The first Thursday of September, intrepid explorers from North Beach Andrew Paul Nelson (shown at left) and Scott Bird are expected to provision themselves with Riesling and make their way to Bird & Beckett to size up our wilderness outpost, est. 1999, here to declaim poetically on the journey that’s taken them this far.

1999 was the year that another Bird, not Scott, dangling his buddy Beckett in his bony claws, swept down from the dizzy atmosphere to alight on mama Frisco’s twin peaks and drifted on a reed down Islais Creek into leafy Glen Canyon, to nest in what’s now the stony Manzoni upthrust on Diamond, then just a sweet little sheet-rocked, thousand-square-foot, four-year old preschooler of a bookshop known as Jill ‘n Pat’s Glen Park Books.

In short order, Eureka Valley watershed troubadour Jerry Ferraz heard rumor of the shop and wandered afoot from around the way to become the presence behind our poetry offerings, our own Bob Kaufman if you will, cadging drinks and spouting enigmatic truths like some scarred white whale of wisdom banged on the head into a higher consciousness by the korrupt kops of kapitalism.

25 years on, on the first Thursday of September 2024, Jerry’s good bohemian buddies Nelson and Bird have vowed to push off from North Beach in a pea-green sardine can and float south to visit the wooden shack that’s been home to Bird & Beckett Books since we came unmoored from Diamond and washed up on Chenery beach.

Michael Koch, the slavic jamaican surrealist poet bookman out of Texas, lends Jerry a hand these days in booking the poets and helped him land Scott Bird and Andrew Paul Nelson to feature in tonight’s Bird & Beckett reading. An open mic follows.

Scott Bird is co-founder of Coit Tower Poetry Club and Apocrypha Press & Poetry Magazine. His book of poems Nyswonger is forthcoming from Lithic Press, and another called Twenty Two Madrigals will be released from Apocrypha Press on September 22 this year.

Andrew Paul Nelson co-owns Golden Sardine Wine & Poetry Bar on Columbus with his wife Caitlyn. He is also a co-founder of Coit Tower Poetry Club and Apocrypha Press & Poetry Magazine. His book of poems How to Draw A Guillotine, from Apocrypha Press, was released in June of 2024.

And what did they find? North Beach is everywhere! It’s a state of mind! Take a cab, take a plane, just get your ass to Glen Park!

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