St. Pete claims beatnik author as its own
Family ties drew Massachussetts native to area numerous times
ST. PETERSBURG — Jack Kerouac lived in St. Petersburg only a handful of years before he died here in 1969. But the Sunshine City still claims him as its own.
One hundred years ago on March 12, Kerouac was born in Lowell, Mass. While the Beat Generation legend was known for wandering, his family ties drew him to Florida again and again. Kerouac was known to visit his sister and mother in Central Florida, and even wrote Dharma Bums during a two-week period there. Today, the Orlando Kerouac House is preserved as a writer’s retreat.
“He got a fourth of his writing done while living in the Sunshine State,” said James E. Hartzell, president of the Friends of Jack Kerouac.
For a few years in the mid-50s, Kerouac lived in a ranch house in St. Petersburg’s Disston Heights neighborhood with his mother, Gabrielle. He had just published his first major work, The Town and the City, and would release his best known novel, On the Road, shortly after he left.
“These were not particularly his glory days, but it was very consistent in what his entire adult life had been,” said Ken Burchenal, a retired literature professor who purchased the former Kerouac home with his wife, Gina, for $360,000 in 2020. “He had two modes: One was at home with his mom, where he would write and be more or less a hermit. And then he would go on the road.”
St. Pete lured the beatnik author back in the late 1960s. This time he brought his third wife, Stella, when he moved in with his paralyzed mom at 5169 10th Ave. — next door to his first St. Pete home.
“People from all over the world idolized Kerouac,” Burchenal said. Before his purchase, a nonprofit called the Friends of the Jack Kerouac House tended the property. The group often found letters from fans in the mailbox, shot glasses and candles left as tributes.
“Ironically when he lived here, his star had diminished,” Burchenal said.
Hartzell said the writer would sometimes drag an army cot out to the backyard so he could sleep under the stars. He celebrated his final birthday at a spring training game at Al Lang Field and contributed a handful of sports writing pieces to the Evening Independent, the afternoon paper of the then-St. Petersburg Times. A lover of jazz, Kerouac was said to have listened to live music at the Manhattan Casino.
“Famously he would go to Haslam’s and rearrange his books so they were on a more prominent shelf,” Hartzell said. “He would
hang out there a lot and read.”
In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times published on Oct. 12, 1969, — a little over a week before he died — Kerouac admitted that he had been feeling lonesome and was thinking of writing a new book.
“Stories of the past,” he said. “My story is endless.”
Kerouac was spending a lot of time then drinking at local watering holes. The Flamingo Sports Bar, a green building tucked along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street, is one of the last ones left from his time here. He was said to have enjoyed his final drinks there before dying of a massive hemorrhage at St. Anthony’s Hospital. These days, it’s become a shrine of sorts to the writer. The bar’s owner, Dale Nichols, spent some time there with Kerouac.
“I came back from Vietnam and I went down to the old pool room and all of my buddies were hanging. They said, ‘Dale, you gotta meet this guy. He’ll party three or four days without sleeping.’ ”
At the time, Nichols was 22 and
Kerouac was 46. Nichols remembers him as “just a regular person.”
“I drank a lot of wine with him and did a lot of crazy things, but wasn’t really smart enough to know who he was,” Nichols said. “I asked him what he did and he said, ‘Well, when I’m not partying or drinking, I like to write.’ ”
Nichols ended up purchasing the bar in 1969, a few months before Kerouac’s death. Sometimes he would come to work at 8 a.m. and find the writer sitting on a bench reading the newspaper, waiting for him to open up. Save for some new pool tables and a display of family photos donated by Kerouac’s brother-in-law, not much else has changed inside the bar since those days.
“It still looks the same as when he used to come here,” Nichols said.
The Friends of Jack Kerouac host monthly poetry readings at the Flamingo Sports Bar, and international Kerouac fans flock there to pay homage. Nichols likes to give them a shot glass as a souvenir. They often ask: Did
Jack have a special seat? (Yes, in the corner.) Did he have a favorite drink? (“He didn’t care what he drank,” Nichols tells them. “He’d mix it all together.”) Many opt to buy Kerouac T-Shirts.
Outside the bar, a large blackand-white picture of the writer in his younger years, outlined in a frame of white lights, stares at patrons as they approach the front door. Next to it, the window advertises the bar’s running “Kerouac Special” — a shot of whiskey and a swig of beer for $2.50.
Several years ago, Hartzell painted a colorful mural of Kerouac on the side of the building. He just finished adding a new typewriter mural.
“I think that initially St. Pete was a little ashamed and embarrassed in the way that his death was portrayed,” Hartzell said.
“There is still a universal appeal to reading his work and having that sense of wanderlust and wanting to experience things firsthand in an increasingly digital world. There’s a deep sense of connection and friendship in his writing.”