"Bam; Roll On with Bam!"

One thing a beatnik cannot abide is a square. The bearded, sandaled beat likes to be with his own kind, to riffle through his quarterlies, write craggy poetry, paint crusty pictures, and pursue his never-ending quest for the ultimate in sex and protest. When deterred from such pleasures by the goggle-eyed from Squaresville, the beatnik packs his pot (marijuana), shorts and bongo drums, grabs his black-hosed, pony-tailed beatchick and cuts out. Lately, beatniks in increasing numbers have been cutting out of the incipient squareness of San Francisco and swinging in the shabby little Los Angeles beach community of Venice. There last week the regular inhabitants were howling in protest almost loud enough to drown out the thump of the bongos.

It all started last June in an abandoned bingo parlor near the beach. Backed by

Los Angeles Lawyer Alphonse Matthews, a self-styled beatnik named Eric ("Big Daddy") Nord turned the joint into a coffeehouse. By midsummer, "the Gas House" was in full swing, and the beats pushed in to make the scene, as they say. A jukebox blared the beatniks' Three Bs: Bach, Bartok and "Bird" (Cool Saxophonist Charlie Parker). Bongo drums pounded out broken rhythms from early afternoon to early morning. Folk singers plunked guitars. Far-out paintings dripped from the walls. Ancient, rump-ruptured couches, rescued from the city dump, decorated the floor, and in the center of the room stood an old claw-legged bathtub that could accommodate a couple of good friends. On some evenings, Beatnik Author Lawrence Lipton, whose book, The Holy Barbarians, heralds "Venice West" as the new home of beatdom, read his cool poetry against a jazz background. It was like crazy.

Ashcan School. Crazier still were the neighbors, who complained that the bongos and other assorted beatnik activities were giving Venice a bad name. After police ruled only that Owner Matthews must have an entertainment license for the Gas House, the townspeople shuddered, got their Venice Civic Union to fight the licensing. The beatniks sent for the Civil Liberties Union, and after generously beautifying Venice's alleys by painting vivid abstractions on garbage cans, got ready for battle.

In Los Angeles' antiseptic Police Facilities Building last week, the squares and the beats gathered for a hearing. In the corridors wandered Beatchick Julie Meredith, strumming her guitar and singing sad songs about love and artistry. Beatnik Lipton came equipped with a sheaf of poetry, which he readily recited:

. . . Yawp it from

The Housetops of Heaven,

Gauguin, great soul, Holy Barbarian of

Tahiti,

Fling us a handful of love. Ride it, Carl Sandburg, stockyards Cowboy, Ride herd on the Realestateniks of

Venice . . .

The complainants' case was simple enough. There was a 1933 hearse, for example, that the beatniks parked outside a nearby apartment house ("There are a lot of elderly people in that apartment building that don't feel very good anyway, and this bothered them"). A man declared that he saw beatniks drinking wine and beer, that he paid admission to attend a life class in the Gas House basement where a nude woman posed, and that he was propositioned by a homosexual. There were tales of lust, drink, and the strange sound of bongos emanating somehow from the sewers.

Later, Man. The beatniks were wise enough to rest their case heavily on respectable--but not square--lawyer Matthews, angel of the Gas House. Defending his friends (and his investment, such as it is), he argued that the beatniks were really harmless. "The fundamental rule," said he, "is 'Thou shall not bug [disturb] thy neighbor.' And we have three dirty words: race, creed and color. I'm not going to regulate people's mores . . . not even the winos'." As for the sound of the bongos, Matthews confessed that he was helpless to stop it. "Sure bongo drums are loud, but my friends tell me that a bongo is a way of dissolving your antagonisms toward other people."

Unable to dissolve them either, the police recessed the hearings, indicated that it might be some time before they were ready to arrive at a decision on licensing the Gas House. As the squares hurried away nervously, Poet Lipton launched into another recitation:

I hear America singing, Bam; roll on with Bam! . . . Aloha, do svidania, au revoir, goodbye, later, man, later.

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