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653 Chenery Street in San Francisco's Glen Park neighborhood
Open to walk-in trade and browsing Tuesday to Sunday noon to six
phone: 1-415-586-3733 email: [email protected]
Thursday, July 16th, 6:30pm Glen Park Association meeting at the bookshop. All welcome! Meet your neighbors! Get involved in your neighborhood! __ July 17th: Scott Foster 3rd Fridays residency: Guitar madness! Myles Boisen and Scott Foster on guitars, with Lisa Mezzacappa, bass, and Eric Garland, drums, Holy Les Paul, Batman! Scott & Myles fiddle with tunes not written with the guitar in mind. The Mad Explorations of two guitarists swinging their axes through tangled thickets. $20 cover charge / byob for adults — cash at the door, please! __ 50% student discount for all of our shows; preteens free; reservations welcome. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733. __ July 18th: Kristen Strom / Jhoely Garay Latin Jazz Quintet. $25 cover. __ July 19th: Peck Almond with the Vince Lateano Trio. $20 suggested. _____ July 21st: The Diversity Principle…
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Scott Foster & Myles Boisen,guitars. Lisa Mezzacappa, bass Jon Arkin, drums. $20 cover charge (cash, please) / byob. Students $10. Kids free. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. The Mad Explorations Of Scott Foster & Myles Boisen swinging their axes through tangled thickets. Holy Les Paul, Batman! two guitarists tinker with tunes not written for the guitar!
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Jhoely Garay is a NYC-based guitarist, composer and arranger from Mexico gifted in swing, jazz and musics and rhythms from Latin America. She uses her voice as an artist to raise awareness about topics often overlooked by the public such as climate-related issues and untold or hidden histories left out of official narratives. Kristen Strom is a key West Coast saxophonist, a faculty member at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Santa Clara University and a mainstay of the Stanford Jazz Workshop. Jazz journalist Andy Gilbert writes that she has ‘a tone that’s lithe and lustrous, that embodies her musical philosophy in every note she plays.’ $25 cover charge at the door (cash, please!) / byob. Students $10. Kids free. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Garay has become an integral part of the dynamic jazz scene in New York and Mexico, collaborating with iconic artists such as Dee Dee Bridgewater, Steve…
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Make Bird & Beckett a habit Sundays at 5pm! Stay for a tune, stay for two sets, — whatever suits your Sunday.! Just byob and a friend or two and have a nice time in the neighborhood. Contribute what you can to the kitty so we can pay these fine musicians, but don’t stress. Our donors have your back. Become one yourself, if you’re flush. It’s good for you, and it’s good for the culture! This week, Peck Allmond comes back for visit. He’s a native son of Berkeley, a graduate in the late 1970s of the storied Berkeley High jazz program that gave the jazz world the likes of Will Bernard, Craig Handy, Benny Green, Peter Apfelbaum. Now, he’s a New York guy, who’s performed with Oliver Lake, Meshell NdegeOcello, Peter Apfelbaum, Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Joe Lovano, James Carter, Jimmy Smith, Benny Green, Richie Cole & Tom Harrell.…
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David Oppenheimer is a clinical professor of law at Berkeley Law, director of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law and faculty co-director of the pro bono program. He is the author of ten books on civil rights and discrimination law, including the first law school casebook in comparative equality law. The Diversity Principle (Yale University Press, 2026), the work of a diversity skeptic turned admirer, chronicles how diversity became a foundational value of higher education over the last two hundred years, how it evolved as it was adopted in commerce and science, and the implications of the current backlash. The diversity principle–the idea that people with different backgrounds, experiences, identities, and viewpoints produce better work by engaging with one another–was a core tenet of the first modern research university, founded in Germany in 1810. It was the inspiration for John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, a touchstone of academic freedom; a hallmark of Charles Eliot’s remaking of…
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A preview of a work in progress with Lisa Austin, Linda Champagne, Carla Diamond, Trudy Fisher, Lori Gates, David Katznelson, Harry Levy, Linda Ryan, Sue Sponge and special guests. Memwah is Howie Klein’s printed and photographed recollections of his life well-lived. Tasked with finishing a book upon his death in December 2025, award-winning columnist Denise Sullivan has gathered a cast of friends from his San Francisco years at KSAN, KUSF and 415 Records, to read the ’70s and ’80s portions of Klein’s memoir aloud, speak to the causes he cared about, and spin the records he loved. From the tenements of New York and its downtown psychedelic scene, on the hippie trail through Afghanistan and India, to a vegan kitchen in Amsterdam, by the mid-’70s, Klein found himself at Harvey Milk’s camera store on Castro Street, and at the center of San Francisco’s mid-’70s social, political and musical scenes. Working…
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August 1st, 7:30pm: Harold Carr Quintet — Flavia Cerviño-Wood, violin; Andrew Voigt, woodwinds; Derek Coombs, piano; Harold Carr, bass and compositions; Susanna Goldenstein, percussion. Album release for Bird Is Whiter Than The Moon. Everyone who attends will receive a free copy of the album! $25 cover charge / byob for adults — cash at the door, please! There’s always a 50% student discount for our shows; preteens free; reservations welcome. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733. _____ August 2nd (the happy hour show), 5pm: Monthly First Sundays Student-Centric Jam Session. August 2nd (the late show), 8pm: Sylvia Cuenca Quintet feat. saxophonist Rico Jones — Joel Behrman, trumpet; Rico Jones, saxophone; Matt Clark, piano; Essiet Okon Essiet, bass; Sylvia Cuenca, drums. $25 cover. _____ August 6th, 7pm: Andrew Paul Nelson and Mukethe Kawinzi Poets! Followed by poetry open mic. _____ August 7th, 7:30pm: Jon Frank Trio — Grant Levin, piano;…
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The posts that follow show you what’s come and gone. Search the videos on our youtube channel or facebook page to find evidence of what you remember, or what you missed! Then, make sure you catch the next thing that catches your fancy. The live streams are great, but live music in a room with folks you know or ought to get to know, that’s irreplaceable…
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Since the McCarthy era theatre text have consistently expunged any mention of important contributions from the Left to the American Theatre. Professor Joel Eis, author of five previous books on theater and politics and a radical theatre practitioner in the 1960s, has unearthed and compiled the story of this sixty-year movement. From the first use of agitprop in the Yiddish theatre in 1887 to the first true theatre-in-the-round in Harlem in 1938, this movement produced the most important plays, playwrights and theater styles for the first half of the twentieth century. Free event, presented in person and live streamed. (A caveat for those viewing in the stream: the visuals presented with the talk in the shop will not necessarily be well served by the live stream. Come to the show if you possibly can!) Visit the Laborfest website for more information on the month’s schedule of events.
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Freddie Bryant – guitar/voice. Sylvia Cuenca – drums. Doug Miller – bass. Cover charge – $20; byob. Students – $10. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Freddie’s Kaleidoscope West Trio presents Poems, Groove and Song: a special program curated for Bird and Beckett’s intimate space. The music is based on a kaleidoscope of influences from straight-ahead to blues, New Orleans grooves to Brazilian, Latin and world rhythms with songs from his recent album SOLO BOSSA, his acclaimed song cycle UPPER WEST SIDE LOVE STORY and LIVE GROOVES…EPIC TALES. Freddie received a master’s degree in classical guitar from Yale School of Music and is in demand in the New York jazz and Brazilian scenes where he has worked with Eliane Elias, Tom Harrell and many others. He was a member of Ben Riley’s Monk Legacy Septet and has played with the Mingus Orchestra for two decades. His impressive array…
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Sundays at 5pm is our happy hour slot every week. Stay for a tune, stay for two sets. Come when you like and leave when you like, and pay what makes sense to you. Bring something to sip if you like — but we have Hetch Hetchy’s finest reservoir tapped, if it’s water you’re craving. That’s on us! If you want to bring comestibles to share with your fellow revelers, we’ll set up a table to accommodate that! The second Sunday of every month at 5pm, it’s our “Americana” slot, and today we’re pleased to present honky tonk, twang, classic and outlaw country music from showman, singer and guitar virtuoso Mitch Polzak with the duo he calls his Royal Deuces. You can catch Mitch & the Royal Deuces in rowdy bars throughout the American West and abroad as well. He’s big in Spain, we can tell you that! He’s recorded…
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Takezo Takeda, guitar and vocals. Chris Burns, piano. Karl Severeid, bass. Paul Revelli, drums. $20 cover charge / byob — cash at the door, please! Students $10. Reservations welcome. For a reservation, call the shop at 415-586-3733. From Shinjuku to San Francisco, it’s an electric blues bonanza!
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Eric Shifrin, piano and vocals. Raul Ramirez, drumset & percussion. Heath Proskin, bass. $20 cover charge (cash at the doors, please). Students, $10. Kids free. For a reservation, call the bookshop at 415-586-3733. Eric Shifrin has been wowing the swells and the swindlers in San Francisco for decades, from the commonest saloon to the most pretentious salon, in the bars and the ballrooms, anywhere folks gather to remind themselves what it is to be in with the in crowd! Tonight, Eric’s In Crowd comprises the great percussionist Raul Ramirez, from the Peruvian port city of Callao, and the unflappable bassist Heath Proskin, assaying a batch of tunes with a tropical lilt. Eric himself hails from Malibu, spent memorable years in Hawaii while still an alto player, and honed his chops on piano in Japan. The trade winds brought him here with his wife Kotomi some years ago, and we’re…
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YIPPEE! I think I saw it move! Did you see it move!?!? Nancy Kurshan, a founding member of the Yippies and lifelong activist, is coming to Bird & Beckett with her new book. “EQUAL PARTS REVEALING MEMOIR, VALUABLE HISTORICAL DOCUMENT, AND GALVANIZING GUIDE TO FOLLOWING ONE’S BELIEFS.” – Publishers Weekly The Oakland author and lifelong activist shares her bold, candid memoir of a life on the front lines of American protest. Climate activist China Brotsky will join her in conversation. Nancy participated in the civil rights and peace movements from her high school years in the early 1960s. While a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, she joined Friends of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Core (the Congress of Racial Equality) and participated in the April 17, 1965 Washington, D.C. demonstration against the Vietnam War organized by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) which kicked…
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The After the End of the World Coretet formed in San Francisco in the summer of 1989. All four member of the group are composers, long-time practitioners, and devotees of music to the core. This iteration of the group is the same as on the recording called ’13’, and features Annelise Zamula on saxophones and flute, Bill Noertker on bass, Dave Mihaly on drums and Jon Birdsong on trumpet. Some singing may occur, who’s to say? The set will be a mix of their original music and some choice covers. Jon Birdsong is visiting from his home in the EU, so this is an extraordinarily rare opportunity to experience the AEWC live and in person. The chemistry of these four together is singular and choice. Come hear this group, buy a book, talk to the musicians between sets. Soul and allure guaranteed. The Bird & Beckett Cultural Legacy Project, a…
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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," 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.
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
