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!
Sunday, November 4th – 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. which way west? Sunday concert series Never a cover charge, but your generous donations help us pay the performers. All ages welcome! Pugsley Buzzard, once again on tour from Australia, returns to the Bird & Beckett stage for the second year running. He’s a consummate artist, serving up a potent brew of Harlem stride, barrelhouse blues and original compositions in hundreds of shows every year, from the jazz cellars of Berlin to salons in the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter and all along a circuit that takes him the length and breadth of Austraila many times a year. A master of early stride and boogie woogie styles, a dark & dangerous songwriter– Pugsley wails with a massive & mesmerizing vocal growl known to make the ladies sigh and grown men cry. Think of a fireplug Tom Waits channeling James P. Johnson and Willie “The Lion” Smith, then come and hear…
Read MoreSunday, November 4th – 2:00 pm Poets Junior Clemens & Meredith Stricker read from recently published works. Junior Clemons received his MFA in Creative Writing at the California College of the Arts. His work can be found in Actually People, Zen Monster, the Newer York, and other fine publications. He was born, lives and writes in San Diego, California. Clemon’s first book, So Many Mountains But This One Specifically, has just been published by Carville Annex Press. Meredith Stricker is a visual artist and poet working in cross-genre media. She is the author of mistake (2012), selected by Rosmarie Waldrop for the Caketrain Press chapbook competition. Other work includes: Alphabet Theater, a collection of mixed-media performance poetry from Wesleyan University Press (2003) and Tenderness Shore which received the National Poetry Series Award (L.S.U., 2003). She works in visual poetry collaborative, a studio that focuses on architecture in Big Sur and projects to…
Read MoreSunday, Oct. 28th Pepper’s music played live 4:30-6:30 p.m., preceded at 3:00 p.m. by a talk by discographer, biographer and jazz fan Gary Carner. Gary Carner has recently completed and published a comprehensive discographic work on Pepper Adams, one of the most respected of modern jazz men and a player unequaled on his horn-of-choice, the baritone sax. An ambitious CD package reinterpreting Pepper’s music has been freshly minted, and a biography is in the works.  Gary will deliver an in-depth talk on Pepper and his work at 3 p.m. Following Gary’s talk, starting at 4:30 p.m., a performance in tribute to Pepper Adams by the Ron Marabuto Quartet. Drummer Ron Marabuto played a lot with Pepper, a family friend, in New York in the 1970s and 1980s, and has been deeply influenced by his music and his take on life. Ron’s father, the pianist John Marabuto, was tight with Pepper…
Read MoreNo kidding! This is big! Better get to the bookshop before 4:30, ’cause by then you’ll find that closed sign flapping in the breeze. We’ll be back — elated, we’re sure! — at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. Go Giants! Cain, a deep bullpen and some serious hitting… we can’t wait!
Read MoreSunday, October 21st – 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. which way west? weekly concert series. No cover charge, but your kind donations helps us pay the musicians and make the propagation of the culture possible! The name sounds quaint, perhaps. It evokes another time. But this band’s music mines that time with absolute focus. If you’re feeling dismissive, ask yourself if there’s been a time in America different at its root than another? A time not in some part flushed with success, fraught with ambition; problems dismissed and brushed aside, or, in any case, the attempt to do so determinedly made while wealth is hastily accrued. Post-war years are typically this way, aren’t they? and it seems to us that the long, challenging post-Civil War years only prefigure the post-WWI and post-WWII years in many basic ways, though historians we ain’t. Black troops returning home from all three found little honor in…
Read MoreLook at it this way… A new book published by Random House, Yale University Press or Penguin — or any real publisher — has a set retail price that’s the same whether you buy it in San Francisco, Fresno, Atlanta or Dubuque. Ok, maybe Amazon discounts it 84%, but we’re not talking about that here…So, even though living in San Francisco is way more expensive than all but a few U.S. cities, the cost of bookbuying here is just as cheap as anywhere else! Â What better way to utilize those high salaries afforded you as a San Francisco wage earner… and if you’re on a fixed income, we don’t tap it any more than it would be tapped anywhere else… Whereas that meal you buy in one of the hundreds of trending restaurants in San Francisco costs you way more than what you ‘d pay in those other cities —…
Read MoreSunday, October 21st – 2:00 p.m. Follow the Path of Most Resistance! Cogitator, philosopher & humorist Harvey Gottliffe imparts the technique and wisdom — and the beneficial health effects – of “The Oy Way”. Feeling a little stiff after a vigorous Saturday of windsurfing, gardening and gesticulating through the social hour after synagogue?  Maybe those bones and muscles just won’t let you dance the Funky Chicken through Sunday Mass? Existential questions got you down? Better come down to Bird & Beckett at the respectable hour of 2 o’clock to get a primer and a work out on The Oy Way! From Exercise 14: Assume the shteyn stance. –Be sure that your body is uncentered and your mind is slightly cluttered. –Take a deep breath, tremble a bit at the knees, and let out a melancholy sigh. –Shrug your shoulders and hold for five seconds after you have gone as high as possible without leaving the ground.…
Read MoreSunday, October 14 – 2 p.m. A dual reading to celebrate the release of Rogers’ book, House of the Unexpected: Selected Poems, 1981-2012, from Wild Ocean Press. Julie Rogers began writing at age 12 and began reading her poetry in San Francisco cafes in the late 1970’s. She’s self-published five chapbooks and has read on public radio and television and at many venues in Oregon and California. In 2007, Vimala published her Buddhist hospice manual, Instructions for the Transitional State. This year, House of the Unexpected, a selection from Julie’s poetry spanning thirty years of work, has been published by Wild Ocean Press. Her poems have been featured in various journals and anthologies, including Beatitude: Golden Anniversary, 1959–2009, Big Scream, The Cafe Review, Abalone Moon and the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. Julie tutors children in writing and, since their beautiful liaison first began a few years ago, has been performing her work…
Read MoreSunday, October 14 – 4:30 p.m. which way west? Sunday concert series Gerry Fialka & jazzbos reinvent the seminal music book Really The Blues by Mezz Mezzrow (Louis Armstrong’s herbalist) and Bernard Wolfe (cybernetics pioneer) with LIVE music, readings and rare film clips. Mezz influenced everybody from Henry Miller to the Beats to Tom Waits to gangster rappers. Wolfe’s words best describe what’s on tap in Really the Blues – “Not very many people have gotten a good look at their country from that bottom-of-the-pit angle before, seen the slimy underside of the rock. It’s a chunk of Americana, as they say, and should get written. It’s a real American success story, upside down: Horatio Alger standing on his head. In a real sense, Mezz, your story is the plight of the creative artist in the USA. — to borrow a phrase from Henry Miller…It’s the odyssey of an individualist,…
Read MoreMonday, October 15th at 7 p.m. POETS! 1st & 3rd Monday of Every Month Featured poets plus an open mic hosted by B&B’s resident troubadour, Jerry Ferraz. Philip Fried has published five books of poetry, the most recent being Early/Late: New and Selected Poems (Salmon, 2011). Publishers Weekly called that book “skillful and memorable,†and The Literary Review declared, “In realms between and including the Almighty and actuarial tables, Fried speaks every language faithfully and eloquently. Rejoice! Read!†Christopher Bernard is author of the novel A Spy in the Ruins, which Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo called “the best American novel … since those of Thomas Pynchon and William Gass.” He is also the founder and co-editor (with Ho Lin) of the webzine Caveat Lector, where he also serves as poetry editor and creative director. He also writes as a critic-at-large for Synchronized Chaos International Magazine, covering art, music, theater, films…
Read MoreTuesday, October 16th at 7 p.m. A reading by the trailblazing beat icon and a key New Orleans poet/publisher couple. ruth weiss is returning from Europe, where she participated in the prestigious Sprachsalz Festival in Innsbruck, Austria, with three fresh books of her work in hand from German and Swiss publishers. She’ll be joined in this reading by David Brinks and Megan Burns, traveling here from their home in New Orleans, who have just brought out a beautiful edition of her classic work, Desert Journal under the impriint of their Trembling Pillow Press.  Brinks and Burns, poets, writers and publishers married to one another, also run the weekly 17 Poets! Literary and Performance Series (www.17poets.com), among other activities. ruth weiss is undeniably one of the handful of significant poets of the Beat Generation still active today. Born to a Jewish family during the rise of Nazism, she eventually made her…
Read MoreSunny with a chance of culture… Thursday, 10/11 – 7 pm: The Bird & Beckett Political Book Discussion Group meets to consider George Lakoff’s handbook for progressives: The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic. Friday, 10/12 – 5:30 to 8:00 pm: jazz in the bookshop features The Jimmy Ryan Quintet, celebrating ten solid years of Friday evening neighborhood jazz parties, with a nod to the late, much missed, Mary Goode. If anyone other than the musicians was a cornerstone of the jazz tradition at Bird & Beckett, it was Mary! Jimmy’s quintet features Henry Hung, trumpet; Danny Grewen, trombone; Scott Foster, guitar; Bishu Chatterjee, bass and Jimmy himself on drums. Sunday, 10/14 – 2 pm: House of the Unexpected, a collection of poetry by Julie Rogers, will be the centerpiece of a reading by Julie and her husband, the iconic beat poet David Meltzer, whose new…
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Jazz in the Bookshop
Litquake at B&B
and The Music of Kenny Dorham played by the Jay Sanders Quartet
It’s a big weekend all over town, and there’s plenty going on right here at Bird & Beckett. Friday, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m., we offer the ebullient bop of Don Prell’s SeaBop Ensemble, with Jerry Logas on reeds, Michael Parsons on piano and Chris Bjorkbom on drums. San Francisco’s longest running weekly jazz party is celebrating its tenth anniversary! 520 consecutive Friday performances! With a special nod to Mary Goode, largely responsible for making Bird & Beckett a key San Francisco jazz venue… And on Sunday, at 2 p.m., Litquake occupies Bird & Beckett when we host five writers who cut their teeth on the radical politics of the late ’60s and continue to be avidly engaged… Elaine Elinson, Hilton Obenzinger, Jonah Raskin, Nina Serrano and Barry Willdorf. Elaine reported from the Philippines during the Marcos regime and recently published Wherever There’s a Fight! on California progressive struggle; Nina…
Read MoreAnyone who knew her will be shocked to hear that Mary Goode passed away suddenly last week. From what we can tell, her heart simply gave out on her at home. It was an amazing heart, and many of us loved her very, very much. She was 68, had her health issues, but none of us ever would have thought she’d go just like that. Mary was one of the first people poking into the bookshop back in its earliest days, intrigued by the jazz implications of the “Bird” in Bird & Beckett, and told me endless stories of her recently deceased husband, John Markham — a drummer who had traveled widely, played behind Sinatra, Peggy Lee and many others, etc. She introduced me to a number of John’s close friends and associates, jazz musicians who populate the Bird & Beckett Friday scene to this day. Of course, I see…
Read MoreMonday, October 1st – 7 to 9 p.m. Featured poets followed by an open mic 1st and 3rd Monday of each month hosted by Jerry Ferraz. Rebecca Farivar hosts a poetry podcast where, as resident poet, she talks with guests about poetry– the hook? the guests aren’t poets. Rebecca, though, is assuredly such an animal… her most recent published efforts include the collection called Correct Animal (Octopus Books, 2011) and the chapbook American Lit (Dancing Girl Press, 2011). She earned her MFA under Brenda Hillman at St. Mary’s College, learned a thing or two more there from Graham Foust and visiting poet Michael Palmer, is an East Bay native, has lived in Lyon, France and Bonn, Germany… She’s drawn the phrase “correct animal,” intrigued by both its sound and its implications, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up — and though the short poems in her collection may at first appear…
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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
