What is a beatnik?

Where did the word "beatnik" come from?
Are there any beatniks today? Who?
I love beatniks.
What embodies a beatnik? What makes a beatnik?
Where?
Why?
Who?
When did beatniks first crawl out of the sea?/climb out of the trees?
Why am I asking these questions? Who the #!*^ are you? you? you? you? awwwww youuu?

This is a beatnik:
:D

Rev. Dr. Frederick J. Freelance, Ph.D., D.F.S

[ Edited by: freddiefreelance on 2003-11-15 09:09 ]

Good morning Dr. Freddie!

Ahh yes the founding father. But who do we have today?

Here's the definition I got from the Free Dictionary. I'd say that no, there are no beatniks any more. All the shining lights of that generation seem to be dead, but City Lights is still open, so maybe there's hope still.

"I think of Dean Moriarty -
I think of Dean Moriarty!"

:music: "I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat myself when under stress.
I repeat myself when under stress." :music:
King Crimson

OK, so this isn't from "Beat" but from "Discipline".

Good!
The definiton of "anarchism": a poltical theory favoring the abolition of governments.
Beatniks also favored communal living and use of psychedelic drugs..............well I guess we could just...look like beatniks?
If hippies came before skinheads and beatniks came before hippies....who came before beatniks? Leave it to Beaver?
So ya' say ya' want a Revolution... wel ell ya' know....we all wanna change the world. Ya' tell me it's the institution wel ell ya' know...you betta free your mind instead.

What came before the beatniks? The Lost Generation for 1.

On 2003-11-15 09:54, jungletrader wrote:
....who came before beatniks?

On 2003-11-15 09:02, jungletrader wrote:
Where did the word "beatnik" come from?

"beat" as in beatitude/beatific,
"nik" as in (the yiddish? hebrew?) suffix meaning something sort of like "one who has the qualities of" or "one who does".

i think mr. Kerouac is credited w/ coining the expression.

On 2003-11-15 10:48, Tiki Chris wrote:

On 2003-11-15 09:02, jungletrader wrote:
Where did the word "beatnik" come from?

"beat" as in beatitude/beatific,
"nik" as in (the yiddish? hebrew?) suffix meaning something sort of like "one who has the qualities of" or "one who does".

i think mr. Kerouac is credited w/ coining the expression.

I've heard the "nik" kame from Sputnik, 'cause they were so far out there.

One time when my Dad was in his twenties he went to a costume shop dumpster found an old Santa suit, blacked out some teeth and an eye. Ripped the suit a bit more, put some dirt on it, then went to a Holloween party as a Beat-Nick.
(is that how it started?)

Er...what psychedlic drugs did the beatniks have access to? I thought it was red wine and the occasional reefer, which brought gigantic jail terms and was hard to get back then...? And communcal living? I thihnk yer thinking of the hippies.

em

P.S. back in my youth (the 1980s let's say) I and my pals called ourselves "The Last Beatniks". We did NOT take drugs, we had SHORT hair, wore a LOT of black clothing, and paid good money to own jazz records and hear world-class live jazz gigs. Communal living? Yeah, cuz we were all poor. We called it "roommates".

:)
em.

The word "beatnik" was coined by San Francisco columnist Herb Caen in 1958 as a term for the original beat writers (Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, etc.) and their followers. Jack Kerouac used the term "beat generation" 10 years before that, using "beat" as a nickname for beatific. Dig?

The beats were the real deal and the beatniks were Hollywood's version, but they're all great in my book.

Lenny Bruce was beat. Tom Waits is probably the only true beat left. Joe Strummer was beat but he's gone now.

That was my 1001st post!

All hail the Honorable Jab!

On 2003-11-15 13:45, thejab wrote:
That was my 1001st post!

like wow daddy-o!
(snapping fingers)

emspace, I was qouting from the "Free Dictionary" link provided by Freddie. Just quoting what I saw.
I've never heard of these crazy cats that you guys say are modern day niks. Lenny Bruce... wasn't he a comic? Been gone awhile right? Joe Strummer.... who was he? Tom Waits? Geets Romo? Greatest beat ever?

Fave film about wanna-be-beatniks:

Beat Girl

Fave beatnik quote:

"You're just a simple little farmboy, and the rest of us are all sophisticated beatniks" from Roger Cormans' "A Bucket of Blood"

-Z

jungletrader - jump in the car and drive straight to San Francisco. Upon arriving, go directly to City Lights Bookstore and pick up the following selections:
HOWL - Allen Ginsberg
Coney Island of the Mind - Lawrence
Ferlinghetti (store founder)
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
How to Talk Dirty & Influence People -
Lenny Bruce
Junky - William Burroughs
Hiparama of the Classics - Lord Buckley
and anything recorded by Lord Buckley on any type of medium, particularly "Hipsters, Flipsters & Finger Poppin' Daddies".
Dig Ya Later,
SWJ

Okay Shipwreck, but can I just go to Borders instead.
Is City Lights an exclusive beatnik bookstore?

The movie Hairspray had a beatnik scene with pia Zadora and Ric Ocasek. Pia wears all black, irons her hair, reads aloud from Howl and asks one og the main characters if she's a "checkerboard chick." Dig?

J.T. - I thought your 'hood was within spittin' distance of San Francisco. My AAA map must be outta scale. City Lights IS the definitive beatnik bookstore! Opened in like 1955 or so, I think Ferlinghetti & his crew were printing a lot of this shit up in the back room as it rolled off the tongues of the angelheaded hipsters. Almost forgot...add Shards of God by Ed Sanders to the list. A lot of people think the hippies were the new beatniks...I disagree, the YIPPIES captured the spirit of the original beats best.

I think "beat" came from the "old beater" cars Neal Cassidy drove. And the "beat up" old clothes they wore on the road, and "beat" old apartments they crashed in, etc.

It's like they saw the beauty in the ordinary things that surrounded them - old and worn out can have an interesting story to tell, and they told it.

The bennies (amphetamines) they took let them stay up and talk all night. Although sometimes they formed a circle and did things I don't go for.

They loved bop. Beat poetry is the jazz of spoken language.

Oh, and before beatniks and the lost generation were the bohemians, right before the turn of the last century. They were an arty set who sometimes frequented opium dens.

Let's not forget the highly underated hillbilly beat poet, Ernest T. Bass:

I ain't talkin'
I ain't talkin'
The more you're askin'
The more I'm balkin'

Ernest T.'s poems were usually delivered dramatically, tied around a rock thru a glass window.

Yes, Lenny Bruce was beat I think. Simply because he was so honest.

After being jailed for obscentity, he said something like, "I don't consider anything I've ever done to be obscene, unless you
count the time I jacked off my dog."

Me!
bohemian beatnik hippiechick...
love all that jazz!

[ Edited by: SES on 2003-11-16 07:50 ]

JT !! You and I have got to do some more drinking buddy! Joe Strummer and Tom Waits are two of my Favorite guys. Both are best known and beloved for their musical endeavours, but both were/are known to appear in the occaisional offbeat indy type movie as well. Joe strummer is one of my personal heroes. He was the legendary lead singer of The Clash, and kept on after with a very respectable solo career. Sorta the Johnny Cash of the punk scene, if you will.

I love Tom Waits....I stalked him in the Wacko store on Melrose once. Stalking...thats what the police report called it....J-O-K-I-N-G! Here's an interesting article from The Onion about Mr. Waits. He's beyond Beat.
http://www.theonionavclub.com/avclub3820/avfeature_3820.html

[ Edited by: DawnTiki on 2003-11-16 12:59 ]

On 2003-11-16 10:03, seamus wrote:
JT !! You and I have got to do some more drinking buddy! Joe Strummer and Tom Waits are two of my Favorite guys. Both are best known and beloved for their musical endeavours, but both were/are known to appear in the occaisional offbeat indy type movie as well. Joe strummer is one of my personal heroes.

Although I think you were addressing this to a different JT, I want to pipe in that Strummer and Waits are two of my hugest musical gurus as well. Although I do agree that Waits is the last true Beat, I don't think I can include Strummer in that category.

And not to contradict the mighty Jab, but my impression was that the Beats were serious writers of the late 40s and 1950s such as Keouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al, and the Beatniks were the trendy kids who were trying to emulate them?

My understanding of 'Beat' was that it is a term coined by Kerouac, meaning both beatific, and beat-up - not physically attacked, but run down, defeated by life, world-weary.

I guess there are as many explainations for these things as there are historians writing about them.

For the record, I have seen many photos of the Beats in their heyday, and I have never seen a single photo of any of the original Beats, the ones mentioned above or otherwise, in stripey shirts, berets, goatees or playing bongos. These were cliches introduced by the wannabee Beat followers - the Beatniks, in my understanding of the word - and seized by the popular media in creating the Beatnik stereotype we know today.

Beatniks, by the way, begat Hippies, another term coined by Keroac, derived from Hipster.

Finally read Joey's literature list above. Good stuff, all of it.

..."Although I think you were addressing this to a different JT, "...

Yes I was, but perhaps you and I should throw a few back as well!
I agree with you about Joe. I don't see him as a beatnik at all, but I can kinda see where theJab is coming from(Sandinista comes to mind). Once a guy reaches that folk hero status, the lines start to blur a bit and they speak to people in ways never before intended or imagined. Joe was a unique character that, to me, trancended any and all stereotypes. I feel a little robbed that his light was extinguished when he clearly had so much more to say and contribute.
In the future I'll be more careful w/ the JT referals!

On 2003-11-16 12:55, tikibars wrote:
Although I think you were addressing this to a different JT, I want to pipe in that Strummer and Waits are two of my hugest musical gurus as well. Although I do agree that Waits is the last true Beat, I don't think I can include Strummer in that category.

And not to contradict the mighty Jab, but my impression was that the Beats were serious writers of the late 40s and 1950s such as Keouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, et al, and the Beatniks were the trendy kids who were trying to emulate them?

Maybe seamus meant TJ (as in The Jab), not JT.?

You're not contradicting me because I agree with you JT! I was trying to say what you said, that beatnik was a media term applied to the followers of the beats in the 1950s, not the original beats. The black clothes, striped shirts, berets, sandals etc. were popular dress with Greenwich Village hipster types in the 1950s so the media used the look as the beatnik costume.

I was just reading a recent article on Joe Strummer in a magazine, and it explained how the man lived his life out of a bag, how he often stayed up all night drinking in bars with strangers, he liked to hang out with the gypsies who live in caves in Spain, he was a cartoonist and a writer, not to mention his songwriting and musician talents. It seems a lot like the beat lifestyle to me.

Chris Jarhead was beat. (shipwreckjoey may understand this).

MY JT was for JungleTrader, but hey, I'll drink with you too!
Strummer turned out to be a devoted husband and father too. I got to meet him in the basement of the Warfield Theatre once, after a Pogues show. He replaced Shane MacGowan as frontman for awhile. What a night!

hep begat hip hence hippies

Nice Charlie Parker photo. I think beat-niks were contemporaries to be-bop. I'd have to say one scene preceding the beat-nik scene was the Cool scene. In it's original meaning cool came from the very old jazz clubs which were not well ventilated and were dark and smokey, filled with customers who'd drink and smoke all night while listening to jazz.
After a while they'd have to prop open windows and doors to let the cool fresh air in and the smokey hot air out. This jazz beacame known as cool jazz and scenesters would refer to a person as being cool if they were part of the scene.

P.S. What is a YIPPIE?

[ Edited by: DaneTiki 2009-08-30 19:15 ]

On 2003-11-16 14:59, Sneakytiki wrote:
P.S. What is a YIPPIE?

Yippies: Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. Don't want to talk about them. Let's stick to beatnik puhleeze.

aloha,
em.

Truman Capote didn't think much of beat writing - so much of it was unedited stream of consciousness. He said, "That's not writing, that's typing."

But I think Capote was sort of beat, despite himself. He had an uncanny knack for rooting out the sublime essence of life in the most mundane circumstances. That's what beat is to me.

Seamus, I'm ready to throw some back when you are. Ready to dive into this subculture and see what it's like, the world of the beat, the music, the books, the poetry. I dig. Turn me on, turn me on.
SES is a beat? Dig it!
Shipwreck, I'm 2 hrs. drive from S.F. Next time I get out there I'll check out City Lights....Must see! For now I'll see what Borders has.
When I think of a beatnik, I think of laid back, easygoing. That's the part I like and man do I need some a dat! Blends well with Aloha. Blend? hmmm, somebody ought to think of a new drink and call it "The Beatnik". I'll bet The Jab already has one.

City Lights (along with Vesuvius next door) were the beat places to hang out. They are both still there and still great places to check out. (along with Spec Adlers bar just down the street)

I can also confirm what The Jab said- Herb Caen most definitely coined the term beatnik.

On 2003-11-17 16:01, martiki6 wrote:
City Lights (along with Vesuvius next door) were the beat places to hang out. They are both still there and still great places to check out. (along with Spec Adlers bar just down the street)

I second that list with the addition of Cafe Trieste coffee house, also in the North Beach area. It still has the same bohemian feel it must have had some 50 years ago.

anyone heard of kepler's? back in the day, it was a ragtag joint that welcomed all walks of life, especially the beat. alan ginsberg was one of the gang that frequented kepler's. to the best of my knowledge, i believe it was the first place to mix books and coffee...spawning coffee houses and super bookstores. mind you, when you got a coffee at kepler's, you had to take it out and cut it with a pair of scissors. but they were known for having beat readings paired with bongos and the sort. unfortunately, the original kepler's is long gone. a new kepler's stands across the street on el camino in menlo park. it is upscale and fits in with the menlo park atmosphere (if you know what i mean)

Beats were the original counter-culure and anti-establishment group. It's funny to think that marijuana, coffee, jazz, and poetry used to be considered unusual...

We have come a long way in 60 years.

Beats were probably the first Western group that also embraced tikies.

Favorite Beatnik Lingo:

Croaker: a physician who writes scripts
Cornball Creep/ John Square: an unhip conformist
86'd: banned or told to leave
Eye Heavy: Drunk
To Freeze: Snub someone
To Front the Necessary: Give $ upfront
Make the run: buying booze
A Poke: wallet
A popcorn: someone with alegitamate job
Sides: records

Yes, I've heard old timers use the term John Square or Square John. Also, Malicious Eyeballing, which I thought was funny.

Captain Beefheart is beat! A cohort of Frank Zappa back in the '60's & '70's, he would have been right at home on the '50's bebop scene. Last I heard he is out in the Mojave desert painting & digging life. He's a true American classic. Perhaps his song "Smithsonian Institute Blues" will be prophetic.

Maybe some of us could setup a Tiki/beatnik scene/booth/bar at the next Burningman fest next summer. Dig? Anyone in? And do a talk-like-a-beatnik day!

[ Edited by: jungletrader on 2003-11-19 22:38 ]

[ Edited by: jungletrader on 2003-11-19 22:50 ]

On 2003-11-19 21:16, Shipwreckjoey wrote:
Captain Beefheart is beat! A cohort of Frank Zappa back in the '60's & '70's, he would have been right at home on the '50's bebop scene. Last I heard he is out in the Mojave desert painting & digging life. He's a true American classic. Perhaps his song "Smithsonian Institute Blues" will be prophetic.

So true! The album "Trout Mask Replica" is beat poetry at it's best. How can a song called "Neon Meate Dream of an Octafish" not be beat?

Trout Mask Replica is the golden age of Beefheart as far as I'm concerned. His music is a wierd conglomeration of 50's beebop, 20's dada & 60's L.A. pop culture. A strange brew...and not for everyone. I've chased off more guests with Beefheart than Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music (which I put on intentionally to chase off guests).