Last Gathering at 60: Jerry Cimino

Museum maestro casts some further light

Jerry Cimino is the founder, alongside wife Estelle, of both the Beat Museum in North Beach, San Francisco, and the Counterculture Museum in the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood. The institution that celebrates the Beats is over 20 years old; the centre focusing on the counterculture opened earlier in 2025.

Few have more interest in and understanding of the histories of those artistic and subcultural worlds than this couple. Below, Jerry brings his own experiences and insights to the discussion as he explains some key aspects of the so-called Last Gathering of the Beats six decades ago…

‘Sixty years on: Beat history framed by a photographic trio’

By Jerry Cimino

‘I guess I was out of the frame’ – Lawrence Ferlinghetti upon seeing McClure, Dylan & Ginsberg on the Beat Museum on Wheels

LAWRENCE Ferlinghetti almost never made it inside the grounds of the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur for the all day poetry event. He hadn’t brought any money with him and the out of town event planners, not knowing who he was, wouldn’t allow him through the gate without paying the $10 fee. As he was returning to his pickup truck for his drive back to his cabin in Bixby Canyon, Magnus Toren, the Executive Director of the HMML, got wind of this potentially embarrassing situation and quickly ushered Lawrence right on through.

Coincidentally, that weekend in 2004 was the maiden voyage of our brand new Beat Museum on Wheels and Magnus invited us to park on the grounds of the HMML for the weekend event. I was alone inside the RV when Magnus knocked and called inside, ‘Jerry, there’s a celebrity here who wants to ask about the picture on the side of the Beatmobile.’ Soon, Lawrence and I were examining the bigger-than-life photograph emblazoned on the vinyl wrap on the outside of our rig when he said, ‘I was standing right next to Allen Ginsberg when Larry Keenan took that shot.’ Lawrence moved closer to the photo and for a moment seemed to be lost in time. 'I guess I was out of the frame.'

The ‘shot’ Lawrence was referring to was an image Keenan took of Michael McClure, Bob Dylan, and Allen Ginsberg, and it is arguably one of the most famous images in the history of the Beat Generation. In many ways it represents the passing of the torch from the Beats of the 1950s to the 1960s generation. It shows a young Bob Dylan standing between the two elder poets: McClure with his movie star good looks on one side, and Ginsberg at the height of his fame on the other.

The date the famous photo was taken was December 5th, 1965. The scene was North Beach, in the little alley between the City Lights bookstore and Vesuvio Café. Back then it was called Adler Place, but today we know it as Jack Kerouac Alley. To be sure, there were a number of other people standing in the alley that day. One was Ginsberg‘s partner Peter Orlovsky and another was Peter’s brother, Julius. A third was Robbie Robertson, the guitarist from the Hawks, later known as the Band, who were backing Dylan for his tour. Dylan had recently gone electric at the Newport Folk Festival and with that he had lit a match that would disrupt not only the world of music, but society in general.

Pictured above: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jerry Cimino in front of the Beat Museum on Wheels, Big Sur, CA, 2004. Image: Estelle Cimino

At the time the photograph was taken, even though most of the world would not understand it for years, Allen Ginsberg had already become aware as early as 1963 the new generation had found its spokesperson in Bob Dylan. Allen later explained what it meant to him in Martin Scorsese’s documentary on Dylan titled No Direction Home.

‘When I got back from India and made it to the West Coast, there’s a poet, Charlie Plymell, and at a party in Bolinas he played me a record by this new young folksinger and I heard “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”... and I wept.’ As the camera stays on him, Allen takes a moment to fight back a tear. When he speaks again his voice is distorted with emotion. ‘’Cause it seemed the torch had been passed to another generation, from earlier Bohemian or Beat illumination and self empowerment.’

So by the time 1965 arrived Allen already knew America was alive with change and transition, and he found himself right in the middle of much of it. Allen, too, was traveling with Dylan during the 1965 tour. Dylan’s sixth studio album, Highway 61 Revisited, had just been released in August, and its last track was a Kerouac echo called ‘Desolation Row’.

Dylan titled other songs with nods to Jack Kerouac, most notably ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’, the lead track on his March 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home. It was his first Top 40 hit in the US, and the genesis for what many maintain was the very first music video. Ginsberg also appears in the video for ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’.

When Dylan made it to San Francisco the first week in December it was a very busy weekend. On Friday, December 3rd, Dylan gave a press conference for KQED public television to promote his five Bay Area shows. In the audience at the press conference along with Ginsberg were Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Jim Marshall, Bill Graham, Ralph Gleason, and many others. Dylan’s first two performances were held that Friday and Saturday evening at the Berkeley Community Theater. For one of those shows, Dylan had given Allen 30 tickets to pass around to his friends, so that night Peter Orlovsky, Neal Cassady, Ferlinghetti, McClure, Sonny Barger, Freewheelin’ Frank, and importantly, Larry Keenan, all sat together in the second row.

‘There were actually three photographers there with Dylan that day outside City Lights’ – Jerry Cimino

And now for the big reveal on the photograph. There wasn’t just one photographer on the scene that day, there were actually three: Larry Keenan, Dale Smith, and Jim Marshall. And yes, we would later learn that Lawrence Ferlinghetti was indeed standing next to Ginsberg when the pictures were taken, but the photographs that prove it wouldn’t see the light of day for some forty years.

So, it’s logical to ask: with three photographers present, snapping pictures of Bob Dylan the day he came to City Lights, how is it that for decades Larry Keenan’s were the only images anyone ever saw?

Larry Keenan was 18 years old then, and a student at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, where he was taking a class taught by Michael McClure. McClure suggested Larry meet him at City Lights – where the historic ‘Last Gathering’ of Beat poets and artists was happening – to take some photos, and following the show that night, the deal was made with Bob Dylan’s approval. At the time, Keenan was still living at home while going to school, and he almost didn’t make the photoshoot on account of his parents’ insistence that he mow the lawn before he could borrow the family car. Keenan’s photographs of Dylan were slated for the recently recorded Blonde on Blonde album cover, but that never materialized.

Pictured above: This image by Dale Smith confirms that Lawrence Ferlinghetti (right) was indeed part of the Adler Place shoot on that notable day

Another student of McClure was Dale Smith. Dale was the same age as Larry, and he too had a camera and shot a roll of film that day. But unlike Keenan’s photographs, Dale Smith’s images weren’t seen for another 40 years. Why, you might ask? Because, according to a 2006 San Francisco Chronicle story by reporter Paul McHugh, Smith knew he had something very special in the pictures he took that day, so he made certain to tuck them away in a very safe place – so safe, it turned out, that Smith was unable to find them again until 2002.

Then there’s Jim Marshall. Marshall had already photographed Dylan in New York in 1963, during a walk around Greenwich Village. Remember the famous photo of Dylan kicking the tire as he walks with Dave Van Ronk along Hudson Street near Christopher Street in New York? That was Marshall.

Jim Marshall was also at Dylan’s KQED Press Conference the previous Friday, and in addition to photographing Dylan, in the footage of the conference he can be seen passing Dylan a poster about an upcoming music event at the Fillmore. So it’s not surprising Marshall got wind of the upcoming gathering at City Lights that day.

What is surprising is Allen Ginsberg’s reaction to Marshall when he showed up on the scene. According to the SF Chronicle article on Dale Smith, Ginsberg waved Marshall away, saying ‘You can’t, it’s their gig’, pointing to the younger Keenan and Smith. According to Smith, Marshall had fired off only a single picture before Dylan announced ‘OK, that’s enough’, and the photo shoot was over.

Three photographers and a few rolls of film. One roll was lost for 40 years. One roll supposedly contained only a single image of this event. The rest have been spread far and wide by Beat Generation fans around the globe. It was an historic moment that captured the spirit of the evolving counterculture in mid-1960s America.

San Francisco – and the world – would never be the same.

Editor’s note: Readers should be aware that the Beat Museum is currently temporarily closed for an ‘earthquake retrofit’. There will be a grand reopening in 2026. The Counterculture Museum is open as normal.

See also: ‘Last Gathering at 60: A survivor speaks’, December 4th, 2025; ‘Last Gathering at 60: Making meaning’, December 4th, 2025; ‘The Last Gathering of the Beats’, December 2nd, 2025