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!
You can help us beat Amazon to kindling! Our sales were 22% lower this February than last… and this, despite a supposedly recovering economy. Thank goodness for the strong community that’s grown up around the bookshop; we’ve got a lot of faith that that’s what will pull us through. Ultimately, nothing will beat the power of individuals pulling together as a group when they recognize their role in keeping their neighborhoods vital. Bird & Beckett is proud to be a community hub in San Francisco, and one that’s particularly keen on giving writers, musicians and others a venue through which to reach the rest of us. But we’re also a bookstore; we need to sell books to stay viable. And, in fact, we’re very keen on helping to keep the physical book itself viable and central to the culture. For some purposes, e-readers have their place, we don’t doubt. And…
Read MorePreviously perused & priced right ALL USED BOOKS 20% OFF THROUGH SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27th AT BIRD & BECKETT! It may soon be a bookworld without borders, but let’s do keep it a bookworld, shall we? Throw your kindle on the fire and pull up a comfy chair… adjust your reading light just so… pour a cup of tea. You can paddle up the Amazon another day… Through the end of the month, sneak off to Bird & Beckett to shop for a real live used book and we’ll knock 20% off the tab… Join us Friday evening for jazz in the bookshop with Chuck Peterson’s 230 Jones Street Local 6 Literary Jazz Band… Sunday afternoon, come for Walker’s retelling of Dostoevski’s “The Idiot”… and later that day, hear Pakistani vocalist Riffat Sultana with Ferhan Qureshi on tabla and Shiraz Ali Khan on guitar. Ah bliss!
Read MoreDon’t let the old-time pass you by! Alex Caton & Pete Winne fly in from Virginia to play Bird & Beckett Sunday, Feb. 20, at 4:30 pm on the final day of this year’s Bluegrass & Old-Time Festival. Fiddle, banjo, guitar & sublime Appalachian vocal harmonies bring old-time and sacred tunes to life. From Bird & Beckett, hop BART to Freight & Salvage in Berkeley to catch the Festival’s closing show: SF’s own, sublimely wonderful Crooked Jades, backed by Portland’s Water Tower Bucket Boys, following Central Valley young’un & old soul Frank Fairfield . Here at Bird & Beckett, we hosted Seattle-based Cahalen Morrison & Eli West last weekend, and it was a smash success. Cahalen’s an amazing songwriter and their vocal & instrumental blend is heartstoppingly gorgeous. And Monday, we caught San Francisco’s own Emily Bonn & the Vivants at Amnesia, and were floored by their classic country spunk.
Read MoreThinking about North Africa Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian author of dozens of important and compulsively readable books and Nobel prize winner in 1988, is known for his masterwork, the three-volume Cairo Trilogy, completed in the 1950s; however, after a hiatus of several years, numerous books followed until his death in 2006. Bird & Beckett patrons are invited to email us at [email protected] (using the subject line “books, ideas, insights”) with your assessment of any of his books and the insights they provide into modern Egyptian life, economics and politics. We’d also like your feedback on the work of other writers, so that we can all broaden our view — fiction, history, economics, politics; it’s all important.
Read MorePOETS! hosted by tru-bop master Jerry Ferraz Jerry Ferraz, a native of this soil – Eureka Valley born – a wandering bard of the San Francisco back lanes – painter of the zen comedy, has kept Glen Park and Bird & Beckett on his peripatetic route for many years, tuning the space twice a month for pairs of featured poets and a revolving and ever expanding cast of open mic denizens. Read his poem “Dharma Dream Walk” and others at www.sfheart.com/sfpoets/jerry_ferraz.html Tonight at Bird & Beckett, Monday, Feb. 7, 7-9pm, Jerry presents Robert Anthony and Larry Maykel. Sign up for the open mic at 7pm; open starts at 8. Carlota del Portillo and Priya Kailath sponsor the series, allowing us to pay a small honorarium to the featured poets; your addition of a dollar or two to the pot allows us to honor them, and their art, more fully.
Read MoreTango No. 9 Today, Sunday, Feb. 6, 4:30 to 6:30 pm Two sets of classic, nuevo and original tangos from San Francisco masters of the genre, with vocalist Zoltan DiBartolo!
Read MoreBeckett / Pinter / Wine – PUS plus B&B Saturday, Feb. 5th, 7:30 to 9:30 pm. Wine tasting, food from Destination Bakery, The Cheese Boutique, Canyon Market, Monterey Deli and more, and performances of short theatre pieces by two Nobel prize winning playwrights dear to our hearts, Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. Proceeds benefit both PUS (Performers Under Stress) and Bird & Beckett.
Read MoreMoh Alileche: Flag of Freedom Moh Alileche, hailing from the mountainous Kabylia region of Algeria, is a renowned Amazigh (Berber) player of the 12-stringed mondol. Based for the past two decades in the Bay Area, he brings his ensemble back to Bird & Beckett on Sunday, Jan. 30 at 4:30 pm as part of the store’s ongoing Sunday concert series dubbed “which way west?”.  Â
Read MoreRockpile Revisited Sunday, January 30, at 2:00 pm, the poets’ roadshow known as Rockpile rolls into Bird & Beckett. David Meltzer and Michael Rothenberg spent several months crisscrossing the country in 2009 with numerous forays out in 2010, converging with poets and musicians in a couple dozen localities, making art from their moment-to-moment experiences.
Read MorePiano Marathon a huge success! From Si Perkoff’s opening Monk tune to Macy Blackman’s killer closing set that encapsulated the whole history of New Orleans piano styles, from Jelly Roll Morton to Dr. John and Henry Butler — with stops along the way for brilliant turns at the piano by Don Alberts, Jon Jang, Randy Craig, Steve Shapiro, Betty Wong, Shirley Wong, Dorothy Lefkovits, Nora Maki, Allison Lovejoy, Rebecca Whittington and Bonnie Knight…
Read MoreNoon to 9 Piano Marathon on Saturday 1/22/11- A Bird & Beckett Benefit! Bring your checkbook! This Saturday, a cavalcade of pianists will coax beautiful music from the Yamaha P22 studio upright piano that we’re raising the money to buy from Oakland’s Piedmont Piano Company. If 100 of you put up $25 apiece, the job will be done! More’s the better! No donation is too small, too big or unappreciated! Since its early years on Diamond Street, Bird & Beckett has kept a piano on the premises- some good, some not so good, but none as wonderful as the one we’ve borrowed at no cost from Piedmont Piano this past year. Now, they’d like us to buy the thing, and we’d love to do it! Betty Wong, who plays at 4 pm Saturday, just gave it a workout and told us it “plays like butter”- she urged us, “don’t let…
Read MoreFaust’s Deal with the Devil – Sun. 2:30pm On the fourth Sunday of each month, Walker Brents III plumbs the depths of subjects literary, mythological and historical…Â always a fascinating excursion into the realm of human imagination… Through the years, Walker has gained a loyal audience for his monthly talks at Bird & Beckett… for reasons that will become abundantly clear once you grab a seat and open your ears… This month: Walker takes a look at the classic deal with the devil through the lens of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust. 2:30 pm, Sunday, 1/23/11
Read MoreNancy Wright Trio @ which way west? 4:30 to 6:30 this Sunday, January 23, in our weekly concert series, we present a wonderful organ trio, with Wayne Delacruz at the keys and Kent Bryson on the skins, led by the fabulous tenor player Nancy Wright… you heard her here before (with Macy Blackman’s band called the “Mighty Fines”), now hear her in an intimate setting that recalls moments in the best fire-lit lounge in which you’ve ever sipped a highball…
Read MoreRudy Mwongozi w/Paula Hackett Rudy Mwongozi left Oakland for NYC a few years ago, but he’s here on a visit, and we’re thrilled to have him back on Sun., Jan. 16 at 4:30 at the Bird & Beckett piano — a might better piano than before, we might add — one we’re saving up to buy (come back Jan. 22 to help us pull that off!) Rudy’s a marvel & plays every part of the instrument, digging into those keys and strings like no one else. Today, he’ll be joined by his good friend and collaborator, Paula Hackett, a poet who Rudy backed to terrific effect on her cd, “Roulette.”
Read MoreOR: The Otis Review Editor & poet Paul Vangelisti will be up from Los Angeles for this reading, joined by Neeli Cherkovski, Art Beck and Michael Rothenberg. Sunday, January 16 at 2 pm.
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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." 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
Call us at (415) 586-3733 to find out how else you might lend your support.
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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