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!
Terry Rodriguez, piano, and Ron Crotty, bass, join drummer Jon Frank, with Joe De Andreis on tenor sax and Noah Frank on trumpet… straight ahead jazz, traversing the territory characterized by the modes and changes of Bill Evans, Miles Davis and the modern masters of the music. Bassist Ron Crotty’s career started with the first Dave Brubeck Trio in the late 1940s. Trumpeter Noah Frank’s career started a decade ago while he was a student at San Francisco’s School of the Arts… young or old, these players are talented proponents of the art of jazz!
Read More
Friday, April 12th, apres le jazz, beginning at 8:30 pm… Come to a celebration for Samuel Beckett’s birthday (born April 13, 1906 in Foxrock, Ireland…died December 22, 1989 in Paris)! Scott Baker, Val Fachman and some of the good thespians from PUS Theatre Company will take the stage with a few gems they’ve polished up for their Beckett showcase opening next week downtown… A bit of Guinness & Jameson will be poured in the hoary great writer’s honor! The full show runs 4/19 to 5/11 at the Bindlestiff Studio on 6th btw. Mission & Howard. It’s called “Sam I Am: A Processional of Short Plays and Prose by Samuel Beckett” and is indeed a processional, so the audience will be limited to 40 per show –book your tix now! The pieces performed at the Bindlestiff will be Come and Go (Sabrina de Mio, Ponder Goddard, Sylvia Hathaway); Not I (Valerie Fachman); Rough for Theatre…
Read More
Linda King has sculpted from life the heads of many great beat and post-beat literary figures familiar to us here on the west coast… her lover Charles Bukowski as well as Ferlinghetti, Hirschman, Micheline, Norse, Winans and more. Buk’s head is in the window at Bird & Beckett for the next few weeks… Linda just brought it this morning to a rendezvous at Higher Grounds, the cafe down the street, where some of her paintings will hang later in the spring… This Sunday, March 3rd, at 2 pm, Linda will read from her just-published memoir, Loving and Hating Charles Bukowski. Back in the 1970s, Linda King, then a fetching young poet and the publisher of the lit rag called “Purrâ€, spent several feisty years in Buk’s intimate company, and she carries the torch and the tongs to this day. She’s a great character herself — a terrific woman, a really wonderful sculptor, a fabulous…
Read More
Sunday, March 3rd – 4:30-6:30 pm. Skin & Bone. 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. Ian Dogole and Max Perkoff co-lead this quartet: Dogole on a variety of drums (hence, skin) and Perkoff on trombone (viz, bone). With them are the legendary Si Perkoff on piano (Max’s dad, as it happens, who learned his trade in the midtown Manhattan atelier of composer/arranger Hall Overton and in a measure of direct transmission from the loneliest monk himself, Thelonious Monk). Also, the very creative and interesting young bassist Sam Bevan. Expect a lively and adventurous couple of sets from some of the top musicians the Bay Area has to offer.
Read More
Plenty on tap at the bookshop, so cancel all other plans, pray for rainy weather on all March Sunday afternoons so you’re not tempted by the hiking trails, and set your galoshes by the door for the trek down to the book shop… come in like a lamb and we’ll send you out like a lion! Mighty Mighty Culture in Glen Park! Sunday, March 3rd at 2 p.m. — Linda King: Loving & Hating Charles Bukowski — Linda King, then a fetching young poet and publisher of the lit rag called “Purr”, spent several feisty years in Buk’s intimate company and carries the torch and the tongs to this day. She’s a great character herself — a terrific woman, a really wonderful sculptor, a fabulous poet, a notable publisher in the day and a sly and eminently readable memoirist (cf, her new book of this title), and she lives in…
Read More
Sunday, Feb. 24 – 2:30 pm: Walker Talks! a monthly series. Walker Brents III on “Walt Whitman & the Poetics of Democracy” followed by: Sunday, Feb. 24 – 4:30-6:30 pm. The Russo/Alberts Trio with Art Lewis. 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.  “swing fiercely, listen closely, and invest each note with soul” — jazz critic Andrew Gilbert on the Russo Alberts “modus operandi” In the late 1950s, pianist Don Alberts, bassist Don Russo and drummer Art Lewis all converged on the San Francisco jazz scene from various spots around the Bay Area. They quickly made names for themselves in a vibrant milieu boasting scores of great players and centered in the “Harlem of the West” — the Fillmore District — home of Jimbo’s Bop City, the Club Flamingo, the Club Alabam,…
Read More
Quhat drowsie sleepe doth syle your eyes allace Ye sacred brethren of Castalian band Since the earliest days of the store, back in the late 20th century, Jerry Ferraz, peripatetic troubadour & bard, has been the cornerstone of our poetry readings — participating in the first triple bill of poets and hosting our ongoing series since its inception. Born in Eureka Valley back in the very early 50s, he proves the adage which posits that if you remember the 60s, you weren’t there… he lost a year or two along the way, and will be happy to take them back if you find them somewhere! Nonetheless, for decades he and his small guitars have been sighted at the bus stops, hovering over PG&E digs, wandering through the parks and bars and cafes… Now he drives an efficient little car, but he’s still the same wandering seer, mystic & trickster. And…
Read More
This week: The 230 Jones Street, Local 6 Literary Jazz Band — also known as The Chuck Peterson Quintet. Series founder Chuck Peterson is out this week as he gets his chops back together after some minor dental work, but Frank Phipps will be ably subbing for him. And singer Dorothy Lefkovits has got somewhere she needs to be, so she’ll be back next month. But Glen Deardorff, the guitarist, has had a much more serious health crisis which we’ll know more about by Friday. Our thoughts are with him. Duncan James will sit in for him this session. Count on Howard Dudune, Dean Reilly and Tony Johnson to swing hard and sweet while their dear colleague and our fond friend Glen is on the mend. Take this opportunity to join us and your friends and neighbors in celebrating the music, the community and the common bond we share! Our…
Read More
Kelly’s Cove has been putting out the most lovely run of books since publisher Bart Schneider got the itch to merge intriguing California writing and intriguing California art in beautifully crafted volumes… The books just feel good, as they arouse your curiosity and kindle the desire to crack them open and begin to absorb what they harbor between the covers. Then you find yourself lost in books that are deeper than you can really describe, that take their own time to go where they’re going, that are going somewhere you can’t be sure of but that make you sure you’re glad to be along for the journey. At the end, you’d have to read them again, go through them again, to know where you’ve been and where they’re taking you, what’s in them and what they’re made of, and even then you don’t know, but that makes you happy too.…
Read More
Closing day of the San Francisco Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival! Triple Chicken Foot (from L.A.) plays Bird & Beckett! No cover charge, but we’ll be sure to ask you to help us pay the bands and we surely hope you will! Expect very limited seating and a big ol’ crowd and a very, very good time! All ages very welcome, though do be careful the kids don’t get stepped on (and please leave those big strollers in the car)! Triple Chicken Foot is an Old Time trio playing fiddle and banjo tunes and songs in Los Angeles, California with Ben Guzmán on fiddle/mandolin, Mike Heinle on banjo and Kelly Marie Martin on guitar. They all three sing. Says Jeff Kazor of the Crooked Jades, “They’ve single-handedly revived the whole Americana scene in L.A.” For over six years, playing old time music in Los Angeles, they’ve performed at the Autry National…
Read More
The Get Happy String Band, Feb. 10th. Triple Chicken Foot (from L.A.), Feb. 17th. Both shows, 4:30 to 6:30 pm. No cover charge, but we’ll be sure to ask you to help us pay the bands and we surely hope you will! Expect very limited seating and a big ol’ crowd and a very, very good time! All ages very welcome, though do be careful the kids don’t get stepped on (and please leave those big strollers in the car)! The Get Happy String Band, based right here in the Bay Area, features Meredith Axelrod and Darcy Noonan, who came together through their mutual love of such masters as The Mississippi Sheiks, The East Texas Serenaders and The Memphis Jug Band. For this show, guest & super guitarist Craig Ventresco will join the fun. Together, they’ll excite and delight you with raucous rags and bombastic breakdowns in an authentic sound straight out of 1933.…
Read More
Tamim Ansary gives a talk this evening on “the often-interrupted history of Afghanistan” as engagingly elucidated in his newest book, Games Without Rules (Public Affairs, 2012). With deft narrative momentum, Ansary helps the reader get past the generalizations and assumptions that obscure the realities of Afghanistan and its national history since the mid-1700s, revealing a human arc of intention, ambition and conflict within that country and among those who would try to dominate it from outside for geopolitical and economic reasons of their own. Ansary first came to wide notice with his book West of Kabul, East of New York, a personal narrative emerging from the events of Sept. 11 and his attempt to understand the complexities, contradictions and continuities of his own heritage, Afghanistan-born and raised to an Afghan father and American mother, and his emigration to the U.S. and coming into maturity as an Afghan-American. His subsequent books…
Read More
Thursday, Jan. 31st at 7 pm: Two distinguished poets, reading their original poems and translations. Richard Silberg reads from his new collection of poems, The Horses: New and Selected Poems, published in September of last year by Red Hen Press. Silberg is an important member of the contemporary Bay Area poetry community — as a skilled and thoughtful poet, of course, and also as a translator of Korean poets Ko Un and Oh Sae-Young, a teacher of poetry classes and workshops at UC Berkeley Extension and Associate Editor of Poetry Flash, a crucial publication that has been a touchstone for the community for decades. Silberg’s poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, VOLT, New American Writing, North Coast Review, City Lights Review, Parthenon West Review, The Addison Street Anthology: Berkeley’s Poetry Walk, among others, and on the Berkeley Poetry Sidewalk; his essays from Poetry Flash were…
Read More
Friday, Feb. 4: Don Prell’s Seabop Ensemble with Jerry Logas, sax Michael Parsons, piano Don Prell, bass Chris Bjorkbom, drums Bassist Prell got his start in L.A. in the 1950s, when he was a core member of the Bud Shank Quartet, traveling internationally and recording three albums. The first Friday of every month, he brings in a fine bebop band; always a good time at Bird & Beckett! No cover charge, but your generous donations at the shows make it possible for us to pay the band. Thanks!
Read More
This reading celebrates Les Gottesman’s newest chapbook, Misuses of Poetry and Other Poems, from Finishing Line Press. Les’s first published poems were in Ted Berrigan’s C magazine in 1965. More recently, his poems have appeared in numerous print and online journals as well as in thirteen chapbooks from his own imprint, Omerta Publications. Les has been a teacher in San Francisco for over 30 years. He received an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts in 2011. See his poems (and photographs) at lesgottesman.com. Jodi A. Sanchez hails from Chicago, Illinois. A graduate of New College of California’s MA Poetics program, she is eternally grateful for the education and inspiration found there. Her works can be seen in local literally magazines and in Beatitude: Golden Anniversary Edition. She currently strive to share her stories in all artistic forms and remember those heard along the way.
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
