Kerouac and St. Petersburg

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Ausonius
Thom2 on Tuesday, October 22, 2019 – 03:51 pm

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Good read. He died 50 years ago yesterday.

Jack Kerouac found the end of his road in St. Petersburg 50 years ago

Kerouac retreated from the limelight to the place he loved the most, the shadows. He picked up a bottle and never put it down.

According to Kerouac biographer Ann Charters, Kerouac once said, “I’m a Catholic and I can’t commit suicide and I wouldn’t do it to my family. But I plan to drink myself to death."

In St. Petersburg, he did just that.

https://www.tampabay.com/arts-entertainment/arts/books/2019/10/22/jack-k...

"I made myself famous by writing songs and lyrics about the beauty of the things that I did and the ugliness, too,” Kerouac said on a 1968 episode of William F. Buckley’s Firing Line. “It was pure in my heart.”

 

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Ken D.
Portland_ken on Tuesday, October 22, 2019 – 04:16 pm

The Flamingo Bar is still in business and is arguably the oldest continuously operated drinking establishment in St. Pete:

https://www.tampabay.com/arts-entertainment/food/bar-breweries/2019/08/2...

They boast of having "three for five" well drinks everyday.

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skyjunk
fabes on Tuesday, October 22, 2019 – 06:53 pm

https://www.kerouacproject.org/

 

How about Kerouac and Orlando?

 

i did some work here and got to meet one of the writers in residence. 

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GravyTrain
Gravytrain on Wednesday, October 23, 2019 – 01:24 am

Nice article. What a character, to whom we all, arguably, owe a great debt. He'd have made a fine 'Zoner.

He gave the world the Beats, which became the hippies; he mostly hated both. He was, by all accounts, a walking contradiction. He was tender and pensive, but brash and quarrelsome. An angry drunk and a disembodied poet.