Introduction

The Look: Beats: the workwear (jeans, workshirts, chinos, t-shirts) and sportswear (sweatshirts, sneakers/trainers) which is today standard ‘casual’ attire.

Left Bank: any colour as long as it’s black, over-sized sweaters, goatee beards for men, for women (like Juliet Greco) long straight black hair, thick black mascara/eye-liner, tight pedal-pushers or ‘Capri’ pants.

The Time: late ‘40s/early ‘50s+

The Place: Beats: New York City & San Francisco

Left Bank: Paris

Influenced: Beats: Hippies, New Age Travellers, Grunge, Indie Kids, Ravers

Left Bank: Goth, Pervs, Acid Jazz

Essay Excerpt

Once a college athlete, Jack Kerouac found the ‘normal’ life on offer in late ‘40s, post-war America stifling and spiritually unsatisfying. With his friend Neal Cassidy he drove back and forth across the vast American continent in search of adventure and encounters with jazz Hipsters, Bikers and the for-real inhabitants of the small towns, slums and backwaters who might cross their path. Back on the East coast, typing frenetically on a single 120 foot roll of paper (so as to avoid the distraction of putting separate sheets of paper into the typewriter) Kerouac created the definitive ‘road’ novel On the Road.