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653 Chenery Street in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood
Open to walk-in trade and browsing Tuesday to Sunday noon to six
phone: 1-415-586-3733 email: [email protected]
Bänoo Zan & Cy Strom, co-editors of Woman Life Freedom: Poems for the Iranian Revolution, have invited poet Summer Brenner to join them in a reading of poems from their recently published anthology, which marks a world-historical moment: the first ever feminist revolution. Woman Life Freedom is the slogan chanted by the demonstrators in Iran. This anthology echoes that cry. Its poems are reflections on the present moment, denunciations of injustice, examinations of the poets’ own consciences, laments for the fallen, bitter curses, prayers, celebrations of life and visions of a better future. Forty poets and translators living on four continents are represented. The poems are ordered by theme: Beginnings, Defiance, Struggle, Witness and Futures. The introduction by Cy Strom sets the scene with a brief look at the situation in Iran and touches on themes of poetry, the arts and revolution; the afterword by Bänoo Zan, titled “Against the…
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Robert Heirendt brings his “Name & Form” Ensemble to celebrate it’s just-released album. You’ll encounter original conceptions/compositions for mbira and saxophone, based on the meeting of traditional Zimbabwean trance music with modern improvisational jazz. The evening will feature Robert on mbira (Zimbabwean kalimba) and two alto saxophonists, Randy McKean and Dan Plonsey, with special guest Linton Hale on bansuri flute. Read more here! $20 cover, cash at the door, please. BYOB. Students $10. For a reservation, call the venue at 415-586-3733.
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Bring something to sip and a twenty for each band to either or both shows! Call ahead for a seat reservation — 415-586-3733. We’re a bookshop during the day and a venue for music and poetry in the evenings, with events four to six nights a week, especially through the weekends. Eric & the In Crowd – 11/14 at 6pm; $20 suggested, students $10, kids free This weekend we have pianist Eric Shifrin’s continuing 2nd Fridays Happy Hour residency, now in its 4th year. Eric & the In Crowd has a vast and varied repertoire and a terrific roster of musicians to draw on, and this week, two of Eric’s key collaborators — bassist Ari Munkres and drummer Mark Lee — are on hand to entertain you with a big bouquet of songs that start with the letter A. Go figure! Better yet, come & enjoy one of San Francisco’s…
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Three distinguished poets present poems “during a time of upheaval.” Xochi Candelaria hails from San Juan Bautista and has taught at City College of San Francisco since 2008, with two books of poems and publication in a number of magazines to her credit. “When I entered the poetic field of Xochiquetzal Candelria’s words, I did not want to leave. I remain compelled by the bravery, by the audacity of images, by the stunning leaps.”–Joy Harjo Carrie Mei-Lin Mar, the great-granddaughter of a railroad laborer, has published one volume of her poems with another, Water Guest, due out this year. Born in San Francisco, she teaches health education at a local high school. “Mar writes with a fine lyrical precision and a stirring range of feeling to connect the world of the reader to the world of the poem. In each of these pages you’ll find something human, something of yourself, as…
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Two great shows today, Sunday November 11th! At 5pm, catch the honky tonk genius of guitar slinger & singer Mitch Polzak with his classic / outlaw country outfit, the Royal Deuces, featuring special guest slide guitar master Joe Goldmark! Two sets ripping it up with fabulous originals and tunes you love by the likes of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson and more. And as if that’s not enough, we’re excited to have Sonoma native son Dan Neville, a brilliant Latin music vibraphonist & marimba player, back in town from his home in Rutherford, NJ where he teaches at William Paterson University and is the toast of the Queens, NYC Colombian music scene. Dan spent most of 2020 in Cali, Colombia studying and working with great masters of the marimba (Música del Pacífico) and brought it all back home, including his wife, the fabulous Colombian…
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This Sunday, November 2nd, at 5pm, a jazz combo from the Community Music Center performs a set and conducts a jam session open to all comers, especially students currently engaged in the study of the art! No charge, but donations help us sustain the series. Bird & Beckett is dedicated to supporting the gamut of Bay Area jazz generations, from the teenagers to the ageless! Back us up in our work of sustaining the culture. Toss some ducats in the buckets, and consider a donation to our 501(c)3 nonprofit Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project!
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Martin Luther, vocals Wilton Rabb, guitar Dave Council, keyboards & guitar $20 cover charge; byob. students $10. reservations, call the shop at 415-586-3733 A gifted vocalist and singer songwriter, Luther is preparing to release his fifth studio LP, “Welcome Back Love.” Two original members of Graham Central Station are on board for the show — guitarist Wilton Rabb and keyboard player/guitarist Dave Council. Says Luther, “Funk in the name of Love is the theme for the evening. We plan to celebrate our fallen heroes of this culture and to keep bringing the heat, because the legacy of real music is far from over. With the recent passing of Funk Legend Sly Stone and the tragic sudden loss of neo soul founder D’Angelo, Luther is coming to lift and heal the spirit through song. We will also hear new music from his forthcoming release as well as some Minneapolis slaps to…
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Spend your spooky Halloween at Bird & Beckett! $20 cover charge per show / byob Eric & the In Crowd get Creepy at 6pm. Eric Shifrin, piano Paul Mehling, guitar Jim Kerwin, bass Winston Tong with Dreambounders (LX Rudis & Andre Custodio) plus M 5tevens at 8:30pm.
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10/30, 7:30pm – Del Seymour in conversation with Alison Owings, author of Mayor of the Tenderloin: Del Seymour’s Journey from Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco. _____ And on Halloween: Blues for Dracula! Eric & the In Crowd Get Creepy – 6-8pm Winston Tong with Dreambounders LX Rudis & Andre Custodio and guest M 5tevens – 8:30-10:30pm _____ Saturday November 1st, 7:30 Martin Luther McCoy Fills Your Soul Full! _____ November 16th The Poetry of Jazz: Allan Harris with The Sylvia Cuenca Trio Check the events calendar linked from the navigation bar for details!
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In Mayor of the Tenderloin: Del Seymour’s journey from living in the streets to fighting homelessness in San Francisco, journalist Alison Owings slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco’s Tenderloin to reveal a harrowing and life-affirming account of Del Seymour–whose addiction led him into eighteen years of homelessness, pimping and drug dealing. Once sober, he started Tenderloin Walking Tours and later Code Tenderloin, an organization teaching homeless, recovering addicts, sex workers, dealers, ex-felons and other marginalized people how to get and keep a job. Owings traces Del’s story and those in his orbit: from his daughters, sobriety buddy and ex-girlfriend, to a police captain and a psychiatric social worker, housing activists and corporate philanthropists, and Del’s Code Tenderloin students. In the Tenderloin, in a city known for its beauty and currently infamous for its divide between haves and have-nots, Owings highlights how Del gives back to people struggling…
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Anne Whiteside’s The Moon in Splinters: Searching for Maurice Pertschuk, British Secret Agent in the French Resistance, is a moving and meticulously researched account that brings to light the extraordinary life and tragic death of British Special Operations Executive (SOE) Lieutenant Maurice Pertschuk. On a moonless night in 1942, Pertschuk, a handsome and brilliant 20-year-old officer, rowed ashore on the Côte d’Azur to support the French Resistance. Just three years later, he was executed at Buchenwald concentration camp—only thirteen days before its liberation. Within the camp, Maurice scribbled poems on scraps of paper, later published in 1946 as Leaves of Buchenwald. For decades, silence shrouded his story. Only after the death of her mother did Maurice’s niece, Anne Whiteside, begin to search for the truth. In The Moon in Splinters, she retraces his footsteps through wartime France, uncovers new archival evidence, and speaks with survivors’ families. What emerges is a…
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Alison Luterman reads from her new volume of poetry, Hard Listening (Wildhouse Publishing, 2025), and is joined in conversation about her work by Leslie Absher. Hard Listening focuses on women’s voices raised up in song, poetry, and activism. Spiritual teacher and writer Mirabai Starr has said, “Alison Luterman is one of my favorite poetic voices. The poems in this collection are luminous.” During the pandemic, Alison started taking voice lessons in order to sing with her musician husband. She did not start out with a firm grasp of pitch or a great sense of rhythm, but had a lot of enthusiasm, a wonderful teacher, and a willingness to work hard. Learning to “speak music”—her husband’s primary language—was the key that opened them up to an unexpected depth of intimacy. The process of learning to sing reminded her of all the singers she had idolized from a young age. She began…
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Brazilian choro music from San Francisco. $20/byob. Students $10. Grupo Falso Baiano. Catia Machado, vocals. Zack Pitt-Smith, reeds and cavaquinho. Brian Moran, guitar. Ami Molinelli. percussion. with special guest Kerry Politzer, piano. .
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Friday, October 24th – 8:30pm
LOBE: was that on purpose?
release party & concert
for their debut album
LOBE, a sextet with Stanford roots, now in the diaspora, come together and come to Bird & Beckett to kick off their 10-day, 5-stop California tour in support of their debut album “was that on purpose?” — release date October 21, 2025. Daiki Nakajima, flute/bass. Ethan Buck, alto sax/bass. Sam Silverstein, violin. Nolan Miranda, piano/synth. Mark Rau, guitar/bass. Michael Hayes, drums. Anav Sood, synth/piano.
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Two writers long committed to the struggle and to poetry roll out new work for you.
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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," continuing the work we began when the store was established in 1999.
We continue to present a full slate of programming of live music and poetry readings, and produce a literary journal and poetry chapbooks, and we seek and welcome your continued financial support by way of donations.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above. Better yet, make a check out to the “Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project” and drop it off or mail it 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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We're immensely appreciative of Jazz in the Neighborhood for having stepped in as our temporary fiscal sponsor for a few months, while we straightened out some paperwork to get nonprofit status restored to the BBCLP. We're happy to say that's been done, and all past, present, and future donations made directly to the BBCLP are fully tax-deductible!
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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
