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!
~~Through Labor Day~~ New release hardcovers 12% off! Buy $20 or more in used books and take a 20% discount. Buy $10-20 of used books and take a 10% discount. Store hours: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, Sunday & Monday For those who look longingly through the new releases but have trouble with hardcover prices on those freshly reviewed & tantalizing titles, we’ll ease your pain by offering a 12% discount on the new release hardcovers in the bookcases opposite the register and on the display tables up front.
Read More
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, September 1st – 4:30-6:30 pm: Vocalist Sandra Aran + Quartet. Live recording for KCSM’s “In the Moment” Born in Mexico City, Sandra Aran evinces an unabashed love for singing in her native Spanish as well as English, and her solid grounding in the jazz tradition has engendered in her a true passion for rendering the standards with wonderful fidelity and creativity. She’s a singer with a profound understanding of her repertoire, offering lovely readings of tunes from the great American songbook. incredible excursions swinging deep into bop territory, and beautiful, soulful travels thorough Latin American boleros, Brazilian bossa nova and samba, and more. Sandra has been performing in the Bay Area for the past five years, and has developed a rapport with her bandmates that’s thrilling to hear. Sharing the stage with Sandra at Bird & Beckett for this…
Read MoreOnce in awhile we’re treated to a five-Friday month, and when that happens we get to bring in a favorite pinch-hitting band– this one led by one of the key players on the Latin jazz scene in San Francisco for several decades already… a top musician, a valued educator, the Jazz Commissioner… Dr. John Calloway. For the date, John has assembled a quintet that features Daniel Casares on tenor sax, Mike Smith on guitar, Mike Arnold on bass and Yoel Bibas on drums and percussion. Read up a bit on John at this link: http://www.flutebayarea.com/calloway/ Then come hear him lead this band through the rhythm changes from the Bird & Beckett stage!
Read MoreSunday, September 1st – 4:00-6:00 pm: The Jimmy Gallagher Quartet — Note the early start/finish this Sunday! and don’t miss a note… or a beat! — Tenor player Patrick Wolff Guitarist Jeffrey Burr and bassist John Wiitala  join drummer Jimmy Gallagher A stellar Sunday date! 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. Note: Hawkeye, a terrific band originally scheduled for today, had to cancel– but we’ll get them rescheduled down the road apiece.
Read More
Jazz in the bookshop… every Friday without fail. San Francisco’s longest running neighborhood jazz party. Joining guitarist Scott Foster at Bird & Beckett this Friday are vibes player Jim Zimmerman, bassist Ken Lenga and drummer Curt Moore, playing a repertoire steeped in the work of the Brazilian masters Jobim, Gilberto, Lins & more…
Read MoreMichael Koch, born in New York City of Slavic and Jamaican heritage. He is a painter, poet, translator, amateur percussionist and avid salsero. Gerald Nicosia is a biographer, historian, poet, playwright and novelist. His biography of Jack Kerouac, Memory Babe, won the Distinguished Young Writer Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters and was called a “great book†by Allen Ginsberg and “by far the best of the many books published about Jack Kerouac’s life and work†by William Burroughs. It is still widely regarded as the definitive work on Kerouac. His book Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans’ Movement won numerous honors and was named one of the Los Angeles Times “Best Books of the Year†in 2001. He is currently at work on a biography of Ntozake Shange. Nicosia lives in Corte Madera, California.
Read More
Steven Ash (coauthor and editor) will present this new edition (Taunton Press, 2013) of the valuable book by William Olkowski, Sheila Daar and Helga Olkowski — who pioneered the non-toxic alternative “Integrated Pest Management” approach. IPM provides an environmentally friendly approach to controlling insects and diseases that can afflict lawns, edible and ornamental gardens, and shade trees, including:Â aphids, slugs, moles, root maggots, cutworms, powdery mildew, crabgrass, Japanese beetles, gypsy moths and a host of other pests. IPM relies on a combination of common-sense practices — using current, comprehensive information on the life cycles of pests and their interaction with the environment. This information, in combination with available pest control methods, is used to manage pest damage by the most economical means, and with the least possible hazard to people, property, and the environment. The IPM approach can be applied to both agricultural and non-agricultural settings, such as the home,…
Read More
Little Kabul comes to San Francisco! 2:00 pm – “Secrets of Little Kabul: The Inside Scoop on Afghans in America” A panel discussion with journalist Fariba Nawa, memoirist Atta Arghandiwal and poet/fiction writer Nahid Fattahi. 4:30 pm – A concert of music by Afghan-American vocalist Abu Sofyan with tabla accompaniment performing modern and traditional music Fariba Nawa is a journalist, speaker and author. She reports on various issues, including immigrant communities, women’s rights and the global drug trade. Her work has been published in numerous publications, including The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, the Daily Beast, the Sunday Times Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Mother Jones. She is an expert on Afghanistan and has been interviewed by prominent news organizations from MTV to NBC to FOX. Her book Opium Nation: Child Brides, Drug Lords and One Woman’s Journey through Afghanistan (HarperCollins, 2011) is a mix of memoir and reportage focused on women’s roles in…
Read MoreThis week’s subject of discussion is Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Anyone can come and join the discussion, and take part in choosing future books… Following are some thoughts on the book by one of the regulars in the group, Dwight Smith: The Righteous Mind I think this book has enough arguments and evidence to leave liberals, conservatives and libertarians uncomfortable if not in angry denial.    Why are the people we elect to public office today so partisan. The author says because Americans have become more politically partisan. The author asks, why, is this the case?  His book, The Righteous Mind explores this issue from the view point of the author’s academic discipline, moral psychology. One of our problems is that we in the educated western European and American world have bought into a narrow view of rationalism. We fail to…
Read MoreAn evening with writers Seth Harwood and Jim Sidel - the first in a series featuring prose writers with emerging careers, who will read from their work and discuss matters of craft, process and getting one’s work published. Seth Harwood, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, was born in Boston and has lived in Cambridge, New York, St. Louis, and Iowa City. He currently lives in San Francisco, where he teaches writing at Stanford and CCSF. Author of three previous works of fiction, his latest novel, In Broad Daylight, is just out from Thomas & Mercer. Seth has also written for publication in the Cambridge Chronicle & TAB, contributed to the Open Culture blog, and written for the San Francisco Chronicle, where he regularly reviews crime fiction. Marilyn Stasio, reviewing Seth’s debut, Jack Wakes Up, for The New York Times, praised its “vitality and a…
Read Morewhich 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, August 4th – 4:30-6:30 pm: Vocalist Ruth Keady with Madaline Duran, sax; Keith Saunders, piano; Scott Chapek, bass. Ruth Keady has a powerfully swinging way with jazz standards that’s gained her ample respect among some of the top jazz musicians on the San Francisco scene. She’s joined on this date by Mad (Madaline) Duran, a superb tenor sax player particularly well known for her long musical partnership with her mate, guitarist Eddie Duran. With or without Eddie, Mad can wail for hours without repeating a thought.  Also on the bandstand, pianist Keith Saunders, recently transplanted from New York and now a highly valued fixture on the scene, and Scott Chapek, whose association with Ruth goes back to the days when the legendary Vince Wallace held down a regular session at the bar…
Read More
DOUBLE BOOK RELEASE READING Jackson Meazle joins Jason Morris and Sunnylyn Thibodeaux in reading to mark the publication by Bird & Beckett of Morris’ Local News and Thibodeaux’s 88 Haiku for Lorca by Morris’ PUSH Press. Meazle’s Jack of Diamonds and the Queen of Spades was published by Bird & Beckett in 2012. Sunnylyn Thibodeaux is the author of Palm to Pine (Bootstrap, 2011) and many small books including 20/20 Yielding (Blue Press, 2005), Room Service Calls (Lew Gallery, 2009) and United Untied (Private Edition, 2008). Her poems have recently appeared in AMERARCANA, Back Room Live, Drunken Boat, Galatea Resurrects, Generación, Lit, TH.CE, and Truck. She is from New Orleans and lives in San Francisco with her husband, Micah Ballard. Together they co-edit Auguste Press and Lew Gallery Editions and have a daughter, Lorca Manale Ballard. Jason Morris grew up in Vermont. His poems & essays have appeared in TRY!, AMERARCANA, Jacket, Forklift…
Read More
Donnelle McGee is the author of Shine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). He earned his MFA from Goddard College, and is now on faculty at Mission College in Santa Clara, California. Donnelle’s work has appeared in Controlled Burn, Colere, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Home Planet News, Iodine Poetry Journal, Permafrost, River Oak Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Willard & Maple, among others. His work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Donnelle lives in both Sacramento and Turlock, California and is the proud father of two beautiful kids. Joining Donnelle for this reading will be two friends — and poets — Jess Duong and Louise Hammond. read more on Donnelle and Shine at: www.donnellemcgee.com https://www.facebook.com/pages/Donnelle-McGee/155484897264
Read More
“Don’t Discuss State Affairs” (a sign mounted on the wall of the Yutai Teahouse — 1898, 1917, 1945) Lao She’s Teahouse is a classic of the Chinese theatre from the late 1950s, an episodic observation over the decades from the turn of the 20th century through the 1940s, set in a milieu where the common preoccupations of the day — not so very different from era to era – waft through the air. Written in 1957, the play premiered in Beijing in 1958, mounted by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre. It ran for a remarkable and unprecedented 100 or more performances. Teahouse was brought back to the stage on the eve of the Cultural Revolution in 1963; however, it was removed from the repertoire once that period set in.  Lao She was interrogated roughly and publicly humiliated as were many, and died in an apparent suicide in 1966. Teahouse was revived by the Beijing People’s Art Theatre in a 1979 production which toured…
Read More
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, July 21st – 4:30-6:30 pm:  Noel Jewkes/Grant Levin Duo. Noel Jewkes is an acknowledged master of the jazz saxophone in Northern California, a musician’s musician with decades of top flight professional experience under his belt. And now, after just a few short years on the San Francisco jazz scene, Grant Levin is coming on strong as the young piano player everyone wants to hear. We’ve been proud to present both Noel and Grant many times at Bird & Beckett over the years, and now are particularly excited to hear them work as a duo. Not to be missed!
Read More
Sign Up for Our Weekly Emails!
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.
TAKE OUR SURVEY
To take our SURVEY, click here, and help the BBCLP get to know you better! As Duke Ellington always said, we love you madly...
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
