Golf, Scotch, and Coffee Enthusiast

“He went around the corner for a cappuccino and pizza at Caffé Trieste on Grant and Vallejo, where a guidebook said the Beat poets used to frequent. Feeling their ghosts hovering still, the air vibrant with poetic energy, Simpson opened his notebook and, while Caruso and Pavarotti sang from the jukebox, he poured out a relaxed and rambling free-verse description of the interior and his excitement at being here. Here! At these very tables under the tall glass windows with a view of Coit Tower up on Telegraph Hill, here under the mural of Sicilian fishermen mending their nets, amid these framed photos and paintings along the Tuscan orange-red walls, Ferlinghetti and Corso and friends could still be seen writing, reading, drinking coffee or Chianti and talking about poetry, art, and probably sex and politics, too. The café felt powerfully familiar—surely he’d been here before; he’d always been here—and imbued with concentrated history and culture, rich as dark roast coffee. He glanced up to the pretty young woman behind the counter, comely with short dark hair and greenish blue eyes, high cheekbones. He sensed that she had been looking his way. She could tell he was a poet. A Romantic. The song on the jukebox was sung in Italian but maybe it was about their love, the amore that could grow between them.”

The home of Tim Whittaker in the Lake District. Photo by Mark fox.