ST. PETERSBURG, FL — The city of St. Petersburg has long had a fascination with the iconic Beat author Jack Kerouac, the subject of much local lore and speculation more than 50 years after his death.
After all, the famous writer spent his final years in Sunshine City and died in St. Petersburg. And for years, his former home at 5169 10th Ave. N. — where he lived with his mother and his third wife, Stella, in the late 1960s — served as a pilgrimage destination, of sorts, for writers, readers and counter-culture aficionados.
Now, the city is gearing up for a weekend of events celebrating the author’s birthday. If he were still alive, he’d turn 101 on Sunday. (Find a full list of upcoming Kerouac events below.)
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“It’s going to be a Kerouac extravaganza, Kerouac-palooza, if you will,” Ken Burchenal, president of the nonprofit group, Jack Kerouac House of St. Petersburg, told Patch.
He added, “This is one of the dates that we always celebrate.”
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There are two organizations dedicated to the writer’s life in St. Petersburg — the Friends of Jack Kerouac and the Jack Kerouac House of St. Petersburg. And both are hosting events this weekend, working together to promote the writer’s local legacy.
“We had dual initiatives for a long time. They’ve always been more program oriented and we were just trying to figure out how to save the house,” Burchenal said.
The Future of Kerouac’s St. Pete Home
About two years ago, Burchenal and his wife formed an LLC to purchase Kerouac’s former home. While a tenant — a local writer — briefly lived in the house, future plans for it focus more on programming and community initiatives.
The space will be available for private events hosted by local artists, writers, musicians and organizations — about 75 people fit in the home comfortably — and there are plans to host regular open houses and house concerts. The organization will also make a recording and streaming studio available to the arts community. (Learn more about booking the house for an event here.)
“It seems like all the ducks are in a row and quacking, and we need to get things going,” Burchenal said. “We just want it to be a cultural space for the Tampa Bay area.”
For a donation, people are also welcome to spend the night in the writer’s final home.
“If you donate to WMNF and give them $100, you get a koozie or something,” he said. “With us, if you make a large enough donation, you can stay in the house for a couple of days.”
The Jack Kerouac House of St. Petersburg fully controls, manages and runs the space, Burchenal added. “And as long as I’m alive, the house is saved.”
Celebrating 101st Anniversary Of Kerouac’s Birth
The two Kerouac nonprofits work closely together, collaborating whenever possible, according to Burchenal. “We support each other and promote each other’s events.”
That’s clear when looking at this weekend’s slate of birth celebrations for the author.
JKHSP will host Jack’s Birthday Jam at the Flamingo — Kerouac’s favorite local bar — Saturday night. The Friends will be present for the event, setting up a table about their organization.
There will be an open house at Kerouac’s home Sunday afternoon and JKHSP was careful to schedule that event so that lit lovers can also attend the Friends group’s screening of the Kerouac documentary “Go Moan for the Man” at Green Light Cinema. Burchenal will also speak during a Q&A session after one of the screenings, alongside Judy and Riva Sharples, the film’s producers and distributors.
“So, however you want to do it, you could probably come and participate in both, if you really have a Kerouac jones going,” Burchenal said.
Kerouac’s Life in Florida
The Friends of Jack Kerouac formed in 2013 initially with the goal of saving his house. As it became apparent that other entities were making great strides to purchase Kerouac’s home, the group shifted gears, focusing more on the writer’s literary legacy and supporting the local arts community.
While “On the Road” is by far Kerouac’s most well-known novel, the author wrote some of his other important works during his time in St. Petersburg and Orlando, James Hartzell, treasurer of the Friends group, told Patch.
He spent two stints in St. Petersburg — 1964 to 1966 and 1968 until his death in 1969 — Hartzell said.
During his first years in the city, he lived in the Disston Heights home next door to the house where he would later spend his final years. In that first home, Kerouac wrote “Satori in Paris,” a novella about his trip to Paris and Brittany to research his family roots and French ancestry, Hartzell said. “In that house, he also wrote his last novel, ‘Pic,’ which was kind of like a hymnal from the perspective of a young Black boy.”
He also lived in Orlando from 1957 t0 1958, during the time “On the Road” was published, according to The Kerouac Project, which maintains Kerouac’s College Park home as a writers’ residency.
There, he “tinkered with” the novel “Dharma Bums” and “Desolation Angels,” as well as parts of “On the Road” before its publication, Hartzell said.
While people focus on Kerouac’s drinking habits and his death in St. Petersburg, the Friends group works to share what his life in the city really looked like.
“There’s a lot of myths and legends that still surround him. I’ve heard people talk about all sorts of odd stories, like maybe he went skinny dipping here or people get the facts of his death wrong,” Hartzell said. “So, there’s kind of that element of his life being obscured. We hope every time when we do an event that we can clear a little bit of that up and point people in the right direction.”
Rumors range from Kerouac dying on the side of the road to who might have been with him when he passed away, he added.
“It’s really difficult to try to honor and uplift someone’s last moments, their last days,” Hartzell said. “We try to put it in a context for people that this was a literary meteor that burned really bright at one point in time and did influence a lot of people, despite, maybe, how things ended at the tragic, early age of 47.”
That’s partially why the Friends group has organized a regular Kerouac bicycle tour through the city. While the guided tour includes his former 10th Avenue home, St. Anthony’s Hospital — where he died of a stomach hemorrhage on Oct. 21, 1969 — and, of course, the Flamingo Bar, “which potentially served him his last drink,” there’s more to the writer’s life in St. Pete, Hartzell said.
The tour includes stops at the now-closed Haslam’s Book Store, which the writer frequented, and Al Lang Stadium, since Kerouac was an avid baseball fan and often watched spring training there. It also rides by the Manhattan Casino, where he went to see live music, and because he wrote for the Evening Independent, which later was bought by the St. Petersburg Times, the group passes the former Times building.
“The goal has always been with our group to widen our aperture and honor also the years that Kerouac spent in Orlando. What’s his legacy in the Sunshine State? And try to break some of those myths about how productive he actually was when he came to live in St. Pete and Orlando,” Hartzell said. “All in told, he got a fourth of his novels written in Florida. So, we’re kind of countering that idea that he just kind of crawled into a bottle; he did have productive years here.”
Both Kerouac organizations have touched upon Kerouac as a polarizing literary figure and the misogyny of the the Beat Generation, but try to separate the artist from his life.
“It’s not to excuse them,” Burchenal said. “It’s kind of like, well, (Ernest) Hemingway was a jerk to women and his friends and himself on a regular basis, but the value of his art was important. It’s important to our cultural process to look at our past.”
As plans to preserve Kerouac’s home moves forward, the author’s body of work will be central to that, but more so, it will be an homage to American counterculture, Burchenal said.
And the writer has inspired countless other artists and writers, he said. “We want to preserve this home because (Kerouac) was a really important cultural force and we want to expand on how the space is used. Not everything at the Kennedy Center in New York is about Kennedy.”
Burchenal added, “We’re not trying to make it a museum for Jack Kerouac. … Just half of the stuff in that house happens to have been theirs. We’re more trying to curate a space where cool stuff can happen and, in the process, hopefully, educate people about that whole American counterculture that really swept the globe and was very, very far reaching.”
Upcoming Kerouac Events
Learn more about upcoming events celebrating Kerouac:
Jack’s Birthday Jam
When: March 11, 7 p.m.
Where: Flamingo Bar, 1230 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street N., St. Petesburg
What: Featuring Paula Bradley, David Kraii, C.B. Carlyle, Chuck Walston, James Hawkins. Hosted by the Jack Kerouac House of St. Petersburg.
Jack’s Birthday Party
When: March 12, noon to 4 p.m.
Where: Jack Kerouac House, 5169 10th Ave. N., St. Petersburg
What: An open house of Kerouac’s St. Petersburg home. Suggested donation $20. RSVP here. Hosted by the Jack Kerouac House of St. Petersburg.
“Go Moan for Man” Documentary Film Screening
When: March 12, 2 and 4:30 p.m.
Where: Green Light Cinema, 221 2nd Ave. N., St. Petersburg
What: A screening of the Kerouac documentary “Go Moan for Man: The Literary Odyssey of Jack Kerouac” by the late filmmaker Doug Sharples. Screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with Judy and Riva Sharples, the film’s producers and distributors. Special guests include Ken Burchenal, owner of the St. Pete Kerouac House and Erik Deckers, president of the Kerouac Project in Orlando. Hosted by the Friends of Jack Kerouac. Purchase tickets here.
Literary Trivia Night
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When: March 22, 7 to 9 p.m.
Where: The Studio Public House
What: Enjoy an evening of literary trivia questions. Prizes will be awarded to the first- through third-place teams. Hosted by the Friends of Jack Kerouac.
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