And it was a bookstore. The kind of tiny, well-packed bookstore I love, but still simply a bookstore. There were dozens of copies of Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg and Kerouac around every corner, but it's not like their ghosts were standing in the corner with bottles of whiskey sharing stories and poems. They were reduced to bumper stickers (which I shamelessly purchased):
(not my picture, seeing as I don't actually have a car)
The teacher tried to point us to Kerouac Alley by finding a bar (which I did see), but it is literally right next to City Lights Books. When I was there, there was a man leaning on the wall with some bags, and nearby was a man holding a leash attached to a tiny pony:
It's not like there were students down there reciting poetry, men drinking and having sex, protestors or lovers– just a man and a small horse. City Lights and Kerouac Alley feel more like empty graves than anything. Walking past Chinatown, I didn't feel Kerouac talking about Buddhism over noodles. I quickly realized that the streets of San Francisco are too busy, too alive, too ever changing to still hold on to the images of the stories we read in "The Dharma Bums". The addresses might be the same, but the stories being told there are new. Those streets belong to the people of the present. The men walking their tiny horses, people in snazzy suits yelling to friends in mini-vans, and two UCSC students eating doughnuts and walking fast past tourists.
Our generation aren't the new Dharma Bums. We are the hipsters, writers, laughing friends whose stories matter just as much as anyone who's name is now a street within blocks of a bookstore. Rather than running around with books about Zen Buddhism and other religions, we treat the writings of Kerouac, Ferlinghetti, and Ginsberg like our new bibles.
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ReplyDeleteJust a Man and His Small Horse. I feel like there's so much to that man and his story. That aside! I really enjoy the point you make here about not necessarily needing a legacy of whiskey and bop prosody for our stories to matter. Before anyone was a writer they were probably at least a part-time human, a point which we only sometimes get to when we're looking at writing that is obscured by a romantic slant to drugs and delirium. Beat Legends: they're people too.
ReplyDeleteI really like you're observation here too, and I think this feeling of expecting a place like this bookstore to have more to it than just the books is something that we get with a lot of historical or tourist sites. As if visiting the bookstore will bring us closer to the beats or have some display or originality like you said of people reading poetry or protesting.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree. You really expect the bookstore, and the area in general to carry that weight, but it just feels like another street corner. That city moves so fast, and its so stressful, trying to allow yourself to feel anything or to connect with what came before, especially right there with so many tourists and right on the edge of Chinatown, is physically impossible.
ReplyDeleteI've been planning to take a trip out to Kerouac Alley and the City Lights Bookstore for parts of my final project, and I am disappointed by your observations, though I whole heartily believe that they must be accurate. These places are only tourists sites.
ReplyDeleteI know I would be going there to find something, and only find the ghost of what was as you say. That generation is passed, and it seems almost impossible that such a generation could exist in the city today.
The thing I love about City Lights though, is that they know their stuff. For example, there is a book only published in the UK that i have been looking for for ages, and all of the bookstores that I had gone to had never even heard of it. When I went to City Lights, they unfortunately didn't have it, but the shop assistant knew exactly who I was talking about, and the book I was looking for. I feel like there is just a wider knowledge and stronger dedication to books at the little places like this, that you won't find at a chain bookstore. They care more.
ReplyDeleteIt's remarkable that although Beat authors and poets aren't really around anymore, the Beat generation proved its importance though the success of the City Lights Bookstore. As others mentioned, the store does sort of just feel like "just another street corner," but it obviously carries prominent messages and historical literature that will continue to be appreciated for, hopefully, many more generations.
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