Kerouac and St Petersburg: “a good place to come die”

Beat generation author Jack Kerouac died October 21, 1969 right here in St. Petersburg where he had been living since 1964 with his third wife Stella and mother Gabriel. It was his mother’s idea to move as Kerouac ironically referred to St. Petersburg as “the town of the newly wed and the living dead” and “a good place to come die”. A notorious alcoholic, Kerouac died from complications brought on by a brutal beating he received at the Cactus Bar in St Petersburg; weeks later resulted in hemorrhaging from his chronic cirrhosis.

The Cactus Bar has been misidentified in many publications. The reason this correction is important is because the real Cactus Bar was (and still is) located in a black neighborhood and it was involved in the 1968 Race riots in St. Petersburg that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968 (see photo). Unfortunately, it is no longer a bar but the building still stands at 1844 18th Avenue South in St Petersburg.

In that time frame of 1968/1969, Jack Kerouac was working on what became his last novel “Pic” about a young African American boy and the racial difficulties that he experiences. Published posthumously, Kerouac wrote “Pic” in a voice that is stereotypically black. The rest of the story is that a year after the riots of 1968, Kerouac was drinking at the Cactus Bar and slipped in to his character Pic’s African American dialect. Unfortunately, the patrons at the bar thought that he was mocking them which led to the brutal beating.

This Saturday night, starting at 7pm the Flamingo Sports bar at 1230 9th St N will host a tribute to Kerouac including readings from his works.