would copy in subsequent decades] Horses would rise to #47 on the Billboard charts and, eventually, be ranked #44 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  Subsequent albums would follow and from that point forward Smith would be a sought-after performer/composer as the New York sound was refined.  She would co-write "Because the Night" with Bruce Springsteen and be offered, and refuse, the position of lead singer with Blue Oyster Cult.

Other albums would follow; Smith would marry and have children.  She would suffer loss as close friends would die; she would be severely injured in a fall from a stage.  She would withdraw from public life and then, at the urging of her friend, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, make a triumphant return.  Even now, as Punk and New Wave are mostly subjects in musicology classes, at the age of 67 she is still in demand as a poet and performer.

In 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.  At the award ceremony she delivered an impromptu lecture on the influence of Rimbaud on her poetry that was so well-received that her award was upgraded on the spot.  The next year, she was named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [in Cleveland!] and, the year after that, was the final performer at the venerable East Village club CBGB on the occasion of its closing.  Her 3 and 1/2 hour concert covered most of her greatest hits interspersed with her poetry.  At 1 a.m., she sang her song "Elegie", read a list of the deceased among the Punk/New Wave world, and brought a portion of musical history to a literal close.

All of her music is still available in a variety of formats; her poetry still in print.  Most prominent among her written work is her memoir Just Kids, which won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2010.

At Christmas, she will be performing in Rome at the special request of her most prominent fan, Pope Francis.

Originally published on Friday, December 12, 2014

Patti Smith

To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom.

______________________________________________________________

I despair of contemporary popular music.  I find it grossly artificial.  If I were of a harsher nature I would also note that it is prosaic, witless, phony, over-produced, derivative, and ugly. Fortunately, I'm not of a harsher nature.

Because I make guitars and basses, I find myself often in the company of young musicians.  These men and women are of no interest to music producers or recording companies as they often aren't all that telegenic or vapid looking.  They just happen to be spectacular musicians and composers with stellar stage presence.  In other words, ehh. 

Which is why I love live music in small clubs; the places that used be so smoky [before the hideous busy-body blue noses in government decided we were too dim to make decisions for ourselves] that, in my playing days, green stripes would be left along my fingertips from the accumulated cigarette residue clinging to the metal strings of my bass.  Those were the places where real music was viscerally rendered and immediate with the musicians and the crowd reaching a gestalt of emotion, encouraging one another to heights of lyricism...yeah, that's how it works.  In those quiet moments between sets or after a gig, by way of encouragement, I like to tell the younger musicians what it was like in the 1970's in Cleveland and New York, when the unlikeliest rock star ever was the toast of the New Wave scene.

I imagine anyone who has ever lived in New York City has felt that their era in the city was one of unmatched creativity in the music and arts communities. In my day, New Wave music was claiming the stages in the nightclubs, including groups such as The Ramones, Blondie, The B-52's, and The Smiths [not to mention the groups for which I played: The Zen Maniacs, The 98 Decibel Freaks, and Head Full of Zombie], who would influence music in the decades to follow.

In the verbal arts, "performance poetry" came to the fore.  A clear descendant of the Beat Poetry of the 1950's that was performed in nightclubs while backed by a jazz combo, the 1970's and 80's version found its home on the same stages as the New Wave groups, often opening for the musical acts.  It was inevitable that New Wave music and performance poetry would collide into one, glorious presentation. When that happened, it was spectacularly rendered in the person of Patti Smith.

Smith was an unlikely artist to be on any recording company's A & R roster, even in those days.  She was not conventionally attractive, her demeanor was sullen, her style extremely "artsy", her stage costume a man's white t-shirt or dress shirt matched with over-sized tuxedo pants, and her lyrics angry and obtuse.  She was, in a word, great.

Patti Smith was born in Chicago in 1947 and moved to Philadelphia and then north New Jersey.  Upon graduation from high school, she worked for a time in a factory, birthed an out-of-wedlock child whom she surrendered for adoption, and eventually moved to New York City to work in a bookstore.  It was there that she met and began a relationship with the provocative photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe. As one would expect of two intense artists living in squalor at the Chelsea Hotel, their relationship was tumultuous; just as naturally, it produced tremendous creativity from the two of them.

Smith was, without question, the most interdisciplinary of the artists produced by this age.  She wrote articles for the venerable music magazine, Creem, acted in and co-wrote plays with the playwright/actor Sam Shepherd, performed with a guitar on the streets and in the subways, and was a member of the St. Mark's Poetry Project.  It was with that latter organization that she crystallized her reputation as the "Godmother of Punk".

While not its originator, Smith became the most evocative character in the movement, mainly as she had a stage presence that captured the post-Vietnam period's spiritual ennui and confusion [what then-President Jimmy Carter would call "malaise"].  As I have heard said of certain stage and movie stars, one could not take eyes off of her.  Even with a personality and appearance that repelled many of the recording execs [I'm trying to imagine how she would be regarded in the current, Taylor Swift-ed music world], Clive Davis of Arista Records gave her a contract.  The resulting album, Horses, with its cover photo by Mapplethorpe, would take the indie rock world by storm.



With it's blending of original verse with rock standards or free-style jamming [something hip-hop composers would copy in subsequent decades] Horses would rise to #47 on the Billboard charts and, eventually, be ranked #44 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.  Subsequent albums would follow and from that point forward Smith would be a sought-after performer/composer as the New York sound was refined.  She would co-write "Because the Night" with Bruce Springsteen and be offered, and refuse, the position of lead singer with Blue Oyster Cult.

Other albums would follow; Smith would marry and have children.  She would suffer loss as close friends would die; she would be severely injured in a fall from a stage.  She would withdraw from public life and then, at the urging of her friend, Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, make a triumphant return.  Even now, as Punk and New Wave are mostly subjects in musicology classes, at the age of 67 she is still in demand as a poet and performer.

In 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.  At the award ceremony she delivered an impromptu lecture on the influence of Rimbaud on her poetry that was so well-received that her award was upgraded on the spot.  The next year, she was named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [in Cleveland!] and, the year after that, was the final performer at the venerable East Village club CBGB on the occasion of its closing.  Her 3 and 1/2 hour concert covered most of her greatest hits interspersed with her poetry.  At 1 a.m., she sang her song "Elegie", read a list of the deceased among the Punk/New Wave world, and brought a portion of musical history to a literal close.

All of her music is still available in a variety of formats; her poetry still in print.  Most prominent among her written work is her memoir Just Kids, which won the National Book Award for Non-Fiction in 2010.

At Christmas, she will be performing in Rome at the special request of her most prominent fan, Pope Francis.