Jack Kerouac

As much as I love to embrace the “New Girl” parallels, I have also learned to accept that the life I lead is one that is entirely my own. And there’s a certain beauty in that.

The mélange of students coming and going produces a sense of departure, if not from the area, then from the normalcy and comfort of routine.

Does it matter that almost 70 years ago this same route was followed by the beatniks? I think the answer lies in how busy City Lights is and how the Beat Museum manages to survive against all odds...

On my computer, I wrote troves of poetry and metaphorical stories, burdening Microsoft Word documents with lamentations about the depression I had been dealing with since fourth grade, and about my parents divorcing. Alone in my room, symbolic pen in my hand, I began, in earnest, to cement my career as a writer.

Renowned poet and biographer Tom Clark, 77, died several hours after he was hit by a car in North Berkeley on Aug. 17.

He called it home for just a year, but the echoes of his presence are still here — just as Whitman’s ghost romped around in Ginsberg’s fantasies, Ginsberg’s ghost continues to roam in Berkeley.