$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated

Tongo Eisen-Martin, a child of the Bay Area, seemed to emerge full blown on the Bay Area poetry front in 2015 with his debut Someone’s Dead Already from Bootstrap Press and a cascade of uncanny readings, hands in pockets, gaze fixed in the middle distance of his mind. But by that point he had already achieved deep hip hop/spoken word credibility and had gone full on into prison work that had taken him nationwide for years. City Lights’ Pocket Poets series followed up with Heaven is All Goodbyes in 2017, #61, and as a brilliant poet he’s been a presence to be reckoned with nationally since. View the live stream at this link. Donate to give Tongo a decent payday at this link.

Eric Shifrin plays solo from the Bird & Beckett stage over the facebook! Click here to go there in one simple step, or go to facebook, search for “bird & beckett books,” click on “videos” – scroll down a bit and watch for the screen with the little red square that says “LIVE” Join us (just the pianist & the proprietor) for one hour-long set by Eric “Mr. Fingers” Shifrin. He’s a San Francisco original who’s wowed ’em in saloons and hotels, dens and dives, in high-toned places and low-down spaces, boites and ballrooms, clubs and concert halls. Eric has played Bird & Beckett countless times over the past twenty years… you know him from dates with “Eric and the In Crowd” and with “EaR Candy,” his quartet co-led with the late great Ralph Carney, and he’s always pleased us with his vast talents, superb technique and great good humor.…

$20 suggested/sliding scale available. Talk about your San Francisco jazz… On the fourth Friday of each month, our weekly jazz in the bookshop series features The 230 Jones Street, Local 6 Literary Jazz Band — in direct line of descent from the Chuck Peterson Trio, which started the whole “jazz in the bookshop” thing 17 years ago. These five musicians  — Ray Loeckle, tenor sax; Jerry Logas, bari sax, clarinet, flute, vocals; Glen Deardorff, guitar; Dean Reilly, bass; Tony Johnson, drums — have all put in decades of work on the local jazz scene, dating back to the early 1950s. The band was originally formed by multi-instrumentalist Chuck Peterson (tenor sax, baritone sax, flute), who was a union activist particularly in his prime years (the 1950s and 1960s) and throughout his career, hence his nod to the address of Local 6 of the American Federation of Musicians, where he and…

$20 cover charge / sliding scale available Dmitri Matheny, flugelhorn Ken French, piano Ron Belcher, bass A gorgeous, charming and intimate evening of music guaranteed

$20 suggested donation; any amount appreciated Grant Levin Quartet: James Mahone, tenor saxophone Grant Levin, piano Chris Amberger, bass Michael Mitchell, drums Pianist Grant Levin has gained great acclaim on the San Francisco jazz scene since his move here in 2001; since that time, Bird & Beckett has been pleased and honored to present him hundreds of times — and we look forward with great anticipation to his last-Sunday-of-the-month bookings through June. He will field a variety of ensembles, drawing on the wealth of fantastic jazz talent the City proudly boasts, exploring a wide range of material. We will accept a limited number of reservations for each date by phone beginning the Monday before the engagement. Should you make a reservation, you’ll need to claim your seat 15 minutes before the show. Thanks for your understanding and cooperation.

$20 cover charge; sliding scale available

Dave Meder $20 cover charge; sliding scale available

We’re transacting business by phone and email during the shelter-in-place period. We have plenty of stock and are happy to place orders for you. One person at a time can come into the vestibule and speak to us through the open top half of the Dutch door. Please give a wide berth to anyone who needs to exit the vestibule!   Store hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.  Closed Mondays. Inquire if you want to arrange delivery or shipping of books.

      “As Hafiz said: ‘Seek life and patience, for the great wheel, with its sleight-of-hand, has a thousand tricks more strange than these.’ His world mirrors ours in a timeless way. The stranger things get, the more familiar they become, to such a poet as Hafiz. As a tutelary presence, to such a storyteller as the years have made me, he becomes more and more distinct, as well as more and more mysterious. This is as it should be. The way I see inside a story is synchronous with the way he sees inside a poem. All I want to do these days is to explore the way such guides inspire me, in the act of composition. “What better place to undertake such tasks as the mandates of heaven lay upon us, than Bird and Beckett? Eric’s live streaming will allow us all to turn into seers of…