住在Andalusia街上
beat generation以及doors的主唱灵魂人物Jim Morrison都曾经住在这个街区。
- Re: Venice and Beat generation LA的威尼斯与垮掉的一代posted on 12/20/2009
The Gashouse in Venice, California...Beatnik Headquarters for west coast
- Re: Venice and Beat generation LA的威尼斯与垮掉的一代posted on 12/20/2009
- posted on 12/20/2009
Jim Morrison
In January 1964, Morrison moved to Los Angeles, California. He completed his undergraduate degree in UCLA's film school, the Theater Arts department of the College of Fine Arts in 1965. He made two films while attending UCLA. First Love, the first of these films, was released to the public when it appeared in a documentary about the film Obscura. During these years, while living in Venice Beach, he became friends with writers at the Los Angeles Free Press. Morrison was an advocate of the underground newspaper until his death in 1971. - posted on 12/20/2009
Many people may not know the reason behind the name of the Venice district of Los Angeles (and neighboring Venice Beach). Orginally called Venice of America, it was founded on July 4th, 1905 by local developer Abbot Kinney who had numerous canals dug as a tribute to the orginal Venice, Italy and also as a way drain the marshes to aid in developing the area. Unfortunately many of the canals were paved over in 1929 to make way for more roads, but several still remain. I hadn’t been there in a while, so it was time for a visit. Some of the houses on the canals were in full Halloween mode.
- Re: Venice and Beat generation LA的威尼斯与垮掉的一代posted on 12/20/2009
- posted on 12/20/2009
威尼斯的另外一个重量级灵魂诗人 Charles Bukowski
His gravestone reads: "Don't Try", a phrase which Bukowski uses in one of his poems, advising aspiring writers and poets about inspiration and creativity. Bukowski explains the phrase in a 1963 letter to John William Corrington as follows: 'Somebody at one of these places ... asked me: "What do you do? How do you write, create?" You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it.' - posted on 12/20/2009
Quotes from Bokowski
Notes From a Dirty Old Man (1969)
If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence.
An intellectual is a man who says a simple thing in a difficult way; an artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way.
The difference between a brave man and a coward is a coward thinks twice before jumping in the cage with a lion. The brave man doesn't know what a lion is. He just thinks he does.
[edit]Tales of ordinary madness (1967-83)
I was given the job of milking the cows, finally, and it got me up earlier than anybody. But it was kind of nice, pulling at those cows' tits (pg. 172).
Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and eight times out of nine I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.
[edit]Factotum (1975)
My ambition is handicapped by my laziness.
Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.
"Baby," I said. "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me."
That was all a man needed: hope. It was a lack of hope that discouraged a man. I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two-five cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax.
It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?
[edit]Women (1978)
People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.
morals were restrictive, but they were grounded on human experience.
Many a good man has been put under the bridge by a woman. - Re: Venice and Beat generation LA的威尼斯posted on 12/20/2009
- posted on 12/21/2009
Venice of America
The Venice, Italy recreation opened on July 4, 1905. Unfortunately for Abbot Kinney, the majority of the inhabitants of Venice of America did not share his interest in art and culture. Even though he hired the best lecturers and performers of the time, the
Chautauqua-like Assembly lost $16,000 the first summer. By December 1905, Kinney knew his dream of creating a great cultural Mecca had failed and, ever the astute businessman, he turned his attention to accommodating the wishes of the public. The character of Venice succumbed to the beach goers and summer holiday guests who frequented the community’s many amusement attractions and Venice came to be known as the “Coney Island of the Pacific.” By mid-January 1906, an area was built along the edge of the Grand Lagoon that was patterned after the amusement thoroughfares of the great 19th and 20th century expositions.
It featured foreign exhibits, amusements, and freak shows. Trolley service was available from downtown and nearby Santa Monica. Visitors were dazzled by the system of canals complete with gondolas and gondoliers brought in from Venice, Italy. There were ornate Venetian-style businesses and a full sized amusement pier. Around the entire park was a miniature steam railroad along a 2 1/2 mile track. Kinney and some of the nearby residents were aghast at some of the low-class shows that that Venice began to offer, but it was considered the best congregation of amusement devices on the Pacific Coast, and it made a handsome profit. [6][7]
Eventually Kinney gained control of city politics and had the name changed from Ocean Park to Venice in 1911. Kinney was also allowed to build a 60-foot (18 m) breakwater to protect his facilities from ocean storm surfs. - posted on 12/21/2009
In 1965, when I was fifteen, I started hanging around at the Venice West Cafe. It was so classic as to be almost a cliché — a dank little hole in the wall, with wooden bench seats and tables. Of course, they served espresso, and the place was always full of (to me at that age) coolly romantic hipsters, complete with shades, turtlenecks — yeah, even berets. The radio played modern jazz — Monk, Coltrane, Mingus, Bird, or folk — Dylan, Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, as well as old and obscure (at the time) stuff like Bill Munroe, Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. Poetry readings were frequent. The place was like a Mecca to me at that point in my life.
At that time, it was run by John and Anna Haag, who had taken over from Stuart Perkoff who had started it. They, too, struck me as almost impossibly romantic – for one thing, they were stylish and attractive people, and that only served to amplify their general hipness. More importantly, they defied authority, got away with it, and sometimes even won. And to a fifteen year old boy feeling trapped in the web of adult authority (as most do) that right there is the Holy Grail.
So I spent a lot of time there. I heard a lot of good music, heard a lot of good (and execrably bad) poetry, and learned …well, a great deal more about life than I knew I was learning at the time. I got to rub shoulders with people like Taylor Meade, Claire Horner*, and a whole menagerie of creative, edgy people who were pushing toward the next thing – and there was almost a tension in the air, a compelling sense that something exciting and world-changing was about to happen. And I think I was a lot better off there than I would have been in a “youth soccer” program.
Sometimes, I worry that parents overprotect their kids these days. The typically obsessed, terrified, “helicopter” parent of today wouldn’t consider letting their teenager hang out with a bunch of degenerates such as infested the VW. And I fear that a whole lot of kids are going to suffer poorer, shallower lives because of that.
I’m just very, very fortunate that I had the chance to experience the things I did growing up in a community such as Venice was then. I hope those kind of experiences will always be there for kids – there is no substitute to be found in Disneyland.
* To be mentioned later.
Topic: Old Fart's Venice | Tags: anna haag, beat generation, beat poetry, beat poets, beatnik, beats, berets, cafe, california, Claire Horner, coffee house poetry, folk, folk music, folk scene, hip, hippies, hipsters, jazz music, john and anna haag, john haag, john o'brien, los angeles, los angeles beat scene, modern jazz, poetry, Taylor Meade, venice, venice beach, venice beach beat scene, venice beat café, venice beats, venice poetry
I would sometimes join my beatnik brother at the Venice West Cafe. At that time I remember old worn overstuffed couches for seating, pretty good coffee, and beatnik poets. I wish I could remember the name of that poet who stood there on the platform that one dreary afternoon and said, in his cool, dry, antiestablishment voice, “Everybody loves change .. as long as it’s to something they’re used to”. To this day I refer to his words when plans for ‘change’ are voiced by the saintly well intentioned. - Re: Venice and Beat generation LA的威尼斯posted on 12/21/2009
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