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!
Caroline Goodwin — newly announced poet laureate of San Mateo County! — moved to the Bay Area from Sitka, Alaska in 1999 to attend Stanford’s Creative Writing Program as a Wallace Stegner Fellow. Her work has been widely published in literary journals in the US and Canada; a short collection entitled Text Me, Ishmael was published in Wales, UK in 2012 as part of the Literary Pocket Book Series and her first full-length collection, Trapline, was published in May 2013 by JackLeg Press in Chicago. Read more at this link. She received her MFA from the University of British Columbia; she lives in Montara and teaches in the MFA Writing Program at California College of the Arts and also the Stanford Writers’ Studio. Laura Walker is the author of Follow–Haswed (Apogee Press, 2012), bird book (Shearsman Books, 2011), rimertown/ an atlas (UC Press, 2008), and swarm lure (Battery Press, 2004), and the chapbook bird book (Albion Books, 2010). She grew up in North…
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Guitarist George Cotsirilos, bassist Robb Fisher and drummer Ron Marabuto have been making astonishingly lovely music together for several years, and this date marks the release of their third CD as a unit. Join us for a beautiful and intense afternoon of music. GEORGE COTSIRILOS: GUITAR.  George has been a member of the San Francisco Bay Area jazz community for many years and has performed with a wide variety of artists, from San Francisco jazz fixtures like Eddie Marshall, Mel Martin, Pharaoh Sanders, and Mark Levine, to internationally recognized blues singer Etta James, cabaret singer Jane Olivor, Bill Evans bassist, Chuck Israels, and the jazz/soul vocal group, The Whispers. In addition to working as an accompanist, he was co-leader of the San Francisco Nighthawks, which included drummer Eddie Marshall, Bobby McFerrin pianist Paul Nagel, and former Cal Tjader bassist Robb Fisher. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Cotsirilos studied…
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Ok! Push comes to shove… we gotta raise the rent! Fortunately we know legions of tremendous jazz musicians & they’re not hesitant to lend a hand… From the time the doors open at 11 a.m. ’til we push ’em shut at 9 p.m., the bop will not stop. That’s not just a rhyme scheme, friends, it’s what we live for! Well, that & a good book. So if you want your little bookshop to keep going, help us get over the hump. We just need to catch up with the rent that’s due & all those other bills that keep coming in the mail! Once in awhile, it takes an extra infusion, is all. So fall by & push some cash into the donation buckets if you can. $20 or whatever you can do. You’ll be getting good value for your money… the musicians are playing for free, and the…
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John Brandi grew up in California where he avidly hiked the Sierra Nevada and explored the Big Sur coast. He graduated from Cal State Northridge with a BA in art and anthropology, worked as a Peace Corps Volunteer with Quechua farmers in the Andes, held odd jobs in Mexico, drove a truck in Alaska, pruned vineyards north of San Francisco, and lived in a mineral shack above the Yuba River. In 1971, Brandi moved to New Mexico, built a cabin in a remote canyon, raised two children, and began teaching as poet in the schools. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, his books include poems, travel writing, haiku, and haibun. As a visual artist his paintings, collages, and haiga have been exhibited widely. John lives with his wife, poet Renee Gregorio, in the mountains of northern New Mexico. Jack Hirschman has said of Brandi, “He has been an open…
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Each month, on the last Sunday of the month, Walker Brents III discusses a topic the springs from his own imagination and curiosity… this month, his musings will revolve around “the derangement of the senses”… that inner state made naked to the outer world through abandonment of all rational caution and self-control, whether deliberately attained through drugs and other self-inflicted means, or imposed upon the gasping man who has found himself in the blazing noonday sun of some vast desiccated natural landscape…
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The Pasha Band is made up of some of the finest middle eastern musicians to be found in the San Francisco Bay Area. Husain Resan, oud, violin and vocals; Younes Al-Maqboul, violin; and Amina Goodyear, percussion, make up the core of this group, with an additional one to two musicians to be added as the concert approaches. Husain Dixon Resan hails from Iraq, where he began his study of the oud at age 14 in Bayt al-Fann in Baghdad, joining its music ensemble at age 16. Coming to the U.S., Husain studied violin at City College, and has been a key component of the middle eastern music scene here in San Francisco for many years. Joining Husain in the Pasha Band is violinist Younes Al-Maqboul, who has set a very high standard for the violinists here since arriving from Morocco several years ago, and Amina Goodyear, a renowned figure locally for her work as…
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Here Tomorrow: Preserving Architecture, Culture, and California’s Golden Dream book release reading and celebration with writer J. K. Dineen. J. K. Dineen writes about urban planning, architecture, and real estate for the San Francisco Business Times. His book is fresh out from Heyday Press. Old buildings in our midst call to the imagination, evoking a time just out of reach. Each structure in Here Tomorrow holds a story of California’s rich past in its wainscoting, adobe brick, or Art Deco chandelier. The Temple of Kwan Tai on the fog-wreathed Mendocino coast contains the history of a once-vibrant seaside Chinatown. A garden of honeysuckle, roses, and tulips once tended by prisoners flourishes on the dry and windy island of Alcatraz. Colorful mosaics, glasswork zodiacs, and historic murals grace the walls of the Los Angeles Public Library, a structure conceived as a great melding of cultures and lore that reflect the diverse…
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which way west? Sunday concert series. All ages welcome! No cover charge, but your generous donations make it possible for us to pay the musicians. Sunday, October 20th – 4:30-6:30 pm: Harvey Robb, sax; David Udolf, piano; Ron Belcher, bass; Danny Spencer, drums. Harvey Robb, tenor sax, has deep Detroit roots — where he grew up in the late 1950s sneaking into the jazz clubs & more legitimately gaining access to other venues to breathe the air filled with the cascading music of the likes of Yusef Lateef, Barry Harris and Elvin Jones.  These jazz legends, along with Curtis Fuller, Pepper Adams, Doug Watkins, Sir Roland Hanna and many others, were able to perfect their art in an industrial city where people headed for the late shift or coming off the swing shift could make the cash registers ring all night long — just the excuse the club owners needed to justify late and long hours filled with music. Harvey came…
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Jazz in the bookshop… every Friday without fail. San Francisco’s longest running neighborhood jazz party! Every third Friday, guitarist Scott Foster brings in a newly constituted ensemble for the occasion. Joining guitarist Scott Foster at Bird & Beckett this Friday, October 18th, are trumpet player Dave Scott, bassist Aaron Germain and drummer Surya Prashanka. This quartet has several years of experience playing as a unit, and has a deep reservoir of tunes at their disposal. In the second set at Bird & Beckett, they’ll pass around their book of tunes to the audience and honor any request. It’s Audience Choice! Scott’s monthly Bird & Beckett sessions draw on the fantastic pool of jazz musicians that populate this little berg, from his years of experience gigging and teaching around town. One day we’ll realize what a golden era of jazz it is in San Francisco!  Don’t be shy to make it out to Bird &…
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Thursday, October 17th at the bookshop on Chenery Street in Glen Park, 7 pm: Bird & Beckett in association with Litquake presents “Cherokee Voices” – Poets Kim Shuck and Indira Allegra joined by folksinger Ed Dang for a program of poetry and music, followed by an open mic hosted by Jerry Ferraz. Kim Shuck is a poet, weaver, educator, doer of piles of laundry, planter of seeds, traveler and child wrangler. She was born in her mother’s hometown of San Francisco, one hill away from where she now lives. She is a career artist in textiles and words. Her first book, Smuggling Cherokee, won the first book award from the Native Writer’s Circle of the Americas. Her new book, Rabbit Stories is being described as a ‘treasure’ and ‘like being given a basket of magic’. Indira Allegra is a poet and interdisciplinary artist whose work explores forms of queer intimacy, text, trauma and racial…
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Sunday, October 13th, 7:00 pm at the Vogue Theatre 3290 Sacramento Street, at Presidio Bird & Beckett, in association with Litquake, presents: “Mohin’s Horses: South Asian Oral Literature, Poetry & Music” We’ve put together an exciting program of poetry, theatre, music and film for the opening weekend of Litquake that will feature: — Playwright Ranjon Ghosal performing a 30-minute segment of his full-length one-man play based on Rabindranath Tagore’s crucial speech titled “The Crisis of Civilisation”, which Tagore delivered just months before his death at age 83. The play takes a look at Tagore’s life work and these pivotal thoughts expressed eloquently at the very end, in 1941, as the world teetered on the brink of chaos and collapse. Tagore saw the problem of the modern world clearly, as the colonization of the mind. Ranjon Ghosal has traveled from his home in Bangalore in the South Indian state of Karnataka for this event…
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Retro Blue is a band that fully embraces the jazz tradition: swing, bop, blues, r&b and free style, and explores uncharted sonic areas as well… Leader Jim Ryan has been on the Bay Area music scene since the late 90’s and began his active music career in Paris, France in the early ’70s, participating in Steve Lacy’s weekly free jazz jam sessions in Paris. Karl Evangelista is a young, highly original and accomplished guitarist who moved to Oakland from his hometown Los Angeles several years ago. He teaches and is constantly gigging in Oakland and San Francisco. Eli Wallace, a native of the Bay Area, recently received his Masters Degree in Music from The New England Conservatory in Boston. Now he’s back home writing, teaching and gigging with several area bands. Eric Marshall plays upright and electric bass in jazz and improvised music groups. He also leads his own group…
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If you’re ready to trail back to the neighborhood Sunday afternoon, Oct. 6th, by 4:30 or so — after three or four days of Golden Gate Park crowds for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass — we’ll extend the spirit of the affair here at Bird & Beckett. Sunday, October 6th, from 4:30 to 6:30 pm, our “which way west?†series presents Laurel Thomsen, violinist, violist and singer-songwriter, who’s enthralled us before on the bookshop’s stage with her gorgeous flights through old-time Americana, Celtic tunes and originals.  In her recent collaborations, she’s been lauded as a fine blues and Grappeli-esque fiddler as well. A Monterey, California native, Laurel trained classically, but in her early twenties found a home playing in bands, doing studio work, backing singer-songwriters, and as the New York Times reported, being one of those cutting edge teachers moving their private studios online via Skype. At Bird & Beckett, Laurel will entertain with all original songwriting,…
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If you’re ready to trail back to the neighborhood Sunday afternoon, Oct. 6th, by 4:30 or so — after three or four days of Golden Gate Park crowds for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass — we’ll extend the spirit of the affair here at Bird & Beckett. And a week later, Litquake begins — and will include two big Bird & Beckett events. Read on! Sunday, October 6th, from 4:30 to 6:30 pm, our “which way west?” series presents Laurel Thomsen, violinist, violist and singer-songwriter, who’s enthralled us before on the bookshop’s stage with her gorgeous flights through old-time Americana, Celtic tunes and originals.  In her recent collaborations she’s been reported to be quite the Blues and Grappeli-esque fiddler as well! A Monterey, California native, Laurel trained classically, but in her early twenties found a home playing in bands, doing studio work, backing singer-songwriters, and as the New York Times reported, being one of those…
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Alan Kaufman and William Taylor, Jr. join Colleen McKee to celebrate the publication of her first full-length collection of ficton, poetry and memoir, Nine Kinds of Wrong, hot off the presses from JKPublishing. Expect tales of a beautiful world of addictive sorrows; glamorous, unwise sex; crime and cabaret; and more whiskey-soaked death than you can shake a stick at. Colleen has been known to say that she writes poems, memoir, and fiction. That she also teaches people how to communicate about art at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. What else? That she writes most of her poems on public transportation; dreams frequently and in color; and can probably kick your ass in Scrabble. She once claimed to write every day and to try to be a nice person. Were that to fail, said she, she tried at least to be honest. That was when she was promoting her poetry. Now, with this, who…
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SUPPORT BIRD & BECKETT - DONATE TODAY!
Your donation to the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project helps us pay for a multitude of operating expenses necessary to present, promote and preserve local music, poetry, and more.
Help us keep the arts alive and thriving!
The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project was created in 2007 "to present, document and archive the creative work of significant living writers and musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area, for a neighborhood audience and future generations." We've been doing that very thing for more than a decade and a half, continuing the work we began when the store was established in 1999.
Due to lapses in tax filings during and post-pandemic, the BBCLP's status as a registered nonprofit was suspended at the beginning of April 2024 while we reapply, which is expected to take about six months. Donations made after April 1st will not be tax-deductible until nonprofit status is restored.
However, we continue to present a full slate of programming live music and poetry, and producing literary chapbooks, and we seek and welcome your continued financial support in the interim. If a tax-deduction is not a major reason for your support to date, we hope you'll continue to ride with us while we navigate these next several months.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above, drop off a check at the bookshop, or drop one in the mail to:
Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project
653 Chenery Street
San Francisco, CA 94131
Call us at (415) 586-3733 to find out how else you might lend your support.
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The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project
Our events are put on under the umbrella of the Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project (the "BBCLP"). That's how we fund our ambitious schedule of 300 or so concerts and literary events every year.
The BBCLP is a [Read More ]
The Independent Musicians Alliance
Gigging musicians! You have nothing to lose but your lack of a collective voice to achieve fair wages for your work!
The IMA can be a conduit for you, if you join in to make it work.
https://www.independentmusiciansalliance.org/
Read more here - Andy Gilbert's Feb 25 article about the IMA from KQED's site
