At Shrine to Beats, Squares Are Welcome, Too
By John Hanc | The New York Times
JERRY CIMINO, founder of the Beat Museum, steps out onto the teeming streets of San Francisco’s North Beach section. Standing under a 12-foot-high, six-foot-wide painting of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady, he opens his arms wide.
“Everything happened here,” he says dramatically. “We call this intersection, Broadway and Columbus, the center of the universe.”
Maybe so, if you’re someone whose heart flutters like a Lester Young tenor sax solo at the mere mention of the names Kerouac and Cassady. Because it was in this traditionally Italian neighborhood that an influential group of bohemian artists and writers coalesced in the late 1940s, eventually becoming known as the Beat Generation. Read More...