Potrzebie
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Hayes Bickford's in Boston, maybe in the late 1930s, at 293 Huntington Avenue, near the intersection of Huntington and Gainsborough Street. Notice the dance school above. Imagine having breakfast here with pocket change during the Depression. For 30 cents you could have scrambled eggs with two fried cakes. To the right is the Gainsborough Drug Store.
The Hayes Bickford's interior was L-shaped, so it had another entrance on Gainsborough behind the drug store. This Hayes Bickford's was still in that location through the 1970s. Today that whole corner is the Symphony Market (so named because Boston Symphony Hall is one block away).
Just across the street at 289 Huntington was the Raymor Play-Mor Ballroom where big bands played. Glenn Miller did a remote broadcast from there on November 24, 1937.
For more Bickford's pics from the past, go here.
In Howl, Allen Ginsberg wrote about Bickford's at night:
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
Bickford's at 7th Avenue and 14th Street in NYC
Labels: ginsberg, hayes bickford's
¶ 10:26 AM 0 comments
Monday, June 28, 2010
Beat Memories
... an exhibition of Allen Ginsberg's photographs at the National Gallery of Art (May 2–September 16, 2010). © Copyright 2010 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.
Audio: National Gallery photo curator Sarah Greenough talks with archivist Bill Morgan
Audio: National Gallery photo curator Sarah Greenough talks with archivist Bill Morgan
Neal Cassady and Natalie Jackson in San Francisco in 1955. Can anyone identify the movie theater?
William Burroughs in Metropolitan Egyptian Wing in 1953.
Gregory Corso in Paris attic room at 9 Rue Gît-le-Coeur in 1957.
Kerouac on East 7th Street at Tompkins Park in 1953.
Labels: beat generation, burroughs, corso, ginsberg, kerouac
¶ 7:51 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Pull My Daisy
The evocative Pull My Daisy (1959), co-directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, remains just as watchable as it was in the 1960s. It's included in the evening program of the 5/15 Robert Frank retro at Lincoln Center. Jack Kerouac's narration was a spontaneous improvisation, but here's what makes it work so beautifully: When the narration was joined to the film, instead of being synchronized to the moment, it was moved back a few seconds, making Kerouac's delivery anticipate the images.
The 28-minute film was adapted from the third act of Kerouac's play, The Beat Generation. The cast includes Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Peter Orlovsky, David Amram (who also did the music) and Delphine Seyrig (1932-1990), who starred two years later in Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad (1961). Appearing as the Bishop's wife is the painter Alice Neel (1900-1984), famed for her painting of Joe Gould with multiple penises. She was portrayed by Susan Sarandon in Joe Gould's Secret (2000) and is the subject of the recent documentary Alice Neel (2007) by her grandson, Andrew Neel. The Bishop's sister is played by dancer Sally Gross, the subject of a recent Albert Maysles documentary, Sally Gross: The Pleasure of Stillness (2007). Ginsberg and Kerouac did the lyrics for "The Crazy Daisy," sung by Anita Ellis. (When you see Rita Hayworth sing in Gilda and other films, you're actually hearing Anita Ellis.) In 1996 Pull My Daisy was added by the Library of Congress to its National Film Registry.
Pull my daisy
Tip my cup
All my doors are open
Cut my thoughts for coconuts
All my eggs are broken
Pull My Daisy
Pull My Daisy
Jack my Arden
Gate my shades
Woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden rose my days
Now my prayers awaken
In the shade love your made
In the shade pluck the day
Like a daisy
Bone my shadow
Dove my dream
Start my halo bleeding
Milk my mind and make me cream
Drink me when you`re ready
Dove my dream make me cream
Dove my dream
Hop my heart on
Harp my height
Seraphs hold me steady
Hip my angel
Hype my light
Lay it on the needy.
The evocative Pull My Daisy (1959), co-directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, remains just as watchable as it was in the 1960s. It's included in the evening program of the 5/15 Robert Frank retro at Lincoln Center. Jack Kerouac's narration was a spontaneous improvisation, but here's what makes it work so beautifully: When the narration was joined to the film, instead of being synchronized to the moment, it was moved back a few seconds, making Kerouac's delivery anticipate the images. The 28-minute film was adapted from the third act of Kerouac's play, The Beat Generation. The cast includes Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Peter Orlovsky, David Amram (who also did the music) and Delphine Seyrig (1932-1990), who starred two years later in Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad (1961). Appearing as the Bishop's wife is the painter Alice Neel (1900-1984), famed for her painting of Joe Gould with multiple penises. She was portrayed by Susan Sarandon in Joe Gould's Secret (2000) and is the subject of the recent documentary Alice Neel (2007) by her grandson, Andrew Neel. The Bishop's sister is played by dancer Sally Gross, the subject of a recent Albert Maysles documentary, Sally Gross: The Pleasure of Stillness (2007). Ginsberg and Kerouac did the lyrics for "The Crazy Daisy," sung by Anita Ellis. (When you see Rita Hayworth sing in Gilda and other films, you're actually hearing Anita Ellis.) In 1996 Pull My Daisy was added by the Library of Congress to its National Film Registry.
Pull my daisyTip my cup
All my doors are open
Cut my thoughts for coconuts
All my eggs are broken
Pull My Daisy
Pull My Daisy
Jack my Arden
Gate my shades
Woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden rose my days
Now my prayers awaken
In the shade love your made
In the shade pluck the day
Like a daisy
Bone my shadow
Dove my dream
Start my halo bleeding
Milk my mind and make me cream
Drink me when you`re ready
Dove my dream make me cream
Dove my dream
Hop my heart on
Harp my height
Seraphs hold me steady
Hip my angel
Hype my light
Lay it on the needy.
Labels: amram, daisy, ellis, frank, ginsberg, kerouac, leslie, resnais
¶ 11:58 AM 0 comments
