Two musicians who have long inhabited the liminal spaces of the San Francisco bohemia perform from the Bird & Beckett stage this afternoon. Poet and troubadour, guitarist and painter Jerry Ferraz, born in San Franciscan in 1950, grew up in Eureka Valley, the watershed from Twin Peaks that feeds the Castro District. He wandered the City from a young age, first just taking in the evolution of the culture and soon offering his own poetry and song to whoever he encountered in the cafes, bars, galleries and streets, channeling ancient traditions of France’s Languedoc region, the rural blues of the American South and the dust bowl folk music of the Southwest. He was on the first bill of poets to perform in the bookshop the year we opened, 1999, and has grounded our poetry series ever since. For a few years now, on many a Sunday he’s been found playing his guitar and singing some songs tucked behind the bookcases on our stage. Jerry’s path is likely to take him north in the next few months, and though we can’t imagine he won’t return from time to time those visits will be all too rare. So we welcome this opportunity to hear him once again, and at length, this Sunday.

Steve Arntson has come into the shop from time to time over the years to play a few minutes of classical piano on many occasions when North Beach poets and artists have descended on Glen Park for a reading or such. Today, beginning at 1:30pm, he’ll present a full program of Chopin and Mozart nocturnes and sonatas. Born in Massachusetts, he came with his family at a young age to the Pacific Northwest, taking up the piano early, and migrating to San Francisco in the early 1960s. He’s been reading his poetry and playing piano all these decades in the same orbit that Jerry has inhabited all along, from Minnie’s Can-Do Club in the Western Addition and Cafe Babar in the Mission, to the Art House in Berkeley, Specs in North Beach… and here at Bird & Beckett.