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!
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But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
Pity the Billionaire, Thomas Frank’s latest salvo in the struggle to scrape away the scales from the eyes of Americans conned by the rhetoric of wealth and righteousness, arrives in stock Tuesday (paperback, $16). Also in that shipment, Good Girls Revolt by Lynn Povich, about the uprising of women on staff at Newsweek magazine in 1970 that shattered the glass ceiling which had kept them completely out of the editorial ranks (hardcover, $26), Plus, Global Weirdness: Severe Storms, Deadly Heat Waves, Relentless Drought, Rising Seas and the Weather of the Future (hardcover, $23). But don’t wait ’til Tuesday to come check out our stock! New titles arrive every couple of days, joining the thousands of interesting books already crowding the shelves. Mention this post and receive a 10% discount on any book purchase today and Monday (Sept. 9-10).
Read MoreThursday, Sept. 6th at 7 pm: The Bird & Beckett Book Club discusses Chad Harbach’s debut novel, The Art of Fielding. Harbach’s novel has been acclaimed for its rich, character-laden narrative, and likened to the best work of John Irving, Michael Chabon, Larry McMurtry and other masters of the contemporary American novel. The Bird & Beckett Book Club has been going continuously for 12+ years, meeting on the first Thursday of each month at 7 pm to discuss books of all sorts – novels, nonfiction, contemporary, classic… Anyone can attend – just read the book and show up for the discussion! Next month’s book club selection is Herman Melville’s Moby Dick — to be discussed at the Thurs. Oct. 4th meeting — and our book group has been given a special discount code to use to buy 30%-off tickets to the Thursday, Oct. 18 performance of Jake Heggie’s new opera,…
Read MoreSunday, Sept. 9th at 2 pm: Work by the late poet/activist Tarlen will be read by Jack Hirschman (SF Poet Laureate, 2003-2006) and David Joseph, as well as Nellie Wong, Sarah Menefee, Agneta Falk and Louise Nayer. Carol Tarlen, who passed away in 2004, was a hugely influential and well-loved figure in the progressive literary scene, never reluctant to put her body on the line nor to put her intellect and passion into her writing. Upon her death, Julia Stein wrote that she was “a North Beach Emily Dickinson, publishing widely in magazines and anthologies but never putting out a full-length book. She was the contemporary poet I knew closest to Whitman or Neruda: from her white trash impoverished childhood to her MA in English from San Francisco State; from her being a poet/delegate on the S.F. Labor Council to her getting arrested repeatedly for feeding the hungry and homeless…
Read MoreSunday concerts coming up (4:30 to 6:30 pm): Sept 9    Sukhawat Ali Khan Ensemble – sufi two vocalists, harmonium, flute, tabla Sept 16    David Solbach Trio – jazz David Solbach (clarinet), Jason Martineau (piano and vocals), Dan Fabricant (bass) Sept 23    New Monsters – jazz Dan Plonsey (tenor sax), Steve Adams (alto and soprano saxes), Scott Looney (piano), Steve Horowitz (bass), John Hanes (drums) Sept 30    Smooth Toad – Esoteric Americana GP Skratz (guitar), Hal Hughes (fiddle), Bob Ernst (percussion) Oct 7       Jay Sanders Quartet – Plays the music of Kenny Dorham Jay Sanders (trumpet), Adam Schulman (piano), Eric Markowitz (bass), Smith Dobson (drums) Oct 14   Messin’ with Mezzrow – jazz Garry Fialko and friends Oct 21   Ragtime Skedaddlers Dennis Pash (mandolin), Nick Robinson (mandolin), Dave Krinkel (guitar), Virginia Tichenor (piano), Marty Eggers (bass) Oct 28   Ron Marabuto Quartet personnel tba Nov 4       Pugsley Buzzard – stride pianist from Australia…
Read MoreMonday, September 3 – 7:00 pm Marsha Campbell & Sheppard B. Kominars POETS! PLUS AN OPEN MIC 1st & 3rd Monday of each month Hosted by Jerry Ferraz Regarding Marsha Campbell’s Revolutions per Minute (Beatitude Press, 2006), poet Ed Mycue has said “Bright statements emerge from smoky industrial sites or a countryside underwater. These ideas roam in the mind, as if sounds from military flights, and hover over forbidden feeding areas. You won’t mistake Campbell’s work for anyone else’s. A rare flowering of superb poems.†Long known as a poet of crystalline expression on the North Beach poetry scene and in key venues like Sacred Grounds Cafe, Marsha has received the TallMountain Award, has been included in AgeSong’s recent Gems of Wisdom Anthology, and has to her credit the poetry volumes Dear Daddos, e.g. press, 1983; The Real Fuselli, Deep Forest, 1990; Reply of Our Lady Teresa to the poet Crashaw…
Read MoreFriday, August 31st – 5:30 to 8:00 pm Special 5th Friday booking in our weekly jazz in the bookshop series Scott Foster Trio live jazz without fail every Friday since October 2002!! 10 years & counting… Each Friday, we present one of four combos in rotation, but when there’s a fifth Friday in a month, we have latitude to bring in a special guest act. This week, guitarist Scott Foster brings in bassist Chris Fouts and drummer Dan Foltz for two sets of classic jazz rooted in the 1950s sound that flowed out of the bop era to make small combo jazz a hugely popular music in cities across the nation. We’ve long considered Scott our favorite guitarist on the local scene– and his confederates on this date are completely in sync with his conception and spirit. Another wonderful jazz date in Glen Park.  Sunday, August 26 – 1:00 pm…
Read MoreMonday, August 20 – 7:00 pm POETS! Ed Coletti & David Beckman open mic follows two featured poets, 1st & 3rd Monday of each month hosted by San Francisco troubadour Jerry Ferraz Born in New York, Ed Coletti moved to Santa Rosa when he returned from the Vietnam War. A graduate of Georgetown University, he completed an MFA in creative writing under Robert Creeley at San Francisco State University. He has a long publishing history; most recently he published Jazz Gods in 2010 and his latest collection of poems When Hearts Outlive Minds was published in 2011 by Conflux Press. David Beckman has written poetry, plays and novels, and has read his work in numerous Bay Area venues including Maxine Hong Kingston’s 2006 peace event in Santa Rosa. His chapbook “Times Three” appeared in 2008. Both poets will be traveling down from the North Bay for this reading. Next weekend (Aug. 24-26): (click on…
Read MoreSunday, August 19th – 4:30 to 6:30 pm Pasha Band (Husain Resan Ensemble) Pan-Arabic music We’re fortunate once again to have some of the Bay Area’s fine middle eastern musicians grace the Bird & Beckett stage this Sunday in our “which way west?” weekly concert series. Last December, you may have been lucky enough to hear the Ayjal Ensemble perform here (view a video of that performance at this link!); the Pasha Band includes three members of that ensemble: Husain Dixon Resan is an oud and violin player, vocalist and composer who hails from Iraq. He studied oud beginning at age 14 in Bayt al-Fann in Baghdad, and joined its music ensemble at age 16. Coming to the U.S., he 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…
Read MoreSunday, July 29 – 2:30 pm Longing for Elsewhere Renee Gibbons reads from her memoir of a restless life Renee Gibbons — born in a Dublin tenement in the mid-20th century and for the past three decades a well loved figure in San Francisco’s North Beach bohemia — is widely known for the long-running column she wrote for the Irish Herald called “The Rambling Road.” And a rambling road she’s certainly traveled since escaping Dublin for Paris at age 17, with the help of a Hollywood actor and a kind stranger. Somewhere along the way, she met and fell in love with a radical longshoreman aboard a ship traveling through the Panama bound for Egypt with her year-old daugher, Ashling. He became her husband and San Francisco became her base, but she has never stopped wandering the world, and has never lost her “longing for elsewhere.”  At the same…
Read MoreSunday, July 22 – 2:00 pm Poet A.D. Winans & Friends Al Winans is a thoroughly engaged and committed poet, turning an unblinking stare on society and its lack of compassion for those aced out of the good life. He’s also got a long record, with his Second Coming Press, of championing (and publishing) poets that come to their work honestly. He’s got no patience for careerists. Read the terrific profile on him by Evan Karp that appeared in this Friday’s San Francisco Chronicle by clicking on this link. A raft of good friends and fellow poets will join Al this Sunday to read from his new collection, San Francisco Poems. Guests will include Neeli Cherkovski, Nellie Wong, Ann Menebroker, Art Beck, Soheyl Dahi, Evan Karp, William Taylor, Jr, Paul Fericano, Trina Drotar, Bill Gainer and Bill Vartnaw. Sunday, July 22 – 4:30-6:30 pm Charles Hamilton Quartet which way west? Sunday…
Read MoreLive Jazz on Sunday / Poets on Monday Sunday, July 15 – 4:30 to 6:30 pm The Noel Jewkes Quartet Noel Jewkes (reeds), Grant Levin (piano), Adam Gay (bass), Bryan Bowman (drums) — joined for a tune on each set by vocalist Marky Quayle Noel Jewkes has been a mainstay on the Northern California jazz scene since he blew in from the wilds of Utah in the early 1960s–his longest hiatus was probably a couple of weeks round about last Christmas, when he consented to a little heart surgery. Soon enough, he was back on the bandstand. His weekly sessions at Mauro’s Sausalito Seahorse Musica each Tuesday draws top musicians week in and week out, always glad to play with a man who’s long been considered one of the best musicians in the region. In Noel’s five decades here on the coast, he’s been called on to work with singers…
Read MoreSunday, July 8 – 2:30 pm Look What the Cat Dragged in Again A CD release party for Whitman McGowan’s latest Whitman McGowan started his spoken word career reading poems at a back alley coffeehouse, The Espresso Bar in Pasadena, California, where he put poems for a dollar each on the menu. After moving north to San Francisco (where his UC Santa Barbara teacher Kenneth Rexroth previously held a famous salon) he became best known for crafting a pagan anthem, “White Folks Was Wild Once, Too.†The difficulty in obtaining copies of this, his newest and fourth album, from Viridiana Records, renders it instantly collectible. The spoken word is accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Don Kirby (known for accompanying Ravi Shankar on tanpura), plus Canadian musicians Johnny and Johnny and Margery Snyder on flute. It also incorporates the surprising recording debut of his alter ego Trungpa Bumbleché, who as a would be…
Read MoreJune 29-July 1 6/29 – Friday – jazz in the bookshop Special Fifth Friday Booking! Mad & Eddie Duran Eddie Duran, born in San Francisco in 1925, had become one of the top jazz guitarists on the local scene by the late 1940s. He got the call to play in Charlie Parker’s band at the Say When Club on Bush Street in 1952, sharing the bandstand with Chet Baker and Lawrence Marable, and has played and recorded with dozens of major figures along the way — including Stan Getz, Cal Tjader, George Shearing, Earl “Fatha” Hines and Jon Hendricks. For four years through 1980 he was in Benny Goodman’s band — check out this link to a video of Eddie, bassist Al Obidinski and drummer John Markham onstage with Benny at Tokyo’s Budokan Hall, in a trio performance of Prelude to a Kiss while Benny and pianist Teddy Wilson look…
Read MoreMonday, June 18, 7 pm POETS! plus an open mic! so bring your best… hosted by Jerry Ferraz — 1st & 3rd Monday of each month Noel Black lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, artist Marina Eckler, and their son Ursen. Co-founder with Ed Berrigan of LOG Magazine and publisher of the Angry Dog Midget Editions in the late 1990s, he has since worked as a writer and producer for a wide variety of media outlets including The Stranger and WNYC. He currently works as a producer for KRCC public radio. He is the author of six chapbooks, including Hulktrans (Owl Press, 2008) and In The City of Word People (Blue Press, 2008). His most recent book of poetry is USELYSSES (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2011). Cralan Kelder was born in 1970 and grew up between California and The Netherlands. An anthropologist by training, he has edited numerous literary magazines,…
Read MoreNext weekend (June 22-24): Friday – jazz in the bookshop w/The Chuck Peterson Quintet Saturday – shop for books! Sunday – 2pm – Poets/Writers Loren Bell & Sharon Doubiago: The Things They Carried Sunday – 4:30pm – which way west? Sunday Concert Series Jinx Jones & the Jazzabilly All Stars
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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
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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
