Relive Part of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ Journey
by Lorenzo Ragionieri, flavorwire.com
May 11th 2011
>From On the Road and Travels with Charley, to The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
>and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, road trips figure prominently in a host of
>our favorite books. That’s why we’re teaming up with Greyhound to encourage
>you to live out some of the most exciting chapters for us. Consider it an
>exercise in revisionist travel. Over the next few days, we’ll be highlighting
>three iconic pieces of road trip lit. Along with each post, you can enter a
>contest to win a pair of tickets for a Greyhound trip to one of the
>destinations these authors visited and wrote about. Reports from the field are
>not only welcome; they’re expected. First up, one of the classics: Jack
>Kerouac’s spontaneous voyage from San Francisco to Los Angeles from On the
>Road.
On The Road brims with free-wheeling prose about women, drugs and driving, and
we relish every one of its hedonistic moments. In one chapter, Salvatore “Sal”
Paradise (Kerouac) abandons his post in San Francisco as a special policeman at
a barracks for overseas workers. He hops a bus to LA, where he meets and falls
in love with a young Mexican-American woman named Terry.
The Clifton’s Scene
While in LA, Sal and Terry “[eat] in a cafeteria downtown which was decorated
to look like a grotto, with metal tits spurting everywhere and great impersonal
stone buttockses belonging to deities and soapy Neptune. People ate lugubrious
meals around the waterfalls, their faces green with marine sorrow.” We know of
only one place that could fit such a description: the impossibly kitschy
Clifton’s Pacific Seas at 618 South Olive Street.
We’re pretty sure we know why Sal and Terry ate at Clifton’s Pacific Seas.
Spoiler alert: It wasn’t for the decor. Long before In Rainbows, Clifton’s was
letting people pay only what they wanted. It was known as “The Cafeteria of the
Golden Rule,” and patrons would give only what they thought was fair, per the
neon “Pay What You Wish” sign.
Clifton’s Pacific Seas, which shut down shop in June of 1960, was the founding
branch of the Clifton’s Cafeteria franchise. Clifton’s Cafeteria on South
Broadway Street, pictured above, is the largest public cafeteria in the world,
and the only Clifton’s left standing.
Coldwater Canyon Park
Though not directly mentioned in On the Road, Coldwater Canyon Park is the kind
of place we could imagine Terry and Sal “picnicking.” We advise you do the
same. A bucolic counterpoint to LA’s sprawling concrete, the park overlooks the
San Fernando Valley, and plays host to a weekly summer performance series in
the S. Mark Taper Auditorium. Among the performers slated for this summer are
Paula Poundstone, Billy Valentine, and the ACE theatre players doing a live
table reading of the screenplay from Airplane!
Venice Beach
On the Road is purposefully opaque about what real-world locations Sal and
Terry visit. Though not directly referenced in the text, Venice Beach probably
ranked near the top of the couple’s list of LA squat spots. In the ’50s and
’60s, Venice became known as a hub of the Beat Generation, a warm place where
musicians, artists, and hobos could well, be homeless. While in Venice, pop
over to the LA Louver Gallery on North Venice Boulevard, where some of the
biggest names in the LA arts scene are on display.
Go to Greyhound.com and travel the same SF to LA route that Sal did. Meet the
love of your life, eat at Clifton’s, and hang on Venice Beach, but whatever you
do, keep a rambling journal.
Original Page:
http://flavorwire.com/159175/relive-part-of-jack-kerouacs-on-the-road-journey?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+flavorwire-rss+(Flavorwire)
Shared from Read It Later
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Sixties-L" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
