“What a great city New York is!”
Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac's original manuscript of "On the Road" comes "home" to the NY Public Library
in March. Walk Kerouac's walk to get the buzz that made the beats.

The bible of “cool,” On the Road--the book that injected a thousand soul-seeking backpackers into the black tar veins of America’s highways comes “home” to New York this March. Although Jack Kerouac’s paen to the hipster’s pursuit of happiness chronicles the author’s cross-country joy ride, it was written mostly in an Archie Bunker-style house in Queens. Ozone Park, to be exact.

In March, the mile-long manuscript (Kerouac wrote it on one long scroll of paper) will come home to New York and be displayed at the New York Public Library for several months. Until then, Kerouac fans can get a jump on Jack and visit the places that most deeply inspired the “angel-headed hipster.”

Kerouac, a Columbia dropout (on a football scholarship) met Alan Ginsberg at Columbia University in 1944. A walk around the campus will give you the feeling of the environment where “beat” was born. Hang out, like Alan and Jack did at the West End Café (2909 Broadway (212) 662-8830) where now-as then-live jazz and hot coffee fuel the muse.

Take the Broadway line downtown to Times Square. In the late ‘40’s, it was hardly the Disney playground it is today. It was seamy, gritty; just the right place to give a fresh-faced football letterman from Lowell, Massachusetts a dose of city smarts. Kerouac and Ginsberg used to hang out here in an all night coffee shop called Bickford’s (long gone). Kerouac wrote, “When I first saw hipsters creeping around Times Square I didn’t like them either. One of them, Herbert Hunke of Chicago, came up to me and said, “Man I’m beat.” I knew right away what he meant somehow.” Hunke was a street hustler whose use of the word “beat” to mean lowdown, poor, humble, etc. inspired Jack to expand it’s definition to represent a whole generation of alienated kids. The best place to get the feel of Kerouac’s Times Square is to sit in a street level restaurant like Sbarro’s on 47th and Broadway and watch the stream of “beat” people flow by.

Get back into the subway and take the Broadway local to Sheridan Square. Here in the Village, Kerouac and friends caroused, picked up hot beatnik “chicks” and found further inspiration for their work. Three bars closely associated with them are still here. The White Horse Tavern (567 Hudson St., (866) 546-6480) best known as the place Dylan Thomas drank himself to death was also a favorite hang out of Kerouac’s. Going east, the Minetta Tavern (113 MacDougal St. at Minetta Lane, 212/475-3850 was another one of Jack’s watering holes. Both are infused with atmosphere and are largely unchanged from the days when Jack hung out in them. The Cedar Bar was relocated in 1966. It is now at 82 University Place, but temporarily closed for renovation), in Kerouac’s day it was just down the street--memorialized in literary history when they ejected the writer for pissing in one of their ash trays.

Finally, beat pilgrims must journey out to Queens to Ozone Park (near Queens College) for a visit to the humble home Jack lived in with his mother when he began the book that became On the Road. The house at 133-01 Cross Bay Boulevard still stands. It was only a few years ago that the Landmarks Preservation Committee put a plaque on the wall--before that it had gone unmarked and unvisited for decades. Kerouac wrote about the long, lonely days he spent here, looking out the windows and listening to the rush of traffic taking his mind back out onto the open road that inspired him.
Then, as now, the house was surrounded by local bars where Jack would go to get a pail of beer or to down a few glasses of wine before going back to work. Choose one of these local dives, order a glass of something cheap and intoxicating and toast the memory of the man who created “cool.”