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!
Tuesday, 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…
Read MoreSunday, September 30, 4:30-6:30 p.m. which way west? Sunday concert series. All ages welcome – no cover, but bring a few bones for the boys. They rhyme “philosopher” and “on top of her” and sing of the antidiluvial zoo. Their texts may be drawn from John Keats and Jimmy Joyce (a fine singer, himself, oncet) when not self-penned with the twisted zeal that comes from long psychedelicized campouts in the redwoods. You’ve worn out their burned cds called “Drunken Dumbshow” and “In Shape for the Inevitable” and find yourself humming such tunes as “Roll Them Bones,” “Alzheimer’s Bound,” and “Alter Kocker Rocker.” Or what may be their anthem, “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum.” Now wander, don’t run, down to Bird & Beckett — you’ve got several days to get here. You can’t see the forest or the trees, but you can hear music emanating from somewhere out there in the gloaming. …
Read MoreChris Hedges, writing for the “Nation of Change” website, concludes his chilling article with these observations: “Obama is not in charge. Romney would not be in charge. Politicians are the public face of corporate power. They are corporate employees. Their personal narratives, their promises, their rhetoric and their idiosyncrasies are meaningless. And that, perhaps, is why the cost of the two presidential campaigns is estimated to reach an obscene $2.5 billion. The corporate state does not produce a product that is different. It produces brands that are different. And brands cost a lot of money to sell. You can dismiss those of us who will in protest vote for a third-party candidate and invest our time and energy in acts of civil disobedience. You can pride yourself on being practical. You can swallow the false argument of the lesser of two evils. But ask yourself, once this nightmare starts kicking…
Read MoreSunday, September 30 – 2:30 pm In the hills of North Carolina from the 1930s into the 1950s, a unique succession of intellectual and artistic developments occurred in the rather ramshackle environment of Black Mountain College, as if it were a sort of farm tended by a succession of agronomists, field hands and dabblers. Some, like the artists Josef and Anni Albers, were at it a long time — fifteen years, in their case. Others passed through more briefly. Many already had, or were soon to make, huge names for themselves in their chosen fields or endeavor, be it writing, dance, music, sculpture, painting… Key individuals in post-war American culture like John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Ruth Asawa, Robert Rauschenberg, Buckminster Fuller and many more taught, studied or simply worked on their art projects there for a semester, a summer, a year… and then there…
Read MoreHotly anticipated new books on the shelves at Bird & Beckett include novels by Michael Chabon (Telegraph Avenue), T.C. Boyle (San Miguel), Zadie Smith (NW), Irvine Welsh (Skagboys); short stories by Junot Diaz (This is How You Lose Her); nonfiction by Salman Rushdie (Joseph Anton: A Memoir), David Byrne (How Music Works), the late Christopher Hitchens (Mortality), Robert Hass (What Light Can Do: Essays), Joy Harjo (Crazy Brave: A Memoir). New in paperback, Stephen Greenblatt (The Swerve) and Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature). New poetry by the US Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey (Thrall). etc., etc. It’s pretty much always like that at Bird & Beckett, though this is the beginning of the autumn onslaught of wonderful books. Who says the publishing industry is in trouble?
Read MoreSunday, September 23rd — 2:00 p.m. PAWA (Philippine American Writers & Artists) co-presents with Bird & Beckett “Birds of a Feather” — a reading featuring Bay Area writers Rabih Alameddine, Laura Goode and Barbara Jane Reyes. RABIH ALAMEDDINE is the author of three novels, The Hakawati, I, the Divine, and Koolaids, as well as The Perv, a book of short stories. He lives in San Francisco and Beirut. LAURA GOODE is a novelist, essayist, poet, and screenwriter living in San Francisco.  Her first novel for young adults, Sister Mischief, was released by Candlewick Press in 2011, and called a “Best Book You Haven’t Read of 2011†by Vanity Fair online, as well as “a provocative, authentic coming-of-age story…full of big ideas, big heart, and big poetry†by Booklist in its starred review. She is the executive producer of the feature film Farah Goes Bang, which she co-wrote with Meera Menon. Her poems…
Read MoreSunday, September 23rd – 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. which way west? Sunday concert series. no cover – but your donations are crucial to help us pay the musicians. What to make of this booking? Bird & Beckett invites you to come down to the shop and find out this Sunday. Call it jazz, but bargain for more than you’ve bargained for. It’s outside, for sure, but it’s tightly focused on sax player Dan Plonsey’s compositions — pushing whatever envelope you can imagine. Bassist Steve Horowitz has pushed this group into existence and propels it on out with the more than vigorous participation of Scott R. Looney on piano, Steve Adams (of the Rova Saxophone Quartet) playing sax counterpoint to Dan, and John Hanes on drums. Scott Looney brought us this project, and Steve Horowitz has been frequently sighted at Bird & Beckett dates for awhile now… Sunday will provide enlightenment about…
Read MoreWhat I’m reading now… an occasional post by the proprietor… Susan Straight has long been on the short list of English-language fiction writers dear to my heart– along with Michael Ondaatje, Jayne Anne Phillips, Breece D’J Pancake, Denis Johnson– admittedly, the writers I stumbled on back in the 1980s and ’90s, mostly from browsing the stacks at Bonanza Books down on Market Street, around Kearny or Sansome, and from hanging out in the Mechanics Institute Library around the corner… escaping the dreariness of office work necessitated by the economic realities of raising a family… Ah, browsing! escape! discovery… Straight was off and running then, writing a string of incredibly flowing, fully imagined books starting with the novel, I’ve Been in Sorrow’s Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots (1993), set among the Geechee people, the Gullahs, of the South Carolina Lowcountry region. Actually, that debut novel was preceded by a…
Read MoreSunday, September 16 – 4:30-6:30 p.m. “which way west” Sunday afternoon concert series. All ages welcome. Never a cover charge, but your generous donations help us pay the musicians. David Solbach, jazz clarinet player & composer, brings in two of the musicians with whom he recorded his recent CD of original tunes, “Dinosaur Dreams” — Jason Martineau on piano and vocal, and Aaron Germain on bass. Jazz that will take you into a realm comprised entirely of David’s imagination… well, that, and them changes…
Read MoreSunday, September 16 – 2 p.m. A special reading by two SFSU English Dept. professors and poets. Jennifer Arin has just published a new collection entitled Ways We Hold, while Meg Schoerke has won wide acclaim for her book, Anatomical Venus. Arin brings an awareness of time’s ineluctable passage and poetry’s power to stop it, however briefly. Brilliant and resonant, one illumination following another, Ways We Hold delivers on its promises because for Arin, poetry “is one / small way we hold on.†You will want to hold onto this book, like a lost friend rediscovered. - Elisabeth Frost Meg Schoerke’s poems display a passionate devotion to form, the pure form of shells, architecture, jazz, and memory. She seems to believe both that pure form can save us from the chaos and abandonments of everyday life, and that it is the truth of everyday life, the underlying silver bones, the signature riff, the…
Read MoreMonday, Sept. 17 — 7 p.m. Featured poets plus an open mic 1st & 3rd Monday of each month hosted by Jerry Ferraz. Virginia Barrett is a poet inspired by her surroundings, her writing tied to her eye as a visual artist as well as the sense of spirit she gathers from a place. While she writes in diverse styles, including narrative and prose, she is intuitively drawn to composing short pieces bordering on the mystical.  Her poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, La Bloga, Heal Your Soul-Heal The World and Forever in Love, and she has received writer’s grants from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, New Mexico and The Book Club of California in San Francisco. Bobby Coleman is a founding member of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade, a progressive attorney and an MBA — a consistent advocate and organizer for radically sustainable reform solutions for over 30…
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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.
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 through our fiscal sponsor, Jazz in the Neighborhood.
Click on "donate" in the navigation bar above. Better yet, send or drop off a check made out to our fiscal sponsor, Jazz in the Neighborhood, with BBCLP in the memo line. Our mailing address is:
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
