FTLGTP: Mimeographed Magazines

Stop #10: Les Deux Megots

The New York School poets continued to move their hangouts east and began spending time at a place called Café Les Deux Megots, at 64 East 7^th Street. Les Deux Megots is French for “two cigar butts” and is a play on words of a famous café on the Left Bank in Paris called Café Les Deux Magots, which was a popular hangout for many members of the Lost Generation expatriates that situated themselves in Paris during the first part of the 20^th century as well as many European artists and writers.

Le Deux Megots in the East Village became what many of the bars on MacDougal Street and in the West Village had been for artists before them. It was a place for collaboration and presentation. Regular poetry readings were conducted at the café and much of the work was published in mimeographed magazines that were distributed throughout the artistic community.

Mellilo describes the Café Les Duex Megots and later Café Metro as “seedy and drug infested places…that hosted poetry readings where poets new and old could gather, drink, and play” (61).

Dan Saxon, the poet who created the magazines showcasing the poetry from Les Deux Megots, used the mimeograph technique for publishing his magazines because he could “create quick and cheap publications that avoided the inhibiting codes of taste and unofficial censorship that guided mainstream publishing” (Melillo, 61). Other members of the East Village poetry movement who published mimeographed magazines included, Ted Berrigan, Amiri Baraka, Diane DiPrima, Ed Sanders, Bernadette Mayer, and Vito Acconci.

By avoiding the mainstream publishing industry, these poets continued to push the limits of poetry and experimentation. Much of their work was sexually charged and purposely hard to comprehend. One particular example that Melillo discusses is The Fugs member Ed Sanders’s Fuck You/a magazine of the Arts. The work that was featured in the magazine was particularly sexual in content and a very aggressive example of breaking the boundaries of poetics.

Up Next: Cafe Metro

FTLGTP: Folk Music on MacDougal

Stop #4: MacDougal Street

Cafe Wha

On the other end of the block is the Minetta Tavern at 113 MacDougal Street, which was a primary New York hangout for Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Dylan Thomas, and others of the Lost Generation. Minetta Tavern and San Remo were prime spots for literary collaboration and community.

There are several other bars in this area that are important to the overlapping of the Beat culture and the up and coming Folk music scene in the 1960s. Places like Café Wha?, at 115 MacDougal Street, Gerde’s Folk City at 71 West 4^th Street, and The Fat Black Pussycat, at 130 West 3^rd St. This collaboration between the beats and the folk artists along MacDougal Street is described by Jens Lund and R. Serge Denisoff in their article, “The Folk Music Revival and the Counter Culture: Contributions and Contradictions” for The Journal of American Folklore Volume 84, Number 334, “In Greenwich Village, the beats and the folk-aficionados came into contact with each other, resulting in a synthesis of attitudes and appearances” (396). Lund and Denisoff imply that not only did these writers and musicians hang out in the same area but that they started to emulate each other.

This area was the centerpiece for the urban Folk movement led first by Joan Baez and then later by Bob Dylan. These folk artists worked to move folk music from the rural areas of the United States and to make them their own. Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger were also vital to this process. Guthrie traveled with migrant workers from Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl and brought the songs he learned with him to the city.

Café Wha? was famous for being one of the first places that Bob Dylan performed when he came to New York City. It is said that he showed up at the place out of nowhere and asked the owner if he could perform. His first performance there consisted mostly of Woody Guthrie songs.

Gerde’s was one of the most popular Folk venues in the area and everybody who was anybody in Folk music was playing there in the early 1960s.

Also along MacDougal Street, The Folklore Center, at number 110, was a place of inspiration and creativity for many prominent artists of the folk scene. Izzy Young founded it in 1957.  It was a central meeting place for folk artists, a place where they could experiment and collaborate.

Up Next: Washington Square Park

FTLGTP: Book-jackets on the walls

Stop #2: Chumley’s

The next stop on our walk takes us farther east and a little bit earlier in time.  Chumley’s, at 86 Bedford Street, now closed because of a chimney collapse, was a popular watering hole for members of the literary community in the early part of the 20^th century. It was originally a speakeasy, established in 1926. For this reason, it never had a sign. The walls were covered with the book jackets from books that were written or worked on at Chumley’s.

This was particularly a popular spot with the Lost Generation and the Bohemians of the early part of the century such as E.E. Cummings, Willa Cather, Eugene O’Neill, John Steinbeck, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. But it also became a popular spot for the Beats later on in the century along with the White Horse Tavern.

Next Up: The Smallest Townhouse in the City