Greenwich Village – Sunday in the Village – “Tales of Beatnik Glory” (to borrow Ed Sanders‘ felicitous phrase). Take a time-capsule and journey back to a very very different New York City and a very different Village! (over 50 years ago!) – Ted Joans, spotlighted earlier this week, is featured reading poetry in a coffee-shop (he appears about eleven minutes in) – “and dig everything, as poet Allen Ginsberg said” – The skittish but calming soporific recorder-music of Charles Mills and his trio and the narration by Jean Shepherd should send you suitably to “another time and place”. The film was produced written and directed by Stewart Wilensky.
The 1992 Rhino/Word Beat boxed-set “The Beat Generation” is also worth uncovering. This excerpt (from the same year, 1960), “Footloose in Greenwich Village” is from a WNYC news feature broadcast at the time.
More “Beatnik” kitsch stuff is available, recently posted by us, in case you missed it, here and here.
Love Ted Joans. "No bread no Ted!"