653 Chenery Street
in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood

1-415-586-3733
[email protected]

Open to walk-in trade and browsing
Tuesday to Sunday
noon to six

 

Live Streams every weekend!

Refresh your browser to catch a show in progress!
Visit our Facebook page or YouTube channel!
But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!

Autobiography of Mark Twain

Autobiography of Mark Twain One of the really big books of the season. Stands to reason! Twain dictated this material (which will run to three volumes when publication is complete) in the last four years of his life- charging his executors with the instruction that it was to remain unpublished until he’d been dead a…

Read More...

Books for the holidays, and for the moment!

Books for the holidays, and for the moment! Patti Smith‘s new memoir about her youthful times with Robert Mapplethorpe, Just Kids, went to paperback in late September and won the National Book Award in mid-November. It’s been a moving and gratifying reading experience for dozens of people we’ve talked to in the shop. And then…

Read More...

Saturday, March 3rd– 7:30-10:00 pm
The Nowheresville City Council
jazz club! when lights are low…
$20 cover charge
 

  Benjamin Aaron Goldberg, William Altrist Bernard, Scott Anthony Amendola Serving you since the 1900’s

Read More...

Saturday, August 24th – 7:30-10pm
Hardly Strictly Family Band
jazz club! when lights are low…
every Saturday night 

$20 cover/sliding scale available. Featuring the renowned country blues singer, Uncle Joe “Lucky” Beckett, and backed by the most dangerous backing band west of the Sacramento River, the Hardly Strictly Family Band plays a mix of your favorite country blues, folk, and Americana music. The Hardly Strictly Family Band features: Uncle Joe “Lucky” Beckett: Vocals…

Read More...

Thursday, March 5th – 5:30pm
A reading for
al-Mutanabbi Street

Read More...

Sunday, April 30th – 2:30 pm
Walker Brents III Talks the Talk, Walks the Walk
and watches the sky!
UFOs!

They come from beyond! What do you make of that? More to the point, what does Walker make of that?? Inquiring minds want to know!!!

Read More...

Friday, August 9th – LATE SHOW! – 9-11pm
Raffi Garabedian/Richard Sears Quartet

Raffi Garabedian, saxophone Richard Sears, piano Miles Wick, bass Tim Bulkley, drums Just jazz. Like you think it should be, and more. $20 cover charge; sliding scale available

Read More...

Friday, May 3rd – 6-8pm
Francis Vanek Quartet

Francis Vanek, saxophone; Randy Vincent, guitar; Chris Amberger, bass. The Jazz Happy Hour, 22 years running! Every Friday save two since 2008! $20 suggested donation for adults. Kids free — teens/students $5-10. Francis Vanek is a legendary North Coast tenor player who hails from Pittsburgh, PA. There, he cut his teeth as a youth with…

Read More...

This weekend, April 12-14, live in the shop…
Eric Shifrin…Erik Jekabson…Elijah Wald…Pamela Rose & Wayne De La Cruz…Rolling Thunder!!!

Two shows on Friday, April 12th, with Eric & the In Crowd rolling out tunes by Arthur Schwartz and Jule Styne in the 6-8pm segment and the Erik Jekabson Quartet bringing the jazz up to the moment, from 8:30 to 10pm. Bassist Bing Nathan and drummer Mark Lee are pianist Eric Shifrin’s In Crowd this…

Read More...

Monday, March 6th – 7-9 pm
A Reading for Al-Mutanabbi Street: Beau Beausoleil, Judith Ayn Bernhard, Neeli Cherkovski, Agneta Falk, Jack Hirschman, Michael Koch, Jessica Loos, Dorothy Payne, Kim Shuck, plus Steve Arnston, piano

“The only war is the war on the imagination” – Diane di Prima. Poets read to commemorate the March 5, 2007 destruction by car bomb of Al-Mutanabbi Street, Baghdad’s bookseller’s street named for the 10th century Iraqi poet. This tragedy, in which 26 died and a great many bookshops and stalls were decimated, marked a…

Read More...