Woody Guthrie

"It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people."

Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,
starving, hysterical, naked,
dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night

The Gaslight Café opened in 1958 in Greenwich Village and became the go-to place for the Beat poets to read their work. Later it segued into a venue for folk music, showcasing the early work of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Dave Von Ronk, and others

Bob Dylan

"The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do?"

Pete Seeger and Ronnie Gilbert sang with the folk group, The Weavers. Their pro-union songs made them a target of Senator Joseph McCarthy and they were blacklisted

The San Remo stood at the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal in New York's Greenwich Village. It was the place where Kerouac and other Beat writers hung out, and was the inspiration for Kerouac's novel, The Subterraneans. That title later influenced Bob Dylan to title his song "Subterranean Homesick Blues."

when the City officials closed down the coffee houses in Greenwich Village due to the subversive poetry being read there, poets took to the streets.

Jack Kerouac

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars"