It is a safe bet that most teenagers are unaware of the legacy of coffee houses to the "beat" phenomenon of the early 1960s, but someone (I'm guessing an American lit. student) caught on a few years ago, and we've been enjoying music mixed with strong java periodically ever since. Proctor Environmental Action--a student group better known for leadership with recycling and environmental education--organized Friday night's event in the basement of the stone chapel.

 

Too young to participate in (or really understand) the beat movement fifty years ago, I knew everything I knew about beatniks from the role of Maynard G. Krebs from the inspired TV sitcom "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," in which Bob Denver played a bumbling, disaffected, jazz-loving hedonist. Coffee houses, I learned, were venues for spontaneous, anti-establishment poetry readings punctuated by bongo drums. At Proctor, chanted, anti-materialistic poetry has been replaced with musical jamming.


 

Still, the stone walls of the chapel basement provide an appropriately intimate cave for a classic coffee house; hot drinks and conversations flow, and Krebs might fit in happily.


 

Spontaneity survives in the arrangements of performers and their music, (although some of these kids do play together regularly and many are truly talented and accomplished.) Did Haakon, Alex, Matt and Josh give it up like this at Proctor in Spain--where they spent this fall together?


 

Dafne appears ready to invoke some Dada-inspired poetry. Haakon's bandana works....


 

Not only is Colin talented, but he's beginning to bear a striking likeness to a disaffected '60s-era songwriter from Minnesota named Robert Zimmerman.....


 

I'm going to guess these hands belong to Tommy...


 

Beatniks Zada and Zoltan.


 

Many members of the crowd took turns at the mikes.


 

What does Dave have in common with peanut butter and jelly?


 

Thanks go to Yasmine Zinbi, whose photography made this page possible!