North Beach dives, San Francisco, CA

North Beach has produced some notable people, including baseball great Joe DiMaggio, who moved there at the age of one and grew up in a flat at Valparaiso and Taylor. Former San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto was born in North Beach.(2)


Jerry performed here sometime in 
1961 Black Mountain Boys 
"Phoebe says, "Jerry was playing in dives in North Beach...""(1)

a Black Mountain Boys anecdote from Eric Thompson:
"I remember one time [the Black Mountain Boys] went to a real country dance hall in a place like Richmond [California, near Berkeley] and we played some tunes and these guys were very nice to us. They said 'That's a nice bluegrass sound.' They played Ernest Tubbs stuff in those places. You came in and you stamped your hand with a blue fluorescent stamp, and there was a bar in the back and there were fights. It was sawdust on a big wood floor. But we didn't make a lot of contact with that world. That was one of the few times we did. Usually it was more of a folk revival kind of thing and I don't think there were really the venues for it. There was no place like the Ash Grove or the Club 47 in Northern California, so we ended up doing things like playing on Gert Chiarito's program on KPFA and things like that — that was about as public as you could get. And then we'd play at these little tourist places in North Beach."(2)

1. Teddy GoodBear, DeadLists@GoodBear.com
2. Blair Jackson, "Garcia, An American Life, pg.41.