Saturday, October 8, 2011

Report #1 from Lowell Celebrates Kerouac 2011

I have a minute before breakfast and then a tour of Lowell with Roger Brunelle, so I thought I'd update readers of The Daily Beat on Lowell Celebrates Kerouac events so far. As you saw in the two previous posts, last night we were on the Kerouac Pub Crawl. We started at Ricardo's, which used to be Nicky's. Jack drank there for free in his later years because Nicky was his brother-in-law. It was standing room only. A couple of poets stood behind the bar and read their works. The second one, Steve (last name escapes me), was really good. Then we went to Cappy's Copper Kettle, another of Jack's haunts. At that point, my cell phone camera started acting up, so no pictures of the next two places. After Cappy's, we went to Majors. There, Melissa from Boston asked me if I was the guy with the Kerouac blog. I said, "Yes," and she whispered "Rumplestiltskin." She earned a signed copy of The Beat Handbook. Amazing. She was with Todd, who is the keynote speaker today, and Judy. I also gave pub crawl leader Mike Wurm a copy of my book. We had a turkey panini and fries there. Tasty. Finally, we ended the crawl at The Old Worthen House. You should see the old school overhead fan system in that place. There, a guy named Kurt came up and asked me if I was Rick Dale. I said, "Yes," and he said he loved my book. Outstanding. Live music followed. We had a great time overall and didn't even get lost walking back to the hotel!

That's it for now. Pictures to come. Also videos from the grave! Stay tuned.

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