Men’s group – road trip to North Beach
Mark K March 10th, 2007
Last night the met at Vesuvio for a night of discussion “On the Road”, Kerouac and the idea of taking to the road. Our first “road trip” meeting was a huge success – it was hard not to stay on the topic sitting in a place surrounded by pictures of Kerouak, Ginsberg, Cassidy and the other Beats and having drinks in the same place where Jack himself had hoisted a few. We even drew the attention of some fellow customers who thought that it was really cool that some old guys would get together to discuss books (or maybe they just said that because they wanted our leftover pizza). The consensus was that our film choice, “The Sure Thing” was okay, but was dated and had a limited audience – teenagers (and maybe not even today’s teenagers). We were all pleasantly surprised that “On the Road” was a pretty straight-forward narrative – it didn’t read like the stream-of-consciousness rant that many of us had anticipated. However, it did have a huge outpouring of energy and careless zest for life that would be understandably appealing to people living in the 50’s – the age of the gray flannel suit, McCarthyism, and the cold war. Any other comments on your reaction to the book or, for those who attended, the evening at Vesuvio?
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Last night was fun, and the bar atmosphere in North Beach helped transport us back to 1950’s San Francisco, the home of the Beats. We sort of got side-tracked from our discussion of the book early on, but I was glad to get back to it in the final part of the meeting. A lot has happened to our society in the past 50 years, and it’s somewhat difficult to imagine what life was like for our parents’ generation right after WWII. Reading about hitting the road and leaving behind their “home” must have been a real awakening for a lot of people. Reading the book also reinforces why I feel like living in the Bay Area–San Francisco has always been the soul of the West, where all roads lead. Hopefully I can make it to our next reading!
Great session at Vesuvio. For my part, I’m very partial to reading classics for a couple of reasons. One, I failed miserably at doing so earlier in life–so for me, this is making up for lost time. Two, as Mark says, Kerouak’s raw, energetic enthusiasm for LIFE resonates with a bunch of 40-50 something dads from the ‘burbs.
In the understated words of Sal Paradise,”…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
Yeah, that’s it…exactly.
Yes, yes, yes I say that was that gonest time yet. What a cool slow place, to get our Frisco Kicks. Man we were itchin, and the pizza was hot. With all the downtown hipsters and hustlers, it was all great moments of laughter and understanding, and we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind when Cassidy’s ghost showed up to make everything real… I spilled the beer and then showed up three long-haired dolls in designer coats, foodbegger girls with 50’s minds who stayed to flirt awhile. They were real gone gals who left us laughing, seven gone guys, digging the carnival together. When we left, I decided to dig everything as we went along, out in the street where life kept on going, laughing in the night in San Francisco. It was absolutely and finally the most fun yet. So we all went home to out tea, Marylou, Camille and sympathy. We all had longer ways to go but no matter, the road is life.