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!
The 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…
Read MoreWhat Was Communism? We sure as hell ain’t sure… but they’re contemplating the question big time at Kolkata’s Seagull Books. (That’s Calcutta to you!) Specifically, they’re wondering why it’s so abruptly gone by the boards — and whether that implies the death of the associated ideals. Seven volumes in Seagull’s “What Was Communism” series examine the overall mystery, and the individual circumstances in six countries: the USSR, Yugoslavia, China, Cuba, Indonesia and India. The writers (Tariq Ali, Boris Kagarlitsky, Slavenka Drakulic, Mo Yan, Piero Gleijeses, Max Lane and Mahasweta Devi) wonder if the idea of communism has really been so thoroughly discredited that nothing is to be learned from it — and ponder these specific cases for answers, or at least for deeper questions. Series editor Ali muses, “The Communist system lasted 70 years and failed only once. Capitalism has existed for over half a millennium and failed regularly. Why…
Read MoreBooks and Bookstores = Nostalgia? or the Future of Your Ever-Lovin’ Mind??? A reader of our website wondered if it was doing a disservice to one of the local shops we mightily admire to imply that they were “on the ropes” — by which we meant struggling to keep their balance and survive an economic (and real estate) environment that’s forcing them to find a new storefront on terribly short notice. Point made, and taken! We invite your testimonials on the ways your favorite bookshops are managing to forge ahead, or maybe even finding ways to blaze ahead, despite the challenges of the day… This assumes that you yourself are still throwing your business the way of the bricks and mortar establishments and intend to continue to do so… email us at [email protected]!
Read MoreHrabal Rouser…Bop Stop… Voudoun Verite…a String Thing… 4 events, Thursday to Sunday Maybe you wouldn’t think it to look at his picture here, but it’s Bohumil Hrabal’s birthday at Bird & Beckett… On the third Thursday of each month at 7pm, we read from the works of favorite writers born in the month at hand… and Hrabal, who wrote I Served the King of England, Closely Watched Trains and many another great book is definitely one of our favorites. Join us March 24 at 7 pm! Blanche is coming! Then, Friday evening it’s our regular jazz thing, this week with the Chuck Peterson Quintet… that would be Howie Dudune sharing the reed honors with Chuck, with Glen Deardorff on guitar, Dean Reilly on bass and Tony Johnson on drums, with singer Dorothy Lefkovits doing what she does best! Sweet and swinging and thoroughly boppish. Saturday, we sell books. Mention you…
Read MoreHot off the press, on our shelves for your perusal… Three novels we’d be more than happy to read, if only we had the time… maybe you do? Mention reading about any of them in this post, and we’ll knock 15% off the price. Or click on the image and buy it through our online store…
Read MoreGet Lost Books…Cover to Cover…Modern Times…even Borders! Gone or on the ropes… Stacey’s…Cody’s…Black Oak Books! Just a memory… You don’t miss your water…’til your well runs dry! Can I get a witness!? Send your thoughts to [email protected] and we’ll see if we can use them to make the point in a way that resonates with all those who still think that Amazon’s just the slickest way to get a book!
Read MorePEOPLE POWER! language & voice! BIG EASY PIANISTICS! 3 EVENTS: SUNDAY, MARCH 20th 1:30 pm- A worldwide reading in solidarity with jailed dissident poet Liu Xiaobo, 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. 3 pm- POET! Mary Winegarden reads from “The Translator’s Sister” 3/20 – 4:30 & 5:30 (2 sets) – which way west? concert Macy Blackman and the Mighty Fines Answering a call by the Berlin International Literature Festival for worldwide simultaneous readings, we…
Read MoreB&B at the Balboa-Philip Guston: A Life Lived + Discussed The Balboa Theatre (Balboa at 37th Avenue) has invited Bird & Beckett to collaborate with them from time to time to present book events paired with films! And so, with great anticipation, we offer you as our first event: Monday, March 14 – 7 pm Bill Berkson + Clark Coolidge in dialogue on the artist Philip Guston, with a rare screening of the 1980 documentary “Philip Guston: A Life Lived.” Program introduced by Patrick James Dunagan UC Press has just published Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures and Conversations, edited by Clark Coolidge, noted poet, musician and a collaborator with Guston in 1991 on the book Baffling Means: Writings/Drawings. Bill Berkson, who himself collaborated with the artist on the 1975 book of poems, Guston: Enigma Variations, is a poet, art writer and corresponding editor for Art in America who for many…
Read MorePoet David Gitin reads from“the journey home” Sunday, March 13th 2 pm Gitin came of age in Buffalo, NY — where he came to know such giants in American poetry as Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, John Wieners, Robert Kelly and Diane Wakoski. He traveled out to San Francisco in the late ’60s… co-founded Poets Theater with Jim Wilson at the Straight Theater in the Haight-Ashbury…with broadcasts on KPFA…a few brief months…di Prima, Whalen, Geo. Hitchcock… took the tools at hand to publish Bricoleur, whose first issue came out in late 1969 with poems by Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Janine Pommy Vega, Clark Coolidge, Clifford Burke, Charles Amirkhanian, George Oppen, poems from Biafra, from Nahuatl poets, and others… (hear an audio interview on the occasion of the publication of this first issue at http://www.archive.org/details/C_1969_11_29)
Read MoreThe Buru Quartet read it! Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925-2006) The sequence of novels comprising This Earth of Mankind, Child of All Nations, Footsteps and House of Glass were composed orally while Pramoedya was imprisoned on the Indonesian island Buru, in the Malay Archipelago, where the Suharto regime held thousands of political prisoners. Denied writing materials, Pramoedya told these stories to his fellow prisoners; only later were they written down, smuggled out and eventually published — and banned by the Indonesian government. They reveal much about the human reality of colonial oppression, and Pramoedya’s life speaks volumes about the nature of authoritarian regimes.
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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
