It's been nearly 60 years since Allen Ginsberg publicly read his icon poem Howl, but the beat goes on.

Jerry Cimino, the founder of the Beat Museum in North Beach, has organized a hip, happening conference for June 26–28 called the Beatnik Shindig. The Shindig—so named because it sounds more fun than "conference," Cimino said—will include at least two dozen speakers at Fort Mason, some of whom were at ground zero during the Beat Generation. It'll also include evening performances and parties in the "heart of Beatdom itself," North Beach, which was home to Ginsberg and other Beats and the site of City Lights Bookstore.

More details about the schedule, programs and tickets should be up on the event website by this weekend.

Beat Shindig poster. Graphic: The Beat Museum/Facebook

Cimino said the reason for pulling together a conference now is because this Oct. 7th marks the 60th anniversary of Ginsberg's first public reading of Howl, which City Lights published the following year — and got into a lot of legal trouble for it. "Lawrence Ferlinghetti had to end up standing trial" on obscenity charges, Cimino said. "Had there not been a Howl trial, we would not be talking about any of this."

Add to that, there hasn't been a Beat blowout in about 20 years, Cimino said. Lowell Celebrates Kerouac! happens regularly in Jack Kerouac's home town in Massachusetts, but the last big conference was in the mid-1990s in New York. "This will be the first major conference to be held in a major city with dozens of speakers" since then, he said.

What is it about the Beats that continues to capture attention six decades later? “What the Beats talked about in the '50s resonates with every group as they come of age,” Cimino said. "Youthful rebellion; taking your risks; living a rebellious life. Young people today are very hip to this stuff."

Jerry Cimino next to the Howl display at the Beat Museum. Photo: Geri Koeppel/Hoodline

Some recent movies have fueled interest, he added. "On the Road came out with a huge cast of characters. Kill Your Darlings came out with the Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe. Howl came out with James Franco. Big Sur came out." The latter, about Kerouac's sojourns to Ferlinghetti's cottage in Big Sur, starred actress Kate Bosworth, who'll attend the Beat Shindig for a screening along with director Michael Polish. Also, the Shindig will see the West Coast premier of “Neal Cassady: The Denver Years.” 

Another big name attending the Beatnik Shindig is conductor, composer, musician and author David Amram, who appeared in the 1959 short film Pull My Daisy with Kerouac, Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers and others. In a phone interview with Amram, he dispelled the notion that Beats were moody, brooding and ill-attired.

"My hope is that since I’m one of the few people there who actually knew Jack and was part of that era—and I’m still living with the ideals that many of us shared—that young people will see that above everything else we were open, warm and appreciative of every person who crossed our path," he said. "We also shared the idea that what you do to pay your rent has no bearing on your value as an artist, that what you get and what you deserve have no relationship to one another, and most importantly, if it appears hopeless, do it anyway."

People "may be shocked to see that those of us who were in the film were friendly, obviously enjoyed everyone else’s company and all were totally different and did not dress or look like depressing, sour, sociopathic, disillusioned, untalented, Lower Slobbovians," Amran continued. "That’s because what became the stereotype of the so-called Beat generation, once it became a brand name, not only made people who weren’t there feel that that’s what we were like, it forced many people to think that if they could identify with the era, they had to act that way themselves."

Amram will speak along with Beat greats such as ruth weiss, David Meltzer and Gerd Stern, who met Ginberg and Carl Solomon in a psychiatric ward. A list of speakers and their bios are on the Beat Shindig website. Top Beat scholars such as Hilary Holladay, founder of the Jack and Stella Kerouac Center for Public Humanities and the Kerouac Conference on Beat Literature at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, will also be there, along with the three children of Carolyn and Neal Cassady. 

Cimino became a fan of the Beats back in eighth grade, he said, when his teacher read one of Ferlinghetti's poems about the crucifixion. "It blew my mind," he said. He became an avid reader of the Beats in college, and then later, in 1988, he and his wife moved from the East Coast to California and in 1991 opened a bookstore in Monterey called Monterey Coffeehouse Bookshop. “Because I knew all about the Beat stuff, I said, 'How about we have some events and I’ll talk about the Beats?'" Cimino said. "I could carry that myself. People dug it. I was shocked at all the people who showed up. We got to be known as the Beat bookstore of the Central Coast."

Photo: The Beat Museum/Facebook

In 2001, Cimino and his wife were traveling in Europe and found the Hash Marihuana & Hemp Museum in Amsterdam. "I remember commenting to her, 'If they can have a hemp museum in Amsterdam, why can’t we have a Beat Museum in San Francisco?'" he said. "I decided to create the Beat Museum as a way for people to realize you can be a nonconformist and still change the world.” It opened in Monterey in 2003 about a block from the bookstore, and moved to its current location at 540 Broadway St. in San Francisco in 2006.

One of the many Beatnik Shindig speakers Cimino is jazzed about is Dr. Philip Hicks, who was Allen Ginsberg's psychiatrist in 1955. During a breakthrough session, he told a young Ginsberg that it was fine to be gay and to quit his job in advertising and start writing poetry and dating men. "Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder at that point," Cimino said. "He looked Allen Ginsberg in the eyes and said it’s okay for you to live an authentic life. Next thing you know, [Ginsberg]’s reading Howl; Howl gets published, and it changes the world.”

The Beat Shindig will run from June 26-28 at Fort Mason and in North Beach. Stay tuned to the event website for more info on schedule, tickets and more in the weeks to come.