JOURNEY TO A FARAWAY BEATVILLE-- North Beach, SF 2012

 

---

08/13/2012/1024PDT

JOURNEY TO A FARAWAY BEATVILLE:

World-weariness may well mean tired of life and bored with living as a pure definition this is acceptable. As a mindset and possible marketable product, it may well serve to motivate even the most cynical and pessimistic person convinced that life has nothing else to offer; even as a teenager or washed-up war veteran.

So skipping beyond the everyday name tags placed on words, a thorough examination of "world-weariness" as the makings of a new cheap t-shirt logo campaign was replaced only by the logistics of where and when, and how, the campaign could be launched.

This came in the form of a wedding invitation to San Francisco, home of the original world-weary poets, professors, authors and in general, all the riff-raff, hangers-on and entourage that accompanied them. The epicenter of this movement was North Beach, where in the late Fifties, there was plenty of pessimism to go around for everybody.

Skipping all the background intros and noise necessary to paint the landscape for present day North Beach, and with a wedding invite in hand, I could now pay a visit, officially, to the faraway land known as Beatville, and decide for myself if launching a new cheap t-shirt logo campaign could indeed offset the "I Heart San Francisco" and "Alcatraz" t-shirts currently flooding the market in Chinatown. 

JAMES C. L'ANGELLE

https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T10:24:52.756-07:00 

---

08/13/2012/1104PDT

ZERO DARK THIRTY Before the launch defenestration to Beatville, the logistics required would have to be suitable so that the only thing in mind wasn't getting there, it was getting out of there. The journey would begin from North Beach, Lake Tahoe and with the destination in mind of North Beach, San Francisco.

Certainly, the driving option would be the easiest to consider. Go down to the Truckee airport, rent a car from Hertz, drive over to the city...too easy, too expensive and ultimately having the car stolen, stripped or set on fire by Occupy Bay Area anarchists. The Hertz rental was ruled out. Not that multiple reservations, bookings and inquiries by phone weren't initially explored; to the point that it appeared the Hertz rental website may well have blocked my IP address from further accessing the page.

There was Greyhound, and there was AMTRAK, the latter proved to be the most practical. In the end, the schedule required getting on a Thruway bus at Truckee before 9AM on day of departure, to Sacramento, where a Capitol Corridor train would take me to Emeryville and from there, another Thruway bus to the Ferry Building.  However, in order to make the first bus at the Truckee train depot, it meant getting on the TART bus on the Tahoe north shore by 7AM in order to make the AMTRAK bus by 8:40AM. Still, the window of connection was very narrow so it meant getting on the 6AM TART bus into Truckee, which meant getting up at 5AM, or "zero dark thirty." 

JAMES C. L'ANGELLE

https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T11:04:20.892-07:00 

---

08/13/2012/1218PDT

SOMETHING VERY ASIAN ABOUT CHINATOWN

SAN FRANCISCO--Following all the logistical arrangements, the bus-train connections proved  a cinch and arrival in San Francisco on Friday afternoon, August 10, at the Ferry Building, went according to schedule. The one thing I noticed was the reluctance of passengers to sit next to the gorgeous babes on the trains and buses, that didn't stop me.  From the way they responded, and the fact that there are far more of them taking public transportation, it is now an added incentive to travel by bus and train.

Checking into the Hotel North Beach went without a hitch as well, and after cleaning up in one of the shared bathrooms on the first floor, I was out the door and soon landed in Kerouac Alley. From there, a quick hike across Columbus to the Beat Museum where I paid the $8 cover and toured the museum. It is loaded with artifacts from the days of the Beat generation and I spent a great deal of time recording video on my computer, the files of which became very large so the process had to be shut down.

Next stop was the Cafe Trieste, which turned out to be a big tourist trap and a few hard corps old timers; didn't stay there long and the big redeeming value there is that it's not far from a Bank of the West branch, which was very convenient for funds withdrawal to continue the North Beach exploit.

Inevitably, the road led over to Chinatown via, and onto Grant Avenue, where the real action was. Hundreds upon hundreds shuffled up and down the crowded streets, the markets were jammed with people, the outdoor produce racks stuffed with vegetables, dead, skinned chickens hanging everywhere. And everywhere as well, the Chinese inhabitants, and the stone-faced Asian ladies, all of them inviting and seductive.

It was getting dark and I found myself without a viable link to wi-fi, or any form of internet connection outside the hotel, that is until I came across the Happy Donut next door to the hotel. The wi-fi signal from the hotel worked at the Happy Donut and I found myself drinking quarts of coffee, getting caught up on the details of the wedding coming up on Saturday; and watching in amazement as tourists and locals tried to figure out how I managed to access the web from the Happy Donut. It was simple, I was staying at the Hotel North Beach and I had the access key to the wi-fi.

JAMES C. L'ANGELLE

https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T12:18:11.516-07:00

---

 08/13/2012/2157PDT

SF: NORTH BEACH--"THE HAPPY DONUT"

SAN FRANCISCO --Having paid visit to all the tourist trap North Beach coffee bistros; and looking for the web aficionado's ideal wifi spot, it turned out to be the Happy Donut, next door to the Hotel North Beach.

Hipsters crowding into the place, overrun by tourists? Negative, nobody but a few locals and asians, plenty of room and wifi from the hotel, which requires a key.

Excellent coffee and certainly lives up to its name as the "Happy Donut" with a long glass counter full of all kinds of treats, plus breakfast, on Kearny.

 JAMES C. L'ANGELLE

https://plus.google.com/104696872148052829321 2012-08-13T09:57:43.885-07:00 

---

THE SEARCH FOR A SHIPPER IN SF OBJECTIVE: (Exactly where this fit into the narrative is unclear, so it is included here)

To cut my travel load in half since, with a clean suit, some of the clothes, extra tapes and other items were no longer necessary. This was begun in Chinatown which was just around the corner from the Hotel North Beach on Kearny, even as the crowd began to pour out onto the streets on Saturday morning.

This was in concert with the ongoing effort to find a wedding present other than the usual gift-card, like Starbucks, which seemed a bit impersonal and I thought I could go one step beyond. The original plan, since the newlyweds planned to travel after the ceremony, was to find something useful, such as a compass. Little did I know that in a city famous for sailing and ships, a compass may be the last item found.

In Chinatown, however, amid all the hanging dead chickens and noodles in the food shops; the cheap t-shirts with "I heart San Francisco" and "Alcatraz" on them, along with thousands of uncategorized and uncatalogued trinkets, a compass was the last thing tourists needed. As one shopkeeper put it, "We have GPS." Right, I replied, until the satellite goes haywire.

No need to explain that while Marine officers were lost in St. Mark's Square in Venice, Italy and looking over a map; I walked by with a compass I'd bought on Catalina Island in Southern California and headed for the main bridge over the big canal without even saluting them as I passed. So much for the Chinaman's world travel experience, he was born and raised on Grant Ave.

Instead of a compass, I settled for a pair of field glasses in a camera shop, since time was running out and the wedding hour fast approaching. It was a small Vivitar that the clerk cut the price in half and then tried to get me to buy a bigger ticket item. I declined, bought the field glasses, (he didn't know what I was talkng about until I called them "binoculars").

Next, it was a matter of gift-wrapping the present. I did manage to locate a small compass on a keychain at the Chinese GPS guy's trinket shop and included that in the gifts for the newlyweds.

In another trinket joint, a Chinese gal found a small red box that had yellow silk lining and the presents fit into the box. She included a Chinese wedding card, so that task was complete and the exit from Chinatown was down some steep street past hundreds of tourists with cheap cameras and cheap t-shirts.

The search for the shipper was on in earnest and forget some Far East Trading Company with impressive credentials dare to lower themselves to packing up some extras and shipping them to Lake Tahoe. They were too busy running guns and drugs to be bothered.

Up and down the streets near the Financial District proved useless. Stopping a weekend UPS delivery man near an Oriental bank, he hadn't a clue where a shipper was. Finally, nearing giving up and deciding to toss the items into the trash, I headed back up Kearny toward the hotel. It was there I found a small shipper with all the right labels on his shop window; UPS, FedEx, etc. However, it was only ten thirty and his shop didn't open until eleven.  Forget that one.. Then across from the Rainbow Cleaners in little Vietnam, in the biggest building on the street, was the main downtown headquarters for FedEx, and the store was open.

Who knows how many times I'd walked past it without looking to see if it was open on the weekend, and it was.

---

MAX BODENHEIM--by Kermit Jaediker--WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, 26 APRIL 1954

 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS--April 26, 1954--By Kermit Jaediker

     (GREENWICH VILLAGE)-- THEY found him with a bullet hole in his chest, while near him lay his wife with four knife wounds in her back. They lay in the stiff and contorted attitudes of violent death in a dirty furnished room loud with the occasional thunder of a passing El train which, when it passes, drowns all sound, including poetry. The windows faced Third Avenue, near 13th street, a few blocks walk from Bohemia, a million miles from it.

He had written:

"I shall walk down the road. I shall turn and feel upon my feet the kisses of Death, like scented rain . . ."

His last road was a walkup, five floors. When he was young, gin was an exhilarant. When he was young, in Bohemia, he could down a pint of it and hike up to the sky. But here in February, when he was 61, with five flights confronting him, gin was a heavy chain around his knees.

"For Death is a black slave with little silver birds perched in a sleeping wreath upon his head. He will tell me, his voice like jewels dropped into a silver bag, how he has tiptoed after me down the road."

But Death, for Maxwell Bodenheim, poet, last of the Bohemians, last of the garret geniuses of Greenwich Village, was not what he had pictured. Death was a gibbering ex-convict, claiming incoherently that he had performed a public good.

     DETECTIVES learned the Bodenheims, down on their luck, had been living in the tiny, unheated room as guests of its occupant, former convict. Harold Weinberg, 26, vagabond dishwasher and expatient of a mental hospital. A widespread manhunt was launched for Weinberg. Detectives ranged through Greenwich Village and delve into Bodenheim's fantastic past. The investigators were told of "sadistic" friends of Bodenheim and of "weird" Village parties he had attended. They were told, too, of men who had detested him. Bodenheim had been a bitter man whose criticism of one young woman's poetry had driven her to suicide, and he had made many enemies as well as friends. But Weinberg emerged as the likeliest suspect of all.

     THE DISHWASHER, when captured, and after a full day of alternately confessing and denying the murders, finally signed a written statement admitting he was the killer. It was learned that Weinberg had given two explanations for the murders. In one he made love to Mrs. Bodenheim while the poet slept in a gin-soaked stupor. Bodenheim awakened and furiously protested. Weinberg shot him dead, then knifed Mrs. Bodenheim to get rid of the only witness.

In the other Version, Weinberg said he shot Bodenheim because he was a Commie. Bodenheim was capable of soaring verse and immense stupidities, and one-of his stupidities was a crackpot espousal of Communism. The grinning, wild - eyed killer was led into court, and shouted that he should be given credit, rather than jail, for ridding the world of  ''two Communist rats! " He sang a line from the Star-Spangled 'Banner while he saluted the flag behind the bench. Then he whirled and asked the packed courtroom, "Don't I look Sane?" He was ordered committed to Bellevue Hospital for mental observation.

     MEANTIME, the poet was buried. That night the men who frequent the San Remo bar in Greenwich Village drank a toast in gin to the passing of Bodenheim. They drank, not only to the end of a poet, but the-end of. an era. This was the brawling, creative era of the 1920's. when Greenwich Village was truly Bohemia, and not the pallid ghost it is today. Bodenheim was a hand- some man with blonde hair, no formal education but a fine gift for imagery and an incurable zest for rebellion. In Chicago, where such poets as Carl Sandburg and Ezra Pound were working, Bodenheim pitched into a literary revolt that was sweeping America. He teamed up with Ben Hecht and founded the Chicago Times. Perhaps to show his contempt for the conventional, he sported a red beard. His first volume of verse, "Minna and Myself," came out. Its inspiration was his first wife, Minna Schein, whom he married in 1918. They were divorced later.

     HE MOVED East, to the Village, where he was an instantaneous hit. He had all the requirements talent, an unwavering conviction that he was a genius, a good capacity for drink and a knack for producing money out of nowhere. The Village was famous for that. Finally, Bodenheim turned to novels. Sex always a sale- able topic, permeated his work. His "Replenishing Jessica," a study of the sex life of a young girl, was a sensation. John S. Sumner, then head of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, had Bodenheim and his publisher brought into court on the ground that the book was "filthy." However, they were acquitted. In all, Bodenheim wrote 13 novels, including "Naked on Roller Skates", and "Sixty Seconds." Some of them were best sellers. But he could never hold onto a buck. It just wouldn't become him, as a Bohemian.

     HE WAS amiable and sometimes brutal. Two women committed suicide because of him. and a third at- tempted suicide. Virginia Drew, a 22-year-old beauty who wanted to be a poet and author, showed him some of her work, for he had become and arbiter in such matters. He told her callously that she was "wasting a lot of time on "sentimental slush" and advised her to give up writing. She said she "didn't want to live if I can't write." She was telling the truth. Next morning her body was fished out of the river. Gladys Loeb, 18-year-old daughter of a doctor, also aspired to become a poet. Bodenheim, her idol, told her she was writing trash. She sought death by the gas route, but police broke into her Village apartment and saved her. Clutched in her hand was a photograph of Bodenheim. Aimee Cortez, an artist's model known as the "Mayoress of Greenwich Village" was reportedly madly infatuated with Bodenheim. One day she was found dead in her gas-filled flat. Another girl. Dorothy Dear, was killed in a subway wreck while on her way to meet the poet. Among her effects were half a dozen love letters he had written her. Here is an excerpt:

"Did you ever walk on a cobweb stretched between the horns of a crescent moon? Or wrap yourself in flowered silence and deride the presence of lust?

"Or use a fantastic indifference to make horizons stand still. Or shield yourself with a smile from furtively vulgar men?"

If she could pass such tests, he said she should write him at once "and we may grow to like each other."

     IN THE 1930's, Bodenheim began hitting the skids. His weakness for strong drink increased and he was finally diagnosed as alcoholic. Two years ago, seven men were arrested in a roundup of common vagrants sleeping on the subways. One of them was Maxwell Bodenheim. The tragedy was almost spun out. But there was still a greater depth for him to fall to. Only the day he died, detectives searching the murder room found a sign and a tin cup. "I am blind," the sign said, but Bodenheim was not blind, not until the bullet brought him darkness, the darkness of Death of whom he had written-

"He will graze me with his hands, and I shall be one of the sleeping, silver birds between the cold waves of his hair, as he tiptoes on."

CHARLESTON GAZETTE--April 8, 1954

     NEW YORK (INS)--Harold Weinberg, who killed Greenwich Village poet Maxwell Bodenheim and his wife in a shabby Bowery rooming house, was declared legally insane today. Two Bellevue Hospital psychiatrists reported that the 26-year-old vagrant was suffering schizophrenia (withdrawal from reality) with delusions of persecution.

     He was ordered committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, at Beacon, N.Y. Weinberg shot Bodenheim and stabbed the poet's third wife, Ruth, to death last Sept. 7 in what apparently was a frenzied quarrel over the woman's attentions.

He had invited Ruth and Bodenheim--literary idol of Greenwich Village's "Little Bohemia" in the 1920s--to his furnished room, just off the Bowery, after he found them wandering homeless and destitute. Captured nearly a month later in a lower East Side basement, Weinberg ranted wildly that he deserved a medal for killing "two Communist rats" and denounced the judge at a preliminary hearing as a Red.

The confessed killer was admitted to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric treatment when he was six years old. Later he entered a state mental hospital, and after his release compiled a police record in various parts of the country. 

(Images) 

The Bodenheims: Buffalo Evening News, 08 February 1954, page 8.

Harold Weinberg: New York Daily News, 09 February 1954, page 3.

---