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!
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But nothing beats being in the room with the music & the musicians!
Sunday, 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…
Read MoreFriday, Sept. 14, from 5:30 to 8:00 p.m., it’s drummer Jimmy Ryan’s quintet swinging through another bop-drenched session of our weekly “jazz in the bookshop” series… and Sunday, Sept. 16, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., clarinetist/composer David Solbach brings in a trio with Jason Martineau on piano/vocals and Aaron Germain on bass in our weekly “which way west?” Sunday afternoon series. Jimmy Ryan first showed up at Bird & Beckett a decade ago, as the drummer on a series of Sunday dates that featured the sublime vocalist Dorothy Lefkovits (it’s her birthday today!) in a combo led by the late, great Henry Irvin. It wasn’t long before he was a cornerstone of our Friday sessions, in a steady, and steadily expanding group led by sax player Chuck Peterson. From a trio to an octet, that little group grew & grew, and the rest, as they say, is history… And history is…
Read MoreSunday, Sept. 23 – 2 p.m. Rabih Alameddine, Laura Goode, Barbara Jane Reyes, hosted by G. Justin Hulog 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 and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, The Faster Times,Boston…
Read MoreSunday, Oct. 7 – 2 p.m. Elaine Elinson, Hilton Obenzinger, Jonah Raskin, Nina Serrano, Barry Willdorf Elaine Elinson, coauthor of the award-winning Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California, worked with the UFW and reported from the Philippines during the Marcos regime. Hilton Obenzinger reads, takes action, and laughs. Critic, poet, novelist, historian, and recipient of the American Book Award, his books include the autobiographical novel Busy Dying. He teaches writing and American studies at Stanford University. Jonah Raskin has written about American radicals and radicalism in Out of the Whale: Growing Up in the American Left, The Radical Jack London and numerous other books. Nina Serrano, poet, media producer, and educator, was voted “Best Local Poet†by Oakland Magazine in 2010. She co-founded the Mission Cultural Center, and produces literature and Latino radio programs for KPFA. Barry Willdorf, a…
Read MoreMonday, Oct. 1 – 7 p.m. Featured poets plus an open mic 1st & 3rd Monday of each month hosted by Jerry Ferraz. Rebecca Farivar is the author of Correct Animal (Octopus Books, 2011) and chapbook American Lit (Dancing Girl Press, 2011). She holds an MFA in poetry from St. Mary’s College of California and hosts the podcast Break The Line. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, 6×6, cold-drill, RealPoetik, The Volta, Word For / Word, The American Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Oakland. Ben Mirov is the author of Hider Roser (Octopus Books, 2012), Ghost Machine (Caketrain, 2010). He grew up in Northern California and lives in Oakland.
Read MoreLiterature with a chance of pulp fiction coming up, a little stormy political commentary, some gentle philosophical breezes out of the west. Between now and Thursday, we’re selling books. Open 11 a.m. every day, closing at 7 p.m… except when we’re here late for an event… and this week the fun begins on Thursday… Thursday evening, Sept. 13 at 7 p.m., the Bird & Beckett Political Book Discussion Group is meeting to discuss Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World, Release 2.0. Did you catch that the other book group is next meeting on Oct. 4 to discuss Melville’s Moby Dick? and that 30% off tix are available to the opera performance of Jake Heggie’s version of that story on Thurs. Sept. 20? Call the bookshop to get the discount code for the opera tix. Friday from 5:30 to 8:00, it’s Jimmy Ryan’s quintet, with Henry Hung, trumpet; Danny Grewen, trombone; Scott…
Read MorePity 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,…
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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," 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
