The Beats Go On

Tonight the 11th Annual Neal Cassady Birthday Bash takes place at the Mercury Cafe here in Denver. Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation, and prominently featured in On The Road, Jack Kerouac's famous novel. Cassady grew up in Denver, living with his father in the Metropolitan Hotel, by that time a flophouse on Larimer Street.  Cassady and his first wife met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg in New York in 1946, and they all later spent a lot of time here in Denver.  In fact, Kerouac was so taken by the city that he bought a house in Lakewood, just west of the Denver city limits, in May of 1949 (seen in the photograph on the left ), and sent for his family to come join him. However, by August, just three months later, they had all left. Lakewood often has that effect on people.

Seeing how the media here in Denver has made such a big deal out of Kerrouac, Cassady, and Ginsberg's time here, I decided to read some articles on the sites associated with them.  Not surprisingly, most of these places are bars.  Kerouac and Cassady did not lead healthful lives - Kerouac died at the age of 47 in 1969, and Cassady died a year earlier, just shy of his 42nd birthday.  The most famous hangout for the trio was the bar at the Colburn Hotel. Cassady met Carolyn Robinson back in 1947 while she was studying for her masters degree in theater arts at the University of Denver (my alma mater!), and living at the Colburn hotel.  They all hung out together in the hotel bar downstairs, now called Charlie Brown's Bar and Grill, seen in the photo on the right.  Cassady and Robinson got married in 1948, right after his first marriage was annulled.

As far as I can tell, if a bar was anywhere close to downtown Denver and in business back in the 1940s, it was assumed that Kerouac, Cassady, and Ginsberg drank there. Cassady's favorite bar was at the corner of 15th and Platte, now known as My Brother's Bar (seen in the photo on the left).  A bar has been located in that building under different names since 1876. Cassady once wrote a letter to a friend asking him settle his bar tab there while he was in the Colorado Reformatory (they used to have a hell of a football team). That letter hangs on the wall of the bar, along with a photograph of Cassady and Kerouac taken there.

One of places that Cassady, Kerouac, and Ginsberg liked to hang out was El Chapultepec, back in the early 1950s. It was a jazz club, and at the time in a neighborhood with a pretty bad reputation.  The three of them were rumored to get high out in the parking lot, and then head into the club to listen to jazz. The owner at the time let them sit in a booth without ordering, perhaps happy to have a literary crowd in the place.  These days, El Chapultepec is in the heart of LoDo, one of Denver's trendiest neighborhoods, and just down the street from Coor's Field, where the Colorado Rockies play baseball.  The only danger in the neighborhood these days is being shoved aside by groups of Millennials and Gen Xers on their way to the next hipster hot spot.  And does all this make me want to read On the Road? Hell no.  Just the opposite.