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!
Jon Frank Quintet which way west? Sunday concerts Sunday, May 15th – sets at 4:30 & 5:30 pm Trumpeter Noah Frank is featured with drummer Jon Frank’s fine group, which includes seasoned veterans Ken Rosen (sax), Terry Rodriguez (piano) and Ron Crotty (bass). Noah is the product of a musical family (his father Jon has led the orchestra program at Hoover Middle School for years), with training at the Community Music Center on Capp Street, School of the Arts at the top of Glen Canyon, and at Berklee School of Music in Boston. He’s back for a visit, and another exciting gig at Bird & Beckett. Bassist Ron Crotty played with Dave Brubeck’s first quartet, and joined Brubeck again for a stint later in a long career of top-flight performing associations — which has included memorable work with pianists Vince Guaraldi and Bliss Rodriguez. The album pictured here, with the…
Read MoreHappy Mothers Day! Here’s a wonderful clip of the mother of all poets, and mother of five beautiful children, Diane di Prima… a reading at The Band’s Last Waltz, Thanksgiving Day, November 1976, Winterland Ballroom, San Francisco. click here!
Read MorePugsley Buzzard headed this way! catch him at Bird & Beckett on Sunday, May 8th, 4:30 pm…Â HAPPY MOTHERS DAY! He boasts an unlikely name and a voice like gravel on a treacherous road, and he’s coming out of Australia for a foray into the Bay Area that’s bound to be talked about for some time to come…Â oh, yes, and he plays a mean stride piano… if you can’t make it to the show, then check him out at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOQLVM018qw
Read MoreA BARD & A PHILOSOPHER Jerry Ferraz & Sterling Bunnell POETS! featured readers + open mic, twice monthly Jerry Ferraz was born and grew up over in Eureka Valley some years ago, let’s say in the early 1950s, round about this time of year… a San Franciscan to the core… though a much broader expanse of time and geography reverberates through him… Through the years, he’s recited his winding and enigmatic fables in verse and sung his lovely flamenco inflected songs in the cafes and bars, at the bus stops and construction sites, in the parks… trading in the poetic coin of the realm of philosophers and seers. There really are precious few like him, and they’re scattered like jewels over centuries of tradition, across the seas and the continents. He’s a poet for the ages, and we’re not hesitant to characterize him thus. After ten-plus years of Bird &…
Read Morean original beat… ruth weiss w/trio at bird & beckett friday night may 6th at 8:30 pm poetry and jazz… a book release celebration! can’t stop the beat: the life and words of a beat poet ruth weiss was born in germany as the nazis came to power; her family fled to austria in 1933. forced to flee again, this time to america, in 1939. new york, chicago. a brief, two-year return of the family to germany postwar, 1946, schooled in switzerland, then returned to “the states,” to chicago. her first reading to jazz in chicago in 1949; the rest is (more) history… new york, new orleans, chicago again, hitchhiking, then san francisco, 1951. 1010 montgomery street; that poem is in the new book, along with “i always thought you black” and more. the cellar, a life amidst the beats and their progeny. an important poet, a vibrant poet. here…
Read MoreThey’ll be dancin’ in the streets! Glen Park Festival All day Sunday May 1st 10 a.m to 4:30 p.m. there’ll be music… sweet, sweet music… Come out to the Glen Park Festival for the fun, the sun and the beautiful neighborhood vibe, and a cavalcade of great bands mc’d by man-of-all-seasons Misisipi Mike. Dozens of Glen Park volunteers have put this festival together for your pleasure, and you’ll find Diamond and Wilder Streets lined with art, food and a panoply of other booths. Activities for the kids on Wilder, including our own Walker Brents telling stories at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Bands on the mainstage will include Orange Sherbet, Los Train Wreck, Misisipi Mike and the Midnight Gamblers, Jinx Jones and the High Tones and Valerie Quevedo and her Cincopaters. It’ll be a beautiful day in the neighborhood! Call friends and tell them to come see Glen Park at…
Read MoreWriters Step Up to the Plate! After a tough homestand against the Braves, the Giants have a travel day on Monday, so we’ll use the pause in the schedule for a literary take on America’s favorite pastime… Monday, Apr. 25, 7 pm: Come out to our celebration of the unfolding baseball season, as five writers and died-in-the-wool baseball fans step up to the plate to take their cuts… Phil Cousineau, seasoned writer on myth, creativity and so much more, is coming over from North Beach… Jeff DeMark, monologuist extraordinaire, will come down from Blue Lake… joining our local heroes Al Averbach, Dan Liberthson and David Frankel…
Read MoreJazz bookends the weekend The Chuck Peterson Quintet on Friday, 4/22, 5:30 to 8:00 pm Also known as the “230 Jones Street Local 6 Literary Jazz Band,†Chuck’s quintet plays a whole lot of beautiful straight-ahead jazz, in a classic West Coast mode. Dorothy Lefkovits joins the band for a few tunes on every set… it’s a sweetly swinging way to kick off the Easter weekend. NOTE: We open at 2 pm on Easter Sunday, 4/24, and present two programs, at 2:30 and 4:30 — see below! Studio 5 on Easter Sunday, 4/24, 4:30 to 6:30 pm Studio 5 is Glen Park expat Mark Reynolds’ collaboration with Mike Dixon & friends. Mark and family moved back to the North Bay awhile ago, but he’s coming down with Gretchen and the kids (Jillian & Jarrett) for this Easter jazz date! Bring chocolate eggs! And don’t forget Walker’s talk at…
Read Morehere on the roof of hell… Thursday, April 14th, 7:00 pm Bird & Beckett Political Book Discussion Group This Month’s subject of discussion: All the Devils are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis Have a yen to hash out the cynical and self-serving machinations of the powerful? C’mon down! In its monthly meeting, a conclave of inquiring souls gathers to consider Bethany McLean & Joe Nocera’s investigation into a landscape of self congratulatory corruption. The authors take their title from Shakespeare’s The Tempest:Â “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” To which Joe Thorn, neighborhood sage, might add Issa’s haiku: In this world We walk on the roof of hell Gazing at flowers Friday, April 15th, 5:30 to 8:00 pm jazz in the bookshop – a weekly communal shindig this week: Peterson – Prell – ? – Marabuto Guitarist Scott Foster is off at a conference…
Read MoreThe pleasures of the page Nothing is really like a book, though only a very few of them are really important as books… still, many would lay down their lives if it would save the book from obliteration, for many fine and very important personal reasons. Fortunately, it will never come to that. So let’s take pleasure in the page, and the binding, and the groaning shelf and teetering stack… Shown here is Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands, a lovely book in its every aspect — its words, its maps, its ideas, its arrangement of the elements — and in its totality. Come take a look. Leaf through the pages and enjoy. We only have one or two copies on hand, but we’ll get a few more in a few weeks if these find their way to other homes. If you can’t come down to the shop for some…
Read Moreold-time is not a crime talked to a couple of guys at the shop on Sunday, while the Saddle Cats held forth on the stage, zipping along the route felicitously preserved on the Bob Wills Tiffany transcriptions, kidding about the idea of a district in town zoned to support a gamut of anachronistic and obsolete businesses… whether they be printers whose skills are cheaply supplanted by the more or less adequate approximations realized through advanced technology, bowling alleys that just require too much space to afford at local real estate prices, blacksmiths in a land from which all the horses have vanished… once, we thought we’d dome the blocks arrayed from the intersection of Diamond and Chenery, declare a principality of Glen Park, or daylight Islais Creek, create a swath of greenspace back of La Corneta from Kern to Chenery, de-pave Diamond from Sussex down for sliding and sledding… all…
Read MoreFrom 52nd Street to the Chisholm Trail FRIDAY (4/8) – 5:30 to 8:00 pm jazz in the bookshop – a neighborhood party every week! This week: The Jimmy Ryan Quartet with Ian Carey (tpt), Scott Foster (gtr), Bishu Chatterjee (bs), Jimmy Ryan (dms) Jimmy’s been swinging at the skins since 2002 at Bird & Beckett… just the continuation of a long career that started in L.A. in the 1950s and continued in San Francisco in the early 1960s. After a lengthy hiatus from the early 70s well into the 90s, he agreed to fill in on drums at a gig his son, the trumpeter Joel Ryan, was playing with Bishop Norman Williams and BJ Papa at North Beach’s Gathering Cafe, and next thing you know he was back in the jazz life. He’s got a fine quintet on display at Bird & Beckett each month, and you’d do well to…
Read MoreHot tamales, and they’re red hot, yes, we got ’em for sale! Well, no we don’t, but we got books! Start thinking about Paris! Brand new Lonely Planet France guide just reached the shelf… come in and pick up a copy… get that new Portual guide while you’re at it. If you tell the guy at the register that you were prompted by this post, he’ll offer you 10% off. Merde!, it ain’t Amazon, but it pays your California sales tax, anyway… and you’re doing your neighborhood and your neighbors a favor by throwing business our way.
Read MoreSpeaking of Amazon… Must we? unless it be the river… But back here at home, that giant big box store on the internet continues to throw its weight around. On April 6, they threatened to pull their distribution center out of South Carolina if the state insists on making them collect and remit sales tax. So what else is new? Discounts on Amazon are great and all, but shopping in the neighborhood ensures that you’ve got one to shop in… and the sales taxes you pay keep the streets paved, the sewers clear and the schools open… If you’re still buying your books on Amazon, we’re not sure why you’re looking at our site… but if you’ve gotten that monkey off your back, well heck, we love you to pieces!
Read MorePoets Monday night… and, then, the night train to Lisbon…arriving Wednesday… MONDAY (4/4) – 7:00 to 9:00 pm POETS! Hosted by Jerry Ferraz Jason Morris and Patrick James Dunagan Patrick James Dunagan‘s new book is There Are People Who Say That Painters Shouldn’t Talk: A GUSTONBOOK, just published by the Post-Apollo Press. His work has been published in many magazines, including AMERARCANA 2011: A Bird & Beckett Review. Next month he’ll be at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in NYC. This month, we’ve got him… as for Jason Morris? He writes, he thinks, he tends bar. Pours whiskey, takes money, pays the rent, writes poems. He is the editor of Push Press and author of Spirits and Anchors and the Golden West Notebook. An open mic follows; always erratic, always interesting, it’s worth your while. WEDNESDAY (4/6) – 7:00 to 9:00 pm Bird & Beckett Book Club…
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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.
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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
